What could be scarier than snakes on a plane?
Try needles on a plane. That’s right, needles.
I’m in the air somewhere between Florida and New York, doggedly stitching away when my tapestry needle takes on a life of its own, launching itself off the end of the thread, becoming airborne and landing God knows where.
My seatmate, a stocky middle-aged blond, has nodded off, her paperback having failed to hold her interest. Rather than disturb her, I quietly stuff my needlepoint canvas into the seat pocket in front of me, place my tray table in its upright and locked position, unbuckle my seatbelt, and awkwardly squat in the aisle, feeling around for it on the cheap carpeting. Nothing.
I’m hardly surprised given my track record with the so-called needle arts. Stress relievers for millions, they are for me a seemingly endless source of humiliation and frustration, made all the worse by the fact that I come from a long line of fiber artists including, but not limited to, my Great Aunt Min, whose hand-knitted sweaters I wore as a toddler and can picture to this day; my maternal grandmother who perfectly needle-pointed the seats on our dining room chairs, and my father’s mother who embroidered tablecloths so stunning I dare not remove them from their box.
All of that talent bypassed me completely. My sister got the needle-art gene. Watching her knit a sweater is like watching time-lapse footage of a bud opening into a beautiful, showy flower.
Watching me knit is like watching fruit rot.
And yet, I keep trying. I took up needlepoint last year, filled with high hopes and unflagging determination that began to flag on my very first foray into my neighborhood needlepoint shop (sorry; “shoppe.”) The British proprietress, who took disapproval to a whole new level, regarded me with utter distaste, her beady eyes boring into my brain as if she could access my every failed project: The paisley shorts I’d whipped up for home ec class; the pullover sweater I’d begun for my first high school boyfriend; the napkins I’d started when I decided to bypass simple embroidery and go straight to crewelwork.
Of course, she couldn’t possibly have known I’d made the infamous paisley shorts three-legged; nor could she have known about the moths that ate the half-finished sweater, abandoned in a closet after its intended recipient had the bad taste to propose to somebody else. As for the napkins, well… let’s just say “crewel” doesn’t even begin to cover it.
And yet I keep trying, seduced by the rhythmic clacking of my sister’s knitting needles on a visit to our parents’, the very trip I’m returning from when I manage to lose my needle on the plane. And then I see it: gleaming evilly, stuck to the leg of my seatmate’s blue jeans. If I can just gently pluck it off there’ll be no need to wake her, no need for another red-faced apology.
I reach for it just as the plane hits a bump. She opens her eyes to the sight of me crouched on the floor, my fingers seemingly about to caress her thigh. So, yeah, I’m forced to offer an apology and then some: I promise to stow my needle for the rest of the flight.
I think I’ll try lace tatting next.
