Needle up, needle down;one stitch, two stitch, three… It’s so relaxing to just sit and embroider something. It sounds very old-fashioned, certainly not the type of thing that a girl like me would be expected o do. However, it’s only once a year that I try to embroider something as a special present for someone. I’m good at it, really I am, even if I only do it once a year. I can concentrate on it, and the stitches mostly go smoothly for me. One year, I embroidered a couple of cushions for my sister’s bedroom. She’d gone into this orange-yellow-and-blue craze, and had completely re-decorated her bedroom with an orange rug, orange blinds, orange bedsheet, pillowcases—all with some splashes of yellow and blue in them. It’s like being on fire every time you go into that room. She was ecstatic about the cushions though…you cudn’t find any cushions with the exact same pattern as your bedcover in the shops now, can you? I didn’t notice it at first, but I have been so frazzled up in these holidays. The exams just twisted me up and I can’t seem to get loose, even now. So this one stitch, two stitch really helps me to relax…as much as I can. Everything seems to make me tense if I give it the tiniest glimpse of a chance…the poems I never got around to finishing, the unbought presents for my cousins, phone calls to birthday people, scrapping back to people on orkut…and my little sister making a video of me as I type this(making a detailed commentary of the way I slug down my tea)…and last of all, this awful cold. Coughing tires me so much I feel like an old woman…maybe that’s also why embroidery has an attraction for me. I have only one thing to say at the end of this post: BAN AIR CONDITIONERS