I've been working on this pattern off an on (mostly off admittedly) over lunch breaks for about a year. I had a number of long hiatus when I decided I'd rather knit than work on this.
In the past year, I've gotten most of the border done. For 2008, I decided I needed to finish a cross-stitch project, any cross-stitch project. This was the one I had at work, so I am plugging away at this. It's a little odd getting back into cross-stitch even if it is only from about 1-2 each weekday.
My colors aren't the same as the ones in the picture. I decided that the blue wasn't true-blue enough for me when I bought the chart, and instead the fish will be in shades of purple and shades of yellow. Maybe in a week or so, I'll finally be using colors. I only have about 100 stitches or so left in the border (I'm in that lower right corner).
Today I got to work on it a bit, and I realized how close I was. It wasn't my best choice to do the border first. But now that I'm nearing the end, I want to work on this a lot. Still not quite as much as knitting, because no matter how long a sweater will take me it is still hours upon hours faster than this simple design.
Off I go back to the gym and a mini (free) nutritionist consult. But I'll be thinking about the craft projects all the time. If I could knit and run on the treadmill at the same time, I would.