This week's Blogger of the Week describes herself best in her profile as "I'm an Aspergers Dealing, Obsessive
Compulsive, Anglophilic, Bibliophilic, Cinephilic, Disneyoholic,
Cross-Stitching Janeite who is the proud Mother of two rescue
Shih-Tzu's."
For me, I love the detail in her blog, her reviews of the various Disney parks are second-to-none and her regular Five Things are always interesting. Her insight into the workings of an Asper-brain are fascinating too. Please welcome Keebs from
1. Please introduce yourself – name,
where you are from, family, pets etc.
My name is Keiley
(pronounced Key-Lee), but I’ve gone by Keebles or Keebs since I was
a kid, so I’ll answer to anything in that ballpark. I was born,
raised and will probably die in Northeast Arkansas. I’ve been
divorced for so long that I’m not sure it even counts anymore. I
have two beautiful rescue Shih-Tzu’s...Bam and Bugs who are my
whole world. And I guess the biggest elephant in the room is that
I’m an Asper with OCD, so a lot of routine things in life are
difficult for me, but since I’m old and grew up in a time when you
either hid your problems or learned to adapt, I have basically done
both my entire life and can function pretty well in the day to
day...or at least enough to appear normal enough to the outside
world.
Bam and Bugs
2. How long have you been stitching and
how did you start?
I was pretty
young when I started stitching probably 8 or 9. My step-grandmother
tried to teach me to crochet first (which didn’t take) and then she
tried knitting (which also failed). My mother used to embroidery,
but I never could understand all the different kinds of stitching, so
again...fail. Cross stitching was last on the list and I took to it
like a duck to water and I’ve been stitching off and on ever since.
Aspers tend to get bored very quickly, but we can also become
completely obsessed with something so much that it lasts a lifetime.
My three lifetime obsessions are cross stitching, Disney and Duran
Duran although the order does tend to vary. On the OCD front, what
could be better than the repetition and symmetry that stitching
offers.
3. How long have you been blogging and
what inspired you to start? Is there a story behind your blog title?
I started
blogging almost 6 years ago partly out of frustration from social
media (I HATED Facebook and the like). I met a fellow Duranie/Disney
person who blogged and showed me the ropes and, after I got
comfortable, all my social media accounts went out the window and
I’ve never looked back. Granted, lack of a social presence does
isolate me a bit even in the stitchy world, but the Asper in me kind
of likes that. We aren’t social creatures by nature and we are
quite selfish as well...I could not have cared less what others were
doing, let alone feel obligated to comment every time so-and-so’s
kid burped. The blog world is SOOO much better and I’m more in my
element, surrounded by more like-minded people. I don’t blog to
gain followers, but rather to have a venting place just for me, hence
Keebles World. I can do a post, rant about whatever, and I don’t
expect others to comment (although I’m always pleasantly surprised
when people do...why anyone would want to read some of the crap I
post is beyond me, especially when I’m having a serious
Asper-rant). I think the hardest part about blogging (at least for
me), is trying to keep up with everyone else’s blogs.
4. How would you describe your stitching
style? Are you a serial starter, a rotator, a OAAT (one at a time),
highly organised, random and eclectic, etc.?
I was definitely
a OAAT until I started blogging and, even then, it was a few years
before I started with rotations. Now I have technically 9 projects
in rotation (although only 6 are actually rotated and the other three
ignored for various reasons). I am EXTREMELY organized...it goes
with the OCD territory, although I am a bit lax when it comes to
rotation schedules (that’s all Asper). I do like to change
projects when I feel like it versus on a specific day (although I try
to switch out week to week), but I tend to routinely report my weekly
progress on Sunday nights. I stitch two-handed thanks to scroll rods
and lap stands and, since I have no life outside of work, I can
easily manage 40+ hours a week stitching on average (at least half of
that is weekend time), so I do tend to make a lot of progress per
week although I’m not necessarily a fast stitcher. I utilize both
paper patterns and my iPad in the process, I take photos of my
progress every night and I keep track of my time via a time clock app
(that’s a fairly recent development). My OCD will not allow me to
use the parking method and I will often get hives just seeing
pictures of other people’s parking. All those loose threads
hanging everywhere...chaos!
5. Do you have a favourite designer or
style of design you are drawn to?
Throughout my
youth, I only did kits and really had no knowledge of anything else
(although I’ve subscribed to cross stitch magazines periodically
throughout the years). Only when I became a blogger and got to know
other stitches did I started to learn more about stitching techniques
and digital patterns which lead me to Heaven and Earth Designs. I
immediately fell in love with Jasmine Becket-Griffith’s work and
have quite the stash of not only her designs, but several other
artists as well. And don’t get me started on the joy that is Etsy!
Since I’m a Disney girl through-and-through, most of my stash
tends to be of the Disney variety or of a similar ilk. Since
Jasmine also does work for Disney, I have several of her prints and
basically have an entire JBG wall in my house which will only grow
with time. I don’t like dithered patterns (as I have mentioned
once or twice or a hundred times on my blog). Now that HAED has gone
100% dithered, it has negatively affected the number of patterns I
buy, especially JBG designs, but I do still buy them if it’s just a
design I can’t live without.
Jasmine Becket-Griffiths wall
6. Which piece are you most proud of in
your collection?
