A common thread

Great Pause #5

A few months ago, I took my embroidery hoop in hand again after putting it down nearly thirty years ago. I’m not quite sure why I put it aside. Probably something to do with the fact that I was a single mom finishing my degree part time. That I had three kids to shuttle around. And then a new teaching career that asked for more hours than I had in a day.

Embroidery patterns have changed since the 70s and 80s when the patterns leaned towards cute or floral or country. Not really pieces I’d want to spend time on today. But then I found Cozyblue Handmade and Snuggly Monkey and I was hooked all over again. Mandalas and vines and sun, moon, and stars. Oh, my!

My hoop has been a lifeline during this Pause. I stitch and stab and worry about whether or not my leaf stitch is even; I focus on french knots and fly-stitches–with nary a thought of some lurking virus. Or a depleted bank account. Or missed grandchildren.

Embroidery has become a kind of meditation that calms my fear and keeps me smack dab in the moment.

So how serendipitous that Tracy Chevalier’s new novel A Single Thread should offer me the the story of how the magic of needle and thread saves a young woman one stitch at a time.

Violet Speedwell is a “surplus” woman. During the Great War so many young men of marriageable age were killed that in the years that followed, a generation of women watched marriage, children, and independence pass them by. At 38, Violet languished at home with a demanding mother until she made the nearly unheard-of decision to move to a new job in another village … and life on her own.

One day Violet visits Winchester Cathedral on her lunch hour and finds that she has interrupted a service dedicating kneeling cushions created by the Cathedral Broderers*. Violet is drawn in by the prayers and music of the service and drawn to the community of women whose artistry would allow them to leave something of themselves behind.

So Violet befriends one of the younger broderers, manages to get her employer Mr. Waterman to allow her to attend the broderer’s Wednesday morning meetings, and begins to expand her life one stitch at a time. She goes on a summer walking tour alone. Dines out with new-found friends. She expands her role in Mr. Waterman’s office. And at long last stands up to her mother. Violet finds purpose in her work embroidering, while the group of women she meets anchor her.

Violet also finds herself drawn to the Cathedral bell ringers and their own mission. She meets Arthur, for whom bell ringing is just as much his life line as embroidery is hers, and bell ringing and brodering come to bookend the story. Quite literally.

If you are a needle worker, you’ll find the story especially engaging. A Single Thread both transported me to another time and place and connected me to this present moment where I’m grounded stitch-by-stitch.

* the brodery referred to in the novel is canvas needlepoint, not hoop embroidery–but the love of all things needle and thread is constant.