The Fisherman: Backwards

Angie dubbed the old fisherman needlepoint project her personal comedy of errors. It was not as if she knew the basics of needlepoint  but, in a strange city, discovering a kit at a local, craft shop enticed her to attempt a new hobby. She was staying in a motel on the ocean beach, while her husband worked. Exploring the beach with their dog was fun, but there was not a lot else to do. She often ran errands for her husband, but time passed very slowly.

“I’ll take it!” she said, excitedly. A needlepoint project would help fill the long, lonely hours.

To Angie, it seemed as if the ocean waves had wafted in a companion for her, as she opened the kit and looked at the printed canvas with its matching wool. It had one large needle with a huge eye, but there were no needlepoint instructions.     

“Where do I begin?” Angie threaded the needle with one of the background colors. “Start at the top and work towards the bottom,” she decided. 

It was not long before the canvas began to pull to one side. “My embroidery hoop might hold it straight.” Angie did not realize she could have stretched and stapled the canvas to a wooden frame.

Over the next few months, Angie worked at it diligently, filling in the background colors from the top to the bottom. The man’s hat, jacket, shirt and tie, she left until almost the last, unaware that working the exterior aspects of the canvas first could have erased some of the colors. Otherwise, the shades of blue, brown and gold blended beautifully.

Later, when working on the fisherman’s face, Angie suddenly realized that all of the needlepoint stitches should have been made in the other direction. Almost the entire canvas had stitches sloping to the left, while they should have sloped to the right. Angie felt devastated, as she struggled to complete it.

Suddenly, she smiled, realizing that it gave the fisherman a unique, real-life expression. His intense blue eyes seemed to twinkle. 

“I did it backwards,” she admitted to herself.

“Perfect!” said her husband, that evening. “That’s me, but I don’t smoke a pipe!”

“Would he have felt that way, if I had done it right?” Angie wondered.