Three weeks before Christmas, my daughter-in-law finally finished the needlepoint design for her daughter’s (my grand-daughter’s) needlepoint Christmas stocking. So, I put the canvas on my Victorian stretcher frame, began leafing through my favorite needlepoint books ( The Needlepoint Book by Jo Ippolito Christensen and A Pageant of Pattern for Needlepoint Canvas by Sherlee Lantz), and began stitching like mad.
Zoe's Personalized Needlepoint Stocking - BEAUTIFUL!!! (Click on Photo to Enlarge)
Well, not that fast! I took some time to picking out the stitches while I downloaded from my local public library the audio recording of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy by Blackstone Audio, Inc. Downloadable audio books which can be listened to on your computer, MP3 player, or iPod has allowed me to combine creative stitchery and literature and learning.
War and Peace was 60 hours and 42 minutes long and I finished listening to Tolstoy a couple hours before I finished the stocking. Thus, I have termed the project the Ware and Peace Stocking. Similarly, an afghan which I knitted for a wedding present became The Children’s Book Afghan and I sent a copy the book by A.S. Byatt as an additional gift. Both books are long and dense. I found them much more enjoyable as audio presentations as I stitched away than they would have been had I read the written words. I remember that the first time I read War and Peace in 1968, it took me the entire summer!
Coming soon details of some of the unusual stitches I used on my Ware and Peace Stocking.
Comments on: "A War and Peace Needlepoint Christmas Stocking" (0)
Reading Peggy’s comments on her “War and Peace” needlepoint stocking are “right on”! I too, listen to audio books while needlepointing and quilting. My “Patrick stocking” designed by Needlepaint was completed in time for Christmas thanks to Barbara Walters (!) Via her auto-biography, “Audition; a Memoir” I traveled around the globe with Barbara as she interviewed heads of state and Hollywood celebrities. As Peggy states, hundreds of audio books are available for downloading FREE from your local public library – all you need is a library card number – check it out on your library website. I have completed other projects while traveling down “The River of Doubt” with Teddy Roosevelt (author is Candice Millard) and cooking, entertaining and going to prison with Martha Stewart in “Being Martha: the Inside Story of Martha Stewart and her Amazing Life” by Lloyd Allen.
Suzanne Reed
Silverthorne, CO
[…] wife was inspired last year by the “war and peace” stocking Peggy stitched for her granddaughter last year. After seeing it, she decided she wanted to make […]