As in Cross-Stitch, so it is in Writing

One of the things I love most about cross-stitch is the way the picture emerges from tiny stitches and colored threads.

It begins with a blob of color that grows with each stitch and each new color from nothing special to something quite beautiful -- if I do it right. I have moments when I get frustrated and tear out stitches because I've counted wrong or read the wrong part of the pattern, but mostly I get it right and can't resist stopping to unroll my work just to look at what emerges.

I'm working on Xmas stockings for my grandchildren this year. It's different than what I've given them in the past and I hope it will be something they will treasure and use each year, remembering that it was made especially for them.

I'm working on a cute pattern that is much prettier as it emerges from the amorphous collection of stitches and colors. I have just finished the bottom half of the stocking and am now working on the top, finishing off stray stitches and making sure the back is as neat as the front with no loose threads. The cat and kitten's eyes are finished and I'm moving on to the rest of the tree and ornaments.

Cross-stitch is calming, despite scattered moments of frustration, and reminds me of how I feel when I paint or draw -- and especially when I write. I begin with an idea, begin writing, and from the words and sentences, paragraphs and pages, emerges a book complete and far more inventive than what it was when I began. That is true of all the creative projects I have done and continue to do.

I feel best and happiest when I'm creating and, for a while, cross-stitch has fulfilled my need to create. I will continue with the stocking and the last 2 I need to make for this year well ahead of schedule, and I will also continue writing, exorcising the dreams that plague me with snatches of conversation, plots, description, and the urgency the dreams fill me with when I'm not writing. There is room enough for more than one creative art in my life and I must have writing or be caught in an endless cycle of realistic dreams that invade my waking and sleeping worlds. At least with cross-stitch there is an end and with writing there is always one more thing to add, one more paragraph to trim, and a few more words to choose to exorcise or leave.

In a couple more weeks, I will have another Xmas stocking for one of my grandchildren, and maybe a new book to begin fleshing out and preparing for publication. It is the journey I love with a goal at the end that never fails to make me smile.

Personal Touch

I had forgotten how much fun (and frustration) cross-stitch can be. Since I decided to make Xmas stockings for my grandchildren for Xmas this year I've rediscovered both, and the joy I get sitting down and focusing on something that blooms with color and shape and beauty with simple stitches.

I find myself looking at cross-stitch kits and ooh-ing and aah-ing over the different styles and pictures, wanting to buy them all and lots of frames to hang them in. I see them in different rooms and groupings and want to do them all, but I have a job and while it pays for the necessities and a few luxuries (one at a time), it's not enough to buy them all so I can make them all, not and still have a job.

That excitement and rush to get back to stitching is what I miss about writing. I schedule time for stitching and for writing but for a long time the writing hasn't been enough to keep me excited and looking forward to the next day. At least it hasn't been until recently. I feel that same sense of excitement and I'm anxious to get to the next sentence, paragraph, page, chapter. It's a good feeling and one I miss and didn't realize was gone.

I started cross-stitching seriously about the same time I start writing professionally. In the meantime I have finished may cross-stitch projects that became gifts, some of which are still hanging on walls and decorating Xmas trees and mantles with toys and fruit and nuts sticking out of the tops of the stockings. I wrote hundreds of short stories and a book I couldn't finish because it didn't really have a middle, few of which were published. I gave up writing books and short stories for a while and concentrated on articles, which I continue to write. The cross-stitch was easier and the results less prey to chance.

When I began a cross-stitch project, I knew I'd finish it fairly quickly and that whoever received it would enjoy having it. Not so with writing. I got lots of (long) encouraging rejection letters, but few sales, and one sale died on the vine when the magazine stopped publishing. I'd have to go back through old archived files to find the story, but it might find a home today. There's not telling with writing.

