Completed Cross Stitch - "Seasonal Fantasies - Autumn" by Katrina Farabaugh

 

 

As a few of us begin to move from the Spring of our lives into the next season, sometimes we just start to…change and change without prior warning.  Hey!  What's up with that???

Now you may or may not be thinking that this solely relates to age but I believe that there could be more. 

Maybe the 'more' is a cross-pollination of thoughts and ideas made from your own eye and ear observations, or others’ opinions massaging and assaulting you, or your own positive and negative experiences producing a different hybrid flowering of your own perceptions. 

Or how about this: it is the accumulation of life struggles that instead looks like a savings account built by pennies of experience locked away somewhere to be drawn from at a later and more convenient time. 

But if you're more favourable to the maturity thing, I know I’ve come across several people younger and older than me that are more insightful than someone double in age from me or themselves.

It’s fascinating what triggers a transitional shift that touches off a new period of where we think we are and where we believe we are going.

Where are you in your life right now?  No, seriously, where ARE you?

Me?  It appears that my life is taking shape based on the late Charles Bukowski's prose.  I recently withdrew my application from a potential government-based position after 14 weeks into the process and remain on the cusp of finishing my degree and have 5 courses left (one full-time term).  Five doesn't sound like a lot but please believe me when I say it's the equivalent of two full-time jobs (and without pay).

Since making the firm decision of going back to university FT in 2012, please believe me when I tell you that I hit every xylophone bar of different emotions between the academic process and the strain of sacrifice for the illusion or real security of a greater good. 

The range moved back and forth from happiness, satisfaction, frustration, exasperation, feeling fed up/beat up, renewed, defeated, broken, healed, "jailed" and "on parole" (from school terms of course and not the penal system), feeling successful, feeling like a failure, satisfied, scared, euphoric, depressed, feeling invisible to feeling seen and recognized, losing self-esteem, gaining insight, and all at the same time it's as if I ran a marathon while standing still for the last few years.

During school, I lost one of my pets due to long-term illness, and for a while almost lost a parent too for similar reasons.  No amount of care, compassion, or support will ever completely stall the status of someone's else life or death situation.  It's a different season that sits just outside the regular calendar (for all of us I guess..).

So maybe you're in the same situation as me where you may be parachuting down from some remote point and the ground is now coming into focus but are unsure which direction you should head into once you land.

After school is complete I would love to move somewhere new and start a unique and different life (been researching 1-2 states in particular).  It seems that I have already done and experienced everything I can where I am now.

However,  I have never been much of a mover from home to home (no really, I should change my name to Stonehenge ha ha).  I feel terrified to make a huge change on my own  and yet all the while worry about the regret from letting fear take the lead keeping my life on ice and do nothing. 

Have you ever felt this way?  Do you know anyone with or without regrets over life changes?  Is there anything that makes you feel fearful that you want to get past?

A small note about the cross stitch, I dyed the linen piece with green, yellow, and blue RIT dye using brush strokes and the fabric count is between 28-32 pt.

Completed Cross Stitch - Lanarte's "Nibbling Beechnuts"

 

This is my latest big project finish.  This was a kit.

I started it on October 10, 2010 and worked on it on and off until completing it on October 12, 2011.

I was very determined to finish it by the one year mark as I forgot that so much time has passed on my WIP that I 'whipped' myself into gear and made it my #1 goal to finish it and here it is.

Here's how I encouraged myself: listening to "The Help" and the first 2 Harry Potter books on audiobook formats.... You're so busy listening to the wonderful stories that you keep cross stitching just to keep listening!

My latest thing is to put a start date on my patterns so that I can see how long I have been working on it because time passes so quickly that it is easy to forget when I first start a project and especially if I have a few on the go.

Completed Cross Stitch - Aliolka’s “Red Fox and Grapes”



Yinka Shonibare’s use of Dutch wax cotton fabric in his “How to Blow Up Two Heads at Once (Ladies)” 2006 was the inspiration for the background.  It was one of my favourite pieces from Art History this year (Thank you Professor S. M.!)

The Dutch colonists first learned about Indonesian Batik in the Dutch East Indies.  The process is putting hot wax on cool fabric to transform plain cloth into patterned cloth through a wax-resistant dye technique.  Dutch wax fabric became popular in West Africa and became to be associated with the bold print designs you still see common today.

 The dye is soaked into the fabric where there is no wax.  The wax gets melted off, the process is repeated until the layers of colour and design are desired.

So, I did just the same but got a little lazy (meaning I had no design in mind) and impatient to try this out.  I took a medium sized candle, waited about 10 seconds after lighting the wick and just poured whatever candle wax drippings would melt fast enough onto the 22-count Hardanger grey cotton fabric. 

The wax looked like a bunch of little ugly blobs and I thought to myself, “uh oh…maybe this isn’t going to turn out like I thought.  This will be my ‘test and throw away’ piece then”. 

In keeping with the Dutch wax boldness, I vamped up the choice of dye to red RIT and purple Kool-Aid.  Here is the list of my steps:

1.       Wax drippings (drops of dots)

2.       Red RIT dye dip #1

3.       Melt wax off

4.       Light bleach wash in the centre of the fabric

5.       Second round of wax drippings (side-to-side splashes this time)

6.       Grape Kool-Aid dip #2

7.       Melt wax off

8.       Red RIT dye dip #3, just the edges of the fabric

The final product is what you see through no pre-planning just experimentation.

The cross stitch subject is based on Aesop’s fable of “The Fox and Grapes” but is inspired from me not getting into my desired program earlier this year.

Here is short summary of the fable:  fox wanted to get some juicy grapes, couldn’t reach them and because he couldn’t reach them, figured they were probably sour anyway.

Since I did not get into the program, I figured that I probably would not have liked it anyway.  Maybe I am right, maybe I am wrong. 

But I got over my “sour grapes” and am still pursuing my degree because it is still my #1 goal.  Why should I give up over one wee minor setback despite my new fuzzy situation?  Have you ever felt the same way about an obstruction?

I k-n-o-w that one day after I grow and learn a little more, my reach will extend far enough to grasp my “juicy grapes” and they won’t be sour.  :-)

Completed Cross Stitch - Sam Sarah's "Acorn"

Yes! Another hand-dyed cloth by me! Um....the cloth is nice but I think I made a mistake matching it up with this design. The colours that the pattern called for are beautiful but definitely too light for this colour of cloth. It was my first time I stitched with buttons and can definitely see why stitchers love using embellishments - it adds a little more "oomph" to the finished product for sure!