For years I have been trying, like everyone I guess, to learn how to manage my time. My diary went from being a sterile list of appointments to a bullettin journal; it was replaced with a notebook and then went back to being a diary; it was coloured red and blue with appointments and to-do lists organised in boxes, then relegated again to list pages and, at the moment, is organised into very short lists underlain by verbal headings: embroidering, drawing, writing, sharing, administrating. In the last two weeks, I have added the item building. Having framed my actions in primary verbs, has taken me back to childhood: because in the end, everything we perhaps do now with boredom and fatigue, we did as children with fun and enthusiasm. The verb, in this moment, gives me back the pleasure of doing. And when I was about eight years old, the desire to make and build was very strong. I remember using my father’s hacksaw in the basement for weeks to cut out a silhouette of a rabbit (I think Beatrix Potter) that I had glued onto plywood. I had even cut off a finger, but I had got to the bottom of it. Then I sewed dolls and embroidered. I didn’t have to cook and the dolls didn’t have to do their homework.

Under the heading of building, I have included the actions of drawn thread work, folding and basting the hems, sewing, assembling, framing, etc.: all the finishing touches that finally give meaning to the embroidery. You won’t believe it, but this verb changed my approach to these movements, which I always found boring and deserving of being replaced by other actions. The problem was that I used to put them in the cauldron of the embroidery heading and inevitably, when juxtaposed with the idea of exciting techniques, they ended up being belittled to stitches and mere second-class tasks. Now I find time for embroidery, leisure and delight, but also time for building, the complete realisation of a creative project. And the endless, tedious hours of hemming have been shortened and made sense.