And of course, I'm a day late!
Not that I have much to report on... this was another month without stitching, And it didn't help that my Husband had cervial surgery this past week, followed by an ER visit for a serum and subsequent three day hospital stay. He's home now, but my "free time" is pretty much broken up with medication distribution, meal prep, etc. At least he's more or less mobile now, although not for extended periods of time.
Question of the Month – How did you begin stitching?
I truly do not remember what came first. I learned to knit in college (1958-9 or so) --- a roommate and I were taught by her friend. But knitting didn't last long.
We moved to Florida in 1967 for our PhD studies. I think my next attempt at needlework of any kind was needlepoint. A friend had purchase an eyeglass kit for a gift for her mother but didn't have time to finish it, and she asked me to attempt it. I taught myself and, not long after, someone taught a week-long needlepoint class at the university and I took it. Was a needlepoint (tent stitch) from then on, until...
We moved to California in 1972, bought our first television set and, at that time, on PBS, Erica Wilson taught a crewel embroidery class. I bought the class books and followed along and added crewel to my repertoire.
I was working at the time, and traveling quit a bit and neither needlepoint nor crewel were well adapted for stitching on an airplane so I bought a little card-sized kit from the Hallmark store near our office to stitch on the plane. It was a San Francisco Cable Car and I have no idea what happened to it but that was my first cross-stitch... self-taught from the little "instructions sheet" in the kit but it really wasn't a major step from needlepoint tent-stitch to cross-stitch. And at this time, I added some specialty crewel stitches to my needlepoint as well.
Blackwork was a natural follow-on, with my first pieces being two small kits I bought in Wales when we lived in London (1992-96)...
Back in the US (2003), I started taking online classes and developed my needlepoint a little, using specialty stitches and finer meshes. And I took up knitting again, sporadically and only flat rectangular things like scarves and afghans...
And there you have my stitching history.
Now, as for my stitching, I do have the right size stretchers now and am working on hand strength so I can hold a frame to stitch. Maybe this next month?
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