This Mother's Day was chaos - as usual. Both daughters called to say cards would be late. Both reminded me how impossible I was to buy for since my true love is needlepoint and I already own a store full.We were at my granddaughter's college graduation but had to make a hasty run home from Charleston to put my husband on a plane for an emergency trip to Albuquerque. Out there our 2-month old granddaughter was in ICU on a respirator. Terry was needed to watch the 4-year old. It took most of the day to make sure he had enough of all 13 (yes - 13) prescriptions to last for 3 weeks. Got him to the airport and ran to take Mom to dinner.I got home that evening fairly exhausted - waiting to take shoes off and relax when I noticed my formerly-known-as-feral outdoor cat doing everything at the door but back flips. As I opened the back door, I was presented with my fist actual gift of the day - a huge dead rat. I am not sure what I did to deserve such a wonderful treat, but I thanked her profusely.
In light of Mother's Day, I wanted to share with you from a blog written by a wonderful young college student named Gatesy Hill. How pleased I am with all our new young stitchers who are finding as much pleasure as we always have. I'll put a link to her blog if you would like to read it in full - it is quite lovely. I will start in the middle:
This new hobby definitely even more in the "mom" status box I was placed in throughout the years with friends dating back to High School, but I didn't care, and I still don't.
Now, being me, I, of course, am going to do deeper. It is really amazing how well you get to know each canvas. It sounds bizarre, I know. But there is nothing like the feel of a canvas that's been completed........
But, I always think about the little journey that particular canvas saw me through. A day in bed with one of those bad colds I am notorious for getting. A rough period where I'm experiencing a large change, like my parents brief move into a smaller house this summer, my grandmother's death, and then our move back IN to my childhood home. Or even just some quiet time with just me, my stitches, and my thoughts ( Quiet time is really a lost art; but that's a different post for a different day) Nonetheless, I have come to love this practice in my life.
It's funny how you can express yourself, even amongst a form......The freedom to make a piece your own, but honoring the original form the canvas came in. A new canvas, even with the image pained on, still lends itself to endless possibilities: i.e. freedom within the form.
http://geggersinc.blogspot.com/2014/03/stitching-it-all-together.html
On a both heavier yet lighter note, I was called by a husband of one of my very favorite stitchers - a sprite of a 91-year-old woman named Lib Dills. Wayne said to come quick - Lib was at hospice and he knew she wanted to see me. She was slipping in and out of consciousness. When I got there and leaned down to kiss her, she opened her eyes and gave me the biggest smile and a hug, and then slipped out of consciousness. Her niece and nephew were there and were most undone. I was told that they had been there all day and Lib had never recognized either of them. Why me? I put it in the only way I knew how. I told them that a good analogy would be that Lib was a drug addict and I was her dealer. Needlepoint is, after all , an addiction - isn't it???
