In the previous post I had told how the sampler came into being, but I had omitted to specify that because of it I had had to compile no less than 11 full alphabets, coloured to the rhythm of an epic compilation, while sweating at mid-August and shivering at Christmas.

I thought it would be easy to line up my alphabets and then narrate the few movements, which, in fact, are involved in padded stitch embroidery. I would throw in a few bits of information here and there, gradually more detailed with each added difficulty in the more difficult alphabets, and in no time my padded stitch booklet would be born.

Well… When I found myself face to face with the PC screen and fingers to fingers with the keyboard, a slight fog lifted on the horizon and, as a spring evening fell, while the nightingale trilled goodnight to her little ones, I realised that I had got it all wrong.

It was not the blank sheet syndrome… No! No!

The words on the keyboard were gushing out.

They gushed copiously!

That was the problem.

They gush copiously and call out for illustrations.

The thing is, when you embroider, you don’t think about what you are doing: your hands fly over the canvas, but if I were to ask now, while pulling a thread, in which direction you are going to pull it in a second… Perhaps I would get a bewildered look. What is the point? Codifying our movements, naming them and arguing why the hell we are pulling this way and that way in one case, and why we are pulling a little below and a little above, is something that cannot be done or achieved in five minutes.

In five minutes you mime and imitate it. You don’t write it and you don’t tell it.

And while the nightingale children dreamed of flying over Everest, as big as eagles, I closed my PC and sharpened my pencils.