Time Suck

So yeah… Still can’t read.  Not even Gabriel Allon can seem to rescue me - so obviously something tragic is going on but I am trying to not give it too much energy and let it resolve itself.

So what, pray tell, have I been doing with my time – I have become a cross-stitching fiend!  Finishing off projects that have been set aside for years, buying more projects than I can ever hope to complete, and even reading(!) a bit about the craft.

“Domestic arts were equated with virtue because they insured the woman remain at home and refrain from book learning.”  Ha Ha – I can’t even…

The Subversive Stitch

I am not going to pretend like I read this whole thing.  It is basically a PhD thesis on embroidery and feminism and if I can’t get my mind to focus on a Gabriel adventure then I sure as hell can’t get into this.  But the bits and pieces I did get through were interesting:  How stitching was considered a hobby of the rich and well mannered, and then became a kind of trade for the lower class; then the push back against the idea that the “craft” is for the idle or pious woman, or as I hear a lot “women’s work.” How the designs have changed from a young woman’s “casket” of work to show off to possible suitors, to the more modern subversive designs that try to break down barriers.  Speaking of…

The project I am working on now is from a book called Twisted Stitches.  I was originally drawn to it because it is written by a man who very unapologetically thanks a family friend for teaching him to stitch but also laments the fact that each finished piece is sent to live out its days in the bottom of a drawer somewhere like many of my past projects.  I love the Sugar Skull pattern but admit that the gun shot wounds, road kill, and voluptuous female vampire patterns lost my attention.  I have to think there is a way to be off the beaten track without beating that track to a pulp with your irreverence.  If only I was creative enough to come up with my own designs.