Round Robins Have Landed!

Posted on June 15, 2006 by Jenna Magee

In a stunning move by the USPS, Cathy received my round robin package today (it was just put into the mail yesterday) and I received Sylvie’s round robin package today (it was just put into the mail in France on Monday). What an incredibly quick delivery of both package! I know that Cathy only lives about an hour away from me, but the USPS does not usually work that quickly between local areas. It often has to bounce from one major postal hub before it goes anywhere. Maybe I’m just lucky that I live somewhat near Philadelphia?

Sylvie did a beautiful job of her RR journal. It’s stitched front and back with paper fit in between, folded accordion style, and the whole thing tied with ribbon. A very impressive presentation, indeed! And it makes me feel like a slob. 😆 In fact, her packaging made me feel like a slob, as well, since she divided the floss into bags for each project. Oh well, it’s my first RR, so I have an excuse, right? 😀

I now have more obligations for my stitching time! The model that I’m working on should be finished and ready to go by Monday, at which point I need to stitch my short list of names for my Flight 93 quilt panel, then I’ll move on to Sylvie’s RR. Of course, in the meantime, there is no way that I’ll ever catch up on the Stitching Leporello, considering I haven’t even had time to baste my fabric yet! *sigh* No rest for the weary…

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SBQ – Do You Like Books?

Posted on June 14, 2006 by Jenna Magee

Today’s SBQ was suggested by Angela and is:

How many cross stitch books do you own and how often do you use them?

I’m answering this from the standpoint that a “book” is some sort of instructional book. Patterns might be included, but it’s not solely a book of designs. At least, this will be my definition for this question.

I have several such books:
– The New Anchor Book of Pulled Thread Embroidery Stitches (signed by Christine Wilkins, of Alchemy Stitchcraft, who created the designs used in the book)
– Stitch Sampler (a good visual stitch reference)
– The Cross Stitcher’s Bible (I’m not wild about this one)
– The Embroidery Stitch Bible (I found this one extremely helpful when I was designing my mini band sampler for the Friendship Tapestry)
– Ultimate Big Book of Finishing, Needlework Knowledge and Techniques (handy for finishing ideas)
– Hardanger Basics and Beyond
– Hardanger Fundamentals Made Fancy

I’ve used nearly all of them at some point. The last two I absolutely would not want to live without. They are by Janice Love and are incredible books that I would recommend for anyone who wants to learn or already does hardanger embroidery. I use them on a regular basis, in fact, I use them nearly every time I pick up a hardanger project just to refresh my memory and make sure I’m doing the filling stitches correctly. 🙂

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And So It Begins…

Posted on June 13, 2006 by Jenna Magee

I finished stitching on my round robin piece last night. The fabric, charts, specialty fibers and beads are packed up and ready to go. The only thing that is not yet finished is the journal that I’m going to stick into the package, as well. I have most of it printed out or nearly so. All I really need to do when I get home is to cut everything out and piece it together. It should be ready to go out in the mail tomorrow, depending on whether or not I need to go to the post office to send it priority mail.

I’ll be VERY excited to be able to cross this off of my list. After assembling the journal tonight, I will be focusing on the model I’m doing that is also loosely due this week. There are several more hours of stitching left on the model (maybe 10?), so I’ll talk to the designer and see if I can send it out on Monday. That would give me the weekend to make sure that everything is stitched to my satisfaction.

I know I said I wouldn’t post this week, but… surprise! I may pop in some other updates, as well. I just wanted to set expectations a little lower than normal so that I could exceed them. 😆 So… drumroll please… here’s my round robin piece:



My Round Robin Start

Actually, it’s a good thing that I just took a good look at the closeup picture of this because I just found an error. I guess I’ll be doing a little bit of frogging tonight first! Bah!

[Edited to say:] I fixed the mistake that evening and updated the picture, so if you’re looking for anything major, you won’t find it. The only boo-boo I left in the piece was a very tiny misplacement of one of the beads. 🙂

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Quiet This Week

Posted on June 12, 2006 by Jenna Magee

I predict that this week will be quiet. I just wanted to clarify that before people wonder where I went. 🙂

It will be a busy week in my personal life. Psychologist visit tomorrow afternoon, neurologist visit Thursday afternoon, round robin due to be mailed on Thursday and model due as soon as I can manage to finish it. As a result, you should not be surprised if I don’t post for a while. I have a lot of my plate and on my mind and the stress is just driving me batty, so the sooner this week is over, the sooner I can start to feel better!

Posted in Life in General | 5 Comments

Stitcher’s Meme – Floss in Residence

Posted on June 11, 2006 by Jenna Magee

1. How do you store your floss?

2. Do you keep a complete set of DMC?

3. Do you buy new floss to “kit” up new projects or do you use out of a master set?

1. I assume that this is more geared to just DMC cottons; however, I’m going to expand my answer to include overdyeds and silks. Which will make this a long answer. 😆

Let’s see now… DMCs are stored in (or on) a mixture of floss bobbin boxes (my oldest DMCs), Stitchbows (which I’ve decided to eventually wean off of, as well) and floss bags hung on a ring. Overdyeds are stored in a mixture of floss bags and their original packaging. The same goes for my silks, except for the spools/skeins of Au Ver a Soie silks (Soie d’Alger, Soie Perlee and Soie Gobelin) which reside in stacks in plastic boxes (one for the Soie d’Alger skeins, one for the Soie Perlee/Gobelin spools). I think that covers the mish-mash of organization.

Ooooh, I just had a thought! Since I just blazed through a Java class the other week, I should write my own web application to organize my stitching projects and materials. Woohoo!

