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Here's a free hand embroidery pattern for you, in case you feel like embroidering a turkey...

In America, the turkey is the Great American Thanksgiving Icon. I like Thanksgiving weekend - don't get me wrong! - but my liking the weekend has far less to do with the turkey than it does with the fact that it is a four day weekend of family gatherings that usually incite a festive holiday mood. (And it signals only three more weeks until school holidays for Christmas!)

To tell you the truth, when it comes to Thanksgiving weekend, I could take or leave the turkey.

Still.... I do like turkeys in general, despite the connotations often associated with the name of the bird. "You turkey!" is not really a compliment, you know. "Don't let the turkeys get you down" implies that the turkey is negative, maybe even hostile or oppressive. I wonder why that is? When I see wild turkeys here in Kansas (and they abound!), they make me happy. I like to see the birds here and there, clustered on the edges of newly harvested fields. I love to have my windows open in the autumn and hear the turkeys out in the woods behind my house.

They don't go "gobble, gobble," by the way.

I think, in general, the turkey has gotten a bad rap.

And really, I'm not sure my drawing helps. If I were a turkey with these feet, I'd be pretty embarrassed.

Still, it makes an adequate little turkey embroidery pattern, which you can enlarge or reduce, depending on what you want to do with it. Reduced a bit (the PDF version, especially), I think it would look pretty stately and turkey-like, stitched in the corner of cloth napkins or a bread cloth for your Thanksgiving table.

Here's the pattern - click on it for a larger version, then save it to your computer. You can then enlarge or reduce it as you wish.