This excellently written article by Marni Jameson for the Denver Post, entitled “Needlepoint Can Mend Our Frayed Lives“, captures the many blessings bestowed upon humanity by needlepoint. Some of her points:

Not exactly my cup of tea, but Richard Basset apparently has some new work which he expressed using needlepoint.

The talented needlepointer

Here’s one three-year-old that’s doing it quite well.

I don’t know why I find male needlepointers so fascinating. Here is another he-stitcher in action:

A man will tell me there are 250,962 stitches in this, so they have more of an engineering take on doing needlepoint and that’s why they are so good at it.

Bob Dillard compares needlepoint to paint-by-number and does it while watching football (without keeping his eye off the needle). Check him out.

Some links I collecting from perusing Needlepoint News today:

According to the Frederick News Post, stitching in public has become a hot trend and seeing groups of people working on needlearts projects in coffee shops, on the bus or subway and other public places is becoming a regular sighting.

Clare Kittredge, a New Hampshire health journalist, writes that recent studies link a resurgence in knitting and needlepoint to their stress-reducing effects.

Read an Insider’s View of Fine Cell Work, which we blogged about here.

Are you a student looking to get noticed? Follow the advice of this anonymous female teenage blogger from Portland, Oregon, and adopt needlepoint.

A Virginia Needlewoman (not her real name I’m guessing) ingeniously re-purposed a needlepoint belt featuring pink elephants and martinis into a preppy hat band.

Amazing the information you can pick up while eavesdropping on a conversation between some professional framers. Now we can all go and make our very own needlepoint stretching boards.

If you deal with digital photos, you’ve heard the term “dpi” – but do you really understand it? This fine young man named Mark from Plymouth uses needlepoint canvas thread count to explain it perfectly.

Try NeedlepointNews.com. It aggregates mentions of needlepoint in recent news stories, blog posts, and discussion boards. It’s a good place to turn to for market research, product sourcing leads, background for an article, or ideas for a new blog post.

I built this site using several Google feeds as the backbone – it is completely automated and it isn’t moderated by any human. It only presents a large sampling; it isn’t comprehensive. I’ve been using it as a personal tool to stay ahead of needlepoint trends, and I decided to share. I’m offering some limited space for advertising, just to cover the costs of hosting. I hope you find it useful!

Needlepoint Belt "Sailing Scene"

If the needlepoint scene caught the attention of the New York Times Fashion and Style section, we’re doing well. Now’s the time to invest in needlepoint everybody! Don’t wait until it’s too late!

A while ago, I bought a Tucker Blair needlepoint headband and took it apart. It is made very well. Neat hand stitching on 18 count canvas. Professional finishing. Very strong – I needed to really exert myself to get the canvas off the headband bone. The only minor complaint is that a bit of padding should have been put underneath, especially along the middle. Without it, it sagged a little in that area. But all in all, a quality product. Still, you can save money and attain stitchisfaction by acquiring one of our own, self-finishing, Threadbands.

BTW, it appears that Tucker Blair doesn’t sell the headband line any more, at least not on the website. You can still access the headband product page, if you know where to go.

Buried in the bottom of a story about President Barack Obama’s visit to Canada, we find this interesting passage:

Although there were no public events planned for Obama in Ottawa, about 3,500 supporters ventured to the snow-covered lawn on Parliament Hill in the hopes of catching a glimpse.

Vahid Saadati travelled from his home in Brampton, Ont., with a simple message. He was hoping to unfurl what he says is the world’s largest needlepoint: an eight- by five-metre creation that had the word “welcome” stitched upon it in 103 different languages.

“I hope they can at least let him know that he’s being welcomed by so much of the world,” Saadati said.

I always thought needlepoint had a lot of math in it, with its formula for forming smooth bezier curves out of 13-count bargello stitching, it’s pattern tessellations, and of course 3-dimensional color space. But it turns out that at least one mathematician, Daina Taimina, has actually written a whole book about it, Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes, recipient of the Diagram Prize for year’s oddest book title. Prize overseer Horace Bent said:

The public proclivity towards non-Euclidian needlework proved too strong for the competition.

The title of a recent press report on the matter led me to believe that the book amply covers needlepoint’s intersection with geometry. Sadly, however, it seems that the book deals chiefly with crocheting, and there’s scant mention of actual needlepoint. Of course, crocheting is a perfectly fine needleworking pursuit. Why, some of my best friends are crocheters.

Read more about math and fibers in a Wikipedia article on the subject. And here is Daina’s own website.

Microsoft Office 2010 will undoubtedly increase productivity in offices worldwide. Apparently, Microsoft is keen on getting consumers to recognize that Microsoft Office is useful for everyday at-home tasks, too. According to blogger Mary Jo Foley, quoting David Webster, the chief strategy officer in Microsoft’s central marketing group:

People are defining work pretty broadly these days, Webster said during a meeting I had with him this week, to include everything from volunteering at events, to creating needlepoint pattern designs, to preparing a PowerPoint toast for a friend’s wedding.

(Emphasis mine). I assume she’s referring to Visio, which is a tool I use myself to chart out needlepoint stitches.

I’m happy to see needlepoint design figuring prominently in conversations regarding productivity in the home. Who knows, maybe Microsoft will come out with a photo-to-needlepoint-chart conversion tool. Microsoft Stitch 2010?