Turtle Trot 2014

I have at last chosen my 10 projects for BAP Attack's Turtle Trot 2014. 

Choosing was a bit of a struggle, between "should" and "want to".  It was also a bit shaming how many pieces I actually found started but unfinished. 

Looking at this full drawer got me thinking about why these pieces had been set aside, and why they had been started in the first place.  Some of them have been set aside for years.  Some had got "lost" in moving - shows what I subconsciously think about where I've been living, that I never got around to fully unpacking - and some had lost/damaged patterns or colour charts.  A few had been started for people who no longer wanted them, for various reasons, and I just couldn't bear completely abandon the hours of work that had already gone into them.  Some just had bad associations.

Time for a little new year's introspection, to decide what I really want out of my stitching, and what really interests me enough to finish.  If these pieces are going to have my name on them, taking up hours of my life, given with love and joy, they better be something that makes my life and the lives of those around me richer.  I choose to work on the pieces that to me mean something good: the wedding sampler celebrating the marriage of dear friends; the housewarming gift for my newly-independant offspring.  A quilt begun in infancy and set aside when I lost the pattern, continued to remind another child I have always loved her, and always will.

The birds are a big psychological step.  In one, I am taking back a bit of my identity and claiming my rightful place in the family.  The other one I started many years ago at the insistence of my husband, and set aside when his abuse got really bad; it hurt too much emotionally, perverting my love of needlework into submission to fear.  It's taken a lot of years to get past the stomach-curdling conditioned fear response to anything associated with him, but I refuse to allow him any power in my life.  That proud, wild bird is now a symbol of me and my individuality that he was too stupid to value.