Motherly Love

After I out myself as a fella who likes to cross stitch, people usually fall into one of two camps.

1. That is weird. You are weird.
2. Can you make me something?

Many times, people in camp number one immediately evolve into members of camp number two.

My mother, bless her heart, was an immediate number two (I realize now how awful that sounds.)

Her birthday was coming up, and she wanted something I made. I severely doubted, however, that she would want something that said "Bitch" or "Fuck" on it, so I had to work something up for her, and it would have to be nice. To top it all off, she had just gotten over a bout of breast cancer. Never fun, so I wanted to do something that referred to that, but wasn't some sort of typical pink ribbon sort of thing.

Then I remembered a line from a poem I had read somewhere. I have no idea who wrote it, but it seemed very appropriate: "Just when the caterpillar thought her world was over... she became a butterfly." Very nice without being too schmaltzy or overused.

I found a pattern for a butterfly in one of the cross stitch books I had purchased from EBay (more on that later) and I was off. The only tough thing would be to pattern out the lettering. Luckily, I found a page that allows you to type in a phrase and choose a font and then it makes a pattern for you. Very handy! You can find it here. When I first found it, you could choose any of the fonts shown, but now they have turned it into a pay site. There are still two free fonts available, though. I have used them a few times now.

There is another caption maker available here, but it is a little clunky.

Anyways, I am pretty proud of how it all turned out, and my mother seemed to like it.

I consider this my first non-offensive, serious work.