Grow!

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Jenna Magee

I have officially killed another WIP for WIPocalypse – woohoo! It isn’t a big finish, but any finish is a big deal for me. 🙂

This design is Grow! from Just Nan’s Over the Top collection.

Here’s where it was when I started:

(This picture was actually taken after I had put some more stitches in. The brown and tweeded lighter green stitches didn’t exist when I picked it up.)

And here it is completed:

No, the fabric did not change colors, my stitching photography just leaves a lot to be desired and I didn’t have the time or patience to fiddle with the colors enough to make two pictures taken at different times of the day under different lighting conditions match up.

And so now I have pulled out another WIP and put in a few more stitches. But you’ll have to wait for my next WIPocalypse update or a happy dance post to see what it is. 😉

Onward and upward!

Posted in Stitching | 6 Comments

WIPocalypse Check-in – January 9, 2012

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Jenna Magee

Yes, the WIPocalypse is officially upon us! Here is my January update with my current WIPocalypse WIP list, including status updates:

    My current WIP pile:

  1. Northern Pine Designs – Geometric II
  2. Mill Hill – Spring Weathervanes – Floral Vase
  3. Jenna Magee – Purin – mounted onto scroll bars and ready to go
  4. Just Nan – Over the Top – Grow! (Tin Topper) – current focus piece
  5. Lody Steward – Pagoda Pincushion
  6. Chatelaine Designs – Micro #1
  7. Lizzie*Kate – Dog Lessons For People
  8. Nora Corbett – The Sunflower Fairy – FINISHED!

    9. Older WIPs:

  9. The Victoria Sampler – Heirloom Memories Sampler
  10. Chatelaine Designs – Tiny Rose Mandala Garden – FINISHED!
  11. Leisure Arts – Pooh Sweet Dreams Afghan

    12. UFOs:

  12. Dimensions – Bonsai and Buddha
  13. Roz Watnemo – Flower Garden
  14. Mirabilia – Fairy Moon
  15. Mill Hill Treasured Spring Sampler Kit – Flower Basket Fantasy
  16. Jeanette Crews Designs – Computer Wizard – Started February 14, 2007
  17. Giraffe Pillow

As you can see, I have added links to current progress photos for the ones I have available. I’m taking pictures as I pull them out.

I have two finishes to report already! Nora Corbett’s The Sunflower Fairy and Chatelaine Designs’ A Tiny Rose Mandala Garden. To be fair, The Sunflower Fairy was nearly complete.

Here are the before and after pics:

The Sunflower Fairy, as of December 28, 2011:

Completed January 2, 2012:

She will be dropped off tomorrow night for framing.

A Tiny Rose Mandala Garden, as of January 3, 2012:

Completed January 7, 2012:

This one will also be dropped off tomorrow night for framing.

Now I have moved on to a very small piece – Just Nan’s Over the Top Grow! tin topper. I needed something that I could work in hand, as working on a stand for several hours every night for a week hurt my shoulders. I suspect my momentum will slow down a bit, as I really have some other hobbies and personal work that I have completely ignored since the beginning of the holidays! 😆

So, there you have it! I need to remember to take a picture of the current WIP today, before I get too far along, so that I can show my progress next month. I suspect I may have this one finished by then and have moved on to a bigger piece. Those I will have to rotate between so that I don’t get too bored and stop making progress on the WIPocalypse in general.

Posted in WIPocalypse | 8 Comments

WIP Killa

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Jenna Magee

I’m starting the 2012 WIPocalypse off with a bang! Last night, I completed a UFO that’s been languishing, unseen in one of my several stitching bags for years. Say hello (and goodbye) to a freebie from Chatelaine Designs – Tiny Rose Mandala Garden:

I probably won’t have more finishes for a little while. I do actually have other things I’d like to focus on other than stitching. 😉 I need to switch to stitching in hand for a while anyway because stitching on a stand for several hours at a time over the past couple of days has been sending me to bed with a headache every night. Enough with that!

