Forging a partnership with my Peg & Awl Hunter Satchel (part 2)

On the road, embroidering

Good morning from a jet-lagged, been up since 3:30 am, canyon desk. It’s great to be home just in time to witness the spring season. Yes. Jet lag is uncomfortable and inconvenient, but the westward flights always bring an extra treat of being fully awake to welcome the sunrise. 3:30 am is a bit too early for that, but I know that in a few days, I will wake up just in time as the sun peeks out of the canyon mountains, and I can feel excited knowing that this can be my new routine (for a while, at least).

I have a list of stories I collected from our time in Europe. I am excited to use these early mornings to start metabolizing them in a tangible format :)

a little embroidery kit in a small ziplock bag. It’s lightweight and packs small for travel.

Frido and I wanted to be as prepared as possible to flow with analogue time for this trip. That meant having some hands-on activities I could fill the in-between time with, which, without intention, could easily slip through between my phone and laptop.

Before I left our home, I put together a mini embroidery kit to use on the road. I love the slow process of embroidering and how few supplies I need to work on a meaningful project that could take a substantial amount of time to complete. I am a newbie at embroidery, so in the mad rush of packing for our trip, I photocopied a few pages of bird and flower designs from an embroidery book I borrowed from the library and stashed them with a few threads of different colors in my backpack. I didn’t pack a needle since we were not checking in the luggage and didn’t want to risk having it taken away when we went through security, but I knew my mother-in-law would have a needle I could borrow once we got there.

I spent much time in the winter garden at Frido’s parents’ house.

I wasn’t sure which surface to embroider on, but as soon as we landed in Hamburg, I turned to my Peg & Awl Hunter Satchel and knew exactly where to use my traveling downtime to pour my heart into. The bag was already going through a metamorphosis during the earlier days of this trip, via my accidental slip into a muddy flat. So what’s more harm in testing out my amateur skill of handwork, right?

The first flower and a dove complete. What’s next??

Ad hoc reference sheets from a library book. Unfortunately, I didn’t write down the author’s name because we had to return the book in a rush, but I will try to look for it and update the info here!

I am not sure how you have been feeling/dealing with what’s going on in the world in the last two weeks (or longer…), but having to coincidentally pick a reference photo of a dove carrying a flower for an embroidery project really helped me alchemize all the feelings of uncertainty from the news into hope and light. Every time I sat down between family meals and following activities, or at a post dinner family conversation in German (which I listened to but didn’t always engage in the dialogue due to my lack of language skills), I picked up my little kit and and added more and more stitches to the Hunter Satchel.

Once I finished the first dove and a flower, I ran out of the white thread. I asked my mother-in-law for a field trip to a local sewing supply shop in Hamburg, found threads in compatible colors, and kept going at it. Halfway into our trip, I finished embroidering the bag's top flap, and I was like, “What’s next?” At that point, I was kind of in a hand-work flow, and I literally couldn’t stop picking up my needle. So I decided to add more illustrations underneath the flap and the back of the bag with designs of dandelion and spring flowers we saw in Frido’s parents’ garden, instead of using a reference from a book.

Kids helped me come up with the designs of a dandelion. Such a fond memory.

An amazing thing about handwork is that it’s contagious. As I stitched through one bird and the next on a couch beside the kids, they started wondering what they might be able to do with their newfound time during the trip. They are skilled in handwork and have done embroidery before, so it didn’t take long before they jumped into the fun and added motifs to their jeans, sweatshirts, bags, and more. One late afternoon, after our family field trip in the city, Satchi and I were hanging out on the couch with needles and thread in our hands. She sighed deeply, saying, “Wow, I can’t believe how fun this is”. It led to our conversation about planning our next big trip and what handwork projects we might work on. (It doesn’t mean that she feels less dreadful about visiting Japan for six weeks this summer, but at least there are a few things we can do to prepare to meet the unavoidable “I’m bored…” moments in the rural part of Japan.)

Busy with their hands…

One of Coco’s projects.

Satchi added meaningful visual symbols to her Ateliers Penelope bag.

I was still stitching away when we transitioned from Hamburg to Ireland towards the end of our stay in Europe. On the last day of our trip, while we were waiting in the rental car for a group tour to start at Mitcheltown Cave, I added the last chain stitch on the bag to complete the final dandelion motif I had in mind and declared to the family that I had finished it.

Finishing the last few stitches in a car.

It felt so good to have a tangible trace of the time we spent together as a family on this trip. In each stitch I poked through the rather tough canvas, I can think of surrounding memories around it, whether kids helping me with the design, overhearing the German conversation deep into the midnight, or driving through many shades of green landscapes in Ireland. My fingertips on the right hand hurt a little from minor blisters (from the friction with needles), but even that feels like a sweet memory from our travel.

And, I know I will treasure this bag for a long time because of the relationship I built on this trip through mud and stitches… and that is truly priceless.

p.s. I was surprised that the white thread I brought from home to embroider the first dove was glow-in-the-dark thread!!! You can imagine the delight kids and I felt when we turned off the light on the first day after I finished the portion of the project!!! It truly felt magical.

With the extra special Hunter Satchel. Sketching the scenery at one of the oldest stone circles in Ireland.