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10/21/2020 0 Comments

To Grid or Not to Grid

I think I learn something new about stitching every week (loop start anyone?), but one thing that is new to me is the concept of gridding.

First, what is gridding? Gridding is the process of physically marking your fabric in 10×10 square blocks, similar to your pattern layout.

There are a few techniques to grid your fabric:
Pre-gridded fabric exists and simplifies the whole gridding process. As wonderful and time-saving as this can be, it does have some drawbacks. It can be a little more expensive than standard fabric. Also, the selection of fabrics with pre-gridding can limited, though Wichelt seems to be releasing additional counts to expand the selection. 123stitch.com has a great selection of Wichelt Easy Count fabric.

But that leads to the next method of gridding: fabric markers. If you sew, you have probably used a fabric marker on your projects. Using a non-permanent marker to grid your cross-stitch fabric is one way to go. Make sure you are using a fabric marker that either washes out or disappears when heat is applied. I cannot stress this enough. I've heard horror stories of stitchers who thought they had used a non-permanent marking tool, only to find their grid is not washing out...after they have completed their project. Yikes!

There are many fabric pen options, including the Pilot Frixion Erasable Ink pen, the Dritz Mark-B-Gone pen, and the DMC Embroidery Transfer pen.

If you don't want to mess with markers, you can grid using floss.

With floss gridding, you can use any floss you have on hand to weave lines in and out of your fabric to mark your grid on your fabric. It is a very loose weave of floss that some stitchers pull out as you stitch (others remove the guide floss after finishing their pattern).
Friend of StitchLife, Notorious Needle has a great tutorial for the two DIY grid techniques.

Now that you know what a gridding is, how do you know if it is for you? What you choose to do depends on you!

I have never gridded my fabric but I've spoken to others who have in order to understand the projects and circumstances best suited for gridding.

Personally, I don't grid because I find the process time-consuming and I'd rather just start stitching. I'm impatient that way.

But if you can't concentrate on counting as you stitch, gridding may be for you. Some parents I know who are called away frequently choose to grid so they can get back to stitching ASAP upon returning to their project. Many people find that gridding helps them stitch faster since your gridded fabric starts to look like your pattern, you can breeze through both long stretches of the same color or long stretches of empty spaces between colors (or even the same color with breaks in between).

If you choose to grid before starting your project, be careful! If your grids are off and you realize after you start stitching, you may get a long visit from the frog to fix your mistake.
If you use a fabric marker to grid, make sure that both your floss and fabric are colorfast. It would be horrible to be washing your finish only to find out that your over-dyed floss or custom fabric isn't colorfast.

What are your thoughts on gridding? Share with other StitchLifers!

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10/13/2020 0 Comments

Introducing the Impostor

Have you been wanting to start that Etsy shop? Film tutorial videos for YouTube? Start a blog?

Are you paralyzed with fear to do any of those things? You may have purchased that URL, set up a business PayPal account, even started building a website or Etsy shop. Does the thought of telling people that you are selling your creativity give you severe anxiety? Are you procrastinating taking that next step to make your dream of making your side hustle your main gig — and then get depressed because you feel like you'll never achieve that dream?

I assure you, you are not alone. And there is a name for what you may be feeling: Impostor Syndrome.

There are a number of other names for the phenomenon — impostorism, fraud syndrome, impostor experience — but the feelings are the same: the lack of belief that you deserve success or that any recognition you receive isn't deserved or is the product of "luck."

The phenomenon was named in 1978 by Dr. Pauline R. Clance and Dr. Suzanne A. Imes in their article The Impostor Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention. The two doctors defined impostor syndrome as "an individual experience of self-perceived intellectual phoniness/fraud" after interviewing 150 high-achieving women.

In their research, Clance and Imes found that even though these women received significant accolades for their achievements, they attributed their success to luck and that their supporters were over estimating their contributions and intellect.

What leads to this self-doubt when others recognize success? The 1978 study recognized many factors, including gender stereotypes, family background and dynamics, and culture.

This feeling of being a fraud — and the related fear of being "found out" — can lead to depression, anxiety, and low self-confidence. Oh, and rumination...which is a fancy word for overthinking (sound familiar?).

While at first, researchers believed the concept of impostor syndrome was seen more frequently in women, more recent studies have shown that it is seen equally in men and women.

Let me share a personal story, not based in any fancy research by PhDs.

