NEEDLEPOINT
★★★★★ (5 out of 5)
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing needlepoint.
For those of you unfamiliar with it, needlepoint is a way of making pictures and signs by weaving thread through cloth! It sounds sort of like sewing, but differs in that it serves no actual function. Needlepoint images can be of literally anything. Anything. Imagine the most beautiful painting you’ve ever seen, then imagine it drawn on a computer circa 1985. That’s needlepoint!
You know that famous phrase “Home, sweet home?” You can thank needlepoint for that. My mother was such a fan of that phrase that she rendered it hundreds of times in needlepoint. As she entered her final days, one can see the degradation of her mind reflected by pieces that became increasingly abstract and frightening. One of them my dad burned because he said it wasn’t meant for this world.
Needlepoint needn’t be restricted to mounted cloth. It can be placed on mobile cloth like pillows, jackets or blankets. It’s that versatile! One of the few things it can’t do is placate a home intruder. The phrase, “Please take my needlepoint, and leave my TV and money” has proven surprisingly ineffective on more than one occasion.
I wish more people valued needlepoint the way they should. Whenever I go to the museum I ask an employee where the needlepoint wing is, but I’m always met with a blank stare. To encourage the museum, I donated a bag of my mother’s needlepoint at their front entrance in the middle of the night. I included a note that read, simply, “You’re welcome.”
One of the most compelling aspects of needlepoint is that it can be done by anyone. Artistic skills or an imagination are not prerequisites! With countless patterns available, one can create the same preimagined scene as dozens of other lonely people. Still, there is room for customization – simply change a thread color or omit a cat. Needlepoint may take hours upon hours, but the results are so worth it.
Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing Isaac Fitzgerald.
