Bums on seats
For over 25 years of my life, I couldn't physically knit because my wrists were shot.
Well, you see, it's like this. When I was unable to finish my degree (I won't go into the details of why, except to say that it was not my fault), I had to think of something else to do rather fast; so I went to train as a secretary. As an idea, that was a bit of a curate's egg. While I can do secretarial work, I'm not ideal for it, because it tends to be interrupt-driven, and I'm much better at tasks where I can just sit down and concentrate. On the other hand, I did end up becoming a pretty decent touch typist, which has stood me in very good stead over the years; and also, in the middle of my training course, I spent a year being (rather to my own surprise) president of the students' union at the college. I hadn't planned to do that, but the previous president had made a mess of things and I had my arm twisted into standing. (For the record, I did sort out the mess... not on my own; I had help, but on the other hand so did the previous chap.)
The position of secretary was vacant, so I had to produce all the minutes and other documents. At first I did this by hand, but then one of the governors, thinking he was doing us a great favour, gave us an old manual typewriter. I smiled sweetly and thanked him very politely; however, I have extremely thin wrists, and I'd already been advised that there was a potential health and safety issue with someone like me using a manual typewriter. I was aware that it could cause damage to my wrists. So I took the matter to my Executive Committee, which was entirely made up of teenagers (the college actually had quite a high proportion of mature students like me, but most of them didn't bother much with the students' union), and I explained the issue. I proposed that the union should buy an electric typewriter, which we could well have afforded to do.
Most kids don't really get the concept of health and safety. They're fine, so they automatically assume everyone else is. I don't know what was going through their heads, but they rejected the proposal and I was stuck with this typewriter. And, sure enough, it wasn't very long before I had to shanghai one of them into doing the typing because my wrists hurt too much to do it. I was diagnosed with tenosynovitis, in both wrists, and ended up in a pair of extremely ugly surgical splints. Every now and then someone told me I should sue; but the problem was that the moral responsibility lay with this bunch of kids, and I'm not suing kids. Whereas the legal responsibility probably lay with either the college or the council which ran it; but they were completely blameless in the matter, and, again, I'm not suing innocent people. So I was kind of stuck.
I was in these splints for years, and knitting was out, so I had to do other things; and one of the main things I did was cross stitch, which doesn't pull on the wrists at all. It's also pretty versatile. I worked on all scales from a spectacle case for a friend done over a single thread of 24-count cloth (he was very much into the Napoleonic period, so I stitched him a Napoleonic soldier) to the cushion shown above, which was done in acrylic yarn on canvas.
Ah yes. The cushion. With, as you see, a convenient carrying loop.
The thing is, if you're a fan of most kinds of music, you're guaranteed at least reasonably comfortable seating (well, except pop music, where for some reason you're quite often expected to stand). But if you're a fan of baroque and early music, you might be at the Wigmore if you're lucky, but much more often you're in some ancient and picturesque church building with a splendid acoustic, oodles of character... and very hard pews. And these pews are designed to seat the congregation in moderate comfort for the duration of a regular (usually Anglican) service, in other words about an hour, tops. A typical concert, on the other hand, is about twice that length (could be shorter, could be longer; if you're going to sit through the St Matthew Passion, as I have done on more than one occasion, you will definitely need some extra padding), and if you're not careful you will end up with a numb bum, which is rather a distraction from the music.
So this was my concert cushion, and it went all over the place with me. It was quick to do because of the large scale, and the design is very effective. I did a few more static cushions, including one with a tiger panel and one with a poppy wreath around a motto in Irish; that last one was lovely but a bit of a mistake, because I had to take it to work due to having a bad chair, and it got so much use that the lettering wore out. (All-over designs are much better for cushions because they wear more evenly.) And there was a pair of large floral cushions for some friends at church. I also did a set of two-colour place mats on plastic canvas for another set of friends, using a Vinciolo filet design but interpreted in cross stitch (white on sage green, so it looked like a Wedgwood), bookmarks for various people, a half-curtain with wild geese, and a few framed pieces including a memorial sampler for a very dear friend who left the world entirely too early. Not to mention a few embellishments to clothing using the waste canvas technique. It was pretty much the case that if you could do it using cross stitch, I did it at some point.
And, yes, I enjoyed doing it; but it was, nonetheless, always a filler. It was what I did because I couldn't knit.
However, when I was in hospital in 2016, all my muscles were pretty much useless once I'd finally returned from death's door, and I had to get them all working again with the aid of a physio. (There is nobody quite so gung-ho as a typical hospital physio. They probably need to be.) And they decided my wrists were also capable of working properly again, so they wouldn't give me my splints back. I had to use both hands to hold so much as a plastic cup for a while; but I've got to say they were right. My wrists did get better. And I have barely done any cross stitch since.
I may yet do it again, though. After all, I no longer own a concert cushion!