2. Yep! 🙂

3. I only buy new floss as I run out of what I already have. I might buy more as I kit up a larger project that I think will need more. If I were doing a large sampler or other project in all one overdyed color, I would try to buy as many skeins as I might need (and more) so that they are all from the same dye lot.

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Stitcher’s Meme – Stitching Photos

Posted on June 10, 2006 by Jenna Magee

1. Do you have an online gallery somewhere with your cross-stitch?

2. How often do you take WIP pics?

3. Do you ever spend time looking at other stitcher’s galleries? If so how often do you look at them?

1. Oh my, YES! And if you haven’t visited my online photo gallery before, you really should!

2. WIP pics are not so frequent with me. I prefer finished stitching pics. However, for larger pieces or mystery/staged pieces, I do take photos as I’m going along.

3. I do like to browse through other stitcher’s photo galleries from time to time. I find that it gives me great inspiration to see the amazing work that others do!

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I’m Glad I’m Not on Blogger!

Posted on June 9, 2006 by Jenna Magee

I really have to say that Blogger’s performance lately has been horrendous! When they’re up, it tends to take a long time to bring up pages. And more often than not, they’re not up at all, or I can read the blogs, but the commenting feature is down. I don’t what the problem might be, but it’s really putting a crimp on my trying to stay caught up with your blogs. Right now, I can only manage to stay up-to-date with those of you who happen to have your blog hosted elsewhere or the privilege of hosting your own!

I will try to catch up as I have time, but until things start to improve with Blogger, I think I’ll be staying behind with you ladies! In the meantime, I’m recovering from yet another migraine today, so I’ll be pretty quiet, as I want to limit my computer time.

P.S. I’ve been over-indulging myself lately, a phenomenon that I’ve managed to further by buying myself a second journal for writing. Yes, a second. The same one I bought before, but in blue instead of the purple. That lovely, yummy leather cover just can’t be beat! Besides, I had such trouble finding one in the first place and they are not stocking these anymore, so the only one left now in one in black. I think maybe I will keep the purple one for more creative meanderings of the mind and the blue one will be for more mundane chatter of my mind. 🙂

Posted in Life in General | 8 Comments

Stitchers’ Meme – Stitch-alongs

Posted on June 8, 2006 by Jenna Magee

1. Have you ever participated in a SAL on one of the BB’s or with people in RL? How did it go?

2. If no, why not? and would you ever consider do so?

1. Participating in a SAL can keep you motivated… until you get really behind. Once I fall too far behind, though, I almost find it to be self-defeating because you know you’re never going to catch up, so why bother? It goes both ways. 🙂

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Stitchers’ Meme – Stitching Rules

Posted on June 8, 2006 by Jenna Magee

What “rules” do you make for yourself regarding your stitching? (These can include finishes, starts, purchases, rotations, hours, fabrics, flosses, etc, etc..)

Rules, schmules. Who needs rules for creative arts? That would take all of the fun out of it! 😉

Seriously, though, I really try not to impose a lot of rules on myself. Rules and commitments lead to lack of enjoyment of my creative activities, which is where I’m at right now. And since these are my outlets from the real world, I can become quite cranky as a result.

I am trying to limit my purchases right now and go back to stash only stitching. I would say that it’s time for me to hop back on The Wagon for a while, but that usually leads to a serious crash and burn stash expedition, which is hard on the wallet. I’ve already had a couple of them this year, so some restraint on my part would probably be a good thing! 😆

I prefer to stitch on evenweave and next comes linen, but I will stitch on just about anything, if the end use calls for it. Certain stitching mediums and uses lend themselves towards certain fabrics. I’m not a huge fan of aida, but I stitch quilt squares on it and don’t mind.

With me, everything’s pretty freeform. Which likely explains why I have so many WIPs… oops!

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Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!

Posted on June 7, 2006 by Jenna Magee

Today’s title is brought to you in the beautiful tenor voice of Bender (from Futurama) in the episode where he is reformed after joining a robot church. Of course, he is tempted back to his usual vices and ends up in Robot Hell, where they do a fabulous musical number, but that’s besides the point. 😉

Technically, it’s not that beautifu todayl. There’s a Nor’Easter rolling in off of the ocean and we’re going to get rain at some point, so the sky is cloudy and gray. But none of that matters to me.

I’ve been up since 6:30 AM. I know that doesn’t seem early to most of you, but to me, it’s early. Especially with my recent fatigue problems. You see, I had to get up in the middle of the night and take some Excedrin so that I could stop the beginning of a migraine that was threatening to ruin my whole day. And it worked! I was even able to sleep off the effects of the caffeine… or so I thought, until the alarm went off and I found myself lying in bed, eyes wide open, completely awake. I resigned myself to getting up and at least taking Phoebe outside to do her business. Then I found myself in the strange position of having 20 minutes or so to myself, in the complete silence and wonderful stillness that is the early morning hours at my house. Ahhhhhh…

I actually sat down and started basting my round robin fabric. Something that desperately needs to get done so that I can stitch my part, pack it up and send it out on the 15th, and yet, I had yet to find the time to actually do. So, I’m now 1/3 of the way through the basting and so happy that I finally picked this up, even if my morning brain was having trouble counting every two stitches.

That brief respite seems to have set the tone for the rest of my day. I’ve strapped on my high-heeled boots and am ready to take on the world. I call them my power boots because they have these big chunky heels that make this wonderful loud thunk when you’re walking down the hall; they make me stand up straight and the heel makes me 6 feet tall or more, so it really helps me feel like I can go toe to toe with any man in IT around here and tower over most of them. Heh heh heh. I am woman, hear me ROAR! 😈

Posted in Life in General | 5 Comments