I do it!

When my daughter was about three, her favorite refrain was, "I do it!" always delivered emphatically, with some irritation. These days, if I try to intervene too much or if I hover, she's not above sounding that old note of irritation, but for the most part she's comfortable seeking instruction and help.

Have I succeeded in making of her what no one made of me, a patient learner who knows that if she does not have the answer, someone probably does? that there's creativity and independence, sure, but there's also a body of knowledge out there and people who have done this or that thing before? that she can access this knowledge before contributing blindly and half-assedly to it?

I hope so. Because the other way--my way--is hard, particularly when you know that this personality tweak reflects and encourages your sense that you are alone in this world, a sense developed at too young an age and no longer (if ever) remotely true.

But it's June and somewhere the sun is out, so we're not going to get heavy today. We're going to laugh at how tenacious these tics of ours can be. To wit: last month my cousin Jennifer asked me to cross-stitch a hankie for her mom (my aunt) to commemorate Jen's wedding day, which happened to be on Mother's Day. Well, she didn't so much ask as tell me she planned to have one made, and then I offered to help:

There it is. The unthinking offer to help and the self-assured "I can do it" or, to borrow from a 3-year-old, "I do it!"

Jennifer accepted my offer, and we moved on to talk text, fonts, and fabric.

Note the confident assurance that "any fabric will do." These words and my baseless confidence would come back to haunt me, as my words and baseless confidence so often do. Note, too, my offer to do embroidery. Why would I suggest such a thing? I have never embroidered in my life.

When the hankies arrived, I had a sense that the project was going to be more difficult than I had imagined. The handkerchief fabric was so thin and tightly woven that it would be difficult--even impossible--to count squares. I contacted my client:

Reader, what is wrong with me? The magnifier did not work beyond making it all the more apparent to me that I was faced with an impossible task. At the point of this realization I should have googled "cross-stitching on a handkerchief." If I had, I would have learned then what I discovered when I was nearly finished with the project, that there is a material called waste canvas that is created for exactly these situations. But no. Because I do it!

I began stitching freehand, which, while nowhere near as dramatic as, say, climbing without a rope or doing trapeze without a net, was quite "extreme" as novice cross-stitching goes. To stitch each night, I had to enter The Zone--you know, get intense--and my family began to encourage (beg) me to stop taking commissions.

The first line went well. Then came the second. See if you can spot the problem:

Yes! The size of the letters is uneven! A calamity. I wrote to my cousin in an email entitled "update/911":

The anguish is palpable, yes? But at least I still considered myself part of a guild, one of the "we" who call uneven stitching "primitive." My cousin didn't think the thing was a disaster, and she told me that she wanted the hankie to look "homey" anyway. (Or did she say "homely"?) I forged ahead.

In spite of my boyfriend's cries of "No! Don't do that! No!" I ripped out the top row of text. The letters were too much bigger than those in the other rows, and while I was all about embracing my imperfection (once my cousin gave me permission to), this was not a bloomin' free-for-all:

And I stitched that row again. See (below) how much better now?

And finally, finally... I finished:

Well, as I say, somewhere in this process I read some cross-stitching blogs and fb posts and learned about waste canvas. I even bought some online! Had I had more time, I would have started over on a clean hankie, basted waste canvas to it, and stitched a (more) perfect gift. But then that gift would have lost a little something of me, wouldn't it have? My cousin wanted a personal touch, and she got it.

It would almost make for a better story if I had let everyone down. Maybe then the Great Hankie Debacle would have been my rock bottom and forced me to come to terms with my idiotic self-reliance.  Instead, Jennifer liked the handkerchief:

My aunt liked it, too. She cried when she opened it!

Lesson not learned. But also kind of learned. I'm so glad to be 45 years old and still not fully cooked.