Learning the Art of the Needle

I read these lovely stories of little girls being taught how to cross-stitch or knit by their precious mothers and grandmothers. My wonderful mother didn’t teach me the art of needlecrafts. Her area of expertise was sewing. She never hesitated to tackle the hardest patterns. Especially the Vogue patterns.

No, I learned pretty much on my own. In middle school our P.E. teacher wanted the girls to learn something domestic, so she taught us to knit. Just the knit stitch and the long-tail method of casting on. I was hooked. My best-friend, Tory, taught me how to purl. She was left handed so we had to use a mirror so I could figure it out.

One day when my mom came home from the fabric department in our huge local Liberty House Department store, she gave me one of the most beautiful projects I had seen. It was a pre-worked piece of needlepoint canvas that was just waiting for me to finish the background in my choice of colors. The store had a huge selection of yarn and designs and supplies.  I found the color I wanted to use and figured out how to do the needlepoint stitch from looking at the finished work that had already been done.

Fast forward a few years, (decades maybe) and I’m still enjoying needlework of all kinds and am working in the most wonderful place a stitcher could imagine. Kooler Design Studio. I feel like a kid in a candy store.

The Studio has racks and racks of finished models and artwork that has been featured in books, leaflets and made into kits. Persian yarn and 6-ply floss cones and skeins line the walls. The atmosphere is comfortable and creative. A stitcher’s Paradise.

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