FlossTube 37 - Stitch Madness WIP Parade, #24HOCS Marathon Prep, and Insane Plans for 2022 Announced

i've lost two of it's jan also known as quirks and stitches it's been a bit i you know i'm really trying to get into some sort of routine with this and then i i buy lawn furniture and it's not warm enough to buy lawn furniture and so all the cushions are in my craft room so i don't feel like i have anywhere to film so i'm in a different area of my house today um i'm in my dining room um and yeah we are slowly making this place our our own i really do like this space those of you that have been with me for the duration of my flosstube journey you probably you've seen my clock wall in the past i'm happy to say this time it actually has some cross stitch in it so my middle piece uh is up that was in a cross stitcher magazine and then i also have time enough by kathy barrick over on the side by the cat with the tail so it does have some cross stitch integrated into it now um i also have my uh this is my little mug assortment wall um there are mugs in all of those cabinets and for those of you that follow me on instagram you know that i do post a picture of my stitching kind of coordinated with a mug or my feelings or anything like that for the day so um i use them as my decor so it kind of helps with the storage i also have some in that little cabinet behind over there um so just kind of keep them out all over um the cross stitch on my wall is still halloween don't tell anybody um but you know it's what it is actually i had some people in my house watson's out problem with being in this room is i have nowhere to put the animals um because there's no doors but we're gonna just go with it had some people in my house for the first time that hadn't like seen cross stitch on the walls and the one person was like it's like a museum they were going around and looking at all the stuff and then she came to me and she's like is your name on all of them because i'm having fun trying to find your name and your initials and i was like well it's not on all of them because my mom would yell at me and tell me that i forget to sign some of my things but it's on a lot of them so she was finding the the names and initials another person was like um how many times have you cross-stitched the alphabet like well samplers it's kind of a thing that happens with him so it's fun to have some people that don't have a background and cross stitch in and see our space i'm i'm super excited this house is super super quirky like it is super quirky we actually just put in new light light fixtures and we have like a pipe industrial light uh where the old circle lights would be so we're making it our own for sure um but it'll be fun to have some people that had seen our old house um it was it was very small and it was very move-in ready so we didn't have to do anything to it and um didn't really ever make it ours so it should be fun to get some people when restrictions lift and everything people can travel that that knew us back then food and water is out also here watson likes to drain it watson enough real life in the lee household today so um yes i wanted to get on and film an update because hey it's been a while and i keep meaning to do that b we have a um 24 hour marathon coming up and so i i tend to do this where i don't film until the marathons and so i i do want to maintain regular floss tubes for you guys too i have some really crazy crazy plans that are going to be happening that i think i'm going to talk about a little bit towards the end some of you will think i'm nuts i'll probably lose followers you know it's what happens um i'm i'm excited about my plans so we'll see how it goes i'm also um i wanna today it's gonna not gonna be like everything i've stitched in the past while because i i don't remember exactly i do have most of it written down but i'm not gonna go through every single piece but for march this year those of you that have followed me also know that i typically do what i call my stitch mania is stitch madness in march and i started this back in 2018 because may just didn't work for me so i decided to do it in march and i started 31 projects different project every day 31 different designers uh and and stitched on that so i did that in 2018 and 2019 and then i also i started in 2020 but it floundered um because we were buying house and it was pandemic and all of the things that happened in march of 2020 so it didn't quite happen but i did start i think about 15 maybe or so um so what i did this year for instead of starting because i'm in that under 20 under 40 by my 40th birthday goal two which um we're going to talk about because i'm still not finishing things like i should be but i've kind of stopped starting things like i you know um so so for today what i wanted to do was i just wanted to take you on a journey through my march of this year because what i did for march 2021 was i had one new start to commemorate stitch madness 2021 and then i spent my time working on all of my old stitch madness projects so originally i started chronologically and i was going to be going through um with my oldest to my newest didn't quite stick with that some of the days i wanted to coordinate with other things and and tie in so i did move some things around but i managed to pull out all but two of my starts or on my stitch madness pieces um so what i wanted to do today it's kind of going to be a whip whip parade and you're going to be able to see all of those pieces i'm going to start with what's still in my whip basket from 2018 first so we'll go oldest to newest and originally i was going to have brandon edit in pictures of where i was when i started that's part of the problem with filming is i get like all these ideas and then brandon and i are on brandon and i are on very opposite schedules because he's working nights and i'm working days and and coordinating with him to know that he's going to be able to edit and and that kind of stuff and then my computer wasn't working and i have to get a new one but i'm trying not to do that yet and i didn't have anything to wear i feel like every time i film i'm wearing this but it's because it's like lightweight and cozy in my house and it's like the perfect stay home and stitch shirt so um i do have other clothes on my wardrobe but you aren't gonna see