For the past month I’ve been working on the three small pieces I dyed in September.

Sidekick ©2017 Elizabeth Fram
It was relatively smooth-going on the first two, but the third has proven to be a real challenge. I mistakenly thought that working smaller would be quicker and easier (the image area of each is around 3.5″ x 4″). Yet it didn’t exactly work out that way. This has been one of those instances when I have been grateful for the ease with which stitches can be undone.

Yin Yang ©2017 Elizabeth Fram
Of the dozen pieces in this on-going series, this latest one has definitely been the trickiest, with many false starts. The saucer was killing me until I finally decided to just dive in and keep stitching to see what would happen.

In Process ©2017 Elizabeth Fram
Although there are technical elements of the earlier iterations that I like a lot and will likely pursue in the future, that darn spoon needed to be grounded.

In Process ©2017 Elizabeth Fram
The experience is best equated to matching up the threads of a screw-on lid — while sometimes the top seems to be closed, you know it’s not quite right.

Prone to Wait ©2017 Elizabeth Fram
There’s nothing to be done but undo and retry, sometimes several times. Keeping in mind Adrianna Huffington’s quote: “Failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success”, it’s a sweet feeling once everything is settled properly into the grooves at last.

Prone to Wait, detail ©2017 Elizabeth Fram
On a Different Note________________________________________________________________________________________
Decoding the Creative Genius of Leonardo da Vinci: This week Tom Ashbrook of NPR’s On Point interviewed biographer Walter Isaacson about his latest book ‘Leonardo Da VInci’. Fascinating! I’m adding it to my “to-be-read” list.