THE SPINSTER STITCHER'S STITCHING NECESSARY

Several years ago, Chrissy and I attended a Stitchers' Day Out hosted by House of Stitches. The instructress for the event was the lovely Miss Sharon Henderson, Her Very Self. Sharon spent a few minutes at the beginning of the session talking about things one should carry in one's Stitcher's Necessary. I, of course, ran right out and bought every single item on the list and then carried the damn thing around with me like a handbag for about six months.

I've gone through several editions of my necessary, but the basic insides stay the same. It's the outside that changes according to my mood or what catches my eye at Michael's. The current version of the Spinster Stitcher's Stitching Necessary (version 8.0) is a little wooden box that was on sale for $7. Woo Hoo!

Now when I attend retreats or classes, I usually dump all of this stuff into a little bigger container and add a few more essentials, like cash, gum, breath mints, a small first aid kit, and some white cotton socks. Oh, and my traveling light.

But....here at home, this is all of the crap that lives on my $8 Target TeeVee tray next to my Happy Chair: A mesh bag with floss bags (hmmm, bags inside of bags), Thimble It stick-on thimbles, "My Favorite Stitches" stitchbook, some strips of felt for under Q-snaps.

Wet wipes, magnifying glasses, a glass cleaning cloth, and a little screwdriver to fix screws on said glasses.

Big scissors, a calculator, a mini stapler, small post-it pad, pencils, pens, and highlighters.

A hair tie, nail files, cuticle clippers (because I'm determined not to chew them anymore....disgusting habit), ChapStick, a tube of Vaseline, and some vitamin C drops.

A small tape measure, boo boo stick, seam ripper, laying tool, magnetized ruler, see through magnet chart marker thing, thread rings, Thread Heaven, Thread Thingies, tweezers, a star de-tailor, a needle tugger, magnets, counting pins, straight pins, needle threaders, scissor fob, ball of #12 perle cotton in ecru, a Sticher's Friend, Stitcher's Lotion, Liquid Stitch, Fray Check, and needles from 20-28 in separate marked containers.

A glass vase that only cost $1 at the Dollar Store holds all of my scissors and the blue thing next to it is The Bucket, which holds all of my orts.
When traveling, The Bucket folds flat, or I use a little plastic container that Chrissy gave me to shut me up when we went on our last excursion.

That's about it. There is, of course about a million different ways you could customize this for your very self. I know that I used to carry doodle cloths of linen and canvas for practice stitches, and I'm sure that I usually always throw Q-snaps into the bag too when I'm heading out into the wild blue yonder.

If you're headed someplace all official-like, then you'll definitely need a name tag, and I know that a lot of stitchers carry address labels so that they can swap info easily.

Whew! You'd think that with all of the crap I have in this box I'd get a lot more stitching done now, wouldn't you? Well, I did start Laura J. Perin's "Equilibrium" on Thursday night and I am really loving every minute of it. This was the very first LJP chart I purchased way back when, and at the time I changed all of the colors to reds. I am, though, stitching in all of the suggested threads this time and have to say that the blues are just gorgeous. I just can't figure out why I am constantly drawn toward blue in my stitching, yet I don't have one spec of it anywhere in my house. At all.
That's it for tonight, kids! Thanks for indulging my "look at me!" needs today. Right back at 'cha tomorrow morning, I promise!