At the beginning of the pandemic, I was wondering why my elbow hurt all the time and making a fist was painful. Some googling and some forced rest (no gym for 8 weeks) made me realize it was probably tennis elbow. Knitting would also make it hurt, so I spent some (many) idle lockdown hours looking into needlepoint kits.

I really, really wanted to get a Kaffe Fassett pillow kit but they were 1.) at least $100 and 2.) the company wasn’t shipping due to the rona. So instead I was reasonable and got a cheap eyeglass case kit to see if I would even like needpoint.

I do like it! But I am very bad at it! I’ve been working bottom up and you can see some incremental improvement but…this isn’t going to win any awards. (I think some of the issue is that I refuse to admit I need a lot more light to stitch than I do to knit, so I can’t always quite see what I’m doing.)

It’s fun, though, in the same way a paint-by-number painting was fun when I was a kid: all the fun of colors AND all the fun of just following instructions and knowing it will all work out. (A good pandemic project after all.)