At some point in our life, we girls learn the craft of cross-stitching. Or were forced to learn it because it was part of Home Economics. Cross stitching is not at all difficult. It requires some basic skill with a needle and a thread. But one thing that makes it hard is the need for patience. Yards and yards of patience. This counted-thread embroidery can take days up to several weeks to finish depending on the pattern you're doing.
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| Arm yourself with DMC threads when cross-stitching |
Two of the most patient women in my life are into cross-stitching: my grandmother and my mother. My grandmother used to cross stitch huge patterns that I couldn't even fathom why she's doing. Her works range from ballerinas to country houses to ladies wearing elaborate Victorian clothes to fruits and vegetables; a testament of her unwavering commitment to this needle craft is an ancestral house filled with frames of projects she patiently cross-stitched. My mother followed her footprints, or should I say, hand skill, stitching relatives' faces from patterns made with their photos (needs a hundreds of threads in various colors) to sceneries and landscapes. She's still into cross-stitch up to now. I had my moment when I was still in high school but didn't have the patience for it, obviously. Haha.
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| Threads of various kinds, colors, and sizes. |
A craft store in the corner of the Shola Shopping Center, bereft of a proper signage, is my mother's haven for cross-stitching in Riyadh. I didn't know how my father found this but this is where he took her when she needed more DMC thread for the pattern she was doing. She bought the patterns in the Philippines and brought them here in Saudi Arabia but the materials she uses comes from this gem of a store, named Adel according to the receipt, that carries not only cross-stitching paraphernalia but also aida cloth (used for cross-stitching), ribbons, fabrics, yarns, tulle, buttons, and brooches. I tended to stray away from the store while waiting for the friendly store keeper to finish finding all the threads my mother require. But the other week, I decided to roam around the small store and see what's available... just in case there are still a few of you who are into crafts that needed these materials.
