Repetition: A Kaleidoscope Of Color Revealed

Knot the thread. Pull it through the needle. Check the pattern. Begin stitching.

That's it - all that's required.

I watch as small tiny Xs fill the blank fabric before me. Colors bleed together - blue like the sky above, white like unblemished snow, copper like clay from the ground. In my head, I'm already done. This is just redundancy to me for a tapestry already formed. To anyone else though, all that shows is just a singular letter on repeat.

They say insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly expecting a different result. Whoever said clearly that has never cross stitched.

All you do in cross stitching is repetition. You sit gazing down at holes, filling them endlessly, letting time drift from you.

The past, the present, the future - they're meaningless. They exist simultaneously in each X.

I am in my home as a child, my mother beside me. She is connecting the symbols on the page to what I am supposed to do. Her smile is like the golden thread tangled beside us. I am gazing up at her.

I am curled in my chair in a place where uncomfortable silence lingers long. My spouse sits across from me texting his girlfriend. The words between us are red thread. They wrap around us, suffocating, warping the bobbin we exist on.

I am surrounded by strangers on a hard chair. A woman is shaking her head that I didn't know to stitch in the same direction each time. I slide my needle underneath the thread, clip it free, and grin at her. The green thread stretches between us as I grow in my skill and knowledge.

I am asked by my friend if I'd be willing to make their favorite character. I am laughing already as I begin ordering the supplies. I realize abruptly once the pattern is laid out why they were tentative. I misunderstood the size. It will be my largest project, but I delight in that knowledge. We are entwined together, brown thread revealing the comfort and joy echoing between us.

Each time I take up my needle, I create myself. The patterns I make contain my soul. I surrender to the certainty of seeing who I am unfurl with each stitch.

The work I do in those moments feels like dancing. I am spinning in a world I alone can see. I let the stories of my existence take space between my fingertips.

In these moments, I transcend the muscle and sinew my body is made of. I am the music playing, the instrumental dipping and curling beneath my ribs. I am the person in space trying to save Earth, drifting in zero gravity among darkness. I am the black cat purring, paws kneading the pillow, slow blinking.

Mistakes hold no fear here. I can rework anything. Shift the border. Nobody will know. Or I could tear out the error and redo it entirely. Here, I am in control, and there is no permanence except that which I desire.

I am frustration, anger, sorrow directed. Each thread yanked through is a triumph. It does not matter that my future is unknown, that my heartbreak is deep, that the world is undone. I exist in a space where I can have that personified and it is not a weapon.

It is art.

I am a kaleidoscope of colors, refractive, reflective, reborn. I shimmer in the metallic of my piece. My shadows are woven in the dark navy. I am passion burning bright in sunrise shades.

As I exhale into the work, lean into it, I am steadied. I am bound to those before me who have found solace in thread, steel, cloth. Together we are a lineage of certainty, existence, defiance, eternity.

So I return over and over again to these moments. I set out my supplies - scissors, thread, fabric, a pattern - wherever I am. I smile. And I begin again.