A woman embroiders her daily entry into her diary - creating over 1800 unique icons.
Keen crafter Sophie O'Neill, 29, who now lives in Glasgow, Scotland began the project at the beginning of 2020.
She decided to start the year by depicting a fountain she'd spotted at work, filled with streamers from New Year's Eve celebrations.
Keen crafter Sophie O'Neill, 29, who now lives in Glasgow, Scotland began the project at the beginning of 2020.
She decided to start the year by depicting a fountain she'd spotted at work, filled with streamers from New Year's Eve celebrations.
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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!