One from the Archive

As we were getting the dude ready for work today, I suddenly realized he hadn't come down at 8:00, the time he usually leaves. We decided I'd drive him in since we are dealing with the SEPTA strike anyway. He quickly ate and grabbed his coat. Just before we walked out the door, he turned and asked, "do I feel hot?" (We still use the sophisticated "feel" technique.) (Which is why that ad where the kid complains woodenly, "Mommy, I feel hot." cracks us up.) He was burning up. This necessitated actually finding the thermometer. He had a fever. Home he stayed. (It's the new H1N1 rule.)

This made me feel less guilty about leaving the dog and running errands. Unfortunately I got all the way to the local needlepoint store and realized I didn't know what color I needed to finish that Shepherd's Bush stocking. (I had a name of unusual length to stitch, and ran out of overdyed perle cotton.) Well, it turned out okay because they didn't have the color in Week's perle and they didn't carry Crescent Colors at all. Sigh. Sometimes they make it hard for me to spend my money locally (more on that later).

So tonight for your delectation, one from the archives. I hope I haven't shown you this before. Back in 1996, the dude looked around our apartment and asked why we didn't have any of my stitching on the walls. (Oh, I knew he was a keeper before then, but that sealed it.) I told him I could stitch something for him, and that he should choose it. He flipped through all of my patterns, including the three inch binders (plural) that held patterns torn from magazines. He chose this:

Starry Night
Catherine Theron
Just Cross Stitch Magazine

He told me he liked it because of the disproportion. Man, I bet if Stella ran into that squirrel she'd stop chasing them for sure.

A Face that Launched 1000 Stitches

Oh sure, he's Kate Moss's boyfriend but it's still hard to believe he could inspire cross-stitch. And yet... This woman is cross-stitching her text messages. All of them. Including the deep, momentous message from Doherty, "Eels slip down a treat." In American English, it doesn't even mean anything. She believes the folorn medium of text messages should be memorialized; some of these messages are meaningful. I'm pretty sure that unless you've got philosophers for friends, most of your text messages can slip into oblivion unnoticed.

Is the world gone crazy, and the rest of us hadn't noticed?