Model Stitching Excitement

Posted on December 19, 2006 by Jenna Magee

I was so excited Sunday night, I could have peed my pants. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but you know what I mean.

Sandie Vanosdall of The Sweetheart Tree called me! Me, little old me. Isn’t that crazy? I really enjoyed talking to her; she’s really a lovely person, very nice and easy to converse with. I am going to send her some samples of my work and then, hopefully, I will officially become one of her model stitchers. 😀 I can’t get over it, I am just SO excited. Her designs are the perfect size for me and it would be such a treat to work for one of my all time favorite designers ever. We were discussing payment and other specifics about model stitching for her and I asked if I could just be paid in stash, since any money she paid me would likely just be turned around and spent on her designs. 😆

I don’t want to get my hopes up too high until she sees my work and approves it, but since I’m not exactly new to model stitching or anything, I’m hoping that there won’t be any issues. She was happy to hear that I do hardanger work, so I guess that will help me get my foot in the door, as well. I can’t wait until Christmas is over and the postal system has cleared out a bit so that I can send my samples and see what she thinks!

Posted in Stitching | 19 Comments

Outage Update

Posted on December 18, 2006 by Jenna Magee

Well, the technician scoped out the job this morning. The fiber will be installed this afternoon, probably while I’m at my first appointment with a psychiatrist. Which means the switch will happen soon.

Good news, though, especially for Isabelle and Zohrah, who have an ISP that doesn’t follow standard operating procedures. 😉 Terry has come up with an idea that will allow us to make the change, but also to service requests to the old address until our T1 contract ends at the end of January. If his plan works, everyone will still be able to get in while all of your service providers catch up with the change.

We’ll see what happens!

Posted in Life in General | 3 Comments

Warning – Outage Ahead

Posted on December 17, 2006 by Jenna Magee

I am going to continue bumping up this post for the next several days to make sure as many of you read it as possible:

Most of you will remember this summer’s famous outage where some of you were unable to access my blog for over a week due to a server address change that took its sweet time getting around the world. Well, I hate to tell you, but it’s about to happen again.

Our 5-year contract on the T1 circuit to our house (to support our web business) ends in late January and just in time, they have run fiber optic service (FIOS) to our development. They ran the fiber over the summer and have been wiring the utility poles and making the connections for months. Finally, the service is available. Terry was checking on a regular basis for the service to become available for sign-up and as soon as they opened the service to our address, he signed us up. They came this weekend to dig the trench and lay the conduit run up to our house for the fiber. I’m not sure if they actually pulled the fiber through the conduit or not, but once that is done, all that remains is for a technician to come out, hook it into the box at the outside of the house and run the necessary wiring into the basement.

All of that tech junk was probably Greek to many of you, but the bottom line is that sometime this week, our entire range of IP addresses are going to change. And this means that our server addresses are going to change again. Which means that, once again, many of you will be unable to get to my blog for anywhere from two days to a month (depending on your internet service provider). Rest assured that I will still be here and still be posting. You’ll just have to keep trying every day or so until you can get to me again.

I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but this switch is going to cut our monthly internet bill roughly in half (and if you knew how much we were paying for the T1, you would probably choke), so there was never a question as to whether or not we would make the change. I just hope that I won’t lose any readers. Please stick with me! 😀

Posted in Life in General | 8 Comments

SBQ – Finishing

Posted on December 17, 2006 by Jenna Magee

This SBQ was suggested by Carol and is:

Do you have any good internet links to tutorials for your favorite finishing techniques that you would like to share?

I purposefully put off answering this question right away. Partially because I didn’t have links to any tutorials that others haven’t already mentioned. But also because I’ve had some tutorials of my own that I have had waiting in the wings for months and just never published.

I finally sat down and put everything together today and published three tutorials, two of them with pictures. I also organized my blog pages a bit better. So now, when you look at the right sidebar under Pages, you will see a couple of different categories: Challenges, Finishing Instructions and Lists. Under Finishing Instructions is where you will find my new tutorials for Basic Cording, Bellpulls and Biscornus.

I would appreciate if some of you would proofread the tutorials and provide me with some feedback. There may be some typos and all sorts of other mistakes. I was just sick of looking at them by the time I was done. 🙂

Posted in Stitching Blogger's Question | 2 Comments

We Have Furniture!