them right now so i was going to have brandon tangent uh edit in like where i was when i started on all of these at the beginning of march but i'm not going to i'm not going to waste his time doing that i'd rather just get this up so you guys can see where i'm at now because who really cares how much i got done during the month you just want to see where it's progressing um if you're really interested in seeing that i did post all the starting pictures on my instagram so you could go and compare yourself if that is something you really wanted to do um i i like to to see the the growth i started hashtagging all of my projects on instagram too i do a hashtag q and s and then the name of the project so that i can just see like how it's progressed each time that i work on it because i'm one of those you know when i take my pictures now up for instagram i take them before i start working and i don't take it when i put it away um so it's how it works best for me with my mugs and people yelling at me that i'm gonna spill my coffee everywhere i'm setting your mind at ease like i literally put my mug down take the picture and then move my mug away like i'm not sitting there with my mug sitting on my cross stitch for an extended period of time i promise my face come to terms with it you should too don't let it stress you out so i am going to just get started um i have some haul i have some things that i will be showing you but i don't have them with me so i'm not going to show them today i'm going to goals for today show you actually begin the sweat parade that's watson um then i'm going to talk a little bit about my plans for the 24-hour marathon this weekend then i'm going to talk to you a little bit about my craziness but i'm not going to go too far in depth with it we'll see what time is like and we'll go from there so whip parade stitch madness 31 days in march 31 different designers each year that the designers repeat year to year i do that just to kind of um it's very purposeful because i want to a spread knowledge of maybe some unknown designers and b i tend to stitch the same designer because that's what i like and i realize that there's more out there than what i'm just accustomed to stitching so i'm trying to kind of open my wheelhouse too and bring in maybe some unknowns or some um just not my typical gravitating towards so you'll see too i think it's fun to see how my stitching style has progressed since i started this in 2018 when i started in 2018 i was just just buying hand-dyed floss for the first time so everything pretty much had been dmc before then i hadn't really started with overdyed fabrics until 2018 so um some of these if i were to start them today i would start very differently but um this one probably being the prime example this is map of hawk not hollow this was my very first madness start it started march 21st 2018 and i'm doing this with the dmc you all know if you have listened to me at all i am a huge carriage house fan i'm a huge kathy barrick fan i am not a huge fan of the dmc conversions this was stitched with npi a dmc conversion is provided um if i were starting this today i probably would have done my own overdied conversion like i'm doing with halloween ad hoc run or like i did with um autumn on lazy bear mountain but i didn't and i i also wouldn't have started this on 32 count so i it's it's very much out of my comfort zone for how i stitch now but i'm gonna go with it and i'm gonna power through it and i'm gonna finish it and so this is actually i've stitched on it during march um but it's been a piece that i've pulled out the past i don't know four or five days so i've been getting some extra piece work on it uh it's my x's with the x-files hashtag x's with the x-files project so i was only stitching on it while i was watching the x-files um and then emily eclectic possessions got way far ahead of me and the x-files because i was only watching the x-files when i was working on this project so i think i'm amending how that works a little bit um i had to have this whole like pep talk with myself this weekend that it was okay for me to stitch on this while watching something other than the x-files and i was like nobody really cares jen except for you you're the one that makes these crazy rules i do so anyway this is where i'm at i want to finish on this one this year and i think it's going to stay out with me until the marathon this weekend i got all of the water done i'm down in that bottom left corner with the mary crow garden right now doing some fill in but then i think i'm going to move back up top i get a lot of questions about whether i stitch in a hoop or in hand i stitch in hand and you'll see the left side of all of my projects rolls a lot because i roll it when i stitch and i find that when i roll it lays better if the stitching is done so i typically work in columns from top to bottom so um i love this to look at it i don't love it to work on it i'm not particular about railroading and things like that i find my stitches get evened out when i iron it and there would be a lot of things i would do differently if i were starting it today but it's kind of fun to see how it was a journey of how my stitching has advanced and how my style has shifted a little bit this is on i think a 32 count light mocha so it's just i think just as weight no overdied i'm toying with the idea i've never done any like tea or coffee dying but i'm toying with doing it after it's done i'll have to do some like trial and error and prep some things um so there's elements i really like i don't like stitching with two strands so i don't like that and you know it's kind of have to make myself do it but it's getting done this year so that's gonna stay out until marathon this weekend at least um the second one that i worked on as the crow flies doing this part of this pattern over here um and i'm doing this one i think on a 32 count lambswool just with dmc i tend not to change colors for prairie schooler because they know what they're doing so this uh fabric i find very difficult to work on it's very much punch and stab um but i will get through this one i started some of the the backstitching so it really gave it i like this piece a lot big blocks of color but again that two-strand-ness that i don't love um then we had what is this one called the great pumpkin