Markup R-XP Cross Stitching App

I’ve been using the Markup app for several months now and I love it so much. I had been using Pattern Keeper almost since I got back into cross stitching in 2020. It’s still a good app but for my stitching, I like Markup so much better. Some of the things I’m going to say I love about Markup may even be available on Pattern Keeper and I just never fully learned to use it.

I will say that when I first started using Markup, I was so confused. I’m sure there are still many aspects of it that I don’t use or know how to use but there are some things I really like and would hate to not have.

The main improvement for me is that it’s so easy to import a paper chart into the app. We have a very old printer and I cannot copy/make PDF and email it to myself. I have to copy the chart as a PDF and save it to a thumb drive. That works, though I wish I could email it.

I find that getting the chart copied, saved as a PDF, onto the thumb drive, then onto the laptop is easy and quick, though I did struggle with it a bit at first. I’d rather work on the laptop than the tablet. There are many free sites that will merge a PDF into one document. If a chart has multiple pages, each page when copied will be PDF 1, PDF 2 (or whatever your printer calls them). I’m betting some of the newer printers will do the merging for you, but for me, I have to merge them into one pdf for the app.

Then I email that merged pdf to myself and open it on my tablet where the Markup app is located, then open it and make any adjustments that need to be made. It took me longer to write all that than it takes to actually get the chart/PDF set up and ready to use.

You can see here that it tells me the average stitch rate/day, which is 387. My goal is 300 stitches per day. It also tells me the average amount of time I stitch per day is 2 hours, 42 minutes. There are people in this house who think I stitch at least 20 hours per day. This is actually the only project I’ve stitched on since I started it.

Here’s where I think something is off. I started this project on April 5. There are four squares and I would say there are close to the same number of stitches in each square. I’ve stitched 2.5 squares. I’ve been stitching 13 days (so it says but that’s because today is the 13th day and I haven’t actually taken any stitches yet so I’ve really stitched 12 days. It says I have 15 days left to stitch if I stitch at the same rate. I don’t think so but we’ll see.

Here’s the fun part since I like to challenge myself. You can see Estimated Completion Date: May 2, 2024. After the first few days of stitching, I stitched a lot one day and not so much the next two days, it said I was going to finish on May 12 or something like that. I wanted to finish by the end of April so I stitched and stitched and stitched and got that estimated completion date to April 29. Then, for a few days, I didn’t get much stitching done and it changed the date to May 15 so I’ve been working hard to get it back to the end of April.

I do think I will finish the third block by the end of Thursday, which is the 18th and I’m almost certain I can finish the fourth block in 5 days, which means my estimated completion date is April 23.

Who do you think is going to win this challenge?