3,672 Stitches

Three years and 3,672 stitches later, the needlepoint pillow I started from an Ehrman kit is finally finished.  I didn't actually count the stitches.  I just multiplied the number of stitches per inch (12) by the size of the design (18"x17").  Math is so useful sometimes.

When I told a friend--an exceptionally creative woman who is always elbow-deep in some project she has just invented--what I was working on, she opened her eyes wide.  "You are working from a kit?" she said, appalled.  "But that's just like painting by numbers!"

Well, yes, it is--except slower.  And that is precisely why I do it.

After hours of squeezing words out of my brain and onto the screen, or notes out of my mouth and into my recorder, nothing restores my soul like threading a needle with bright-red wool and filling in a poppy petal.  When you do needlepoint from a kit, the goal is to reproduce exactly the design stamped on the canvas.  In a way, it's not unlike playing music composed by someone else, except that the player has a lot more room for interpretation.  With needlepoint, you color outside the lines at your own risk.

When I sit at my embroidery frame, it doesn't take me long to enter into a semi-hypnotic state, lulled by the "thwack"of the needle piercing the canvas and the "swish" of the wool pulling through.  It's a rhythmic activity, not unlike walking, and like walking it frees my mind to saunter at leisure, and even to wander off its usual well-worn paths.  Sometimes, between one row of stitches and the next, an idea comes to me, seemingly out of nowhere, or the solution to a problem appears as I anchor the end of a length of wool.  But the main virtue of needlepoint, as I suspect is true of most varieties of handiwork, is that it is almost impossible to remain tense while doing it.

As petals, leaves, and stems begin to emerge I take pleasure in their colors and shapes, and feel grateful to the artist who created them, just as I send thanks to Georg Philipp Telemann for taking the trouble to write, back in the troubled 1700s, the lovely duo recorder sonatas that I am struggling to learn.  There is so much beauty in this world, and I give thanks to the artists, musicians and writers who make it their own and then offer it for me to delight in.
A while ago, I briefly considered making my own needlepoint designs, but this would negate all the therapeutic effects of needlepoint.  With every stitch I would anxiously question my choice of colors, the curve of a leaf, the shape of the negative space.  It would be like endlessly rereading my own writing, word by dispiriting word.

No, for me, the virtue of needlepoint lies in its very absence of creativity, an absence which, happily but unpredictably, sometimes triggers my own.

Needlepoint With Thich Nhat Hanh

A friend lent me a CD of one of Thich Nhat Hanh's talks and I put it on the player and sat down to work on my needlepoint of big, red Art Nouveau poppies.  I was multitasking, a really bad Western habit.  But at least I wasn't watching TV at the same time.

TNH's English is very good--he studied at Princeton and taught at Columbia in the 1960s.  But his intonation is still a bit disconcerting, and that, combined with the quality of the recording, made him difficult to understand.  His voice, though, is lovely, soft but deep and just a little raspy and absolutely even in volume.  If there is such a thing as an equanimous delivery, TNH has it.  Listening to him is the polar opposite of listening to Italian opera.

After some initial frustration I let go of attachment and just let his voice wash over me. At the same time, I was acutely aware of the aural aspects of needlepoint, which in case you'd never noticed are as follows:  thwack!, the needle goes in;  swishhh..., the thread goes through;  pop! the needle comes up.  And so on.

Beyond all the thwacking and swishing, TNH kept up his murmur.  Every once in a while, like a deep-red leaf dropping to the ground in autumn, a sentence would reach me:  "Stop thinking;  start feeling;  enjoy brushing your teeth."  "How wonderful to have a paradise at any time, because you have eyes."  "Breathing in, I calm body and mind.  Breathing out, I smile."

Thwack, swish, pop...

And the kicker:  "I think, therefore I am not here."  Take that, Descartes!
 

Some Moral Reflections On Needlepoint

I just this minute finished a needlepoint pillow I've been working on for almost a year.  And by "finished," I mean finished--backing attached, stuffing stuffed, the last seam sewn and the final thread firmly secured.

But as I look at the thing my thoughts turn, as they have every time I've looked at it over the past months, to the day I bought it.  I had been suffering from one of my periodic bouts of itchy fingers--the  urge to do something mindless with my hands--and had found a website, Ehrman Tapestry,  that had the most gorgeous needlepoint designs I had ever seen. Instead of the hearts and kittens that are the staple of crafts stores, here were reproductions of medieval tapestries, Art Nouveau motifs, and designs taken from the paintings of Gustav Klimt.

I badly wanted one of those kits--in fact, I badly wanted half a dozen of them.  But they were expensive, around $100, and I really did not need another pillow.

Still, my fingers kept itching, and I thought that maybe someday I would buy one of those Ehrman kits.  But not now, not right away.  As a recovering Catholic, I knew all about deferred gratification, and how good it is for the soul.

I decided that before I got the kit I lusted for I would test myself with a cheaper, humbler one, just to see if I had the perseverance, dedication, and moral stamina to finish the project.  That way, if I lazily and irresponsibly gave it up half-way through, I would only have to feel a little bit ashamed.

I told my plans to a friend, and on a sunny, icy day we drove an hour to the nearest needlepoint shop.   I was not enchanted with the selection.  My friend watched me sifting dispiritedly through the stacks of hearts-and-kittens kits and said "You know, you should get something you really like."

"Look," I said, picking up an ultra-conventional design of blowsy roses on a white background, "this is not too bad."  And I bought the thing.

I brought it home and put it on the needlepoint stand and worked on it halfheartedly for months.  And without fail every time I threaded my needle I thought about those medieval tapestries and those Klimt designs.