conspiracy by cross-eyed cricket um i love this one but i i've not really gotten very far on it and i'm not sure why it's on a piece of 40 count luna by lakeside linens it's kind of colors aren't really popping here i was having some trouble uh with lighting but um i did get some more done on this just with dmc they kind of look like easter eggs right now i'm excited to actually make them look like pumpkins because not a fan of easter easter eggs feather your nest with thy needle and thread i started this one i love the blue house down in the corner like that was why i started this one i think and i love this one when i pull it out like it's just it's on a 36 count i think it's maritime white by lakeside and i do like just having a bunch of projects started because i don't always love the starting process so i can just pull something out and get working on it i don't have to like do any measuring i don't have to do any cutting i don't have to do any of that kind of stuff so it does not stress me out to have a ton of projects going which is good because i have plans so this is still 2018. um this one you've heard me talk about these lizzie kate ones i absolutely loved fall and winter i am not a spring and summer person um but i love the typography and that the colors don't scream to me the um images don't really scream to me but i have to get them finished so i did finish fall and winter i have both done fall is hanging up over there which is why i looked over there winter i have and it's backed so i can just flip-flop the frames i didn't this year because i suck and um i have spring done so summer is the last i have to do of this series and i enjoy working on it when i pull it out i just don't it's i don't know what i'm gonna do with it when it's done because the colors are just they're not me at all it's on i think 32 count legacy so again that two strands like just changed how i stitch a little bit since then this is my last one that was from 2018 this is cool tied welcome by plum street this is on i think sand dune or vintage sand dune just with the dmc i'm gonna trim that i have a nice big piece there so i did get the whole block on the lettering done um i like to give myself just spots that then i can know i can do fill in so um especially like sitting out on my deck and things like that i know i can just grab it and i don't have to have a pattern with me so this will probably be um a deck piece because i think 36 count i should be okay did you fill in without my light uh 40 counts a little iffy these days i'll take i'm i'm okay that it's i can still do 36k i need new glasses desperately so maybe that'll help too so that was 2018 so i only had what was that one two three four five six projects that i'm still working on from 2018. um i would love to say that my goal would be to get them all done before the end of this year but it's not going to happen nope 2019 i started crazy crazy big projects it was like a lot of really really large projects so um most of these i don't know if they'll get done i have have a plan for how i'm going to kind of accomplish we'll add that that will be um i'm going to talk about this and then i'm going to talk about my plan for like may because this is april already and like how i'm going to stitch through may then we'll talk about marathon then we'll talk about my craziness deal you can skip ahead if you don't want to worst barbara anna all creatures great and small this one is another one i love when i have it out working on it just hasn't been out that much this is where i am on him i don't remember where i worked on it i think i finished the pigs and did some of the cow it's on a 40 count again either sand dune or vintage sand dune i don't remember just stitching with dmc birds of a feather blackbird designs love this piece this one i think i'll be able to get finished this year this is just on a 40 count piece of natural linen um and i'm just using the dmc i found that the reds really kind of blend together but i'm i'm hoping once i iron and get it kind of going it'll be a little easier to see there is i think i'm off on the border somewhere but i think i made it work i did something with the border a little i think i don't remember um there is some like over one on the legs and things that i had in that i tore out because i need to do it with a um hoop or something on to make my stitches better dead man's oh no i'm using brandon's computer and i'm totally not used to it dead man's chest by palm street i love this piece i'm stitching it on 32 count with two strands 19 2019 start i pretty much knew that i wasn't going to love that by then but i'm doing that because if you frame it under glass stitched on 32 count it's like a playable chess board size and since we are gamers i wanted to do that so i i've had the whole grid in um i finished doing the green border around the edge of the the grid and then i had had some of this filled in but i think it was like i want to say it was 927 or something like it was super blue it wasn't like gray and i wanted it to be kind of grayish and so i compared a whole lot of grays and i ended up doing 3022 from dmc and um i'm happy with it because it's kind of like a greenish gray i i'm it's more green when i look at it in some lights than i realized but i do i'm happy with the choice so that took a lot of time for me to try to figure out i pulled like every gray i could find and um and i'm doing it i think it's like a 32 count pearl barley i think it was supposed to be exemplar and i picked the wrong one so which one am i doing i do have my list here i could be actual no i'm doing it on exemplar and they told you to do it on pearl barley but i really like exemplar and got excited that's why that's all there weeping tree sampler by the city stitcher when i started this uh in 2019 i literally had like hardly any of it done because it's a lot of specialty stitches and i didn't study the pattern before i started it and i i talk sometimes i really like making x's i don't love making specialty stitches so um i struggled with it a little bit but i am enjoying it more i think i'm going to be converting some of those specialty stitches to regular stitches i got the tree started some of the letters going down a bunch of the border it's hard to see it will be easier when the other part of the border is in um it will