00:00I'm Sophie O'Neill, I'm based in Glasgow, Scotland, and these are my embroidery journals.
00:16Every day I embroider an icon that represents my day.
00:18This could be something I did, something I ate, somewhere I went, or even how I was feeling,
00:24but every day I embroider an icon that represents my day.
00:31At this point, I've been doing this for five years, and I've embroidered over 1,800 icons
00:35representing my day.
00:37Each embroidery journal takes me about 30 hours over the course of the year to embroider.
00:42That's about five to ten minutes a day of embroidery.
00:47I started my first embroidery journal back in 2020, and this was before the pandemic
00:51started to represent my journey into being a new manager-in-training in a hotel.
00:56I wanted to embroider everything I was learning, things I was doing, I even embroidered tiny
01:01little stars to represent each individual meeting I was going to on a daily basis.
01:06But it was a great three months, and then I was furloughed, so I actually ended up charting
01:11the course of the pandemic through my embroidery.
01:14So I have all sorts of icons that I was doing, things that I was just trying to fill my time
01:19with during the pandemic.
01:20So lots of cleaning, I was gardening, I was even baking and watching films, doing puzzles,
01:28all sorts of things that people were doing during the pandemic.
01:31Later on in the year, I even charted a health issue I had where I developed a bone infection.
01:37It was a horrible experience, but I have a whole bunch of icons representing this time
01:42in my life.
01:43After I completed my embroidery journal, I decided to keep on doing it.
01:46So I've done this for five years, and embroidered all sorts of icons, and even charted my move
01:52from California in 2021 to Glasgow, Scotland, where I reside now.
01:58It gives me a good way to look back on my year by stitching an icon a day.
02:03I can kind of, at the end of the year, look back and be like, you know what, that was
02:07actually a really good year.
02:08I can see all of these small little things that occurred that you might not think about
02:12five years from now.
02:14This year, something I probably would have completely forgot about, is I hosted an Easter
02:18egg hunt for my co-workers, and it was amazing watching all of these grown adults run around
02:25trying to find the Easter egg hunts.
02:26We did a spoon and egg race as well.
02:29It was such a good day, and I don't know if I would remember that in a few years from
02:34now, but I get to just look back and recall all of these silly little things that happened
02:39throughout the year, and it's just a great way of being mindful and thinking about your
02:43day.
02:44For 2025, I decided to do something a little bit different.
02:47I'm going to be embroidering 7-10 icons for each month, so I'll be doing significantly
02:52less icons throughout the year, so I've downsized to a 7-inch embroidery hoop rather
02:56than a 12-inch.
02:57I also think this will be a way to just focus on the actual highlights from each month.
03:03I'm really excited to see how it goes this year filling it up, and if I can actually
03:07keep to doing 7-10 icons a month.
03:08We'll see!
Comments