I was born to cross-stitch. No other craft is quite so suited to an obssessive, nit-picking perfectionist personality like mine. After resisting the temptation to do so for several years, I finally gave in to the persuasion of my best friend, Bev, and worked my first piece in 1989. It was a naive depiction of a ginger cat sitting on a mat from a leaflet called "Ferguson and Friends", and I worked it on sage green 14 count Aida. After that I did a set of four simple herb pictures and then another cat... aargh! I was hooked!
Since then I've done too many projects to remember, large and small, from tiny floral designs for the lids of porcelain trinket-pots to large pictures, such as Mirabilia's "Garden Verses". Most of the big, framed stuff I've given away - several birth samplers to friends and colleagues, a Teresa Wentzler Rocking Horse to my sister and a tranquil garden scene and yet another cat picture to my mother.
According to the people who know about these things, I do everything wrong. I don't use a frame - I've always worked in hand. My tension seems to be even enough for it to make no difference and the back of my work looks almost as neat as the front (told you I was a nit-picker!) I use the Danish technique of working: doing the bottom parts of lines of stitches first, from left to right, then completing the line from right to left (the English technique is to complete each stitch individually before going on to the next). I fasten on with a loop when I'm using an even number of strands and, horror or horrors, I lick the floss before threading my needle! I can't abide French knots and will do anything not to use them. I also don't like working with metallic threads and blending filament, although I will if I must (under protest, mutter, mutter..) If I don't like something about a chart, I change it. I have designed several projects of my own. The greatest attraction of cross-stitch for me is being able to conjure wonderful subtly-coloured images from a chart - since I can't draw or paint to save my life, this is the nearest I can get to creating artwork.
As for favourite subjects, I've done lots of cats, several dragons, a phoenix, things with suns, moons and stars in and Art Nouveau/Pre-Raphaelite style figures. The last two pieces I finished were an old-fashioned map of the world (a Bucilla kit called New World Discovery) and a teddy-bear, William at the Window, which was a badly-designed, needlessly complicated kit. I'd really like to do something by William Morris or Alphonse Mucha. And, yes, I will finish Teresa Wentzler's Fruit Bellpull and The Castle... someday!
Sadly, I haven't done any stitching for some while; I had to go on treatment for an under-active thyroid, and I find that the side-effects of the pills - restlessness, inability to concentrate for very long and a total lack of patience - make it impossible to sew. Whenever I've shown friends and colleagues my cross-stitch pictures in the past they'd always say 'I don't know how you have the patience to do that!' - well, now I don't.
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