I’ve been wanting to post something, anything, for ages but I couldn’t justify doing so, what with the ongoing horrors. I’ve got drafts about my favourite Christmas songs, why I like the Oregon Ducks, recipes for pickles (full-on fermented ones) and ube cookies, but despite what Homer would have you believe, not everyone wants to hear from a white male aged 18-49, especially now.
Trying to share anything has been met with an internal dialogue of imaginary critics shouting me down. “Really, you’re going to post about that baseball meme? In this economy?” so I keep things to myself.
If you followed that link, you’d see that I like to make cross-stitch patterns. My late mom taught me how to cross-stitch at a very young age, and it’s something that I’ve picked up again in recent years. I’ve designed a few and quietly put them up on Etsy, but haven’t crowed about them, because of the aforementioned imaginary critics. They’re definitely frivolous, but as a cringey millennial with a niche hobby, I think I’m hardcoded to make frivolous things.
I came across @today-maybe on Bluesky and was inspired to make a new cross-stitch pattern. The thought of “Maybe it will happen today” nails my mood lately, and judging by my social media feeds for the last few years, it’s how a lot of others are feeling as well. It came together quickly, and I’m using that momentum to share as soon as possible. I’m ultimately sharing it in the hopes that I can get out of this woe-is-me bullshit rut, but also to give others something to do when they don’t know what to do.
If you’re a certain kind of online, you know exactly what the it is referring to, but if not, just think of this as a daily affirmation you can look at, to keep going.
The pattern is just one page, and there are two versions, one with a colour pattern, and one in black and white. You can download them below in PNG or PDF format, whatever you prefer.
You don’t have to give me an email address, sign up for a newsletter, or add them to a cart: just take it and make it. Also, you don’t have to follow the exact colours. I definitely didn’t, I just chose those when making the pattern because they worked well on the screen.
If you do complete one, tag me wherever the finished product is – I’m @weftandweaving.com on Bluesky and @weftandweaving on Instagram and elsewhere. As mentioned before, I don’t post much these days, but hopefully this will help change that.
post script
The font used in the pattern is one I cobbled together on Fontstruct based on the dialog boxes in The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (Game Boy edition.) Thanks to The Death Generator for making it easy to capture the entire alphabet to recreate it. I don’t how litigious the Zelda folks are so it’s probably not a good idea to use it for commercial purposes, and who knows how long it will stay up.