When I started moving around the country, taking my job with me, I gave up cross-stitch and put my organized plastic boxes full of threads, needles, and blending filaments in storage next to the old stories and files full of rejection letters. When I picked the writing up again I didn't pick up the cross-stitch until now, although, five years ago, my mother gave me back the 18" x 36" framed and matted King Tut and Nefertiti I cross-stitched for her about 20 years ago. She wanted to make sure I got it back when she was gone. My dad died a week later, but King Tut and Nefertiti hang on the living room wall, still framed, still matted, and still as beautiful as the day I finished them. They will last long after I'm gone and I'm not sure where they will end up. I'm not ready to go yet, so I haven't decided that yet either.

My stories are different. They will last (I hope) long after I'm gone and they will belong to the people who bought them and kept them to read again and again. At least I chose two creative endeavors that have legs on them and will keep going and making people smile or laugh or simply marvel at the good and bad in both areas.

Life is about change from our first breath and although my dreams of writing and art, in this case the cross-stitch, remain, the way in which I approach and execute them are very different than when I began. My work in both now is nuanced and mature and will continue to gain more subtlety and maturity as I keep working on both, as long as I keep working.

My birthday is tomorrow and, if I have one wish, it is to be able to continue writing and stitching until my last breath. I want to die in harness, so to speak, and will gladly expire quietly knowing that my work has no expiration date. That is a gift I can enjoy every day of the year because it bears the personal touch.

King Tut, Bequests, and Cross-stitch

Beanie called yesterday to see how I was doing. What she really wanted was to talk, something we haven't done in a while. The connections seem filled with static with broken trunk lines.

We chatted, but what interested me most was a all she told me about. One of the boys called her a day or two after the funeral to apologize if he was inappropriate and ask if he could have the death mask of King Tut that I had cross-stitched and given to my mother. Beanie told him she couldn't do that because Mom gave Tut and Nefertiti back to me a few years ago. They hang on my living room wall. He never called and asked me about them and it has been nearly a week. I guess he'll wait until I die, take them down and take them with him when he goes after my funeral, except I am not planning on there being a funeral and I've considered donating them to a museum. The frames at least are worth something and I put a lot of work into both pieces. Mom always said I should have them appraised, but where does one go to have cross-stitch appraised and how would they be valued?

The value to me is obvious. I spent a great deal of time stitching the pieces, two weeks for each, working 8-10 hours a day for 14 days. I changed some of the materials, like using a 28-ct even weave cloth in navy blue instead of the Aida suggested. I don't like Aida; it's too stiff. The fabric I used feels soft and takes the thread and needle like a dream. The metallic threads that give the piece it's shine and rich look are hard to work with but worth the effort. I still have some of the thread I used for Tut and Nefertiti; I saved everything, including the metallic threads, and then I gave at least one box of the threads to a friend. Mom sent them to me in one of her junk boxes, a combination of things that belong to me and were in storage and whatever she thought I'd like.

Our tastes were so different. She preferred gaudy colors and knick-knacks and, while I like looking at knick-knacks, I don't like dusting or having them cluttering everything up. I gave up knick-knacks a while back and even then my dust catchers were different from my mother's ideas of tarting a place up with junk. I prefer crystal balls in ornate holders and porcelain statues of Erte's costume designs, and the occasional Greek goddess or god. There was a time I collected porcelain eggs, but that time is past. My shelves are more apt to be filled with books and DVDs than statues and painted marble or porcelain eggs. Fewer things I have to box up and move.

And the books are going, too. I'm donating them to the library and either Goodwill or Volunteers of America. Maybe both.

One thing we did agree on was Tut and Nefertiti, or at least my colored thread renditions of them. That's Tut's picture above. It's not a great likeness, but it's all I have right now and I cannot find my camera to take another. Maybe after I get rid of some more books it will turn up.

Since the first time I shared the pieces with her, Mom coveted them, so much she threatened to burgularize my apartment to get them since I refused to just hand them over. Neither piece was matted and framed yet, that was next on my list of things to do. I did allow her to take them to work to show people. She loved bragging and showing off, even if it wasn't her stuff she was showing about. When I got them back, I cleaned them up and took them to a framer's shop to be done. They cost $119 each, and that has been about 20 years ago. It was a lot of money but it was worth it.