Posted on December 16, 2006 by Jenna Magee

Ahhhhhhh… that’s a happy sigh, not a scream, though it could also be a squeal. 😉 The delivery company called yesterday and said that our delivery window was sometime today between 7 AM and 11 AM. SHOCK! We didn’t go to bed until sometime after 1 AM and had to wake up at 5:30 Am to get ready. LOL. We did manage to the entire room cleared out, though, and didn’t actually have to twiddle our thumbs for long before they arrived. I was able to take pictures of the empty room and tomorrow I will take pictures of the loaded room so that you can see the before and after. It’s truly incredible.

I am nearly beside myself with joy and contentment. Truly. I realized this morning that I have not have furniture since I was in high school. That means, up to this point, I have lived nearly half of my life without furniture! It’s no wonder I had no idea what to fill up all of these drawers with. I felt like a caveman being introduced to a new concept when I was looking at all of the storage. What is this thing… sto – rag – eee? Me no understand. What me do with this… draw – er? 😉 Seriously. I have had organized piles of folded clothes on the floor for so long that it took me a little while today to realize that I could now move this stuff into my dresser. 😆 For the first time since we moved in, there is almost nothing on the floor!

I have now used all but one of the drawers between my dresser and my nightstand. That’s impressive for me. Of course, there’s nothing in the armoire yet, except the TV and components. One step at a time. Terry remarked that it feels like we’re in a hotel and he’s right. I moved some old lamps, that his parents gave us many years ago and have been sitting in our basement gathering dust, onto our generously-size nightstands and now it has a lovely glow. I was able to take doilies that his mom and my mom have made and use them all over the place. In fact, I am going to solicit more from my mother to use on my dresser. I was laying there for a little while, in this huge-feeling poster bed, trying to take a nap so I could get rid of the monster headache that has come on from moving so much stuff around over the past couple of days, and tears started to leak out of the corners of my eyes.

As I laid there, looking around in amazement at our new room, I thought up about how much my life has changed over the past two years. And here comes the personal growth portion of this post. So much has happened to me over the past two years and I have grown and transformed myself so much, it is a wonder. I used to wear jeans and a t-shirt to work. Now I wear khakis and nice tops. I never used to wear makeup and now I wear it to work everyday. I now wear heels without worrying that I’m going to tower over my husband. I am standing up for myself in my career and demanding a change, which is allowing me to climb to new heights and expand my skills. I demand and command respect and don’t hesitate to give it to others. I stand up for myself and am very open, honest and forthright in my communications and my relationships. My house is finally almost completely furnished. Things are just coming together for me in such an incredible way. I am starting to feel whole and comfortable in my own skin. It’s just hard to believe the difference. I feel like the planets are aligning themselves and I can soon start to live my life and enjoy what I’ve worked so hard to achieve. Life is good. 😀

Posted in Journey to Self-Discovery, Life in General | 8 Comments

Christmas Meme

Posted on December 15, 2006 by Jenna Magee

Snatched from the blog of a certain ferret lover.

  1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?

    2. Wrapping paper, mostly. I do recycle gift bags for odd-shaped gifts or small things that I want to combine, though.

  2. Real tree or artificial?

    3. Fake. I can’t stand cutting down a living tree, just to have it sit in my house for a few weeks and watch it die. I would get balled trees, but eventually you run out of places to plant them. So, fake it is.

  3. When do you put up the tree?

    4. Any time after Terry’s birthday on the 8th.

  4. When do you take the tree down?

    5. January-ish.

  5. Do you like eggnog?

    6. Definitely. Don’t forget the nutmeg!

  6. Favorite gift received as a child?

    7. I don’t know. I don’t remember the gifts so much as the wonderful family time spent together and the traditions that we had.

  7. Do you have a nativity scene?

    8. Nope. We always had one when I was growing up, but I don’t have one now.

  8. Hardest person to buy for?

    9. Terry! He never gives me ideas and always buys himself whatever he wants, so I have to wrack my brain every year for something special. One of these years, I’m going to come up empty.

  9. Easiest person to buy for?

    10. I think that my friend Mary is the easiest. She loves whatever I give her! 🙂

  10. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?

