Me, Movies & Needlepoint
I am an avid, obsessed needlepoint addict. I am not sure how I got this way. It may be an outcropping of how bored I am watching TV.
I have almost always liked sewing things. I used to muck up my clothes until they were almost unwearable. As a young adult (hippie years) I made a puny living designing and making one of a kind clothes. I did embroidery on some of them, a few of my designs were pretty good but I had no ambition beyond a regular boyfriend and having fun.
I eventually took up needlepoint. I think I chose it because there was a needlepoint store I walked by everytime I went to the post office. I sometimes think the big decisions in our lives are made when we are doing something else (like going to the post office).
My first needlepoint project was a duck. It was around this time that we got our first VHS machine. Remember the old mechanical VHS players, with the tape carriage that popped up when you pushed open? So, 2 important things happened at once. Needlepoint and movies I could rent and watch.
I have always loved movies, I have always hated commercials. So my movie collection grew and I stitched as I watched.
I got really sick for a long time and did not do much (except maybe complain, I did a lot of that). Then they found (at last) what was wrong with me and fixed it. I was 51 and better again. I took up needlepoint again and switched to DVDs. This was 8 years ago.
Now I have a huge movie collection. I love romantic comedies, I love a good tearjerker. I love psychological horror (not blood and body parts), I love mysteries; Miss Marple & Sherlock Holmes, I love the BBC costume drama classics, all the way from Clarissa to The Way We Live Now with Daniel Deronda in the middle. I love Bette Davis, I love Olivia DeHavilland. I love all versions of Pride and Prejudice, in fact all the Jane Austens be it book or movie. My husband calls them “Keith Repellent” (goes without saying he is Keith). I call them premiere chick flicks.
movies I love (very short version of the list):
- The Heiress (1950)
- Love Actually
- Hobson’s Choice (1954)
- Chicago
- The Haunting (1963 Julie Harris version)
- Greenfingers
- An Ideal Husband
- Being Julia
- Jackie Brown (gets better each time I see it)
- Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
- All Judy Holliday except the Marrying Kind
- ALL Mae West
- The Quiet Man (John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara although it IS sexist, it is also charming)
- Zandy’s Bride (1974)
- A New Leaf (1971)
- The Women (1939, not the pitiful remake, you have to see the original)
- The Uninvited (1944)
- Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola more than makes up for The Godfather 3)
-
- The Damned Don’t Cry (1950)
- The Hired Hand (1971)
- Saving Grace (2000, NOT the TV show, please!)
- My Cousin Rachel (1940something)
- Annie Hall
- With honorable mention to Boston Legal on DVD (Denny Crane!)
Ok, so I have covered that.
Now back to needlepoint. I am a color changer. I am often in disagreement with most of the needlepoint designers out there as to color use. I know safe sells but really…..
Same old, same old. Fans, Kimonos, Geishas, pets ( ok, I do adore cats but they have to have attitude), flowers (yes, I love flowers too but…), sayings (mostly uplifting or twee, please look up the word *twee* if you don’t know it, it is beyond apt here), In fact, twee describes quite a bit of it (who am I to waste a great word).
Bitching on…and the needlepoint community’s obsession with fancy stitches, the harder the better. Yes, I too like and use decorative stitches but is that really all needlepoint is about? To me, it is all about color, color and texture. The way colors work together, the look of the fibers, the sheen and how light reflects off them and how the designs work with the colors and the colors work with the design. Whew. That is what gets me going.
Color.
It is my hope to liberate (another strong word) the art of needlepoint from the tyranny of small minded designers. Now, I grant you, there are a few needlepoint artists out there doing fabulous work. Immediately I think of DeElda and Susan Treglown’s incredible graphics. I have stitched canvases by both, in fact I have a long term project going with a series of Susan Treglown’s optical graphics. Sorry Susan, I have changed many of your colors.
Which brings me to my next point. Changing colors is not always successful. There is always the *see through* issue. The current popular advice to “wite-out” or acrylic paint over the color with white is usually a miserable failure. Indeed, white canvas has it’s own issues (as I well know). Most of us know that once you have hopelessly clogged the canvas holes with paint you pretty much have to throw it away.
This next pillow picture is a successful color change I did. I am sure many of you saw this hideous needlepoint canvas at your local needlepoint store. It had a terrible green background. It hung on the wall at the store near me forever. The store owner sold it to me at a discount, glad to be rid of it. This is what I made of it. I changed the background completely and adjusted some of the colors used in the heart, as well.
Anyway, my solution is line drawings on white mono canvas. This does often require using a doubled strand of DMC Pearle cotton but then again, that gives the needlepoint a richer look anyway. Then you are free to go anywhere you want with color and in the end, you have a unique, completely personal needlepoint. I (hope to) sell these at my new web store
www.newneedlepoint.com.
Ok, I am done now.
Now the personal stuff. I am 58, I live in Apollo Beach, Florida. Doesn’t that sound like there should be half naked body builders on roller blades down the promenade? Arnold Schwartznegger in his Mr Universe days? It is nothing like that.
Apollo Beach is a dismal little half of a town. One side of the highway has 7 nail salons, 5 bars, uncounted fast food, 1 decent restaurant (with a bar in it) and 3 supermarkets. The other side of the highway has these huge mostly empty produce distribution facilities. I haven’t seen them in operation yet but they are kept in perfect repair and lighted so they must be used occasionally.
We moved here for my husband’s job. We were both retired but we needed him to go back to work, so he did. A good job in this economy is nothing to sneeze at, even if the development we rent a house in has half the houses empty, for sale or in foreclosure.
Needless to say, my nails are in perfect condition with such a wealth of nail salons and I like the choice of grocery stores even if a fresh, tasty bagel is a rarity.
I have a cat. He was my son’s cat but my son did not have the time to take care of the cat the way he would like to. He is a chef, he began as a pastry chef and then got certified for full culinary. In season, here in South Florida, the younger chefs work 6 days a week, 10-12 hour days. Then they all go up north to work the summer season.
My son’s cat was very kitty depressed, being alone all day in a shut up apartment. He just stayed under the covers in my son’s bed, a very sad, mopey cat. My son is a good person, a better person than I am. He was more interested in his cat’s happiness than having his cat there for him when he got home from work. He asked us to adopt Jack The Cat (his full name).
So, Jack came to live here, he is happy. He hangs out on the screen porch, he goes in and out the open windows between the porch and the house, he terrorizes his catnip mouse and ambushes me from the top of his kitty condo when I walk by. Jack treats me as his personal slave and indeed I am.
I have a favorite chair, it is, to Jack, “the Petting Chair”. When I sit there I am required to pet him until I am fully coated in cat hair.
Jack has become very vocal, he tells me what to do and when to do it. He has a definite *NO* meow. He has a *yes* meow too. It is very clear which is which. He and my husband argue about who is Alpha Dog in this household. It is clearly not me.