I launched StitchLife on a whim in early 2020, in response to a post in a Facebook group for cross stitchers. No shit. It was truly me opening my big mouth (or, in this case, typing with my big fingers) and connecting with others who thought it was a decent idea.

From the end of January to the end of February, when we released the first issue, I didn't have time to think about what I was jumping into. Then I was about to press SEND on the email with the first issue. My body went stiff and numb at the same time. What the fuck are you doing? my brain said to me. Who are you to think you can write a magazine about cross stitching? You don't even know what frogging is or how to do the loop start. You are a fake!

Seriously, that's what I said to myself. Even though I started my career working for a well-known business magazine in NYC, I had been stitching on-and-off for 40 years, and I was the VP of marketing and communications at a tech company...I still felt like a fraud and that by putting myself out there, everyone was going to see that this emporor had on no clothes.

I then recognized that this self-doubt was impostor syndrome — and, like other emotional battles, it was more common than I knew. In fact, some studies suggest that as many as 70% of adults in the workforce have, at one time or another, experienced some level of impostor syndrome.

Let me take the time to point out that although common and sometimes situational, impostor syndrome is not recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or International Classification of Diseases, literally the books on classifying and categorizing mental health disorders and diseases. In my research, I wasn't able to come up with a solid answer to why but I wanted to make this point.

And since impostor syndrome can be situational — meaning you may not have the phenomenon in some areas of your life but experience it in others — it can sometimes sneak up on you.

As I mentioned earlier, in my "real" life I am a marketing boss lady. I have been working in marketing in some form for my entire professional career (more than 25 years!) and there are rarely times when I feel like a fraud at work. I may diminish my contributions to a successful work project, but I don't sit in meetings or give presentations and feel less than, if that makes sense.

But in my side hustle, StitchLife, I often feel that I don't have the qualifications that others do. And while I had already committed to the magazine, I knew that I had to create videos and share tips and techniques...and I still feel like I have no business doing that.

I feel like I have to be perfect and know everything about cross stitch in order to be a contributing member of the community and live up to the role I created for myself as the founder of StitchLife.

As cliche as it seems, recognizing that you experience some level of impostor syndrome — and knowing that others are likely feeling similar feelings — is the first step to managing it.

I've read a lot about techniques to help you realize and acknowledge your worth and value and my biggest takeaway is that opening up about your feelings to people you trust can go a long way. Whether you find a mentor or a partner, surrounding yourself with positive support can help you recognize your accomplishments and enjoy your success.

Sources: Wikipedia, apa.org, time.com, businessinsider.com. Illustration courtesy of medium.com

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10/6/2020 0 Comments

I'm all too aware of breast cancer every month of the year

Each October, we blanket everything in pink to remind us that hundreds of thousands of people around the world are battling breast cancer.

We have fundraisers to help those suffering from the disease pay for all the expenses associated with fighting cancer, including paying bills and buying food. These funds also help support research to find a cure.

Some of these people (yes, men as well as women) will have the good fortune to have their breast cancer caught early — and the additional good fortune to have healthcare to support treatment and recovery.

These people, with proper care, can expect a 5-year recovery rate of 99%. That means that 99% of people who are diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer will be alive five years from their diagnosis.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that 30% of those people will see a recurrence — possibly within that 5-year window but perhaps many years down the road — and that recurrence may present itself as late-stage cancer.

When that cancer is diagnosed as Stage IV, it's known as metastatic breast cancer.

Honestly, this is the cancer that no one wants to talk about. This is the really destructive cancer that spreads to other parts of the body, usually through the bloodstream or the lymphatic system. The most common areas to find metastasized breast cancer is in the bones, the brain, the liver, and the lungs.

This is the cancer my sister had. Yes, had. She passed away in 2010, just a month from her 45th birthday. She left behind a husband, two stepchildren, two cats, a business she had built from nothing, and a large circle of family and friends.

My sister was part of the 30%. She was diagnosed with Stage I, non-invasive breast cancer in the early 2000s. A dutiful patient, she followed her oncologist's treatment plan — lumpectomy, radiation — and went back, as instructed, for regular checkups and scans. She took her tamoxifen.

About a month short of her 5-year milestone, she wasn't feeling great and, over the winter holidays that year, she admitted to me that she was worried that her cancer had returned.

She had to beg her doctor (and insurance) to have another scan because she was so close to her 5-year anniversary, she was young, her previous scan had been clear. She finally got the authorization, went in for the diagnostic tests, and scheduled the follow up with the same oncologist who had treated her previously.

