I do not, typically, view myself as a particularly creative or artistic person. I was never very good at drawing, painting, ceramics, or anything like that — though that could have been (probably was) due to a lack of real interest and therefore practice.

It was only in the last few years, when I really began to pursue baking and cake decorating as a hobby (and, eventually, profession), that I realized that I have any creative bones in my body. The repeat use strains in my wrists and the pain I feel from a healed broken finger — not one that I broke balking but one that I had to continue using at work for weeks — attest to this.

But, for some time, I have allowed myself to place limits on my creativity — I can do these creative things and nothing else, and only to extents I’ve set for myself. While there are creative hobbies I have considered, in passing and at various points, taking up, I have had very limited motivation to actually get started on them. Whether it’s out of a fear of failure, not wanting to add anything else to my plate, or just depression-induced apathy, I’ve had many excuses. I haven’t convinced myself of the reasons to actually do these things. I’ve always known I’m capable of learning new things, and when I’ve really decided I want to do something — not even take up something but try something — I can usually put my mind to it.

So I’m pretty pleased to be offered external motivation for something by being in this technology in education course and having a free inquiry project to do.

One of those potential hobbies I’ve put off for so long is embroidery. I dabbled, for about a week, in embroidery when I was a kid, but like everything else I took up when I was a kid, it didn’t stick. Something else came up, and I wanted to try it.

But, even before this course, I was looking up embroidery kits, and I even went to Michael’s to pick up an instructional book. They didn’t have any kits or beginners’ patterns, and the pages in the book were out of order, and the line was too long that day, and so on, and so on.

But, the other day, I ordered a kit — and it arrived!

 

As I state in the video, these instructions are not very thorough and probably not enough for me to learn the basic stitches before I embark on this pattern. And, as I said, I didn’t buy that instructional book at Michael’s. I went to Michael’s again yesterday, found the instructional book, the pages were all there and in order, and the line was about twenty people in line. I ditched the book in the wrong place — like a bad customer — and ducked out of the store.

However, I’ve got social media and YouTube at my fingertips. I’ve been starting to follow a lot of embroidery accounts, particularly ones that embroider the types of strange and spooky things I would eventually like to figure out how to do; I found that book from Michael’s as a PDF online; and I’ve looked up YouTube videos. I’m fairly certain that YouTube will become my best friend in this project, so I’m glad to see there’s easy to follow, easy to find videos, like this one:

He didn’t tell me how to thread the needle and how to involve multiple strands, etc. etc. but…I’ll get there.

So, after I’ve armchair analyzed the reasons why I haven’t done this, or many things, before, I find myself really thinking about why I do want to do this. What do I want to get out of this project (list order does not reflect prioritization)?

  1. I want something to do with my hands while I watch bad TV. This is not a joke.
  2. I want to learn how to make something pretty that doesn’t get consumed. Cakes are great, but my photography skills are lacking so the evidence and best showcase of my creativity and hard work disappears pretty quickly.
  3. I want to learn a new skill.
  4. I want to improve my dexterity, hand-eye coordination, and patience.
  5. I want to be able to make cute, lightweight, portable things that I can cheaply mail to my friends back in Toronto. I don’t know when I’ll see them again and feeding them baked goods was a big part of how I demonstrated my affection for my people — I want to be able to create something that can provide that same sort of demonstration from afar.
  6. I want to reassert my ability to do something I set my mind to.
  7. I find tasks that involve a lot of repetition and fine motor skills to be extremely relaxing and restorative. I need this. There’s a reason I watch bad TV.
  8. I want to practice learning things independently again — for myself, and so I am better able to help guide students throughout their own self-teaching in the future.

What do I want to be able to produce out of this inquiry?

I want, first and foremost, to be able to eventually embroider spooky little bats and spooky little ghosts to hang on my wall and to mail to my friends. I think this will, hopefully, be an achievable or close-to-achievable goal by the end of the semester.

Beyond that, I would like to learn some traditional Ukrainian embroidery. Since finishing grad school, I feel like my connection to my Ukrainian heritage has waned because I’m not actively engaging in questions of Ukrainian history and culture day in and day out. When I was a kid, my grandparents’ had these beautiful table runners and napkins with traditional Ukrainian stitching as well as intricately stitched traditional peasant tops, all of which they brought back from Soviet Ukraine. I would like to be able to replicate some traditional Ukrainian stitching, even if it’s just something small, and gift it to my grandfather who has really been feeling his own mortality. He’s always been pleased with the interest I’ve taken in his family’s background, and I know it would make him very happy to have some hand-stitched Ukrainian embroidery from me.