Here is the most math you will ever see in my blog (and it is expressed in words. Of course): My cross-stitching time is reversely correlational with the number of yoga lessons I attend in a week.
This week was packed with yoga indulgence. So, I give you a monotonous update in which I stitched with the same colour (“shell gray,” which is actually a purplish hue) all week.
Speaking of “shell gray,” have I ever mentioned the infuriating sadness and inaccuracy of embroidery floss names? You know when your [insert handy-person minded parent here] dragged you to one of those horrifically dull hardware stores when you were a child, or a teenager, or a university student, or a young adult or any time when you were not my father, and the only mildly fun activity while said parent was picking drywall screws or strange looking plumbing objects was picking out vibrant paint chips and reading the delightfully creative names? (no? just me then?)
Well, embroidery floss is not like that. Despite catering to an exclusively crafty (and therefore potentially or actually creative…) demographic, the names of the thread colours suffer from two distinct, irritating failures:
1. The names, much like Mondays on stupidcrafts, are depressingly monotonous. Let me give you an example. Here is a picture of my storage box at the moment.
It is all organized numerically, inspires creativity at a simple glance and is frankly, a little awe-inspiring. (just me again? oh poo.)
See those delightful greenish-blues at the top of the second column? Three of them are called: “Forest Green – Very Dark”; “Forest Green – Dark”; and “Forest Green – Medium”.
If those same colours were paint, they might be called Evening Pine, Mystic Rainforest, Precious Emerald or Mermaid Song (some of these are real paint colours. I did research.) Inspiring, if a little sappy.
How can I possibly get my creative juices flowing with names like “Forest Green – Medium”?
2. The next problem, equally aggravating, is the lack of correlation between floss colour and name. Some names verge on the illogical. For example, what does “Beaver Gray – Medium” mean to you? Nothing, right? Aren’t beavers brown? Apparently beavers, at least the medium gray ones, are a pale greenish shade (seen above in the upper first column). There is also a colour called “Brown Gray – Dark,” which you would think is pretty much the same thing as Beaver Gray. Think again. Those floss-namers are tricky. It is actually a steely blue-gray hue.
In the bottom of the second column, you will see some pretty shades of blue. If you look at the third one from the bottom, how would you describe this colour? If you are Behr, you call it Sailboat or Mountain Blueberry. If you are embroidery floss colour-namers, you call it “Baby Blue Ultra Very Dark.” Baby Blue.
Sigh.
PS: I am now on Twitter. I don’t really know what this means yet. find me @stupid_crafts. Maybe I will tweet something?
stupid crafts 