Appreciation post: the retired librarian who corrected my stitching without a word

Last spring at a guild meeting in Portland, an older woman watched me struggle with a rounded spine for a good ten minutes. She didn't say a thing until I set it down. Then she picked it up, flipped to the back, and pointed at my kettle stitch. She just shook her head and handed it back. I asked what was wrong. She said, 'Your thread is taking the long way around.' That was it. She walked off. I spent that night redoing the stitch her way, and it locked up tight as anything. I've done maybe 200 bindings since then, always with her short sentence in my head. Has anyone else had a stranger's few words change how they work for good?

1 comments

1 Comment

hill.christopher17d ago

Funny, that would bother me, honestly. There's something almost smug about a pro who won't just say what they mean upfront, even if the advice itself was solid.

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