How do you balance your stitching time with your other obligations such as work, household chores, etc.?

This varies, according to what country I am in, and whether I am working or on holiday. Of course, if I have a lot on at work, I get very little stitching done, as I get home so late. However, if I am in Cyprus and not too busy at work, I can get quite a lot done, as I have no housework responsibilities here at all, apart from tidying up and doing a bit of laundry. No cooking, cleaning etc. It's quite different if I am at home in Paris, where I do all my own housework, and also have a lot of other things to do, as Paris is a bit more lively than Nicosia! Nicosia has no such temptations as the Louvre and WH Smith etc etc...

What do you do to your thread clippings? Do you just scrap them or do you use them in something else?

Oh, I just scrap them......... when I was at Skals, we were advised to collect them and eventually we would have enough to stuff a pincushion, but really! How long would this take, and wouldn't it all show through, depending upon what colour the pincushion and the threads were? At Skals we did have a jar for left-over threads that were long enough to do something with, and people could use this if they just needed a colour for a few stitches, that was quite practical. Same at Veronique de Luna's school in Paris. But these days, if it's just a clipping, I let it fall to the floor and someone sweeps it up (Cyprus) or I do (Paris).

Do you ever get to a point working on a project that you’ve had for so long, you start to wonder what possessed you to start it in the first place?

This usually happens when I am on the tenth square of pattern darning or one over one on 32 count! I know perfectly well what possessed me to start it - it looked beautiful and I really wanted to do it - but some of these ones take forever, and I do start to doubt my own judgement in starting and despair about the prospect of ever finishing. In these cases, the remedy is to put it away until I can get excited about it again. After all, it is supposed to be fun, and it actually doesn't matter if something takes me five years to stitch.