Mountmellick blackberry/dogrose identity crisis

If you’ve been hanging around here for any length of time, you’ll know that I have been quite sick for a while, and that the illness has definitely affected my creative output. However, yesterday morning I woke with the feeling that I HAD to make something. Not being completely well, I decided the best plan of attack was to work on a project that was already started. (Despite feeling all inspired by Mary Corbet’s stuffed, embroidered eggs!)

So I picked up a small Mountmellick doily that I had started back in February, on a day when I was also feeling an attack of creativity. It was a design featuring dainty dog roses.

It was too nice a day to sit inside to stitch – a lovely warm Autumn day, with gorgeous sunshine. I packed up all I needed and took it out into the backyard. I was about to start stitching when I realised there was something wrong with the design.

Here was a branch of dog roses, and lo and behold, there were what seemed to be a few blackberries stuck out the end. Huh? (Keep in mind that this was designed by me, so if anyone’s to blame, then its definitely me!) I went back to my computer to check the pattern, just to make sure that it was named “dog roses” not blackberries. Ah, yes it was. These were definitely supposed to be rose branches. So then I checked my records of historical designs to see whether any of the dog rose designs had little blackberry looking things attached to them. Ah, no. Blackberry branches had blackberries, and dog roses had buds.

What to do?!

Because I’d already started stitching it on that day back in February where I’d had my moment of VERY confused creativity, I really didn’t want to have to start again. So I tried rubbing out the pencil lines where I had drawn the blackberries onto the fabric. It didn’t work. While they were very light pencil lines to start with, they were definitely still there.

So the only thing to do was to start again. I redrew the design onto a new piece of fabric, this time omitting the blackberries – which thankfully looked okay, and didn’t leave it looking like something was missing – and started again.

Late last night, I finally finished the whole doily, knitted fringe included. I’m very pleased with the design, now that it is only dog roses, and not having a slight blackberry identity crisis! It was lovely to be able to feel like I was well enough and inspired enough to spend the whole day stitching. (And to have the opportunity to do so.)

It also says loads to me about the state of my brain back in February! I might have thought I was ok, but obviously I was not operating at full speed. Precisely the reason why I have had to put aside any book writing for the past few months. I think the most annoying thing about me being sick has been that my brain went AWOL as well. Maybe it has now decided to come back?

I’m not showing you a picture of the doily, because I’ll keep this design for when a magazine next asks me for a project, or for a future class, or even for a future new Mountmellick book. (Yes, I’d love to do another one some day, but there’s a long list of other books I also want to write!)