    11. I don’t remember.

  11. Mail or email Christmas cards?

    12. Mail. Except this year. I’m either skipping cards completely or doing them via email.

  12. Favorite Christmas Movie?

    13. The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (the original, animated version). Ooooh no, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol! THAT is my favorite!

  13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?

    14. June-ish. I have to be done by Thanksgiving or I’ll have a panic attack. 😆

  14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?

    15. No

  15. Favorite thing to eat and drink at Christmas?

    16. Sparkling grape juice (non-alcoholic, of course) to drink and turkey with stuff, gravy, cranberry sauce and broccoli casserole for dinner. Oh, and peanut butter kiss cookies. 🙂

  16. Clear lights or colored on the tree?

    17. Multi-colored for indoor trees. Clear for outdoors.

  17. Favorite Christmas song?

    18. Mmmmm… not sure. Maybe Bing Crosby’s White Christmas? I have both volumes of the Time-Life Christmas collection and there are a lot of “oldies but goodies” on there.

  18. Travel at Christmas or stay home?

    19. Stay home. Ever since we built the house, Christmas is here. It’s just easier that way.

  19. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer?

    20. I can sing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” so yes.

  20. Angel on the tree top or a star?

    21. Oh come on, like you even have to ask? 😉 Actually, we had an angel until I found the perfect star topper last year. It’s the Hallmark Starbright Illuminations tree topper.

  21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?

    22. Both. Terry and I exchange gifts with each other the night before to have some special, romantic time to ourselves and we exchange gifts with the rest of the family Christmas morning.

  22. Most annoying thing about this time of year?

    23. The stress and the crowds, but mostly the over-commercialization of the holiday.

  23. Favorite thing about the Christmas holidays?

    24. The generosity of the Christmas spirit, giving gifts and the general glow of this time of year.

  24. Most memorable gift?

    25. Many of the gifts that Terry give me have some special significance, but I could not point out any single gift as the most memorable. Mostly because my memory is terrible!

  25. What’s the one thing you seem to never get done at Christmas time?

    26. I can never seem to get everything stitched that I would like to for gifts. I even started earlier this year, but then took on too many other obligations, so I ended up worse off than usual.

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Short-Changing Christmas

Posted on December 14, 2006 by Jenna Magee

I’m short-changing Christmas a bit this year. I just have to, in order to preserve my sanity. Because my gift-buying for family is typically done by Thanksgiving (and I even had more than half of them wrapped by then this year), no one gets shorted on that front. However, I will not be sending Christmas cards, first off. I hope that all of you out there know that I love each and every one of you and that I’ll be thinking of you and wishing you a wonderful holiday season. 😀 I just can’t afford to take several hours addressing envelopes and writing out cards.

My anxiety level is through the roof right now. I haven’t been sleeping well and as a result could not get awake enough yesterday to get myself out of bed until 10 AM or so. Something has to give. Our bedroom furniture is being delivered on Saturday (weeks early – shock!) and we have to have the room completely cleared before the movers arrive. If you saw our bedroom just a couple of weeks ago, you would know what a HUGE effort that will be. Fortunately, I have been working on it for an hour or so here and there, so it’s not looking like an impossibility at this point. But there is still a good bit of work to be done and some of it will have to wait until the last minute. Namely, disassembling the bed and moving it out of the room. I still haven’t quite figured out how we’re going to do that, with the Select Comfort bed. I think we’re going to have to deflate it and take it apart. Ugh. I think we can probably clear a spot in the closet (especially with the mounds of laundry that I did last weekend) to put the dresser in there for a couple of days and Terry’s nightstand can just be put out into the hall on Saturday. I’ve already pulled everything out of the bookcase that I was using, placed everything in neat piles in the craft room and had Terry move the bookcase into the basement. I ordered two big Space Bag totes in which to store the extra bedding that we don’t use most of the time, but they won’t arrive in time, so I piled all of the bedding in the spare bedroom for now.