pop more this is the same fabric i'm using for map of hawk run holo it's i think that 32 count light mocha so it pulling that one out again it made me like it a bit more and like i think it will be one that i will be happy to be pulling out i had to rescan this so the original is over by my scanner somewhere and i forgot to grab it but this one is tree of life samplings and it's penny harvest um i kind of love hate with this one i'm enjoying it more the problem was was i had gotten to a point doing it and i was counting stitches and in here it was like you're jumping all over and so i found counting stitches very difficult um i'm enjoying not counting stitches anymore those of you that listen to me ramble about all my systems for counting stitches don't be afraid to give systems up i do um i am not going to do there's a bunch of like over one words on it that says like grace and rest and family harvest plenty i don't know i don't think i'm gonna do those words i'm saving them for last to see by carriage house i've done elizabeth of this series and um i did it on 32 count lambswool the same that i'm using um for as a crow flies and it's it's a very stiff fabric so i started molly on that and i had a piece to do all four girls on um i don't love the fabric so i've struggled a bit with it um she looks like wednesday adams i think i got a lot done on this one got a lot placed in and the cat in and made sure that the border was going to fit because i did a terrible job measuring this piece um because i was trying to get a piece for all of the girls so i've decided that when i do susanna and um mary margaret i'm not gonna do them on the same fabric so i'll have two on the same two on a different seam i think that will make me much happier because i do love them they're so quirky and bizarre and i just think they're i love them but i just have not loved the fabric choice serenity harbor this is on a 40 count lamb's wall i do love stitching on this and the fabric on it it's very like delicate um i did change some of the whites up here on the sales because and the lighthouse i believe because they just weren't popping against it and i didn't want to have to backstitch i do love this piece a lot i don't know why because it's completely not my color scheme but it makes me smile when i see it so i'm gonna keep it out bump in the night prairie schooler this is so we're still in 2019. this has been my work project so like if i'm at the office and um sitting on a webinar it's 32 count dark cobblestone and the dmc so it makes it really easy to just pull out and put some stitches in it should be finished relatively soon um there are a ton of mistakes in it though i don't know what my problem is counting is not my strong suit which doesn't blend well with crosstalk jenny bean's friendship sampler i have one more house to go and then all of the fill in there's so much villain in this one but i love it i love all the jenny ones that was another one i have jenny beans halloween hanging up and my one friend that was over was like that one says jenny b did you make it say that and i was like no just coincidentally my name is jen and that is jenny okay 2019. still quaker diamond hillside sampler there isn't much left to do on this i don't think i'm doing the contrasting color around the outside i like it just how it is um oh i didn't i don't have the picture it looks like this but with the rest of the alphabet in on it what i did with the picture i must've left it with the pattern um i had messed up on the over one here and so i had to tear out over one it's i think 36 count pair maybe again i have it right here i don't know why i keep not looking yep 36 count pair so um i had to pull out and it was a struggle so got it back in i keep i do stitch over one in a hoop um to make my stitches neater and yeah that'll that'll get finished soon i've also started using a magnifier when i do over one on 40 because it probably makes it look neater even though i don't want to irish blessings by twisted threads so here i am on this i love this one brandon's irish so i have all these high hopes of decorating for st patrick's day but then i don't this is one i did not work on i did not pull this one out um i believe i've talked about it not that long ago though that i'm gonna change it uh i do believe so it says home it on the pattern it says is where your story begins i'm gonna put the leaves and then in the bottom i think i'm gonna put established 2010 because that was the year we got married and then on the houses i'm going to put we've lived in six different houses since we got married so i'm going to put the house address house numbers on the roof and then leave the last three for our future so i will be doing that but i did not get it pulled out during the month of march because it involved charting and that was too much thinking for me at that time i had originally had the plan to do 31 trees on this during madness um and so it was going to be like pulled out every day but the problem was is there's so many different color changes there's like i don't know how many colors there are there's a ridiculous i had five of my project cards filled of colors so and they had 20 on it so there's like over 100 floss colors for this thing it just it it was too much to try to finish a tree before moving on to the next one because i i wanted to be able to utilize my floss so um effectively and not have a bunch of little random started things i did get a bunch worked on but um i did not do 31 trees and then this was going to be my like bedroom project but again having so many flosses to have to pull out um i'm gonna probably pick a monochromatic piece to be my bedroom project do people have different projects for different rooms i i go back and forth as to whether i like that or not because then i have to be in that space to stitch on it but get cracking have you guys seen alison's uh allison rosen uh why am i blanking on her shop her needle minders what is it craft school why am i blanking i'm totally blanking um charm school charm school have you seen her new kraken and like octopus stuff there's a shipwreck needleminder that i don't even use needleminder like i don't i i stick them on as magnets on things um it's perfect it is phenomenal um go get one get anything from her shop she is a talented talented lady but i