Tess Needham

Last week, I finally finished a counted cross stitch kit I’ve been working on for months. I’ve been doing it while watching TV or movies. Something to keep the hands busy, I guess.

I’m relieved to be done, and also… kind of questioning why I bought it.

Why I bought it

Four years ago, we were travelling through Navajo Nation, in Arizona. We stopped at a roadside gift shop, and the basket of cross stitch kits called my name. These were reproductions of Navajo rug designs, and I picked out two. At the time, I guess I was thinking that they were a lightweight souvenir, yet meaningful. 

I’m not sure I thought about how long they would take me to craft, and for how long I would put off getting started. It didn’t cross my mind how bored I would become with the endless rows of white background. How, near the end, I’d be desperate to stop, but had come too far to give up.

If you haven’t done it before, I’ll tell you that cross stitch takes a really, really long time to complete. It’s intricate, fine work, and very repetitive. It requires dedication to stick with it.

Is a cross stitch kit creative?

While driving the needle through yet another hole in the cloth, I pondered my compulsion to buy these wretched but beautiful kits. I thought about how important it is for me to be creative. But how lacking in creativity counted cross stitch kits (or any other pre-made craft kit, for that matter) are.

Now, I don’t want to be the creativity police, but I do have a pretty useful definition of what creativity means to me. And some of these central principles of creativity are not being fulfilled with a craft kit. I’m not filtering inputs through my own experience and skills, then producing something original. I have no control: I’m given all the materials I need, and very specific instructions for where it all goes. Any deviation, even if by accident, would throw the whole thing off.

Worth it…?

I’m not saying these are totally worthless. I’ll admit that there’s a meditative quality to performing stitch after stitch. And it’s a tactile way to think about my experience in the Navajo Nation, in a very different way to wearing the jewellery I bought there. Also, it’s satisfying to have something to hang on my wall at the end of it. 

So when is cross stitch creative (according to my definition)? Well, creating pieces of my own design is definitely creative! I have a spark of inspiration, an idea forms, a plan is made, sketched out, and decisions made about colours and size.

Not again soon

But I won’t get hung up on the semantics of whether something is creative. I’ll just try to remember to be careful what souvenirs I commit to in the future.