A woman embroiders her daily entry into her diary - creating over 1800 unique icons.

Keen crafter Sophie O'Neill, 29, began the project at the beginning of 2020, while still living in her home state of California.

She decided to start the year by depicting a fountain she'd spotted at work, filled with streamers from New Year's Eve celebrations.

She had taught herself to embroider just months before, after noticing a creator on Instagram starting a similar project and becoming inspired.

Each day of 2020, Sophie spent up to 40 minutes painstakingly stitching a unique icon to represent the most memorable part of her day - and now, after five years of the project, she has amassed over 1800 icons, with no two the same.

"I was on Instagram and I saw an embroidery journal for the first time - and I'd never seen anything like it," said Sophie."

"In October 2019, I decided to start embroidering and teach myself how to do it, so that in January 2020, I could start my own journal to track my progress in my new job - but I ended up tracking the pandemic instead."

"I picked up a cheap embroidery kit, just to learn how to do embroidery, and taught myself more from there and started designing my own patterns."

"My first year wasn't too difficult. I was working as a housekeeper and front-desk manager in-training, so I was learning so much."

"I was taking my icons from doing laundry at work, or learning how to manage people, and turning those into icons representing my day. "

"I was furloughed in March, so I was gardening and watching films and doing puzzles – so I had lots of icons I could pull just from my day-to-day."

Sophie's journals take about 30 hours per year, as she divides the fabric into clock-style segments - each wedge featuring a different month of the year.

Since beginning her project, Sophie has chronicled her move from Orange County, CA, to her aunt's home in Birmingham, the beginning of her relationship with her now-partner, and her journey to live with him in Glasgow.

Now, after hitting the five year mark, Sophie says her embroidered diary entries only take 5-10 minutes at a time - and she has begun stitching them in batches twice per week.

"It's amazing to see them all laid out – in the past five years, I've done so much," she said."

"I stitched a big Union Jack when I moved to the UK – then there's all of these icons where I didn't really know what I was doing. "

"I was living in Birmingham with my aunt, trying to find a job, and she was taking me on walks to castles and doing all sorts of activities. You can see that in all of these icons. "

"Then I went up to Glasgow for a trip and just happened to meet my boyfriend the month after moving to the UK. I get to see all of these things occur in the space of five years, and it's wonderful to look back on."

"I did a bonfire this year as well for bonfire night, because I'd never been to a bonfire night celebration and got to do that for the first time."

"I didn't realise until doing this that I was quite a positive person. I don't embroider the best thing that happens that day – just the most memorable. "

"So, if I have an awful day, there's going to be an icon representing that, like a frowny face or a teardrop or a low battery icon – but they rarely pop up and it's so surprising. Most of them are things that I've gone and done throughout the day."

Leading into her sixth year of the project, Sophie plans to continue her detailed diary - but this year, she's only stitching seven to ten icons per month.

"I've done this for five years now – so this year I'm going to scale it back a bit and stitch 7-10 icons every month, and then I'll probably do one update at the end of each month."

Throughout her journey, Sophie has been updating followers on her blog, The Stir-Crazy Crafter, and her accompanying Facebook group, where nearly 20,000 follow along - with many even beginning their own embroidery journals.

"The response has been overwhelmingly positive. I created a Facebook group two years ago and it's just about to hit 20,000 members. It's so wholesome – everyone is so kind."

"I've designed about 500 icons for people to use throughout the year as inspiration, and you see so many people in the group making their own with their own spins on it. "

"It's been wonderful to see."