Stitching Randomly

No, this isn't the same picture as last time. All the wool strips have been tacked down so the project is now portable.

I'll be filling it in with stitches, beads and sequins. I don't know exactly how and I don't care. I'll figure it all out as I'm stitching. When I'm not following a pattern that's how I work. I sometimes think that if I had started the project a day or an hour earlier the end result would be completely different.

I call this random stitching - this is one I did a while ago. It is actually work to be random. It's easy to fall into a pattern and then start repeating it again and again. I had some lessons in randomness early on and I can now easily stitch randomly.

Back when I was a teenager, my sister and I read the Dune series by Frank Herbert. Briefly, it is science fiction and takes place a planet made up entirely of sand dunes. Outside of the main city on Dune it is dangerous. The main predator is a gigantic sand worm that can easily eat people whole. It is attracted by regular sounds. So, the natives have perfected a method of walking without rhythm.

About the same time we found ourselves at the Sand Dunes National Monument (now Park) in Southern Colorado which is a mini version of Dune. It even had the same wildlife (except for the evil sand worms) like kangaroo rats. As soon as we got into the sand one of the first things we tried (besides running down the dunes and pretending to be stranded in the desert without water) was the "dune walk".

The "dune walk" is not easy. After a few steps you either freeze up unsure of what to do next or trip and fall. We gave up and went back to normal walking and playing.

A few years later I got another lesson on randomness that really helped. More on that later ...

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Erica's Stitches

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