Musings on cross-stitch

I've been doing a lot of cross-stitch again these past few days, which has made me start thinking back to when I first learned this incredibly addictive for of embroidery.

I don't remember how old I was when it happened, but I know I learnt it when my mother was going through one of her obsessive phases of crafting. She would cross-stitch for hours in front of the television, and eventually I decided I wanted to learn to. So she taught me, and unlike her efforts to teach me to knit, I actually took to this form of needlework quite quickly. She got me a little cross-stitch kit, and I went to it.

I got pretty good at it. Sure, sometimes I'd make mistakes, but I learned from them and moved on and kept at it. I made no more mistakes than she did, I'm sure, because she taught me how to read the charts properly.

Then came the time where she decided to buy me a big kit when she bought her next kit. I browsed through all the patterns and kits at the store, and finally settled on one that was, if I recall, a pattern of a carousel on black Aida cloth. She bought it for me without question, and said I could start it when I finished the project I was working on at the time. She put it in her closet when she got home, to wait until that time came.

I finished my project, and asked to start on the carousel. She said she was busy, and would get it later.

This kept on for months. Always I'd ask, and always she'd say she'd get it later, she'd get it tomorrow, that I should do something else first.

Finally she told me the truth. She said she had realised only after buying the kit for me that the black Aida cloth would be too hard for me to work with, since it would be more difficult to see the holes to put the needle through. She had given the kit away.

I wasn't devastated. But I was mightily ticked off, and I told her that she should have at least told me that. Besides, I argued, it isn't hard to feel where you are on the fabric, and if you push the needle through a wrong hole at first, you take it out, adjust, and try again. She made some noncommittal noise and went about her business.

It wasn't until much later that I really understood what she meant when she said the kit would be too hard for me. She meant that it would be too hard for her, and that therefore by default must be too hard for me, because I couldn't possibly have greater skills after less practice. She didn't even give me the chance to try before giving away something I was looking forward to.

She had a habit of doing that. She would make things, saying they were for me, and then give them to somebody else. She was working on a complete collection of Cherished Teddies cross-stitch patterns a long time ago, just before I entered my teenage years, and she said she'd give them all to me so that I could decorate my room with them. Even though I wasn't big on teddy bears, I was thrilled that she'd work so long and hard at something, all for me!

Then I discovered that she'd given nearly half of them to a friend-of-the-family's daughter, out of the blue, and that she wasn't going to bother finishing the rest after all.

Like reading, I sometimes marvel that cross-stitch wasn't something that was ruined for me by crummy events in my childhood. I enjoyed it, but she always managed to find some way to ruin it for me. But I've grown up now and still enjoy getting lost in that soothing pattern of stitches, watching the design unfold piece by little piece, being able to sit back after only an hour and see a measurable difference in what I was working on. It's calming, it's pleasing, and I love it. I have the skills to tackle difficult patterns, and I have the skills to design my own patterns to boot. But it would have been so easy to get lost in the disappointment felt in other situations relating to it, squashing any enjoyment I could have gained.

Instead of it being squashed, it thrives. So much so, in fact, that merely talking about it makes me want to go back to stitching instead of spending the evening with a book.