Wacky Wednesday

That just looks good as a title; today isn't such a wacky day. I finished the Pineapple Candlewick Pillow yesterday evening, and immediately picked up another very old UFO: the Name Sampler, which I may or may not change to simply A Sampler. I began stitching it in early spring 1993, in those halcyon days of yore when I had just started graduate school and before I became overwhelmed with the work. I got as far as nearly finishing the border before I had to put it down, and it soon became buried in what turned into the mass of Things To Think About After Graduation.

Meanwhile, I've taken care to collect sayings for samplers, and had been filing them in miscellaneous places until one of my moves, when I put them all in the trunk with the rest of the embroidery stuff. I especially love the ones that say something to the effect that women should just mind the stitchin' and leave the thinking to the menfolk; they smack of delicious irony to me, an educated woman.

With cheerful mind we yield to Men

The higher honours of the Pen

The Needle's our great care

In this we chiefly wish to shine

How far the art's already mine

This sampler does declare

My original pattern for the Name Sampler came from an old (old even in 1993) issue of Cross Stitch and Country Crafts Magazine. Various friends over the years kept up a subscription for me, and I had the rare (in me) presence of mind to keep them organized in binders. Anyway, every couple of issues or so, between the teddy bears and the apples and the Santa Clauses, there would be a wonderful sampler. The Name Sampler is supposed to teach the subscriber how to personalize something, to change it from the published pattern to make it unique. I've never been slavish about following patterns (sometimes to my grief) so the idea of just taking elements and combining them to please myself appealed to me. It featured a nice border, an alphabet section, and then the stitcher was supposed to personalize it by inserting a name in a box, and put the name's meaning below, and fill the resulting margins with great little sampler bits like an hourglass, a key, crowned hearts, etc. There are a couple of roaring lions and some potted plants, too.

I remember vascillating between following the pattern more closely and using a name, or not so closely and putting in a flippant verse, but I can't remember what I decided to do in the end. So, I can create something unique, or I can follow the pattern, or do a little of both. What was it that the poet said, about two roads diverging in a yellow wood?

I'll muse on this more in another entry.