fernweh in stitches

It's no secret that I'm in love with the open road. 

So when LittleGrayFox offered up her newest Crafty Challenge theme, "someday you'll ache like I ache," my mind immediately heard one word:  fernweh.

photo from one of my trips across the country...i no longer recall which one

Fernweh is an old German word, for which there is no direct equivalent in English.  When I first discovered it, it was defined:

"a longing for, a desire to return to, a place you've never been." 

Wiki has an alternate definition which places it more clearly in the context of this challenge theme:

"an ache for the distance."

 

So this is where my mind went when the challenge was proposed.  I've recently become interested in embroidery, so I decided to attempt to translate the above photograph into a stitched piece.

I left a lot of the details out, and tried to boil the photo down to the just the essence of what Fernweh means to me.  A lonely road to nowhere is sort of iconic in my mental encyclopedia.

 

After stitching, I placed the muslin in a kind of gothic-y frame. 

It's a little "emo-crafty" but hey, it seems to work.

 

Some close ups of the stitchery.  I tried to stick to a simple gray scale, which was a bit harder than I'd originally anticipated.

I am SO not a stitch-y expert.  I am just really enjoying messing about with embroidery these days.

 

In the end, it looks a good deal different then the photograph, but hopefully still captures the spirit.

Be sure to visit LittleGrayFox tomorrow to see all the entries.  I am so curious to see how everyone else intrepreted the challenge.

{ do you ever feel a little 'fernweh' ? }

Pssssssssst! oh. em. gee. tomorrow is the Virtual Fashion Show!

Thank you to all who submitted photos -- I am soo excited!!