bought it because i'm working on this i love this piece again not counting stitches made finishing the kraken part up top with all the backstitching a whole lot easier because i had stalled on that i have just purple purple thread just hanging out on it love this piece 40 count i think sand dune vintage sand dune one of those this is the other piece i did not work on prairie moon on the fourth day of christmas this is brandon stocking um it's supposed to be on 28 count because it's the size of stocking i don't like the dmc conversion so i'm gonna be restarting this one and i'm going to i have one for me i forget which day of the day it is either the first or the fifth it has a pear tree on it or something um so i'm gonna be like coordinating the colors so that they're in the same color scheme and just doing it either i'm thinking i may just start it on a 32 count it'll be a little smaller but we're not going to really use them as stockings anyway and um just use silk and then i can only i can do one strand instead of doing two because i don't i don't like stitching the two strands anymore have i said that enough today have i like nailed that point in that it's just not my favorite thing to do numero no by jeanette douglas i love this piece the different typographies and things like that i have a little key side collection thing i like keys so it's a lot of gray my color dye lots were a little wonky but i've enjoyed working on it i love it every time i pull it out i like things that is like made up of little boxes life after death long dog this might be my bedtime bedside project so this is days gone by by silk weaver and i'm stitching it with storm clouds i love it i love love love working on it i do believe though there is a whale i think the whale is going to be in a gloriana silk instead of the storm clouds because the whale was really why i wanted to stitch it because i love whales so i think that i'm going to have him pop autumn on lazy bear mountain i did a conversion for this if you would like my conversion just let me know converted it to gast and i'm stitching it on uh autumn gold 36 count i haven't decided what i'm gonna put in the memorial part down at the bottom um if i'm gonna personalize it or not saving them until the end to think about decide i did a lot of work on the border on that one that was i started at madness 29 but then i restarted it because i originally started on a fabric with the dmc and so i started um an rnr i think it was 35 count it mink just way too thick couldn't get it finagled well enough and um i wasn't loving the conversion so i did one myself be thankful cricket collection cricket and this was another restart for me i had originally started it on a 35 count with two strands and decided i didn't like that so i'm doing it it's on a 46 count now so um i did have it in a hoop for a little bit it's a very tight 46 count um but i didn't like having the punch and stabbed so it was going okay not being in there so i took it out but it's slow going and it made my hand cramp quite a lot so it's not gonna move very quickly so those were all my 2019 madness starts um i think i can get a bunch of them finished this year maybe actually start finishing things i think i'm sitting at 67 finishes right or 67 whips right now which 31 of them are madness i think so you're seeing a whole bunch of them stitcher sampler by primitive hair um isabella is uh italian and so there is a grammatical like um translation error here it says my soul is feed she did do a correction for fed though so you can get that i think it's available on her website um so i haven't gotten to the words yet because i wanted to make sure the border was in first and i um because i think i'm gonna have to use two s a different skein and so i was trying to get as much done consistently with the one skein of garden gate as i could i love this 40 count flagstone 40 count let's find it cedar plank not flagstone get those too confused ink circles three little kittens i've decided so our downstairs guest room is um we're gonna have it be like childhood themed so it kind of like has a feel of camping it has built-in book bookshelves and um it used to have bunk beds it doesn't anymore but it also has my dollhouse and different things like that so we're gonna put out like a lot of our old toys and things and just kind of have that retro revive uh brandon's like nintendo thing that he just built the lego nintendo will go in there and then um have these envisioned as being finished as like pillows on the bookshelves kind of spread around so like little folk stories and nursery rhymes and things it's a very like pasteli um palette but i like it and i enjoy working on it 36 count heartland yep got really excited coffee quaker i stitched on this a little bit during madness but then i kept it out afterwards and i got a finish this one is flagstone no no i don't know what's up my list um yes this is flagstar so this one is finished coffee quaker by heartstrings called four colors different fabric i usually change fabrics i sometimes change colors depends how i'm feeling um plant wisdom by the sampler company i love that willow tree and i love this alphabet so much this is on a buttercream and i got it all done so that i can use the rest of the linen for something else well i mean i didn't get it all done but i got the border all done because usually i'm not a border stitcher although i found when i was pulling things out for my madness this year i did a lot of border stitching um not sure why i love hershey charts and dmc we'll talk about that in a minute may i buy um all through the night i started this one in 2020 and um then we bought a house with a very large backyard but we are not garden people at all like i'm not an outdoorsy person i couldn't keep plants alive it's just not gonna happen so i do believe i'm gonna change the word garden to stash and have it be in my craft room instead this is one that i'm doing on 32 count but i felt like this fabric worked perfect for the background and what i wanted um and i am doing the overdyed flosses everything but i think the picnic basket i did a dmc because i didn't have it at the time um i think this is echo by picture this plus i do really like it happy with how it's coming out technical difficulties i'm gonna have to get him to put his uh computer on