Now that the pillow is finished I can direct a compassionate look at the deferred gratification virtuosa that was me, and let her go.  No more little useless sacrifices that don't do anybody any good.  From now on, it's pleasure first, and the devil take the hindmost.

Go to the link above.  See the pillow with the eye-popping poppy?  That's what I'm ordering the minute I post this.  It's not even on sale, and I need a pillow even less than I did before I finished the blowsy roses one.  But carpe diem is my motto now, because who knows how many diems I have left, how much longer my eyes will be able to find the holes in the canvas and my hands to grasp the needle?  

Bring on the needlepoint, then, but only the kind that will take my breath away every time I look at it!

Gothic Fantasy

Among the countless delights of my daily existence, one of the latest is my rediscovery of needlepoint. 

I was skeptical when the urge first hit me.  O.k., I said to myself, I'll get back into needlepoint, but I won't go whole hog.  I know all about my sudden urges, many of which--such as the one to carve wooden spoons--fade as quickly as the morning dew.  Others, like the desire to keep goats, come and go through the years.  The urge to write, that moaning continuo of my life, is one of the few that have stuck around.

By not going whole hog, I meant not investing major moneys on exquisite needlepoint kits reproducing entire medieval tapestries.  Instead, I went to a local shop, bought a harmless flowery pillow design, and went to work.  Or rather, play.  Or, perhaps, meditation.

But I found that struggling with the stiff canvas in my hands distracted me from my bliss, so I returned to the shop and bought a stretcher frame, and tacked the canvas onto it.  That was somewhat better, but not really what I wanted.  My heart's desire was a needlepoint stand, a contraption that sits on the floor and holds up your work so you can sit and embroider and feel...what?  Medieval, that's what.

The root of this desire probably lies in children's book illustrations of ladies in in wimples and long garments embroidering by Gothic windows, a troubadour at their feet, strumming his lute.  The embroidery stand by the broken-arch window, the lady and the troubadour, have been staples of my imagination ever since I can remember.

I went searching on the web, where the usual Aladdin's cave awaited me.  There are needlepoint stands out there that are works of art in themselves, mostly early-American and Victorian reproductions in walnut and cherry, and selling for thousands of dollars.  But as usual, if you look diligently, you find dark corners in the digital cave where even the humblest needs are met.  And so was mine, for well under $100.

Yesterday afternoon I set my needlepoint stand by the (non-ogival) porch windows and sat in an old straight-backed walnut chair, the basket of wools by my side.  It was raining, a gift in this odd, dry spring.  While the dogs napped on the floor around me, I threaded the needle with white for the background that would set off the central bouquet.

I put on Bach's Saint Matthew Passion, it being Palm Sunday, and embroidered my way through the whole thing, listening, in my barely-there German, for the words (the kiss, the cock's crow, the vinegar-soaked sponge) that elicited the old story.  Listening to Bach's dissonant chords, which seem to me the very sound of sorrow.
When it was over, I stood up and stretched, put the frame against the wall, and, feeling sorry for the house-bound dogs, took Wolfie and Bisou for a walk.  Even in the drizzle, a bird was singing, and I saw that the front field is almost completely green.

Needlepoint For The Soul

Last week I suffered one of my periodic attacks of "I've got to do something with my hands!"  I've been doing quite a bit of writing lately (not here, I know), and writing often brings on an almost physical urge to do something completely different.  Over-taxed as well as over-stimulated, my left brain begs me to let it go vacant for a while, and switch to the other side.

Drawing is a good right-brain activity, but not what I would call restful--for me at least, it involves too much judgment.  No, when my cranium feels like a dried-out husk but it's still not time for bed, nothing soothes me like needle and thread.  Crochet works sometimes, but it's too monotonous.  And ever since the German nun who tried to teach me to knit in second grade yelled at me for dropping stitches, knitting has been way too fraught for me.

I got yelled at by various other nuns on both sides of the Atlantic for being a sloppy embroiderer, too, but they didn't leave the scars my knitting instructor did.  Crewel is my favorite--it is close to painting on cloth, and the many possible stitches produce a variety of textures.  But, after a stint at the computer, crewel is hard on the eyes.

For ease and mindlesness combined with color and tactile pleasure, nothing beats needlepoint.  You buy a kit that includes a design stamped in color on canvas, a needle, and a bunch of woolen skeins in the appropriate shades.  The work itself is a lot like coloring in a coloring book.  You try to stay within the lines and to make the stitches as even as possible.  The needle is sturdy and blunt--you don't even have to use a thimble.

Then the fun begins. There is the scratchy feel of the starched canvas, the satisfying thwack of the needle going in, followed by the pshhhhht! of the thread being drawn.  Another thwack, another pshhht! and before you know it you have colored in the pale green half of a curvy leaf.  You turn to the wrong side of the canvas, anchor the thread and cut it.  Now it's time to work the dark part of the leaf.  You gloat for a moment over the delicious collection of wools in your work basket, then thread the needle with the evergreen-colored wool, and before you know it you have a lovely, woolly leaf.  Next you get to do a flower.  The hardest part is stopping.

Since needlework is an old-timey pursuit and I feel deliciously old-timey while I'm doing it, I lean towards old-timey designs:  overblown roses set amid generous foliage and spiraling tendrils.  But it bothers me that these are someone else's designs, not my own.  After all, how hard can it be to design one's own needlepoint?  As far as I can tell, all you need to do is keep the design fairly simple and remember that different shades will be juxtaposed instead of shading into each other.  Sort of like this: