Fruitie cuties cross-stitching and thoughts around it

(written by me, translated by AI)
I can’t explain how it happened, but I’ve started cross-stitching. It helps get my brain out of social media. I’ve already embroidered a little pineapple and a little watermelon. Following a pattern, which is the most surprising part of this whole fact, because normally I’m one of those people who reach for the instructions when nothing else has worked.

Anyway, I bought a “cute fruits” kit at a second-hand shop and now I’m happily embroidering away.

And thinking a heavy thought.

The kit is incredibly well thought out — there are threads, an embroidery hoop, a needle, a super-cute little book that explains in detail how to cross-stitch from absolute zero, and patterns for embroidering four (four, this is important) fruits: a little pineapple, a little watermelon, a little lemon and a little strawberry. All very cute.

And THREE pieces of fabric for them. And the book says: here are patterns for four fruits and everything you need to embroider three of them.

And so I’m embroidering and thinking, “Why three?” What stopped these wonderful people from putting a fourth little piece of fabric in the kit?

Maybe they had a strict weight limit?

But the pieces of fabric are slightly bigger than necessary, make them a little smaller and stuff four in there.

Or they could have given patterns for three fruits, hiding from the customer the fact that you can also cross-stitch a lemon.

Or… Okay, I won’t lie, I’ve run out of theories here.

Maybe it’s some kind of cliffhanger, which is also drug dealing, right? To make you want to embroider the fourth fruit SO badly that you’ll go to the shop and buy another little piece of fabric at any price.

I’ll be happy to hear your theories, and meanwhile I’ll complain that this whole thinking-things-through and planning thing is the hardest part of sales and work in general for me.

Putting together a box and remembering to put the needle in. Writing about the courses and remembering to include the link. Inviting everyone to the website and remembering to make it first. Writing “call A.” on a list and, while dialing the number, knowing why you’re calling them.

I admire the cute fruit embroiderers — not only did they, for some reason, following their cunning plan, put three pieces of fabric in the box, they also remembered to write that down. Or the other way around: having devised the devilish trick that not all their fruits could be embroidered, they actually put exactly three pieces of fabric in there, not two and not eight, and not no fabric at all, go embroider on your tablecloth at home.

Planning level: god, seriously.

A very important part of the illustrator’s trade is drawing for dates. In September everyone is already frantically finishing calendars and Christmas greetings so they can send everything to print without stress, and in October it’s already time to start on hearts so they’ll be ready by February. Pumpkins were drawn in May, and what we’re supposed to be drawing in winter I don’t even know.

I’ve always been amazingly bad at this. The thought that I have to get something done in time for some holiday makes me panic, although ordinary normal deadlines don’t scare me at all.

I started my career as a stock illustrator, and there this is very, very important. You could literally see sales and money flowing past, and I still couldn’t make myself upload a hundred turkeys for Thanksgiving.

American holidays are being discussed on the forums, cute little turkeys flood the feed, and I’m frozen. Suddenly some impulse appears and I try to force myself and draw a turkey or two, but they drown in a stream of much more professional and timely thank-yous, cornucopias and autumn leaves.

Stocks and I never really worked out, although in general it was quite nice there.

But back then it seemed like an impossible level of stress and attempts to catch luck by the tail.

My daughter tells me how she catches microtrends on Vinted — look, she says, fur collars are trending, so, she says, I buy an ordinary little top for 20 kronor, sew fur onto it and sell it for 100.

And I just blink at her.

Microtrends, my ass! I tried to draw some viruses at the beginning of the pandemic, tried to quickly ride the wave of Squid Game love. As pointless as possible.

At the same time, I don’t have even the slightest feeling that I’m creating something great for some kind of eternity either (when that happens, please alert the orderlies).

So I just keep floating around in limbo. Cross-stitching.

With love and happy back-to-school!

Yours,
the little watermelon.