less of a delay or so it doesn't keep blocking on me um i love these flowers i don't know it's just i don't know what i love about this one but i do and i love that alphabet again and i mean i only worked on these for about a day during the month so i'm hoping with some more you know concentrated time i can get a little bit more done emily's house now in these stitches this one will be concentrated for a finish soon look at that house i love that house um and i think i'm gonna be changing the cats to be my cats emily i love your cats but i have two crazies of my own sunflower farm by kathy barrack i don't think i ever showed this one before or if i did it was very wasn't very much done i love this bird i'm doing this on a 35 count kansas city blend by r r and it's a totally like not in my comfort zone yellow but i love the bird on it it's much more yellow than it's showing on camera right now so and this was gifted to me by someone um so thank you for sharing it because it's it was before it was uh available on her to purchase so it was a club release this was my new start for madness this year this is the pandemic sampler this is a freebie how can you believe this is a freebie she does um by christy sarcy girl on instagram you can get it um go to sarcygirl on instagram and there's a link to it um she does have an etsy shop as well um and is doing some other ones i love this piece i think like it's just i mean the foxes everything about it um i was really excited to start it so i started it and i i've been buying new fabric i've been buying lots of fabric and i'm not sure i love my fabric choice but i think i'm going to stick with it so this is um it's an ex jude and i thought it was darker than it actually ended up being it's um dirt road by axe jute and i love stitching on it and it's dmc which i also love um so i had this theory that brandon and i were gonna do these movies kind of like the x-files thing where i was only gonna stitch on this while we were doing a movie through our years um and then that little plan didn't really work too well so um i have to amend it a little bit and i'm not sure what i'm gonna do with it yet so right now it's just gonna be a whip that i work on when i wanna work on it instead of having rules for when i need to pull it out so we'll see um it was a belated birthday start that's why it was going to be the birthday through the years we'll see i don't know i keep making these like rules for myself and then i decide that they don't really work and so i have to be a little gracious for myself i tell you guys to do that all the time but then sometimes i get too much in my head um just do what makes you happy and brings you joy and all those sorts of things i need to tell myself that and um listen cause i'm good at saying it and not so much good at making it happen um so that was my that was my journey with madness this year i really did enjoy it i i really liked being able to i find that i'll have these projects sitting and then i don't work on them and so i i forget that i enjoy them and it's nice to be able to pull them out and see it did really get me kind of wanting to crave some finishes in april and then i ended up feeling guilty about working on them because i hadn't shown them to you guys yet so that's why i like pretty consistently worked on coffee quaker and because i kept telling myself i'm gonna film today i'm gonna film today i'm gonna film today kept not filming um so i don't know my plan for i think may is to kind of do what i wanted to do for april and work on finishes but i think what i'm going to do is i'm going to look through my whip list i'm going to finish a block of quaker halloween or halloween at hawk run because i only have two blocks left i'm going to finish a prairie school or santa and then for the rest of the days i'm gonna use my size rotation plan so if it's a small project it gets two days if it's a medium project it gets three days if it's a large it gets four if it's a big ass project it gets five um and then go through and i think i'm gonna pick a project and if it doesn't get finished in those two days the next day time it comes up to do a small it would be that project um because i want i want some finishes because i said i was going to finish get to under 40 whips by my 40th birthday i do still think i can well okay so here's the thing let's talk about that after we talk about 24-hour plans marathon is this weekend my other projects that i've been working on um one of the biggies is consider the lilies i'm working on that on sundays with my mom and instead of showing it to you now there's two reasons i'm not going to one you're gonna see a whole lot of it when i film um during a marathon and two uh it's at my mom's house so i don't have tears so you can't see it even if i wanted to show it to you um so my mom and i are going to continue working on our consider the lilies we are going to marathon at her house this time we are going to go alphabetically with movies so we are each taking um movies for entertainment we're finding two for each letter of the alphabet and then we will pick two to watch so we'll be going in with four that way if we both pick the same two movies we have two um because we really like that amount of time to stitch and then film um i'm taking friday off i'm taking monday off so i have some like i'm just gonna i'm just it's a weekend to stitch and to just be um i i do like this concentrated self-care it's important guys find something if it's not stitching right now find something else that is going to be your self-care because it is so so important um stitching is definitely my thing so you know and i'm going to just spend some time with my mom there's some stuff going on people will be posting in the facebook group there are some zoom groups um i know that there are there there was one started a lot during last marathon that's been meeting regularly um fun day stitchers they've got a facebook group up and it's linked in the 24 hour group as well so if you're a zoom virtual stitcher you can feel free to hop on there um it is not something that my mom and i run um we are not really affiliated with it in the means that it's not an official thing but you know it's it's what it is um not that it's not official like it's just not being run by us so we didn't want you to people to hop on