WIP Focus - Cinnamon Bear

I was watching YouTube yesterday and have notice that many like doing "X" amount of starts in December with no intention of finishing any during this month. It's an interesting concept, but I'm not sure it's for me any more. I get a feeling of anxiety every time I look at my WIP list - especially since it's so old! That feeling I got again, after watching all the starts motivated me to pull out one of those WIPS. 

My focus piece today was "Cinnamon Bear" by Pamela Kellogg. The pattern can be found in the Just Cross Stitch 2001 Ornament issue. I have no idea when I started this guy and could not figure out why I never finished him, because I'm quite close to getting him done. Well, until I started working on him today. There's a lot of color changes and confetti stitching. It makes him look so awesome but is quite tiresome to try to figure out where I left off and when you have colors so close, to know exactly where you stitched. So I took and enlarged the chart and got my trusty highlighter out. Boy, does that make life much easier!!! I didn't get  a lot of stitches in, but did finish his foot, did the empty spots between hi eyes and a bit on the blanket and kitten. If I keep going, I could have this piece done by Christmas. I don't know if I'll put the border on. I have to check to see if I have the color needed. 

One thing I'm finding while looking at these old WIPs/UFOs is I have no idea what fabrics are used or in the case of HoHRH, I'm going to have to figure out if I used one strand or 2 to stitch. It's a bit of a challenge to see in the lighting when I put it on the bars. I'm not going to worry about that until I start stitching. This has made me realize that I need to start taking notes from now on. There's much to be said about keeping a record!