Dora (front) and Pookah, her mom-cat, (behind)
We’re all exhausted. Especially the cats.
Begging for turkey is hard work, you know! I’ve been stitching — more news on that front later. 
Hope you US folks all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that the weekend is wonderful for EVERYBODY!
Last Monday I posted a link to some Middle Eastern patterns I had found via twitter.
I love the way information travels around the web. I received a lovely comment on my post pointing out that she had shared the information and linking to her Yahoo group that is teaching blackwork techniques:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Blackwork/?yguid=460107685
Her blog includes the informational posts – patterns and other such will be included at the Yahoo Group.
My great-grandmother Cotterell produced some amazing embroidery and quilt tops. I didn’t know about any of them until after both my grandmother and my mother were gone. Only then did I find the linens in my grandmother’s closet — after Mom had died and we were finally emptying the entire house.
I had had the thimble longer. It was part of a tin box of embroidery things my grandmother gave me before she died. But then I didn’t use thimbles — and it was too big for my 12 year old finger anyway. Somehow I managed to keep hold of it, though the embroidery supplies have disappeared over the years – some used, some lost in moves…
My great-grandmother’s thimble has a hole in it. People aren’t usually surprised by this, until they find out that it is in one of the dimples on the top — worn through because she always used it in exactly the same way, pushing her needle with the exact same spot year after year.
The thimble fits my finger perfectly now. This is surprising because I am not a small woman – I stand 5 foot 9 inches, and have fingers of a size to match. Modern thimbles have changed shape to make them easier to manufacture, I suspect, and their angles don’t fit my hand nearly as well as that old one.
This is sad. Because perhaps more surprising than the fact that she wore a hole in it is the fact that I wear and use it exactly the same way — which is to say that I can’t use it, because it no longer serves its primary purpose– the needlew goes right through that hole and into my finger whenever I try!
The thimble now lives in my sewing cabinet: I can’t trust it in my workbox, as it always finds its way onto my finger. But I keep it to remind me of my connection to an amazing needlewoman — a lady who has inspired my stitching since I first saw hers, and in whose footsteps I dare to follow.
Please don’t take this as disparaging to either my grandmother’s or my mother’s skills with a needle. Both of them did exquisite work as well. But the level of fineness that is apparent in my great-grandmother’s linens is not there. Mostly, I suspect, because styles changed between the late 1800s when my great grandmother learned, and the 1920s (when my grandmother was stitching). My mother’s work that I’ve seen was typical of the 60s and 70s when I saw her doing it. She was a painter by preference, but would pick up a needle on a whim every so often.
Bleeding Sampler Motifs
I’ve been thinking about comedy and humor recently. Remember way back when in my Welcome post, when I said I wasn’t a needlework humorist? I’ve been trying to figure out why. Some of my current thoughts on the subject make me think that while embroidery is inherently healing, friendly, and beautiful, it doesn’t lend itself to humor like knitting or sewing… Why? I asked.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to really write humor well may be from a position of pain. Pain is where we find the truths about ourselves, and that kind of truth is whence humor really stems. Even the Yarn Harlot’s humor stems from the mistakes that happen with gauge or with working through a misunderstood pattern. Maybe that’s why it’s hard for embroiderer’s to move to humor about their work — when I don’t get gauge on a sweater I can end up with a finished project that would alternately fit André the Giant or a Barbie doll. When I mis-stitch a flower petal in a piece of embroidery, I end up with… a misshapen flower petal. Or, when the sampler threads bleed all over the bottom of the fabric and it never comes out… is that funny or just sad?
Yet I can see many opportunities for humor in my sewing – the T-Rex T-tunic for example (always remember to put eas in the arm measurements or you will have T-Rex arms when you put it on!) Turning something flat into something 3-D is ripe for humor. Whereas flat work, like the misshapen flower petal, choosing the wrong color in a needle painting, or my struggle to get the eye in the right place on a profile figure doesn’t have quite the hilarity factor (for the record, I just now realized that my problem is always putting it too far back on the facial profile — drawings will now improve, probably dramatically. Funny though? Probably more pathetic.)
So I’m still trying to find humor in my stitching. Anybody know any funny stitching stories you want to share?