and think that we were gonna always be there because we really really cherish the time that we are able to spend together doing this so while we're able to do that it's gonna be probably we're a little possessive of that time sorry uh not sorry i'm not gonna even apologize for it so um it is something that we do really really enjoy um being together doing and i challenge you to if you don't have a community that you have someone to do right there with you there are those virtual spots there's also um it's sylvia ward she does uh she's she runs that um and has been amazing with with putting up all sorts of stuff it's just uh way more than i can commit to at this time so um if i wasn't working maybe i could somebody figure out a way to make this my job then then i can do more things um i think that's the dream for everybody right but um you know even just connecting with with the people in the facebook group has been really really a neat thing to see and see how many stitchers from all over the world are joining in and doing that we we love what 24 hours has become and being able to be part of it with you guys so looking forward to that time for sure um and i think i'll be able to get a finish on lily's this year for sure so we've just been working on that my mom and i get together on sundays and it's just been what we've been stitching on so i'm just about at that halfway point uh not totally halfway but getting there so i think it'll be finished this year um under 40 by 40. i have to finish my under 40 by 40 by january by 2021's end i need to be done before 2022 because i have some insane plans for 2022 and i was gonna start my insane plans on my birthday but i really realized i wanted to run january through december not february through february because that would like it would just start off 2023 weird and i didn't want to do that so i think i've talked about before that i was planning to do um 82 starts because i was born in 1982. i'm gonna turn 40. it's got to be big you know like if if i'm regularly starting 31 projects in a year it's just got to be big you know it's it's and not not for any reason other than for myself to commemorate it not because like i feel like that's what everybody wants to see or anything like that but i want it to be a way that i remember it for the the year that it was and so i started thinking and i was thinking about the number 82 and then it wasn't like really translating really well into how i could start them through the year and how was i going to decide which 82 to do and and this or that so it's having a little like you know pow-wow session with my mom and usually she tells me i'm crazy when i come up with things if she thinks they're crazy so she usually talks me down from the insanity and so i'm like you know just telling her that i'm not really feeling like this settledness with 82. it's just not quite there and my 40th birthday i've said it before i'm very upfront about my age apparently is on february 22nd 2022 so like that's a lot of twos and i was like well you know i could really you know make it a bang-up year and do the 365 but i didn't really want to do that and that didn't really speak to my 40th and i wanted it to be unique to my 40th so i've decided on 222 starts so starting january 1st of next year i'm journeying through starting 222 things and what i would like to do for the rest of this year because when you mass start things it's part of part of why i like doing it is the organizational side of it um and getting everything kind of lined up it's kind of like a puzzle it's putting everything together it's it's doing that and then it gives me like i said before it gives me projects that i can just pull out and work on i don't have to find the materials i don't have to think about math i don't have to do any of those things because it's all already there for me but i can't just like make a list of 222 projects that i want to do because that's too hard like i need needed some sort of like narrowing it down as well and i needed some checks on myself because i tend to gravitate towards really really large projects and i didn't want to start 222 big ass projects because i want to finish these projects too so i've decided what i'm gonna do is i looked at what types of things i like to stitch okay i like to stitch houses i like to stitch alphabets i like to sit whales i like to stitch owls i like to stitch um things about my cats i like to stitch dark 13 halloween stuff so what i've done is i've come up with i think there's 17 categories that i have and i've assigned the categories a different day out of the month so on the first of the month for instance i will work on a calendar piece i'm going to be restarting here at hawk run hollow and i want them all individually done so i will do they're gonna be considered 12 starts i think that's the only one that i do that with um on the fourth i'm gonna do whales on the sixth i'm gonna do something like that so i have i've narrowed it down so that would be 12 different projects for each of my categories and similarly to how i do stitch madness i wanted to make sure that i was also spreading out how the different designers because honestly you look at like woodland and foxes and i could do 12 plum street pieces because she designs beautiful foxes but i only wanted to do one so i got this whole spreadsheet um where i've got it all kind of knocked down what i think i'm going to be doing with you guys for the rest of this year is i'll be sharing my progress on my stitching and getting down to my 40s but if you're interested i thought i'd also share with you my process on how i'm kidding up this is this amount of projects and what i'm doing because i'm really trying to be mindful of spreading it among different designers spreading my categories out so it's going to be things that i'm not going to have to 222 halloween things because i need things up for the rest of my years you know the rest of the year since i mean i don't really because i just leave it up all the time anyway but you know things like that um i'm mindful of the size of the projects as of right now i think i've got it down that i'm only starting 12 big ass projects so i really tried to be careful with that um i am being mindful of what type of materials i'm going to be using so i've chosen a lot of things that are charted