New Skill

My week off is almost over. Memorial Day messes up holding mah Jongg classes so I usually take this week off. It turned out I didn’t totally lay off working as I have been having some private lessons on zoom. It is very efficient to learn this way if someone is willing to pay for private. I love doing one-on-one lessons because I can tailor the lesson speed to the person learning. So a few private lessons, just not big classes.

If you know me you know I hate being unproductive. So even on my days off I want to produce or learn something. I have been working on my secret Christmas ornaments and have kept to my one a month schedule. I have a few finishing touches to my fifth one so I should finish before May does.

I could have finished that ornament today, but I wanted to learn a new skill. I am anticipating needing to finish my own needlepoint Christmas ornaments this year for my exchange gifts. I am way behind on getting them stitched and the finishing deadline is going to beat me. So knowing this I wanted to try and learn to finish an ornament to see how it goes.

Since I don’t have an ornament stitched to practice on I used an embroidery piece to test that my friend Anne gave me. The first thing I had to learn was how to make cording. I have a Lasic cording machine that I have never used. It came with pitiful instructions, so I searched you tube and found a few tutorials.

I learned a lot. Mostly that measuring out the thread is harder than I thought it should be. The most important lesson I eventually figured out was to wear the skein like a bracelet so that it does not get tangled. Next time I am going to twist the individual colors more than I did for this one.

I also used the wrong clear thread on the first half and went and found the right thread on the second half. Using the right clear thread is important.

Anyway, I think I finally got the hang of how to finish an ornament by the time I was done with this one. I am glad I had a practice one so I can do a better job on the next one. I think I will try and make a tiny test ornament for myself so I don’t screw up a gift ornament.

This will have to be done next week as I am back to work and travel this week. Looking forward to doing the thing I can do with my eyes closed.