I went with her to that appointment and I will never forget that day. Since I've already given you the ending of this story, you know that my sister's cancer had returned, and it was metastatic. In fact, her left femur was so diseased that the doctor was concerned that she would break her leg as a result of one simple fall. The oncologist gave her about 18 months to live, an endless prescription for morphine, and walked out of the room. He had dumped all that information on her in less than 10 minutes and ushered in his nurse to "take care of the details".

What happened in the next 30 minutes is still, frankly, a blur for me so I can't imagine what was going through my sister's mind. Questions about clinical trials, scheduling surgery to insert a metal rod in her leg, a series of brain and bone scans, authorization for handicapped parking, forms to file for disability, business cards for support groups and charitable organizations.

This is process is not uncommon, I came to learn. And I came to learn so much more about metastatic breast cancer than I ever wanted to know.

For example, 27% of people diagnosed with Stage IV/metastatic breast cancer can live for at least five years with the disease, but there is no cure. Researchers have developed many treatment protocols to slow the spread of the disease and to try to give patients a decent quality of life, as well as drugs to minimize the side effects of the treatments (and drugs to minimize the side effects of those drugs).

But many patients, like my sister, are always waiting for the other shoe to drop — have doctors exhausted all treatment options? will I have to have another surgery? what if my insurance stops covering my treatment? what if the next scan shows even more spread?

You may have followed the breast cancer diagnosis of actress Shannen Doherty, from the 1990s Fox hit series Beverly Hills, 90210. She was originally diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015, finished her initial treatment in 2017, and was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in early 2019. Her story is a bit like my sister's: Doherty had unusual back pains that led her to visit her doctor for tests to find the cause. She got the same diagnosis as my sister — but sadly Doherty was alone when she got the news about her PET scan results. I can't imagine.

The author of the article about Doherty in a recent issue of Elle, Katie Pickert, wrote something I feel is both poignant and accurate:

"A breast cancer patient in remission knows it’s never really over. There is the long-lasting damage from the treatment to contend with—the lingering effects of chemotherapy, for example, or the loss of a natural breast that can never be replaced, plastic surgery notwithstanding. The terror of the diagnosis is also hard to forget, especially because after breast cancer treatment ends, there is always the chance the disease might recur."

As Doherty states about her own future and wrapping up her affairs: "It feels like you’re signing off, and I’m not signing off,” she says. “I feel like I’m a very, very healthy human being. It’s hard to wrap up your affairs when you feel like you’re going to live another 10 or 15 years.”

And Doherty could live another decade or more. The landscape of breast cancer drugs and treatments changes regularly. As stated previously, between one-quarter and one-third of those diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer will live at least 5 years after diagnosis.

For my sister, we had that 18-month timeline in our heads from the day the oncologist provided that number — we called it an expiration date. We saw that date come and go and tried to joke about it being a sell-by date and not a full expiration date. We tried to joke about as much as we could just to cope.

In some ways, my sister was fortunate. As a family, we committed to devoting all our available resources to support her and her family during her treatment. I relocated back to my hometown. My retired mother went back to work part time. We knew how to track down support organizations that helped with transportation, utility payments, and so much more.

Not all people battling metastatic breast cancer has a support network that can regularly help them, the access to reliable healthcare, the money or insurance to afford life-extending treatments, and the knowledge or time to look for community organizations dedicated to helping those in need.

In fact, women of color are much more likely to die of breast cancer than their white sisters. And it likely isn't surprising to learn that women who are living near or below the poverty line and/or in inner cities have higher mortality rates than those with higher incomes and in different living situations. And for those women of color who have metastatic breast cancer, the prognosis is even more dire.

This is the reality of metastatic breast cancer. It’s not just pink ribbons and jerseys.

And, for the record, my sister hated the color pink.

StitchLife is donating all proceeds from the sale of our Hope pattern duo to African American Breast Cancer Aliance. We're also donating a portion of every new VIP membership to the cause. Help us make this a donation to remember.

References: cdc.gov; nationalbreastcancer.org; breastcancer.org, komen.org; cancer.net; American Society of Clinical Oncologists; Elle Magazine online, Doherty Is Not Signing Off Just Yet, Katie Pickert, September 29, 2020.

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To Grid or Not to Grid

Introducing the Impostor

I'm all too aware of breast cancer every month of the year

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