I’d forgotten this bit of ritual…
It must be about 10 years since I did any serious cross stitching. I never thought I would be doing it again, it had fallen out of favour. I had a period in my life when I did it all the time, and even made some money designing pieces for magazines and so on.
The work on pixels and stitches with Bo though, has brought it back to mind, and I find myself preparing…
Stretching the fabric on a frame, counting, sorting the colour palette, all so very familiar, but curiously distant. Like meeting an old friend you’ve fallen out with, but can’t quite remember why.
The work I’m doing is nothing like that I did in the past. And we’re back to that old discussion… That was definitely craft, this is definitely art. I feel it in my bones, that difference. But the ritual is the same. The physical process the same, the mental process totally different. But can you tell from the outside? Does it look different?
I don’t really want to talk about the work itself here, that’s for the joint blog “pix”, but I find myself looking over my own shoulder, as if in a time warp. Amused, puzzled as to how different it feels now.
