Rituals, Part 3

I was moderating a training class recently, and the facilitator said something along the lines of "I don't let people talk about the weather anymore at the beginning of Zoom meetings." The session was on relationship building, and they were trying to get to the heart of deeper conversations in a virtual world. I've been thinking about this comment recently, and I wondered why no one asked, "What do you talk about instead?" My default conversation is usually about my cat because he's amazing and everyone loves him. Then I remembered a former co-worker who used to ask people one of the most random questions I've ever heard as a meeting starter: Do you eat Skittles in a particular color order? 

The answer is "of course I do," and then you share your preferred order. I go from least favorite to favorite so green, yellow, purple, orange, red. I eat Starburst jelly beans in a similar order. I loved this conversation every time I was in a meeting with this person, and we had several conversations about this topic at work happy hours. It wasn't just the flavor order, but the ritual of organizing things and doing something the way you most enjoy it. Both of us are a little Type A (if you haven't already guessed), so bringing order to chaos, even if it's a bag of candy, is our jam. 

I didn't create today's piece with Skittles in mind, but they came to mind when I was stitching my rainbow today. I wanted to do something that was all whipped back stitch (I get a little obsessed with new stitches) and colorful, so I went with an abstract rainbow. Which, naturally, made me think of Skittles, which led me to think about conversation starters and not talking about the weather. My brain is spectacular place.

Enjoy!

Details:

Stitches: whipped back stitch, back stitch
Palette: DMC 666, 909, 820. 996 (6 strands), SS 301, 201, 601 (6 strands), DMC C3799 (3 strands)