Grime guard, needle minders, and ezPDF

So many things have been happening for me lately, stitchy-wise. As I posted about earlier, I started my first HAED. Since this was going to be a big project that would take me a while to complete, I treated myself to pre-gridded fabric, as well.
As a further treat for passing my test, I bought myself a set of qsnaps, and I love them so far.

Well, I have taken things even further. To go along with the qsnaps, I naturally had to have a grime guard to go around the outside. Since I have quite a bit of fabric that I wanted to tuck into the edges, I ordered a slightly wider guard to accommodate that.
I have to say that I love it so far! I had a bit of a challenge getting the fabric to roll up right to fit into the grime guard. As it is, I'm not too happy with how it is rolled, so I will probably re-do that part.

As I was stitching with my new qsnaps and grime guard, it suddenly hit me. I can now use a needle minder! After having sold a bunch in my Etsy shop, I still have not actually used them before, since I tend to work on my projects in hand. I pulled out some of my already-made needle minders, and picked one that I love the most. I had to remove a bunch of my needle minders from my shop, but I still have a bunch laying around.
The one I picked is in my most recent progress picture that I posted earlier, here.

I started stitching again, and I would catch myself repeatedly studying the pattern, trying to find all the symbols, and again it just hit me. I can use an app on my tablet for that.
I downloaded EZ PDF onto my Windows tablet and played around with it for a while. I was eventually able to figure out how to search for symbols, and it has made it so much easier for stitching. It is so easy to find what to stitch for a particular color I am working on. Up until now, I always worked from printed paper copies of my patterns. This has been a game changer!

I can't even explain how much I am loving all the new additions to my stitching. I always saw people using these in my stitchy groups on facebook, but I never considered going so far with it. Now that I have, I don't know what was holding me back. I was just being silly! I will never go back.