Art Day

It's art if I say it's art.

Earlier this week, I took my mother and sister to Berlin, pronounced with the emphasis on the "Ber." It's a little town west of here smack in the middle of Amish land. The road to get there has extra wide shoulders to accommodate horse-pulled buggies, and there are hitching posts in the McDonald's parking lot. Berlin's main street is lined with gift shops and craft stores, and there are a couple of small cafes where the locals eat.

After having lunch and pie at one those places, we went to a craft store next door. I was expecting yarn and doll parts and the usual stuff, but we were accosted by something new to us. It's called needle punching, and the sample sucked us in, as did the woman at the counter who demonstrated how it all works. We decided this thing had potential to make artistic things—by that I mean things that don't look like tea cozies and things that wouldn't look fine next to a crocheted octopus at the craft fair. I bought one of those once and vowed never to make that kind of stuff.

My sister and I each bought a small kit and went home to figure out needle punching. It looked so easy in the store, but easy it is not. There is a knack to this thing I haven't quite figured out yet. I finished my design, which looks reasonable from a distance, but up close is a mess of loopy embroidery floss. I quickly set out to create my own design on a piece of fabric and am attempting to get this thing right. If it works, I'll display it next Art Day. If it doesn't, maybe I'll paint another table, or the $25 punch needle tool. Sheesh.