stitch and bitch
Dec. 19th, 2018 09:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
toujours_nigel I used to embroider rather a lot as a child, and I started at I think 3? Thereabouts, at any rate. One of the Wee Rhea stories is about the time I stitched my frock up into my embroidery hoop. Another is about the time I rucked up my frock before starting and consequently tried to stitch my thigh into my embroidery hoop. I was... a handful, let's say, and significant parental and grandparental effort was expended in keeping me occupied. A book would do it unfailingly, though I might take the book and sit inside a cabinet or on a wall or in the high branches of a tree; embroidery would do it most of the time.
School of course made us stitch samplers rather desultorily till the fifth grade, and more seriously since. Knitting as well, but that I pushed off to my mother, who is very fast, since I haven't the patience for it. We did cushion covers and tablecloths and such. Last thing I ever did was a landscape my grandfather drew freehand, a beautiful thing I haven't seen in years, because my grandmother hoards and then forgets. That was in Grade IX or maybe X, and then it sort of faded. I was getting into writing, and didn't have room for more than one hobby, and there wasn't any impetus from school. I've never been a self-starter, and any time I picked up a needle since, I'd get partway and then stop and never resume.
I've been doing better in the last year and half. Starting June last year I've done seven small hoops in all, and an eighth larger one has been on the shelf for months and will get started on soon. oh, and a cushion-cover in 2016, forgot all about that! The trick is to pick things i can finish before I get distracted, or like enough to return to even if I am: quotations and the like. Then you get to have the spark of satisfaction about having finished a thing, which really truly helps.
Thing is, I used to get a lot of surprise/resistance about my interest in embroidery, being as it was distinctly girly and I was distinctly... not, back in school and even through college. I also get shock about cooking, for much the same reason. Embroidery didn't fit, though idk what would have since never have I ever been sporty. i'm just quiet and snarky and sit in corners a lot, in my head embroidery works just as well as reading to support that image. I suppose reading is gender-neutral as an activity? I dunno. Conforming people are odd and incomprehensible. To complicate all this, the accomplished embroiderer in my family was my grandfather, who had never met a visual art he did not love and have some deftness in, so it was never to me a feminine thing at all. (Ditto with cooking, and my uncle; even my father's learning now he's retired: it's one of his projects.)
All of which is to say, I'm here, I'm queer, I embroider.
School of course made us stitch samplers rather desultorily till the fifth grade, and more seriously since. Knitting as well, but that I pushed off to my mother, who is very fast, since I haven't the patience for it. We did cushion covers and tablecloths and such. Last thing I ever did was a landscape my grandfather drew freehand, a beautiful thing I haven't seen in years, because my grandmother hoards and then forgets. That was in Grade IX or maybe X, and then it sort of faded. I was getting into writing, and didn't have room for more than one hobby, and there wasn't any impetus from school. I've never been a self-starter, and any time I picked up a needle since, I'd get partway and then stop and never resume.
I've been doing better in the last year and half. Starting June last year I've done seven small hoops in all, and an eighth larger one has been on the shelf for months and will get started on soon. oh, and a cushion-cover in 2016, forgot all about that! The trick is to pick things i can finish before I get distracted, or like enough to return to even if I am: quotations and the like. Then you get to have the spark of satisfaction about having finished a thing, which really truly helps.
Thing is, I used to get a lot of surprise/resistance about my interest in embroidery, being as it was distinctly girly and I was distinctly... not, back in school and even through college. I also get shock about cooking, for much the same reason. Embroidery didn't fit, though idk what would have since never have I ever been sporty. i'm just quiet and snarky and sit in corners a lot, in my head embroidery works just as well as reading to support that image. I suppose reading is gender-neutral as an activity? I dunno. Conforming people are odd and incomprehensible. To complicate all this, the accomplished embroiderer in my family was my grandfather, who had never met a visual art he did not love and have some deftness in, so it was never to me a feminine thing at all. (Ditto with cooking, and my uncle; even my father's learning now he's retired: it's one of his projects.)
All of which is to say, I'm here, I'm queer, I embroider.
