For my second year of stitching this hoop I wanted to choose a theme with more of a personal twist. The temperature hoop that I stitched in 2023 really appealed to the geography/science loving part of my brain but this time I wanted to choose something that might have an impact on my habits. Could embroidery actually influence the way I live my life? Other than having strands of thread all over my clothes, sofa, bathroom floor….
The simple answer is yes! I knew that I wanted/needed to move my body more. I’m not a runner and you’ll never convince me otherwise, but I do like a good walk and so trying to increase my step count seemed like a good way forward. In the last few years, I have seemingly sacrificed looking after my body for all of the other things on my list of things to do, and carving out time to take a walk felt really difficult. But no more! Having gone through menopause (oh joy) I knew that I needed to be taking better care of myself and what better way to start.
The first step was to work out the colours and data ranges. I already had the threads from 2023 and I wanted to use the same colour palette so I simply thought about what the maximum number of steps might be, optimistically plumping for 20,000 (imagining hikes around the Lake District!) In my head it made sense for the cooler blues/greens to represent the lower numbers and the warmer reds and pinks to show the higher step counts. I wanted green to be used when I hit my target of around 8,000 steps.
The ranges and associated DMC stranded cotton colours ended up being:
- 0 to 2,500 steps – blue – 3765
- 2,500 to 5,000 steps – light blue – 3849
- 5,000 to 7,500 steps – teal – 3812
- 7,500 to 10,000 steps – green – 701
- 10,000 to 12,500 steps – light green – 907
- 12,500 to 15,000 steps – yellow – 444
- 15,000 to 17,500 steps – orange – 946
- 17,500 to 20,000 steps – red – 321
- 20,000+ steps – pink – 3607
It obviously wasn’t enough to just track my steps so I also recorded the days that I went swimming. I’d started swimming regularly towards the end of 2023 and so it seemed like a nice addition to track swim days too. I added a dark blue (DMC 820) French knot on swim days and before the end of the year I’d also stitched silver (DMC 02) French knots to mark the days that I swam outside and there was even an orange one for the day that I went scuba diving in our local pool!
During 2023 I’d used a simple satin stitch to fill in the squares, but once again I wanted to do something slightly differently, so I perused the RSN Stitch Bank and found Rhodes Stitch. It has a lovely 3D effect and I think they look like little gems. I used 4 strands of thread for the Rhodes stitch and then outlined each square with 2 strands of the same colour. The French knots were stitched with 2 strands of thread.
So then ‘all’ I had to do was get walking! Starting this kind of thing in January is not very conducive to walking more so I bought myself a walking pad (like a treadmill but with nothing to hold on to!) and I was off. The walking pad lived in the living room, and I often walked whilst watching the TV, or listening to music or a podcast. I also tried to walk outside in situations where I might have just jumped in the car. I regularly walked down at the beach which I really love to do. I already owned a simple wrist-watch style pedometer and that was all I needed to record my actual steps. I think it was accurate, and I did a couple of tests where I walked and counted, and it seemed pretty good. I used the same watch for the entire year so at least the numbers are consistent with each other, if not 100% correct! Each night as I got into bed I would record the number in an Excel spreadsheet accessed on my phone.
Don’t get me wrong, it was hard! But knowing that I’d be recording a number each day and then stitching it really spurred me on. I still had a lot of things on my to do list each day, you know, work, running my small business, school PTA and governor responsibilities, but I tried hard to find time most days to walk.
When it came to the stitching, I would normally stitch at least a week at a time. Stitching every day was just too much faff! It would take longer to get set up and tidied up then to actually stitch if I did it every day, but once a week or so was not overwhelming to do. Occasionally I would let it drift for a few weeks, but I can’t remember ever having to stitch more than a couple of weeks at a time.
And it worked. I moved my body every day and definitely more than I had in the previous few years. And now that I’m writing this blog in February 2025 I can honestly say that I’m once again moving my body less. The swimming is continuing but the walking less so. Just writing this and looking at the data again is making me want to get back on the walking pad!
Some data analysis for you –
- Total steps walked in 2024 – 2,386,003 (1,019 miles)
- Maximum steps in one day – 24,058 (30/12/24, what a walk that was!)
- Minimum steps in once day – 914 (07/04/24)
- Average daily steps – 6,519 (less than I’d have liked!)
- ‘Best’ month – March
- ‘Worst’ month – November
And my favourite data – the number of each colour squares stitched!
- 0 to 2,500 steps – blue – 42
- 2,500 to 5,000 steps – light blue – 110
- 5,000 to 7,500 steps – teal – 85
- 7,500 to 10,000 steps – green – 56
- 10,000 to 12,500 steps – light green – 43
- 12,500 to 15,000 steps – yellow – 20
- 15,000 to 17,500 steps – orange – 7
- 17,500 to 20,000 steps – red – 1
- 20,000+ steps – pink – 2
Looking at this data, I would have loved the green colour (7,500 to 10,000) to be the most frequent day but hey ho!
And some swimming stats too:
- The number of times I went swimming – 115
- Lengths (25m) swum – 5,121, which equals 79.5 miles!
- Number of single swims over 1 mile – 22
- ‘Best’ month – June, ‘worst’ month – August
- Outdoor swims – 6
I’ve signed up to do the Great North Swim in Lake Windermere in June 2025 (half a mile) so I definitely need to keep the swimming up!
What a year. I was and still am really surprised at just how motivating this project was. I’d love to hear about your year if you have been stitching too, feel free to leave a comment!
If there is anything else that you’d like to know just drop me a message on hello@littlelightstitchery.co.uk or via DM in Instagram.
Nicky x
