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The 2023 Scroll

Yesterday I put the last stitch in my year-long creative project, a recycled linen scroll with a line of slow stitch embroidery in a color to represent my mood for that day.

There is a lot of green on the scroll, which is a color I associate with calm and serenity, a state of mind I always try to achieve daily.

There's thankfully almost no black, which represents despair and depression.

I did work on it every single day last year, always as a way to unwind at night. I think it helped me in a meditative sense, as I slept better last year than I have in a long time. The one big surprise was how long it turned out; I did run out of space twice and had to add more linen to the scroll, but I didn't bother measuring it.

Here it is on the stairs in our house, to give you a better idea of the size. It's 168 inches, or fourteen feet long. :)

I found it most interesting to compare some of the embroidery I did in December (top) with the stitching I did in January (bottom), when I began the project. That illustrates how much the arthritis has damaged my hands this year, and why I'll soon have to give up hand stitching altogether. For that reason (and a few others) I'm very glad I did this project.

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