flower basket director's chair

Anne of  http://www.thecapestitcher.blogspot.com asked about why I stitch with a thimble.  Years ago, I was stitching a canvas from Lee's Needle Arts that was a flower basket on 14mesh canvas that was 16x20 inches.  It was a canvas that they had replicated as a 10mesh rug with an additional border. This canvas became the seat of a director's chair.  The back canvas is one that I counted from the rug border.  The sad footnote to this story is that while I love the director's chair and how comfortable it is to sit in, my husband, the sophisticated New Yorker, doesn't like "it's look".  So it has been relegated to Needle Nicely's back room.  Sigh.  There's a lot to be said about marrying them young and training them--marrying them old doesn't seem to work that way! 

I must confess that I don't use a thimble when I work on a frame.  I don't feel it is necessary.  However, when I stitch "in hand", I always use a thimble.  The flower basket canvas was painted on 14mesh canvas.  I stitched it with 2-ply Paternayan persian.  It was really difficult to pull through, especially when fitting colors into odd places in the design.  I tried stitching with the new-skin that athletes use to spray their skin before applying athletic tape.  It didn't work very well and gummed up the eyes of the needles.  Then I tried the rubber fingers that secretaries use to help them collate pages in reports.  The rubber kept grabbing the needle and it didn't really protect my finger.  So, reluctantly, I was forced to try a thimble.  My finger was bloody and really tender.  That was enough incentive for me to persist with the thimble.  Today it is almost an automatic response to put the thimble on.