Delicious tedium...

Tedium, my beloved. Busy hands must at all times be had. Cross stitch was the gate way to my drug of choice, needlepoint. I started needlepointing about 15 years ago. I always go back to it. Sure I am lured by the sewing computer and all its accoutrements. Knitting is so vary portable and needs no electricity. Oh but the dear stiff canvas, big eyed needle and repetitive tedium of the stitch is my siren's song.

Some people wash their hands, some pull hairs, one by one, but for me, I need my time to be a bit more productive. I have yards of needle point pillows to show for my minutes, days, years. About 10 years ago my mother, another needlepointer who has produced a football field of pillow tops, one stitch at a time, said to me, "You're young, you can make tapestries. Then you will have many years to enjoy them." I often take good advice when I hear it and so started a tapestry. It is from Ehrman Tapestry which I use exclusively. This panel is 41 by 30 inches and at 10 holes to the inch that is about 12, 300 stitches. It took 5 years to complete it.

Such tedium is a delicious compulsion. It takes great perseverance and patience to complete a project like that. Mainly I turned to tapestries because I get deeply offended when someone sits on my pillows, or worse, wads them up under their arm pit so that they may be comfortable. If these works are on the wall it is so much harder for them to get treated badly. I value them, after all, they represent my time and effort. They are pretty expensive as well. They will be here for generations to come. At least until my grandchildren use them for the dog bed, ungrateful little bastards. Its a good thing I will be dead by then.

Until then, I will keep stitching thousands more stitches, I dearly hope.

That next panel is not yet complete, and it calls me, open holes to be filled with wool thread. Delicious.