Welcome to The Stitching Moon

“Unicorns and cannonballs
Palaces and piers
Trumpets towers and tenements
Wide oceans full of tears
Flags rags ferryboats
Scimitars and scarves
Every precious dream and vision
Underneath the stars
You climbed on the ladder
With the wind in your sails
You came like comet
Blazing your trail
Too high too far too soon
You saw the whole of the moon“
–The Waterboys, “The Whole of the Moon”

Sure, the obvious reference for the title of this blog is “The Killing Moon” by Echo & The Bunnymen, which is also a great song, except my brain keeps thinking of The Waterboys’ “The Whole of the Moon.” Neither has anything to do with cross stitch, of course, but I had to start somewhere with the title for this blog. It’s also a good representation of what you’ll find here: musings on cross stitch and life. I’ve been writing regularly about The Golden Girls over on my other blog, surprising even myself at my ability to keep that going. And even though I enjoy writing about other topics when inspiration strikes I’ve also been feeling the pull of wanting a space for more personal, less restrictive writing. Combine that with my recent foray back into cross stitch and you have The Stitching Moon.

I learned to cross stitch from my mom as a kid, probably when I was around 10 years old. I’m not sure that I ever even completed any projects back then. Thankfully, cross stitch is a little like riding a bike, and I was able to easily pick it up again after a long absence. I got started again with the Cross Stitch The Golden Girls kit, a gift from my mom for my birthday last November. I gave birth to our daughter, Edie, that September so I didn’t have time time to get to it until this March. To be honest, I did The Golden Girls cross stitch mostly to review and feature on my blog. I wasn’t expecting to fall back in love with it as much as I did. Things have a way of entering your life just when you need them most, though, and I’ve found that cross stitch serves more than one purpose for me. Not only is it fun, but it helps with my anxiety at night and keeps me off my phone and social media for a few hours.

So here I am with more than one cross stitch project in progress now, which you can find on the Works In Progress page. I definitely have the bug to cross stitch all the things! But I’m trying to stick with the ones I’ve started so far and not get ahead of myself. Hopefully this blog will help with that, too. I have lots of thoughts about the history of cross stitch and how it’s evolved as a craft over the years. Plus I’m looking forward to discussing my completed projects. And who knows? Maybe I’ll share some other thoughts along the way, too…