Posted in Stitching | 4 Comments

My Little Art Space

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Jenna Magee

At the end of November, beginning of December, or somewhere around that time, I ordered another Ott-Lite lamp so that I could use it to illuminate my easel, allowing me to do some drawing and other artwork after the sun sets. Since that happens quite disturbingly early in the winter and Joann.com was kind enough to run one of their 50% off of Ott-Lite products sales, I was happy to oblige by making a purchase. I ended up with a really beautiful lamp – the Lexington floor lamp in Mocha Pearl. It suits the other lighting in our little reading nook quite nicely and that is where I decided to set up a little artistic space for myself, since the craft/music/everything else room is too crowded for me to set up my easel in right now. Add in the gorgeous bamboo easel that I bought from Dick Blick a while back (probably when I was still taking classes at The Art Institute), a folding chair, a bunch of pencils (and erasers), a nice thick pad of high quality paper and the two amazing artist’s models that Terry bought for me for Christmas and voila:

A little doodling space pour moi. You’ll have to ignore all of the mess on the floor and in the background, but it is hopefully only a temporary space for now until I can find a more appropriate and permanent space after we finish the basement this winter. It works, though, and lets me keep all of my drawing supplies spread out all over the floor and reading chairs so that I can pick back up on the drawing that I’m hiding in the photo whenever the spirit moves me. 😉

Posted in Art | 2 Comments

Black Friday (-ish) Fabric Splurge

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Jenna Magee

Okay, I am ashamed to admit it, but I splurged on some stash after Thanksgiving. Silkweaver had a sale, I thought I needed some fabric and the rest is… well, infamy, really. Wait, I mean history. Yeah, that’s it. 😉 Anyway, it took a month to get to me, but I’ve really been wanting to get two of these colors, so I’m glad to have them in my hot little hands:

Top (L to R): Solo – 28 count linen; Solo – 28 count linen; Hocus Pocus (limited edition color) – 32 count lugana
Bottom (L to R): Scattered Leaves – 32 count linen; Witch’s Brew (limited edition color) – 32 count lugana; Iris Garden – 32 count linen

I could have sworn that one of the solos was supposed to be a blue, but it was so long ago that I don’t remember anymore and it’s pointless to try to argue. Everything but Scattered Leaves and Iris Garden was just for the heck of it anyway. I really have to start ignoring their sales (and I did successfully ignore their Christmas sale, due in large part to the fact that my previous order hadn’t arrived yet) unless I need a specific fabric for something.

At least I can slot this little slip-up into my 5 Finishes challenge and not feel so guilty about it.

I was going to try to slip in a couple of stitches last night on a UFO that I’ve pulled for the WIPocalypse, but I spent too much time running down what appears to be my only skein of DMC 501 for the UFO and then got stuck playing around with PCStitch, so I frittered away all of my spare time and forced myself to be a good girl and go to bed. Bummer. I’m hoping for stitching time tonight, but I’m also trying to balance out stitching with working towards goals that I want to accomplish this year. Speaking of which, I really need to write some of these things down…

Posted in Stitching | 1 Comment

First Stitching Finish of 2012

Posted on January 3, 2012 by Jenna Magee

Say hello to Nora Corbett’s The Sunflower Fairy:

Design published in Cross-Stitch & Needlework Magazine’s September 2009 issue.
Stitched on 32 count overdyed linen named Days Gone By from Silkweaver.
Used the beads and fibers called for, with a few exceptions:

  1. Substituted Old Oak Tree by Crescent Colours for Valdani V4 Golden Brown
    (due to what I think was a mislabeling of my Valdani skein)
  2. Substituted Kreinik #4 braid 221 for the wings
  3. Substituted DMC 898 for the backstitching of the wings and antennae
  4. Substituted DMC 948 for the skin, which I recharted to stitch over one
Posted in Stitching | 6 Comments

WIPocalypse NOW!

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Jenna Magee

I’ve joined Measi’s 2012 WIPocalypse. So far, I have identified 8 WIPs/UFOs that I’m going to focus on for which I have photos. I also have the 8 projects in my current WIP pile, plus at least 1 more project I want to focus on. I suspect that the list will grow as the year goes on and/or as I finish projects on the list and/or as I start new projects. For now, though, this is what I have:

    My current WIP pile:

  1. Northern Pine Designs – Geometric II
  2. Mill Hill – Spring Weathervanes – Floral Vase
  3. Jenna Magee – Purin
  4. Just Nan – Over the Top – Grow! (Tin Topper)
  5. Lody Steward – Pagoda Pincushion
  6. Chatelaine Designs – Micro #1
  7. Lizzie*Kate – Dog Lessons For People

