A Hobby, Rediscovered

A couple of weeks into lockdown here in the States, I got the sudden itch to do something concrete and conquerable – namely get my stuff out of storage and sort through it. I had a few caches of things with friends and family from when I moved to Japan in 2017. Before returning, I needed to sift through all this stuff and decide what to do with it.

So, wearing my homemade bandana mask and taking social-distancing precautions, I reclaimed my stuff from my friend’s basement.

When I was packing up and selling all my things in preparation to move to Japan, I discovered that there was a real Rebecca and an imaginary Rebecca – and imaginary Rebecca had a lot more hobbies (and all their associated stuff) than real Rebecca. To my delight, I discovered that 2017 Rebecca correctly identified and kept supplies for my favorite hobbies.

The most relevant find was embroidery supplies – a few hoops, some thread, my stitch encyclopedia, and even a project in progress. This last was the clincher. I can get stalled out for years, unable to settle on a project, so the fact that my cache of supplies included a pre-determined project (that I still liked!) was critical.

I wound up restarting the project from scratch, and am pleased with the direction it’s taking.

The basic premise is three pieces using the three main colors in my living space in Japan, a combination of western and Japanese stitches, and geometric designs of interwoven circles and polygons.

I drew up the base designs using a free geometry program (GeoGebra Geometry) and made edits in a drawing program (Sketchbook)

I haven’t been able to get myself to do anything creative with writing since the lockdown started so having this outlet has been a lifesaver.