stitching :: planned mistakes

I have two slow stitching projects on the go at the moment.
I'm calling them 'slow' for two reasons :: firstly they are taking me time to pick them up between stitching days and get working on them, secondly because I am working by hand on them both.

Crochet, of course, is always by hand (rather than machine) - but I think it's the process which which I'm working it, that's making it feel slower and more by hand than usual, for me. This is the piece* that I started last year, sometime. I took it with me to the Brisbane school pick-up and drop-offs, standing there waiting and stitching row upon row upon row. Straight rows, one after the other. Occasional double crochet added, but mainly single crochet stitch after stitch. I got bored with it. I love the organic wool. I love the feel, and the colours. But I got bored stitching row after row and wondering when (if) it would ever get to a suitable size to be called a blanket - rather than a big scarf. So I unraveled it. All three+ balls of it - the kids helped me to pull and then wind it all up into one big ball.
Now I am stitching in the round. It started as a spiral, then morphed into circles. It's meant to have stepping ups to the next row - but generally it doesn't. So there's a lot of mistakes. But that doesn't matter to me. It's happening. Enjoyably. Fairly quickly - slowly or not at all at some times. Of course it won't be ready for this Winter - but that's okay. Perhaps next Winter we'll have it in our new house, to snuggle under in a new room, on a new couch (or some sort of thing to sit on, depending on funds at the end of building!).

Hand stitching these pieces together is fun. Giving me the freedom to allow myself to stitch loose and big and not at all in any sense of 'perfection'. At the moment I've lost the needle somewhere within a pile of fabric, but next week (or even this afternoon) I'll find it again and pick it up and start stitching some more. These warm flannel fabrics are lovely to work with, and easy to imagine joining the crochet blanket next year in that new house of ours - despite the fact the colours won't match at all. All I did was cut the big squares (don't know the sizes, as my tape measure is packed somewhere in a box, with the spare sewing needles and extra threads) into quarters, and now am stitching them back together in different colour variations. I'm working on all reds / pinks together, all yellowy / orangey / pinks and then the blues / greens together. Once they're working into bigger squares of block colours, I'll arrange it again and see how the colours + patterns work together. I'm doing it without thinking too much, or more to the point, without overthinking it (Something I do too much, too often). It won't be perfect - but that's good. I'm aiming for not perfect. I'm even assuming and planning for the fact that I'll probably have to do repair work on my wonky, loose stitching at some stage (perhaps even in it's first year of use).

Planned mistakes, letting things evolve as they happen - stitch by stitch, row by row (either crochet wool or stitched cotton fabric). That's a good thing to do sometimes. Letting my hands work slowly, happily bit by bit by bit by moments at a time......

{I'll find the pieces I'm working on, along with the camera, and the correct sunshine lighting, and the spare moment - possibly with or without little hands in the frame - and show you the actual stitches that are happening. Rather than the before shots - before it was unraveled, and before it was cut}

*Looking back on that blog post, and seeing the drawn plans for our home. How lovely - of course, there have been at least a half dozen or more reinterpretations of the ideas since then. But always, always, with a room of my own.