Are there any other crafters out there? Or stitchers? I love to do counted cross stitch. It is like painting a picture. When my niece graduated from high school, I sent her a set of two pretty flower designs in the hoop type frame. I put love in each stitch. I hadn’t seen or talked to her since she was 5 (her mother and I were on the outs). That summer I drove my children (just in their teens) back home to show them where I grew up. I visited with my former sister-in-law who then invited me to her home. She showed me my niece’s room – and in the midst of all black and white decor was the colorful flowers. Apparently she did not like colors and had surounded herself in black and white. When she received my gift, she put them right up on the wall. And from then on she let colors gradually come back into her life.

We never know what one little thing will make the difference in someone’s life. I say, don’t say it with flowers and cards, say it with a gift you make especially for them – with love in every stitch.

Hi there – let me introduce myself – I am . . . . . well, Mom, Mama, Daughter, Sister, Aunt, Cousin, Mamma, Grandma, and Granny.  I want to ‘retire’ – that is – do what I want when I want and have the money to do it.  Anyone relate?

Have you ever noticed that what you spend your time and money on are, as you ponder on it, your ‘passions’ in life?  At work I am known as a ‘passionate’ person – that means to them that I stand up for what I believe in and do it vocally without beating around the bush.  Other people have less desirable names for a person like that.  But it is politely politically correct. 

I do have several ‘passions’ in life.  My family is the first – my kids, and now my grandkids.  I find myself delighting in them as they grow. 

One passion I have is Cross Stitch (counted cross stitch).   As a child of 9, I spent 6 months confined to a bed.  My mother had to find something I could do to keep me in bed.  One of the things she did was to purchase stamped pillowcases and some embroidery thread.  She taught me how to do each type of stitch.  I loved it.  As a teen, I bought stamped quilt tops and embroidered them, then quilted them.  I would watch TV, listen to records or the radio, or be in a waiting room at the doctors or other appointment, and out came the cross-stitch. Later, I met my sister-in-law and saw her beautiful counted cross-stitch pictures.  I wanted to do it.  So I got a book of patterns, some Aida cloth, and proceeded to learn the art of cross-stitch.  It is like painting – creating something beautiful. 

As I grew more practiced at it, I started experimenting with different cloth types, different types of thread, making special pictures for my friends, birth announcements for each grandchild, and designs on clothes.  I even used it when I began to knit.  Sound crazy?  I will expound someday on how I would take a cross-stitch pattern to knit a picture into a sweater. 

When my daughter entered her teens, I taught her how to cross-stitch.  She loved it.   Now my granddaughter is almost the age I started at.  It is time to teach her.  But where are the stores I used to buy my thread, hoops, needles, cloth, and patterns from?  Even Wal-Mart has quit carrying it.  I have to go to the hobby store, and even they don’t carry the selection I used to have.  The specialized needlecraft stores are disappearing.  If I, living in a large city with a dozen suburbs, cannot find the selection, what happens to the women in the more rural communities or small cities do?

I hope this does not turn into a dying art.  There are so many more projects to do, many more things to try – like taking a picture, putting it through software, and getting a coded pattern to cross-stitch.  Well, I had better get off the soapbox for now – I can go on about another day.