The article features a pierced young woman who advocates shopping at subversive cross stitch. Don't we all?Hot on the heels of the knitting craze, which reached its modern-day zenith last year, cross-stitch and needlepoint are the latest domestic arts to be reclaimed by urban hipsters. Just don't look for them to stitch couch cushions that read Home Sweet Home. (Calgary Herald, May 17, 2004, emphasis added)
If you could design your dream needlework/cross stitch shop, what would it be like?
It would be organized, perhaps anally so. What I dislike about so many shops is that they use several methods to organize things: designer, type of design, new things, small designs out in the counter boxes, and patterns near the shop model. Just when you think you have it all figured out, something you're looking for is somewhere else! I'd try to have many models because some of the photography simply doesn't do justice to the finished piece. I'm a big fan of stores that have all the threads, so I'd carry as many as I could. I'd also try to have an area where people could sit and stitch, one that would be comfortable. The most important thing is that I would stay open late one night a week and would be open on Saturday and Sunday. You know, because not everyone who stitches is a housewife.
There is one kind of needlepointer--I am one--who would rather achieve all the details of a design with this regular, endlessly repeated even texture of the one needlepoint stitch than any other, using the combination of needlepoint and petit point as the only variation. Perhaps laziness has something to do with not using the other stitches, but I have never thought so. The limitation of making the colors plus just the one stitch do everything is the challenge. There are even those who say that resorting to the fancy stitches is cheating. This is rather prejudiced, but I sympathise even if I don't agree.
From embroiderers I hear many comments, such as, "I don't need to buy that, because I can learn to do it," or "this is just what my Great-aunt Charlotte did, and I have enough of that."
A person can know how to do oils yet still want to buy a Picasso. The modern fiber artists are no Picassos? How do you know? ...My Great-aunt Charlotte never did anything like what I do--never even dreamed of it. (11)
The crafts of cross-stitch and crochet, usually associated with suburban mothers and grandmothers, have been adapted to sexual themes, with the exhibition's curator happy that her own work is labelled pornography.
The group show Done Dirt Cheap, which opened last week, features work by eight artists, five Kiwis and three Britons. Works include a crocheted penis and several cross-stitch designs depicting sex acts. Curator Angela Meyer, who made the cross-stitch works, said her work was harder than mere erotica: "It's pretty explicit stuff. It will be really interesting to see how it goes in New Zealand and see whether people embrace it or go: 'This is outrageous!'"
Ms Meyer, 29, learned to cross-stitch when she was a child. She was impressed by "the beautiful threads" for sale in Wellington craft stores, but "the patterns were just naff [nb: American readers, "unstylish, cliched, outmoded"] ...I'm not really a puppies and baskets kind of gal."
Where to start with such riches? First, I'm really tired of people thinking that all cross-stitch is puppies and country-style geese. I know some of it is, especially if you are only looking in the big box craft stores. I also have a sneaking suspiscion, based on what I see in the imported craft magazines, that a lot of what is available outside the U.S. is indeed naff. But I'm not going to knock my international readers for doing it, so I'll leave it at that.
We also have to do something, as young, hip, urban stitchers--and I know some of you reading this are--to change the idea that people who cross-stitch are suburban mothers and grandmothers! I'm pushing for the stitch n' bitch for um, real stitchers. (Knitting just isn't stitching to me. Stitching has needles with eyes. Try to convince me otherwise.) So go to meetup and sign up.
And what's with the idea that grandmothers aren't hot for porn? Apparently when you get old you dry up. Just check out what one old bastard's up to. Scroll down, all the way down. I'm warning you, they're nude. Of course this is erotica and the aforementioned material depicts "sex act." Now why can't I find that on the internet?
You probably expect some kind of feminist rant against porn, but I ain't your girl. "Outrageous" indeed.
And here's where it gets weird. I wrote down the dimensions of each project. Did the math to figure out about how long each would take. And ordered them by number of hours. These are just estimates, but for example the three Christmas Folk Ornaments would take about 15 hours, the Monthly Manias about 19 hours each, all the way up to the Friendship Saltbox that will take 418 hours. If that weren't enough, I put this information into a table and now I've added two columns to figure out whether I have the fabric and the floss I need. Lots of dedicated stitchers do this too, I'm sure.
But I've got Christmas presents to make and the WIPs to finish before I can go spending four hundred and eighteen hours on a project!
Oh, and I signed up for a bunch of round robins. To, uh, do in my spare time.