I’d have to say
my first HAED (which is a JBG), The Highland Girl. It was the
largest project I had ever done at the time and I’m still in awe of
it. Although, the most difficult piece I ever did, the typical
stitcher’s rite of passage, Teresa Wentzler The Castle, took me
from high school to college to college dropout, then to marriage to
divorce, and back to college and dropout again before it got
finished, so I guess there is something to be said for that and it
holds a lot of memories (as well as stains). HAEDs have spoiled me
because I HATE half and quarter stitches, backstitching, and most
certainly French knots! My OCD loves a whole project with all the
same kind of stitches lined up all nice and neat (although the
backside of my projects are atrocious and I can’t see that ever
changing).
Highland Girl
The Castle
7. What has been your worst stitching
disaster?
My poor Mickey
and Friends. It was an old kit I bought off of eBay back in the day
and the material was sucky to begin with. It sat in my stash for
years before I started it, so the fabric didn’t age well. Somehow
or other, I managed to put my hand right through the fabric creating
a huge hole/tear and I ended up patching it with a cutout piece of
fabric put on top and stitching over it all. You can’t really tell
other than it’s a bit lumpy in that area, but I’ll always know
and it drives me insane every single time I look at it. Also, most
of the symbols were so similar that I ended up doing most of Donald’s
face in the wrong color and, by the time I realized it, it was too
late to fix it. He’s got a pink tint to him (and pink is my
absolute least favorite color), which is another sore spot for me.
Unfortunately, it was during pre-digital age and I used to mark off
the completed stitches on the paper with a marker basically
destroying the pattern. On top of that, when I finished a project,
it was a big deal for me to trash the pattern and the leftover thread
as a sort of send-off to the project, so I don’t have the original
pattern to redo it. Now, I make copies of paper patterns and keep
the original digital copy (if there is one), but I do still trash the
working pattern like I always have. I don’t get rid of the old
thread anymore though, I save it for a rainy day.
A Patch in Time Saves the Project?
8. Which new technique would you like to
try, either stitching, finishing or another craft?
I always wanted
to learn to quilt, but I can’t sew (long story involving my refusal
to take home-ec even though my mother tried to force me to every
single year of high school). I had this amazing quilt when I was a
kid (a Sunbonnet Sue one although it had this hideous yellow ochre
backround), and it got ruined when I moved to live with my dad (which
also got ruined, but that’s a whole other story). I always wanted
to remake that quilt in shades of purple (of course), but alas, it’s
probably never meant to be. Quite a few years ago my mother bought
me a sewing machine and all kinds of quilting stuff for Christmas,
but again, I can’t sew, so the machine sat in my closet for several
years still in the box until I lent it to a friend and I haven’t
seen it since. Besides, I’m not sure I have the patience or the
skill-set to quilt. I’m not a crafty person by nature and all the
different mix of fabrics needed for quilting doesn’t play well with
my OCD mentality. If I have instructions and a specific task, I do
well, but I’m horrible at trying to be creative. Even when I was
an art major in college, I did better drawing or painting something
in front of me or copying something else versus coming up with my own
ideas.
9. Do you have a box of
finished-but-not-fully-finished pieces? Or is everything FFO'd?
What's your favourite way to fully finish a project and what do you
do with them?
I used to have a
drawer of them, but I finally got almost all of them matted and
framed. I like the typical black mat and black frame and, because
I’m poor, I can’t get too fancy with it anyway. I used to mat
and frame them myself, but the older I get, the harder it is for me
to cut straight and I’ve gotten lazy and it’s just easier to pay
Hobby Lobby to do it. Plus, digital charts tend not to be the
standard size, so they need custom frames anyway. In my early years,
I did a lot of projects for other people, especially for the birth of
a child or marriage, but it seemed like people got less and less
appreciative over the years. Designs I worked so hard on got put in
attics or trashed and I hated it. Over time, people tend to move on
or forget things...we Aspers dwell forever and we NEVER forget. I
still have and cherish the projects I did when I was just a wee one
and it’s hard for me to comprehend that others don’t think like I
do.
10. Which of your projects most represents
"you"?
I would say
again, Highland Girl (because I have strong Scottish blood) and
Princess and the Pea (because I am incredibly sensitive to sensations
and have been accused of having Princess and the Pea syndrome
anyway). Every pattern or kit I buy has to be "me " or has
elements of my taste in it or it won’t hold my attention long
enough to finish it.
Princess & The Pea
11. Tell us a secret about yourself. Or a
joke. About anything!
I’m not sure I
have any secrets...I’m pretty open on my blog and often talk about
things I probably shouldn’t...from work to family to personal
stuff. I am the I.T. Systems Admin for a pathology lab by day, live
in a trailer filled to the brim with Disney memorabilia by night and
rarely venture out of those two realms. There is a part of me that
really wants to start doing FlossTube, but that will have to wait
until I build my house and I have a well-lit craft room. I also plan
to do time-lapse videos of my stitches that I’ve done since I
started taking pictures, but I have issues with the lack of symmetry
of the pics and need to find a good stacking program first (something
I’ve been trying to do for a couple of years). When it comes to
jokes, my Asper brain can’t process them quickly enough to get the
punch line, so I typically avoid telling them or even listening to
them.
12. Anything you would like to add?
Thanks so much Jo
for doing this! What a great idea and I’m learning so much about
my fellow bloggie friends!
