Sunday, January 29, 2012

Cretan Stitch Eskimo Pie!

This week's stitch for TAST was the cretan stitch.  I am definitely not a fan of this stitch.  It's very simple and yet I had such trouble with it.  I kept getting the needle on the wrong side of the thread and kept getting my spacing wrong.  I think I frogged out as much as I embroidered in.  But it does make for a very nice fill-in stitch on aida cloth.
My subject for this past Tuesday was the Eskimo Pie.  Christian K. Nelson of Iowa patented the Eskimo Pie on January 24, 1924.  
I chose this bit of history because it brings back some wonderful memories.  When I was about 4 or 5 I spent a lot of time during the summer at my maternal grandparents' house and Nana always had Eskimo Pies in the freezer.  I could have one whenever I wanted, not much spoiled was I?  I am an only child and adopted too so go figure.   
Nana was the one that taught me to cross stitch when I was about 4 and Mom taught me sewing not long after and later on how to knit.  
There are a lot of neat memories from those early years, summer drives with Papa on country roads with cornfields so high on either side of the road that it was like driving between fences, listening for hours to old 78's on the record player, molding all kinds of  things from a roll of aluminum foil, making new gowns for Barbie from Kleenex and tape, stringing and re-stringing buttons to make necklaces  and trying to figure out how Papa could keep up with one baseball game on the radio and another on the TV and still keep them straight.  Not to mention the best fried chicken dinners with creamy mashed potatoes and milk gravy on Sundays.
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I think I need to buy some Eskimo Pies now.

3 comments:

Jules said...

Even though you had so much trouble, it still turned out beautifully!

Yes, I think we could all use an Eskimo Pie right about now. Thanks for sharing your childhood memories!

Anonymous said...

Adore! That's a lot of cretan stitch tho - oddly it's one of my favorite stitches! :) I never thought of using it as a fill stitch tho! What a great idea!

Susan said...

Oh, that does sound so wonderful a childhood - memories like that are priceless, so I can understand why you chose the design. ( I laughed when I looked at the code I have to type in for my comment. It was frozede! )

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