Library mouse (01)

Do you love books? Me, too. Real ones...More......that you can hold and touch and annotate and in which you easily can hold your place flipping back and forth to coordinate information on the various pages (that’s why books were invented in the first place; scrolls were good for from-start-to-stop reading, but not for page-to-page-in-the-same-book consultation…I haven’t tried digital books, as I just can’t focus my thoughts reading on a computer, as I can when reading a book, yet). Then, like me, you’re what the Italians call a “library mouse”…so much nicer than “bookworm,” I think. I recently found some needlepoint books that I can hardly wait to share with you one-by-one, as they arrive. (When they’ve all arrived, I’ll put them in the bibliography.)

The first one to be shared is Barbara Hammet’s The Art of William Morris in Cross Stitch, n.p.: David & Charles, 1996. It’s 128 pages packed with great photos, some basic information about the fascinating fellow William Morris (who wanted to fill everyone’s everyday lives with soul-uplifting beauty, bless him), and with about 50 charted designs for imaginative projects, complete with sewing instructions and some basic information for cross-stitch starters (though the complexity of most of the designs makes them suitable only for those with cross-stitching, or needlepoint, experience, in my opinion).

With some practice at interpreting charts for doing needlepoint, I think that most of the designs (those that don’t rely heavily on outlining) can be adapted for needlepoint fairly easily. I particularly like the way that she envisions the background as an active part of the design (more on that when I talk about the book on the Beggarstaffs, which I am awaiting eagerly).

Her approach to cross-stitch and the final effect of her designs are so akin to the look of needlepoint that I’m tempted to try cross-stitching one of her designs. Because the cloth background and final product of cross-stitch projects are so much thinner and flexible than needlepointed ones, cross-stitch also can be used for lots of things that needlepoint can’t, and that makes for happy gift-planning, for example, a personalized book marker. That’s tempting, too.