I chose the mats and frames with such care, settling on a papyrus reed paper for one of the mats. The effect was stunning. I gave Tut to Mom for Xmas one year using one of my more devious methods and she nearly fell down the stairs getting to it when she finally realized it had been hanging on the hall wall all Xmas Eve. None of us had seen her move so fast, not with two knee replacements and her bad back. She clutched the large frame to her chest and ran through the house yelling, "I got it. I got it. It's mine. It's mine." Nefertiti follow a few years later, but I just handed her over once she was matted and framed without the elaborate gift-giving strategem. I had someone else to torture that year and I limit myself to torturing only one person a year -- per family.

Tut and Nefertiti hung in pride of place in the house in Hilliard and then in New Holland until the year Dad died. I came back to Ohio to spend a week with Dad and took Tut and Nefertiti home, wrapped in a faux mink throw. They -- and I -- made it safely home and they have been with me since.

Mom told me several times that she wishes she hadn't given them back. She missed having them close. Someone she knew offered to mat and frame them again, this time with glass between the work and people's hands, and did the pair for free. She didn't choose a papyrus paper mat and didn't use the same colors in the matting, but the frames are nice and the glass protects the work from the elements and people. I don't mind too much because it's not the frames or the mats that count, it's the work itself.

I'd no idea that my son had ever seen them or wanted them, but he must have seen them some time. That he remembered and coveted them still surprises me. There are so many other things to covet and ask to have. Mom had so much junk and lots of knick-knacks to choose from, but he wants Tut. Probably Nefertiti, too, if he knew about her; she did come later since it took a while to find a pattern and change the colors to match Tut's, and then the all the time to stitch and frame her. Getting either one is not an option now. I'm still alive.

And I've taken up cross-stitching again. I'm working on Xmas stockings for my grandkids. I've nearly finished the first one -- on Aida cloth -- and will hopefully finish the other four by Xmas. I don't have the time to spend 8-10 hours a day working on them and my fingers are not sufficiently callused yet so the needle doesn't hurt so much when I push it through the stiff cloth. I've a little callus building, but it's not ready yet. I'm ready though, ready to pick up cross-stitching and there are so many beautiful projects to choose. I even found some beautiful nudes that would be fun to try, almost as much fun as the 24 x 36-inch nudes I painted when Dave and I moved to Arizona after David Scott was born. I didn't work at first and on those rare occasions when my son was quiet or napping and I waited for the load of wash to finish so I could hang them out to dry, I painted by the numbers, blending the colors and changing some of the design, and created two beautiful nudes that hung on the wall.

I never had them framed and somewhere along the way they were either lost or given to someone who coveted them the way I covet colored and metallic threads and the way they change in my hands from thread to layers of light, shadow, and color to create beautiful images on cloth in some alchemical magic that delights and surprises me still. The process is calming and soothes the restless artistic spirit that overtakes me from time to time, reminding me of a time when brush and paints answered the touch of fingers and hands to bring the seeming of life to blank canvas for someone to covet and ask for -- or pay for -- with or without mats and framing -- and glass.

The night stand by the bed has a heap of tangled thread ends on it. I like to stitch in bed for a while before reading until I'm ready to fall asleep. The images on the instruction sheet come alive on the cloth as I stitch and I marvel anew that threads combined in a certain way create the subtle shading, shadows, and light that make the whole project come alive. I see the possibilities when I decide to buy the kit and it makes me want to buy other kits and make more projects. Bell pulls, tapestries, baby afghans and bibs, bits of cross-stitch for clothing, and so many other things. I imagine stitching and hanging them on the walls with appropriate frames and matting or hardware, or packing them in boxes and sending them to my sons to give to my grandchildren to enjoy. This need to cross-stitch will pass and another creative outlet will excite me for a while until only my true passion remains -- words.

Words on a page, threads on canvas, built letter by letter and page by page, a tangible reminder that I was here and left a mark for someone to covet after my death. I wonder which will endure the longest -- Tut and Nefertiti behind glass or these tangled words.