Some Days

Good days are usually followed by bad ones. My sons car engine blew today. considering this was a car he was just about done fixing after purchasing it well used, well, he is feeling bad.

And I had a funeral to go to today. Not a family member but a friends brother. So many funerals for me. I don't attend a service regularly in any denomination so it seems all I go to are funerals. I am hoping for quite a few more weddings to counter act that.

Thinking of funerals, I have to think again of my Auntie Lorraine who passed away just a few short weeks ago. She is part of the reason I started to blog. She never married, so excepting a huge family of nieces and nephews, grand nieces and grand nephews and another generation after that, she had no children. I hope she did not go to her grave thinking no one would remember her. I do. She gave me the path to myself a long long time ago. It has shaped who I am and how I see myself in every way.

She taught me outline embroidery so many long years ago. She was working on some dish towels, and I must have been fascinated by what she was doing. I probably nagged her so she showed me how. Pretty soon she sent along a set of ducks to embroider onto tea towels, and I don't think I have ever been without a needle since.

I learned some very very basic knitting in Brownies. When I was 12 or so, my god mother, Auntie Alma gave this beautiful tiger in crewel work. By grade 4, I learned enough to sew a little and made barbie clothes for friends, and then when I was about 14 or so, I bought an afghan kit and taught myself how to crochet. I made all my friends doilies as grad gifts. I then picked up needlepoint, and petit point, and followed that through all the years with sewing much of the clothes I wore. I've done some quilting too. I found cross stitch and then on to hardanger and many many other kinds of counted thread work.

Always something, forever something, a needle and a thread, and so much joy. That was Auntie Lorraine's gift to me.