<br/>Heron Bag — Dan Spier

Needlepoint

I have been an active needlepointer since 1990. As you may or may not know, needlepoint is an art that involves stitching fibers through the holes in handpainted canvas. It differs from counted cross stitch in that you only do half the cross and do not count. You merely follow the design that has been painted on the canvas and place one stitch across each intersection. I use exclusively a stitch called basketweave or the tent stitch and a few French knots for decoration. The process of needlepointing seems very tedious to many people, but I find it very relaxing and fulfilling. I follow the process all the way through to a finished product. My husband blocks the finished canvases using steam to straighten them. I then make them into Christmas stockings or pillows or ornaments or simply framed pieces. My husband wrote a poem about my needlepoint that explains the process very beautifully I believe. I would like to include that poem here for you to read.

The Conversion

Wrested from off the dusty plaster wall
Where long it hung a market crucifix,
Push pins had pierced the manufactured holes,
Long languished there in mercantile neglect
Amid the other Christmas stocking blanks,
Hand-painted graphs of erstwhile caribou
And candy canes and horns and dolls and drums
St. Nick and Magi,Bethlehem, and all.

But carefully in tissue tomb it now resides,
Awaiting morphogenesis to come.

Recumbent in her Lazy-Boy my wife
Reclines and carefully unfurls the coil.
Then starched and stiff, the latent prize unfurls
The canvas mesh she straightens on her knee,
And starting like the ancient Eastern kings,
The northeast corner working toward the west
And southward up and down the needle flies.
In subsequential holes, she fills with wool
Or brightly colored silk or cotton thread.

The acupuncture process heals the mass,
Converting fabric plain—mosaic-like,
The loops obliquely march in measured line,
A perfect pyramid emerges strong.

In places where the paint had flatly lain
The seamstress matches hue and tone and shape,
The screen by magic fills and plumps each fold
And trees and bells and sleeves and toys emerge.
Conversion comes at last to lifeless form
A vacant, empty shroud of cloth transformed
To Christmas stocking filled with Christmas joy
To Christmas stocking made with love and care.

This is a blue heron that I stitched for myself. I put it on a carpet bag.