Feb 4, 2021

The month of February is now upon us and I finished my January journal entries only a day late. To my great surprise, I am still inspired to stitch every day or to at least catch up in a day or two if my work shifts interfere with my needle time. Not only am I inspired, but I am excited about it as well. The COVID lockdown continues here in Ontario so these entries help to keep me motivated and healthy on the mental health front. Having something to look forward to and creating a little something every day is definitely helping me to cope with not being able to go any where besides work and the grocery store. Plus, it is fascinating to me to see what will transpire as I pull out a random thread, put it on the needle and push the needle through the cloth. There is no pattern or plan and that is what I love because it is sparking a creative flame in me that has been dormant for so long.

Somewhere in one of the many social media groups that I follow, I recently came across a photo of a project that involved french knots as a full coverage piece on a hoop. I am one of those weirdos who love doing french knots so this caught my eye and imagination. Where some people will substitute beads for french knots on a project, I go the other way as I hate beading! A quick search through my stash uncovered an old wooden hoop and I cut yet another piece off the fella's old uniform shirt to fit on the hoop. My current thinking is to view this as a thread journal as well in that I am trying to do one thread of knots each day along with the one thread for the first piece. 

 As I contemplated for a few moments about this blog post, I got to thinking about how I declutter my stitching stash every time I think about moving. Mind you, my thread stash goes down slowly with stitching, but perhaps it is the idea of controlling something, anything, during a stressful process. The first time I moved in this itinerant military life six years ago, I was overwhelmed with the volume of stuff that had accumulated in the 15 years that I had lived in my first house. Having a huge shelving unit and a spare room just made it so easy to accumulate stuff and pile it up. That first move was the first time I started a journey of letting things go out of my stash. Little kits that I would never do were sent off to the charity stores for someone else to put in their stash. Before our most recent move from Nova Scotia to Ottawa, I culled my patterns and sold off a stack of patterns that were beautiful as a collection, but were never going to get stitched by me. Two small boxes of Kreinik threads that I had collected went to an even more avid stitcher who loves using threads like Kreinik. I hate stitching with  those types of threads despite how beautiful the final project turns out so it was a relief to let that collection go to someone who would use and appreciate them. This time, there is a lot of sadness around this upcoming move so I am trying to create something beautiful as my heart heals and I try to figure out my next step in life. 

Stay safe and healthy out there! Happy stitching!