in dmc and as opposed to everything that's charted in um overdieds because of cost and things like that so i'm trying to do this in the most frugal way that i can so i've got i can't tell you how many spreadsheets i have i mean i have spreadsheets for what floss is called for i have spreadsheets i've i've used my cricut to make floss tags i've started pulling the floss that i have here and it's why i want to finish some of these projects to see what i'm going to have freed up to be able to use for that i've started picking up fabrics and it's just going to be a year that then i can a take off from mass buying hopefully and probably not i'll still probably purchase a whole bunch of stuff but i'm hoping next year when i'm not buying all the fabric for this i'll be buying the frames for the stuff that i want to get framed and finished for up in my house so still looking to give back to the stitching community for sure and especially craft gallery paula you'll be seeing me a lot because i have a whole box of things that needs to be framed but i really just want to i want to do 40 big you know like i'm not a person that wants to go away and do a big party and that kind of stuff so this is how i'm going to do 40 and ring it in so i'm really really really excited about this um it really feels like it's kind of fallen together you might think i'm crazy um it may be too much for you um but i have all these patterns sitting that i want to stitch someday and you know yeah maybe i won't finish them it's possible you know i i don't know it but so you know at least they're getting some love and i'm getting to look at them and i'm getting to enjoy the process of doing it um my mom's totally on board with this one i figured she would talk me out of this one for sure i was really surprised that she she didn't um but yeah i'm really i think it will be really fun and it it should be it should be interesting and so i'm not only stitching on these 222 like i'm gonna work on things on those other days um i haven't decided if i'm gonna try to like watch something i keep thinking there's gotta be like a series that has 222 episodes that i could be like okay today's start i'm watching episode one um x-files ironically has 217 so it was close i could have tied the two move the movies in and then the new episodes probably but um you know so i'm i don't know i mean it's it's kind of crazy i mean the majority of them that i've done are smalls i've been pretty pretty proud of myself that i've really tried to narrow it down to some small ish projects um tell me what your thoughts are are you interested in seeing like the kidding up process and things like that um if you are right now what my process is i've scanned in all of the patterns that i'm planning to do i have a spreadsheet that shows which is going where and i'm in the process of printing out my working copies and i bought a binder for each month so that then i can put my working copies and kind of plan out my starts throughout the year um and then i'm going to i've started to pull floss so i've started to kind of coordinate i always do fabric last because if anything changes i try not to have it cut down to size until i absolutely am sure that it's a project i'm going to start so right now i'm just acquiring fibre fabric and building that stash up with it um i do think it's funny you know looking at this i i did the the 31 stitch madness and you see how my my process has changed since 2018 i can't really see how much more it's gonna change i mean i'm sure it will eventually and i will do other things but i've really found like where i'm comfortable stitching and that's a 36 count fabric the 36 or 40. um i do sometimes like smaller and i have some that i will stitch on smaller accounts but um i think i'm pretty much set in how i i'm gonna do that i picked up a few new patterns for this but majority were things that i had in my stash so it's not like i'm going out and being like oh i have to buy all these things so i think i have i'm also going to be coordinating stitch madness into it as well so the when march comes i will do all the the 17 stitching days whatever i have throughout the month but march will get a start each day and it will be a true madness for me with 31 different designers as well um so it's been very puzzly like trying to figure out what's going to go where so that's my biggie my big plan that i've kind of been toying at and not talking about and trying to figure out if i'm i'm really gonna do it um i am it's my thing everybody in my life is okay with it so it's gonna happen uh so i just have to save all the money for the floss and the fabric now so that's that's gonna be where all my extra cash is going and uh hopefully i'll be able to find all of the things i need things are still back ordered so that could be a challenge i might be having to do some conversions um which is fine so work with what you got right so anyway this is me rambling now because i never remember how to end these things so i'm going to stop talking i'm going to actually go stitch some more because gotta get these things finished um and i just stitch and be calm find what you like and and embrace it you know it's life's too short gotta do makes you happy so i hope that stitching is bringing you calm i look forward to stitching with you this weekend if you were joining in for the marathon um links will be there for the um typical things but i'm not promising that i'm gonna link everything because i sometimes forget so i've stopped making promises not having them um brandon will hopefully edit this when he gets home from work tomorrow so it is the what is monday afternoon ish um early evening-ish and uh hopefully it'll get up at some point tomorrow that's my plan i have missed you guys and i thank you for letting me ramble on and on and on and listening to it not sure why you do but thank you for for doing that because it it is a really nice release for me so i have 5 000 subscribers that's crazy guys didn't think that was gonna happen so i appreciate all of all of you more than you know so have a great night keep making those x's bye guys

Channel: Jen Lee

Views: 6,614

Rating: 4.9830508 out of 5

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Id: UWSIB-_YcUE

Length: 61min 8sec (3668 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 20 2021