to stitch or sudoku

slow, quiet note no.35

I have a confession.

Rarely a day goes by without me picking up a needle and thread - sometimes I’m sewing, sometimes I’m quilting, sometimes I’m making samples for workshops. However, the daily stitch project which I wrote about here stalled over the summer months. I got to day 45 and stopped. It’s been a while.

daily stitching in progress

I have completed four circles this week but the routine of stitching first thing in the morning has been tricky to sustain. When I started at the beginning of May I set a few parameters. I had been given some of my late mother-in-law’s embroidery threads and wanted to use them rather than putting them in the thread drawer. I found a thrifted vintage table cloth as the base fabric and determined a plan to start the day filling a circle with running stitch and using a sudoku puzzle to determine the layout of colours.

I had seen the sudoku strategy used by quilters in the past, allocating fabrics or quilting blocks a number from 1-9 and arranging them according to a puzzle. I knew it would give me a random pattern without risking putting the same colours side by side. It also helps me avoid spending time choosing a colour each day. The puzzle determines the colour choice and I just happened to have a sudoku puzzle available on the day I started.

I have been sudoku-avoidant for years. Crosswords - lovely. Wordsearch - a piece of cake. Anagrams and scrabblish puzzles - I’m there biro-poised.

Sudoku, however, eluded me. I would come across a puzzle in a magazine or one of the Sunday papers and give it a spirited whirl but, invariably, I would fail. I tried and tried and tried again but sometimes (and of this I’m not proud) I would swear quite a bit and fill those pesky boxes with random numbers (again, not proud).

I am, as luck would have it, married to a man who enjoys a sudoku. In the past I would often abandon my efforts only to find them later in the day completed and left casually on the kitchen table. This became more infuriating than not being able to do the puzzle itself. Something had to change.

I needed practice. I bought two identical sudoku puzzle books for our respective Christmas stockings and suggested that we might each complete the same puzzle every day starting on January 1st.

£7 well spent based on cost per hour/skill improvement

This has proven to be a pleasant, quiet (sometimes slow) way to start the day and we are just about to start on our third book. I have learned a few things along the way:

• it is possible to sudoku without swearing

• practice makes proficient (if not perfect)

• doing the thing is more important than doing it first

• there’s more than one way to solve the same problem

• I should probably put the book and pen back in the same place every day

• spending time doing anything other than phone scrolling is a good thing

You can read about the benefits of puzzling in this article from The Guardian. Mirroring recent research by Anglia Ruskin University into the connection between wellbeing and crafts, 98 year old Miriam talks about the feeling of satisfaction she gets from completing her daily crosswords and her intuition that daily puzzling is good for her brain.

There are researchers across the UK and beyond investigating how different activities affect neuroplasticity, cognition and emotional wellbeing. It is a vast and fascinating subject.

I know that making things makes me feel good and that making means writing, drawing and stitching. It could be knitting for you. It could be baking, gardening or spoon carving for someone else. In short, anything that involves moving or making seems to better for us than something that involves sitting and scrolling.

To finish, it seems that stitching and sudoku have more benefits in common than might be expected:

• both involve a degree of decision making and logic

• both require concentration and focus

• patterns are important

• fixing errors is satisfying

• finishing is more satisfying

• they usually induce a sense of calm

All the good things to start the day.

As ever, thank you for taking the time to read this week’s slow, quiet note. Your likes, comments and shares are very much appreciated. These Sunday posts will continue to remain free to read for all but if you would like to support my writing and work, I have set up an option to buy me an occasional or monthly coffee (or, in my case, threads and fabric).

Have a great week.

J x