Finally, A Bit of Stitching

I am well aware of the irony of calling this page a stitching blog when it is painfully bereft of any evidence of actual stitching. Even though it's not finished, I wanted to show you what I have been working on this summer.

I seem to have bogged down on the word "pleasure". Suddenly, my eyes have lost the ability to focus at the necessary distance to see what I am doing. Bright light helps, but I fear a magnifying lens is in my near future. Working on a fine linen cloth, trying to do a counted satin stitch over 5 threads doesn't help either. But soon it will be done.

The text reads: "The object of their labours may have simply been the pleasure of the work itself." It is a quote from the weighty anthology "The Object of Labor", which I wrote about several months ago. It was referring to the possible reason behind the huge output of tea cloths, pillowcases, doilies and such that women produced in the 30's and 40's.

I have been thinking about the words in the context of this big project I have taken on, using text fragments and old cloth to explore ideas of impermanence, life and death, fate and faith. It amuses me to think of the Three Fates enjoying their work of spinning, measuring, and cutting the threads of our existence. Why shouldn't they take pleasure in their acts of creation? Every artist knows the need to be able to look at a piece of work and say, "It's done."

This piece of text will be one element in a larger cloth that more directly reference the Fates. I look forward to showing the finished work to you SOON.

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I have been enjoying sitting under this large maple during the summer. Its leaves are now starting to shift in colour - autumn is only a day away.