Embroidered egg shells

This is from Facebook a while back. Names have been obscured to protect the guilty.

Embroidery on egg shells

by Annie H on Tuesday, April 12, 2011 at 12:26pm

Flippin' embroidery on egg shells. Why does this outrage me so much? Next we'll be discussing how we can gild spider webs for that understated elegance that makes attics warm and inviting.

Here's a conversation my friend Brian and I had about these eggs.

**A: I almost had a stroke when I saw this project. Poor Man had to listen to me holler "never never never!" a couple of times in response to this utterly ridiculous project.

**B - Why "never never never"?

**A - Really? Sewing on an eggshell? Shoot me now. Maybe I havn't been very public about my recent wrastlings [sic] with the fiber arts.
 Just... just shoot me before I ever attempt this project.

**B - I don't know... In school they had us do threading projects like this all the time. Granted, it wasn't on egg shells, but I'm failing to see how egg shells turns a rather ordinary craft into something that is worse than death. Maybe I was born from an egg... ???

**A - Working with eggshells is extremely difficult. They are sturdy little guys, sure, but playing with rough edges on an egg shell is just asking for disaster. Pulling a thread tight on a hole is a crack waiting to happen. And after you spend hours making these things cute, what do you do with them? Take pictures for the interwebs and try not to cry when your kids "just wanna see" and they end up in a pile of shards and floss and broken dreams of cute mommy blogs where everything glows in immortal, pixelated glory.

Maybe I've been traumatized by my dogged persistence in trying to make some crafts work out despite the reality that delicate materials tend to perish in my man hands. Maybe I have white, housewife guilt because I'm capable neither of decorating my home nor of making elegant handicrafts. Perhaps I just tremble with my compulsive desire to approximate my smaller scale, more refined sisters and their single frame successes. Maybe this project represents the hours and money I've poured into attempting to make similarly inane pieces of homey expression as effigies of domestic felicity, because my efforts to create that same felicity in relationships has been such a monumental struggle.

And now you've done it, Brian. You've tapped into my reservoir of shame, shaped and filled to overflowing by hopeless Christian aspirations toward perfection, my racial achievement culture including the hyper-hip and coastal power earners, and the need to deserve my place in this country despite obesity, pimples, my uncanny ability to have sweaty palms even in the dead of winter, and the fact that I've never had an Asian boyfriend. So, for that, THANKS.

(Actually, this has been an interesting foray into some creative writing. Thanks for that, man.)

**B - Oh. I just thought maybe you had a thing where eggs grossed you out.

The lady in the blog DID say that not even a single crack formed while drilling the little holes. Maybe she just had more Asian boyfriends than you.

**A - I almost blew half chewed apple out my nose. I am so fake-outraged that you would throw that in my face.

(My note: after reading this exchange, Man said that I should write more for the masses that are normal, like me, rather than pretend perfect, like the Stepford blogging mommies who would freaking embroider egg shells. From him, that's a huge compliment.)