    8. Older WIPs:

  8. The Victoria Sampler – Heirloom Memories Sampler
  9. Chatelaine Designs – Tiny Rose Mandala Garden
  10. Leisure Arts – Pooh Sweet Dreams Afghan

    11. UFOs:

  11. Dimensions – Bonsai and Buddha
  12. Roz Watnemo – Flower Garden
  13. Mirabilia – Fairy Moon
  14. Mill Hill Treasured Spring Sampler Kit – Flower Basket Fantasy
  15. Jeanette Crews Designs – Computer Wizard – Started February 14, 2007
  16. Giraffe Pillow

Too much? 😉

Posted in WIPocalypse | Leave a comment

Stitching Update – December 28, 2011

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Jenna Magee

First up, I will showed the framed version of the Grandmother pieces that I stitched for Christmas:

For Terry’s grandmother:

For my step-grandmother:

Then, Belinda at Tor Rhuann Designs released her 2011 ornament design on Facebook on December 16th. I loved it so much that I immediately kitted up 3 versions of it and had completed all three the next day. 😆

All 3 versions are stitched on linen (the second one is a discontinued opalescent Silkweaver fabric) with Rainbow Gallery Hi-lights fibers.

Finally, today I finished the final version of Brittercup Designs’ Britty Christmas Puppy. This one is for Lily; I’ve already done one for Abby and a memorial one for Phoebe. I just need to make sure I finish them into ornaments before next Christmas. 😉

Next up, I need to get back to working on Nora Corbett’s The Sunflower Fairy. This is where I last left her a couple of weeks ago:

Posted in Stitching | 4 Comments

Don’t Freak Out, I’m Okay

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Jenna Magee

I apologize to anyone that I may have freaked out with my post last night. I am struggling to deal with the reality of my parents’ impending divorce smacking me in the face while I’m home. I needed to do a brain dump to get everything out. Writing is what saves my sanity in times like these and is what I turned to the last time my mother got divorced, as well.

Thank you for your support, as I can use all that I can get right now, but I will be fine, I assure you. I just have a lot of processing to do; far more than I had realized and/or ever anticipated. So, there will probably be more writing on the horizon, but it’s not a cry for help, just a release of emotion.

Posted in Journey to Self-Discovery | 2 Comments

Sadness

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Jenna Magee

Please forgive this very personal post, but I had an intense need to capture my thoughts and emotions this night so that I can purge them and move on.

_________________________

Oh no, no, no, no, no. Please no. Not now. Not again.

I’ve spent the last 23 years of my life clawing my way out of that deep, dark, miserable fucking hole that I was thrown into as a child and just as I’m finally reaching the top, I find the walls to be unscalable, the surface slicked by a flood of tears that won’t stop. My eyes are red and puffy, my sinuses stuffed and swollen. I can’t lie down to try to escape into sleep because I can barely breathe. Every fiber of my being yearns to run. Run away and never look back. Never come back.

I can’t take the silence, the boredom, the sadness, the pain, the hurt, the moving boxes, the empty bookcases. It has made a place that I already disliked visiting completely unbearable. I know that I need to scrape together what has become, in just one night, in only a matter of hours, the scattered vestiges of my sanity, put on a happy face and get through the next couple of days. I’m just not sure how.

Why? Why me? Why now? Just when I was starting to regain my sense of self, remember who I really am, reach out and dare to become who I’m meant to be. Haven’t I cleared enough hurdles? Haven’t I earned the right to get myself to a place where I am happy with everything in my life? I still had a ways to go to even get there and yet here I am. Feeling like that sad, scared, empty and lonely little girl again. I don’t want to be her. I don’t want to go through that again. Losing myself for two decades was bad enough. I don’t want to lose myself again. I don’t want to be broken, like a doll laying in a ditch after a hurricane, dirty and damaged.

I have a husband who is trying to help, wants to help. But he can’t. No one can. No one can follow where I go. And no one really should or should even want to. I don’t want to be here. Not again. Never again.

And so I won’t. Somehow I will finish the climb out of that hole and I will seal it up so that I can never fall down again. I will find the strength to keep moving forward, to keep moving towards my dreams. I will not lose myself again. I can do this. I will do this.

Tonight, I may cry myself to sleep. I may feel as though I could drown in my tears. But tomorrow, the sun will rise. And another day will begin anew. And I will put one foot in front of the other and keep going.

Posted in Journey to Self-Discovery | 10 Comments