Mike Powell

During the past couple of months the weather has frequently been inhospitable for wildlife photography, either hot, humid, or rainy (or some combination of those three conditions). Some times in the past I have gone out anyways with my camera, but this year I have been increasingly staying indoors.

What have I done to keep myself occupied? During the mid-1980’s I was introduced to counted cross stitch. One of my friends used to stitch quite often and I commented to her that someday I should try it myself. I was a bit shocked the next time I saw her when she gave me a pattern, a needle, an a cross stitching kit. When I was growing up, I remember my Mom cross stitching some pillow cases, with the pattern printed onto the fabric. This “new” version that I was introduced to was counted cross stitch, i.e. the fabric was blank and I had to replicate the pattern with a series of x’s in the designated colors.

I discovered that I really liked this new hobby and found it to be both creative and therapeutic. I continued to cross stitch regularly throughout the late 1980’s and 1990’s. Cross stitching seemed to be really popular at that time and I remember subscribing to multiple cross stitching magazines (and accumulating a lot of cross stitching patterns and materials).

My life style changed when I retired from the Army in 1997 and my attention shifted to other aspects of my life. I gradually stopped cross stitching completely, though I never did get rid of my “stash.”

I returned to stitching a few years ago after I finally stopped working and had a bit more free time. Several ladies from my church work at a wonderful local needlework store called “In Stitches” that focuses exclusively on needlepoint and counted cross stitch and they encouraged me to get more involved in activities there, including stitching nights twice a month.

I’m discovering that cross stitching has had a kind of resurgence in recent years and there are numerous FlossTube channels on YouTube in which stitchers of all sorts showcase their works in progress (WIPs) and completed projects. More recently I’ve been involved with a number of cross stitching channels on Twitch. I used to think that Twitch was only for gamers that wanted to watch others play video games and only recently learned that there is a whole series of “Makers and Crafters” channels in which you can watch others working on their own projects and chat with them as they do.

On one of the Twitch channelsI was watching, the streamer @TheDaceman0 was working on a sampler called 100 Owls by Owl Forest Embroidery. I loved the pattern, which is available as a free download here, but did not want to commit to stitching all 100 Owls. I started with the Long-eared Owl (Asio otus) in the second photo below and recently stitched the Great Gray Owl (Strix nebulosa) that you see in the first photo below.

As you can see, my wildlife interests are sometimes reflected in the subjects of my stitching as well as in my photography. Last year I happened to stitch yet another owl pattern, shown in the third photo below, that was a bit more stylized and was included in the Halloween edition of Just Cross Stitch magazine. It’s fun to rediscover a dormant hobby and to see how it has evolved during the period when I was inactive. There are now a lot more options for fabrics and threads than in the past, but, for the moment at least, my tastes have not changed and I continue to use the same materials and techniques that I used in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.