Working With My Hands

Last May, my mother gave me a really neat gift for my birthday. It was something my grandmother had in her kitchen as well as my mother and my sister, hand embroidered dish towels. Mom beautifully wrapped up a package of iron-on patterns with bright colored thread and flower-sack towels for me to create beautiful dish towels for myself.

It sounds like a strange gift, but that's really what I wanted last year. That whole summer I'd be working on my thesis and I knew I would need some sort of creative outlet, something to keep me a little calm. Embroidering seemed like a great solution. I'd have beautiful towels for my kitchen that I created.

Well, I had not done embroidery since I was a little girl. I ended up looking up embroidery blogs online to refresh my memory on certain stitches. Like, all of them. Actually, Join the Revolution is really neat if you're looking to embroider yourself. Stitch School is another neat one to take a gander at if you want.

Some seven months later, I finally finished my first towel. Yes, I was very busy person finishing up a degree and a thesis performance, but I was the slowest stitcher in the history of stitching. And the first towel, well, it's a little rough, clearly my first attempt.

In any case, these last few months, I've been embroidering to my little heart's content and I've finally finished the entire package of patterns.

My stitches got better with each one and I got infinitely faster. It only takes me a few hours to finish one rather than a few weeks.

When I finished, I still had the need to do more so I've moved on to a coffee package of patterns.

What's a girl going to do with so many dish towels? I have no clue. All I know is it keeps my hands busy and my mind focused on a project.

So if for some reason I give you dish towels, you will know why now.