My maternal grandmother, Betty, taught me how to stitch when I was maybe five or six years old one summer at our farm and as the story is told, I was apparently "very bored" and was in desperate need of a "distraction". Betty had a small canvas that must've been from the '50s, and I was shown how to stitch with wool that was most likely 40+ years old as well. She thought this small needlepoint canvas would distract me for maybe an hour, having no idea that I would be distracted with needlepoint projects for, well, the rest of my life. Little did she know that summer day at the farm would lead to bicycle rides to The Needle House, just a few blocks from my childhood home, to get thread for yet another needlepoint ornament. And while I never told Betty, needlepoint was a real distraction in college and being short a skein of Vineyard Silk for a project would have me in my car and driving the hour and a half to Stitchers in Memphis instead of going to art history class (sorry, Mom and Dad). 

Needlepoint has been there for joyous times, and for those not-so-great moments, and I can easily say that it has kept me grounded through all of the above. I had always wanted to stitch stockings but never been able to commit to such a large project, but when my husband and I found out we were expecting a second child I quickly ordered my biggest projects at the time: two beautiful Strictly Christmas stockings, one for each little one. I had chosen not to stitch them until our daughter arrived, and instead continued to stitch ornaments for our son. On the day of our daughter, Eloise's, arrival, I stitched a Star Wars themed ornament for our son, not realizing that our lives would be flipped upside down with our daughter's surprise medical conditions. Eloise's spontaneous central nervous system condition changed the trajectory of how I used needlepoint, from being a light and cheerful hobby to being the only activity that I could do without having a mental breakdown with the incredible stress of frequent hospitalizations and the unknown. As we navigated new life with our daughter's conditions, needlepoint proved to be essential to my mental health and I began Eloise's stocking to prove to myself (and to Eloise's medical team) that she would thrive. And she did! I'm happy to say that Eloise is entering kindergarten and healthy, and has a pink Christmas stocking with most likely the tightest stitching ever seen. 

Once again, needlepoint came to the rescue in another powerful way in March of 2020 when Covid hit. Friends who were stuck at home were desperate for a hobby that kept them off their phones, and I was thrilled to be able to teach such a beloved craft to anyone who wanted to learn. I started a Needlepoint Zoom called "The Stitch Happy Hour" in April 2020 for friends new and old to see happy faces who adored needlepoint just as much as they did (and do), and began to write a small email newsletter the following month about trunk shows across the country, shop sales, and new designs to anyone who would read it. There were eight subscribers to the first newsletter that was sent, and in January of 2022 when I ended it, I had over 3,000 subscribers reading the weekly and monthly newsletters. The twice weekly needlepoint Zoom calls with Instagram friends brought friendships that I will cherish forever, and several of my closest friends stemmed from those late-night Zooms and FaceTimes. The newsletter also fostered relationships with shop owners, designers, and vendors, which furthered the dream to open my own needlepoint shop one day. My grandmother, Betty, would mention that I should open a needlepoint shop of my own, and one of our last conversations was about if owning a shop would be better for my "canvas stash" at home, or worse. She sadly passed in May of 2021 so I couldn't share the joy of opening a needlepoint shop with her expertise, but she has a heavy influence on what Novella Needlepoint is. 

Novella Needlepoint is named after my paternal grandmother, Novella, who stitched pillows of her beloved Whippets and Terriers, and a stitched portrait pillow of her favorite dog, Lady Jefferson, proudly rests on the sofa in my parents' library. But it is Betty's eye for color, her passion for travel and her collection of small trinkets from around the world, her floral arrangement talent and her adoration for butterflies that radiate from the shop's logo to the pieces in the brick and mortar.