Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

In an effort to making the coming dreary rainy months more tolerable, I’m employing a strategy I learned from behavioral economist Katy Milkman, whose book “How to Change” has many strategies that I’ve come to value. One of them is pairing, combining an enjoyable thing with a less enjoyable one (listening to energizing rock’n’roll while vacuuming or weeding, for example).

I enjoy hand embroidery, but I decided last spring I wouldn’t embroider during the good weather, and would only break out my projects once the rains started. We’ve had a couple of atmospheric rivers in the last two weeks so I’ve got my projects out. The first one, pictured here, is a belted kingfisher. I based my design on a photo shared on Facebook by a great local photographer, Norman Goo. I did a previous version on scrap cloth to get the thread colors right and am now working it up on a good piece of linen. I drew the guidelines on the fabric in pencil.

I’ve had this project in the back of my mind for several months so it is highly satisfying to get it out to work on again. Once that’s done, I’ll work on an osprey, also inspired by a Goo photo. And I’ve just purchased my first batch of Piper silk threads, which are so so so different from the usual DMC embroidery floss I use. Embroidery artist Helen Stevens‘ amazing work inspired me to give the silk thread a try and it’s been a bit of a challenge handling them. My test run of these threads had me all thumbs. They are so fine, three stands together equal the size of one strand of DMC floss. Below is my first practice exercise — based on a design I purchased from Stevens’ web site.

I wonder. Will my goal to complete three projects make me wish for a longer winter?