Anyway, I’m boring you with the details. I just want to relax and have fun right now, not be stressed out about stuff. Things are very much in a “hurry up and wait” position at work, with most people checking out mentally for the holidays already. Those of us who are still plugged in are unhappy. I think I’ll do some productive virtual thumb-twiddling in the form of working on my stash software program. Hey, it’s keeping my Java skills honed; that’s a valuable use of work time! 🙂

I really wish that I could get more in the Christmas mood. I think once the furniture is here and we’ve settled the room the way we want it and loaded the furniture, then we can decorate for Christmas and I will feel a little jollier. Right now, I’m trying to make sure that I get some time to myself every night, whether it’s for reading, stitching or other crafting.

So, I’m not being a scrooge. Honestly! I’m just trying to make the holidays better for everyone by not completely running myself down until I’m a puddle on the floor. That’s not what it’s about anyway. It’s about time with friends and family, giving presents to the people you care about, not having a perfect house, the perfect dinner, the perfect cookies, the perfect decorations. Do you hear that, perfectionist self? IT’S NOT ABOUT BEING PERFECT! Now to get that through my thick skull. 😉

Posted in Life in General | 8 Comments

I Hate Blogger!

Posted on December 13, 2006 by Jenna Magee

You know, they really need to get their stuff together with this beta version that they are pushing everyone to use. For the past two days, I’ve been unable to log in to leave comments on beta sites. It would appear that their link between Google and Blogger logins has broken.

I know that it’s a free service and a ton of people around the world make use of Blogger, but they have some of the worst service problems that I’ve ever seen. Between not being able to comment and people have problems posting photos all of the time, plus unexpected downtimes, it really is a mess.

I am SO GLAD that I am not on their system. I just wish that so many others weren’t. 🙂

So, if you are using beta Blogger and you don’t allow anonymous comments, I can’t comment right now, but it doesn’t mean that I’m not reading!

Posted in Life in General | 16 Comments

Cathy’s Round Robin

Posted on December 12, 2006 by Jenna Magee

Okay, so I finally spilled the beans to Cathy about my surprise for her. Mostly because I am going to need more time in order to fully complete her round robin. My stitching motivation hasn’t been what it could be, especially right now when I’m stressed about furniture, renovations, the holidays and work.

Cathy has been so kind as to give me as long as I need, basically. That way, I don’t feel so strapped to get it finished before Christmas. Thank you Cathy! I think you have helped to save my sanity, though my anxiety immediately found something else to focus on with a phone call today that the bedroom furniture will be delivered on Saturday. It’s okay; tomorrow is a Dr. Steve night so I can talk to him about my anxiety and the other stuff floating around in my brain today, mostly this massive competitive streak that I have when it comes to the last boyfriend I had before Terry. Long story, but I seem to have this incessant need to be better than him, financially, morally, etc. I’m not totally sure what it’s about, other than wanting to show him that I’m much better off without him than I was when we were together. And that was like 9 years ago. I think I have a problem there.

Anyway, that was a little off-topic. I finished my portion of Cathy’s round robin on November 30th, except for the personalization, and now that I’ve let the secret slip, I can show a picture of it. That way, at least Cathy knows what 3/4 of her round robin looks like. 😉



Cathy's RR

It’s a pansy design published by Sudberry House that I purchased from Patterns Online. LOVE that place!

P.S. I’m thinking of sending the biscornu photos to Sandra Vanosdall. I wonder if she would let me stitch any models for her? 😉

Posted in Stitching | 9 Comments

Tada!

Posted on December 10, 2006 by Jenna Magee

Warning! If you are prone to drooling all over your keyboard, cover it now.

Presenting… my mother’s biscornu:


Mom's Biscornu
Mom's Biscornu (Closeup)
Mom's Biscornu (Back)
Design is Enchantment (a Teenie Tweenie design) by Sandra Vanosdall of The Sweetheart Tree.
Stitched on 28-count antique white evenweave using my own DMC and GAST floss and Mill Hill bead conversions.
Finished as a biscornu as a Christmas gift for my mother.

Doesn’t it look like something the Queen of Sheba would have lounged on? It’s just so sparkly, sumptuous and royal looking. I wish it was for me! 😆

I took so many pictures of this, trying to get the right angle, lighting, etc. I felt like a fashion photographer. 😉 I’m not sure if it captured exactly what I wanted, but I’m looking to start taking more professional looking pictures of my finishes so that I can scrapbook them. I think this is a decent start.

Posted in Stitching | 27 Comments