Hobbies – Round Three: Cross Stitch
stargrace 
My Mom taught me to cross stitch when I was around 10 years old. It was her main hobby (besides reading) and I always admired the pieces she created. She would do these elaborate, sometimes blanket sized, pieces full of colours. It was no surprise when I wanted to take it up, but it turns out that I do not have her patience or perseverance when it comes to this hobby. I would get bored easily, want to start new projects constantly, and I’ve never completed anything large. Now that I’m older it’s a bit easier, but because of the number of hobbies I have, cross stitch is probably one of the more neglected ones. Especially since my eyesight has been going. I’ve been thinking about investing in one of those magnifying glasses that you can clamp to the couch, so that I can see my stitches clearly.
Cross stitch happens exactly as it sounds. You stitch tiny little X’s over and over. Sometimes that’s mixed in with other types of stitches (back stitching for outlining, half stitches just for a different look, knots, etc) but the majority are the repeating X’s. I have a huge collection of kits, as well as patterns I’ve bought online or ones I’ve printed out. I subscribed to a yearly magazine for a while that included a tiny little seasonal project, but they mostly sat there, unused.
I have bins of canvas, threads neatly organized in craft cases, bags of threads less organized, and everything in between. The size of my cross stitch collection is (IMO) under control and quite small (I have one plastic tote dedicated to it, I make sure everything can fit into the tote minus my containers of floss) compared to other crafts I have (knitting, I’m looking at you) and I prefer to keep it that way. Like most of my hobbies, if I don’t set aside dedicated time to it, it tends to get neglected. I’d like to do a little stitching each day and then at least over time I might be able to see some progress. As it is now, I tend to rotate my hobbies in and out, so I’ll work on knitting for a few months, then swap over to cross stitch or miniatures, then swap over to my 4th hobby which I’ll talk about in tomorrow’s post.
How do you handle having multiple hobbies? Do they all get an equal amount of attention or do you tend to hyper focus on one and rotate them out like I do? Let me know in comments!
