I play with needles

Also, occasionally, I’m a hooker.**

Don’t worry – it’s all totally safe. When I was about 10, my cousin taught me how to cross-stitch, and it’s been a pastime I’ve enjoyed ever since. I learned how to latch-hook rugs at about the same time. In the intervening years, I’ve also learned how to sew, crochet, punch-hook and knit. And shortly, I intend to learn how to do Bayeux-style embroidery.

A scarf I knit in 2009-10

As a kid, this marked me out as decidedly un-cool. I mean, who would go out of their way to learn what is essentially an obsolete skill for the vast majority of the modern population? So old-fashioned. So pointless. So… very… nerdy… While other kids were playing with their Nintendos (we’re talking NES and Super NES here, if you want a guesstimate at my age), I would sit, half paying attention, further down the couch, a bunch of embroidery floss or yarn in my lap, contentedly working away. If I was offered a turn, I would occasionally take it, but let’s face it – I have never had any talent as a gamer (and to this day, Rock Band guitar on medium difficulty is about as good as it gets).

This has remained a pattern for me ever since. In fact, I find it hard to sit and watch TV or a movie without having some fabric in my hands. Looking back, though, I don’t think it was the embroidery that did it. I remember getting in trouble in class for hiding books in my desk to read while the teacher was talking. I got caught, and when I said in my defence that I had in fact been paying attention, the teacher asked what she had just said. I repeated it. Verbatim. I don’t think that teacher liked me very much from that point on. I also remember another incident that involved hiding my bloody finger after accidentally stabbing myself with a compass while chipping paint out of the inside of my desk (I didn’t get caught that time). I always needed something else to do, preferably something that involved my hands.**

One of my recent cross-stitch pieces

At some point in the last few years, textile arts have become sort of popular again, amongst a certain set. I count myself lucky that the majority of my friends fall into that set, and it is not unusual for a large number of us to gather for television viewing events and, once we’re all settled in on couches and chairs, to start pulling various projects out of our purses and backpacks.

I’m thinking that from time to time I may share some of my projects here – in a recent flash of brilliance, I thought I might also try to time-lapse my next project, and maybe get a video out of it at some point, just so I can really see how much time and effort goes into these things (my most recent cross-stitch project I’ve been working on for about 10.5 months now).

Detail of a recent X-stitch piece

Also, given that most of these projects ARE just things I do in order to keep my hands busy, I don’t have much use for them at the end. If there’s something I post that you like, let me know, and we might be able to arrange something (I’ll try and make sure to label things as unavailable if I’m not willing to part with them).

**Yes, I realize I have opened myself up to all sorts of inappropriate jokes. Go ahead. I've probably heard them all already. :)