I’m doing something different. And new for me.
It’s needlepoint.

Needlepoint . . . is actually something I’ve long wanted to do. Despite being proficient at most embroidery and hand stitching techniques, I have never tried needlepoint. Why? Because my mom convinced me when I was a child that needlepoint was expensive (everything was expensive when I was growing up) and the materials were not readily available (as opposed to say . . . Red Heart Acrylic yarn and DMC embroidery floss which were sold right at the grocery store). So I shifted my focus to embroidery and knitting and crochet.

My interest in needlepoint, though, remained deeply embedded in my heart.

It started here, you see . . . with this needlepoint stepstool I used to sit on in my great grandma’s bedroom . . . where my sweet little grandma let me play with the buttons in her button box and taught me to embroider. She was patient, and she was eager to pass on her love of handiwork and needlecraft to me. (I secretly think she was also hiding out from my grandmother – her daughter – who was not patient and had no interest in handiwork.)

Anyway. I used to sit on this very stool as a child. I’m not positive that it was my great grandmother who stitched the top, but I think it was. Her husband (my great grandfather, who was dead already before I was born) was a furniture maker, and I think he put the stool together. And now, years later, it has come to me — well-worn, but quite sturdy. I love it and keep it in my art room/studio.

My great grandmother used to show me other things she had embroidered and stitched. She had the most charming little jewelry box that she’d stitched in petit point, which is very much like needlepoint — but with much smaller stitches and (seems to me) quite a bit more fussy.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I was a tween and then teenager, needlepoint wasn’t really “groovy” . . . y’know? So I put that particular stitch technique on the (way) back burner and focused on doing free-form embroidery all over my denim overalls and jeans.

But the needlepoint itch remained.

And this year, I finally decided to scratch that old itch and teach myself basic needlepoint. I bought a little kit from Poppy Monk, watched a few YouTube videos, and . . . just started in. Now here’s where I’ll admit that . . . I started with NOT a beginner kit. Poppy Monk has some really lovely beginner kits — big swaths of needlepoint areas where you can really get into the rhythm of the stitching. I mistakenly thought this owl kit WAS a beginner kit . . . because it is small. (And it is small – 4 inches X 4 inches.) But you can see that there are not “big swaths of areas where you can really get into the rhythm of the stitching.” And that would’ve been a smarter way for me to begin. But . . . I didn’t. I’m getting the hang of it, though.

I think . . . I’m going to like this!

(And I’ll always be grateful for my little great grandmother for instilling in me a love of all things hand stitched.)