A long time coming

I found knitting and needlepoint great companions when I was first ill with the debilitating illness eventually diagnosed as Myalgic Encephelomyelitis (M.E.) or Post Viral Syndrome or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or whatever - it meant that I had very little energy to do anything and slept away for much of the day, every day.  I am still like that quite a lot but there are more better days, twenty-three years on from the beginning.  Anyway, doing a little archeological excavation through the layers of life in our house, I came across a completed panel of stitching, which I recall working on at the beginning of my six year journey through the world of City and Guilds Embroidered Textiles.  This was when I found I was expecting my third child, who has recently had his sixteenth birthday, so that gives some idea of the time it has been sitting around, unfulfilled and purposeless.  I remember thinking that it was probably the last kit project I would ever undertake.  Oh, memories!

I remembered another two panels of stitching I'd worked from a design by Beth Russell for Ehrmann, based upon tile designs by William de Morgan (I've had an almost lifelong love of Arts and Crafts and William Morris and all that), before the passionflower-bedecked piece I had come across, and a little more searching brought them to light, also.

Anyway, hidden away, unpurposed and incomplete they are no longer.  They have been joined by a sample piece of Liberty Hera design (peacock feathers), backed with dark blue velvet and stuffed with cushion inners, to sit resplendent upon my navy-blue sofas.  It is about time!



I think a lot of the delay was caused by being anxious about spoiling them by trying to stitch them onto a backing,  In the event, it was so simple, logical and, once the necessary materials assembled, fast.

So, my time piece is being paid attention to, and I'm determined to complete more projects planned or started, and buried in the domestic chaos that is our home.  The excavation continues!  It feels good to have finally put my stitching to good use.  And, today I mended moth holes in my knitted shawl, so I can wear it once again.  Small targets, but progress is being made,