7.24.09 The Honest Scrap Award

TinkerBelleKnits has gifted me with the Honest Scrap Award. Cathy is a local knit friend that is also a Wahoo. We will get to that in a minute.

I’m supposed to tell readers 10 things they may not know about me. Not so easy for me…and then I have to tag 10 people with this award, let them know they have received it. I will try.

Here goes:
1. I am 6′ tall and I hate basketball. My height is a huge part of my life. I grew up tall, not one of those growth spurt people. Pictures of me in school are always in the back row. I still get tall comments and jokes. I am constant search of jeans and jackets. Fortunately there are now a lot of internet resources for fashion, but they were not around when I went through the anorexic fashionably thin years. Damn it. Fortunately for my tall daughter I lived through growing up height-enhanced so I can sympathize and empathize with her struggles. My average height daughter is weirded out that she has such a tall family but then again she looks a little like my mother who is 5’2″. Yep. I lived through that too.

2. I am a Wahoo. That is, a graduate of the University of Virginia. Back in the day when Easter’s was still allowed. I have the stained tee shirt to prove it.
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Cathy is a Wahoo too. I entered school in 1975 and was the first person in my family to graduate from college. It was a foreign world to me as I had no idea what to expect in college and most of what I learned had nothing to do with the classes I took. I thought I would major in English or History or French and go to law school. I ended up in a Biology major and graduated with a Bachelors of Science in Nursing. Neither was a good choice but I made the best of it and worked as an RN for many years.

3. I taught myself to use a computer. The only help I had was from a couple of five year olds when I volunteered for my daughters’ kindergarten class computer lab. That is secretly why I did the volunteer thing. Oh, and the other mothers didn’t like computer lab, they wanted to talk to each other rather than help the kids.

3. I love art but I cannot draw or do anything art-wise. I was never allowed to take art classes after 7th grade because it was viewed as frivolous by my parents. I had to take typing and shorthand, marketable skills. I have used the typing but NEVER the shorthand. I sure would have used that class in color theory.

4. My father’s father was a weaver and loom fixer for the River View Mill in what is now called Valley Alabama. It is hot at h*ll in Alabama in the summer and I have no idea how those people survived without air conditioning in those mills.

5. I dislike cooking.

6. I am perfectly content doing nothing. What is that about?? I do think when I do nothing. It just looks lazy. This drove my mother crazy so I was rarely allowed to be idle. Therefore I learned to sew and visited elderly neighbors who were some of the most entertaining people I have ever met. One was responsible for getting me my first real job where I met Wendy. It was then that I refined my knitting skills.

7. I love candy. Any kind of candy. Mmmm.

8. I collect copies of gargoyles and grotesques. I know, weird. They are interesting! Plus, they protect me from evil. I have named some of them. This is Lars because he looks rather like Lars Ulrich of Metallica.
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9. My bed has to be made before I can get into it. I usually make it in the morning but sometimes I don’t and I have to do it when I go to bed. Compulsive.

10. I LOVE clogs. Always have since the ’70s. These are my latest. When on vacation in North Carolina I visited the Endless Possibilities shop in Manteo. I ordered these clogs. They weave the fabric in colors that you designate then send the fabric off to the clog maker. I got them 8 weeks later. Cool no?
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If you read this you are tagged!

7.13.09 Bag Squared

Hemp for Knitting is a yarn. Hemp is not the easiest yarn for knitting but you can knit with it. Here is the evidence. I think it could be a great farmer’s market bag. The pattern is the Shop til you Drop Bag by Lanaknits. The yarn from The Yarn Lounge in Richmond!
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Bag craziness continues. A few weekends ago Caroline and I happened upon a sale at the local quilt store. Of course we did. (Well, we went to the shop on purpose, they just happened to be having a sale….) I bought some Kaffe Fassett fabrics. (I also scored some Amy Butler fabrics but we will get to that another time.) I also bought a couple of bag patterns. I made one of them this past weekend. It is “The X Bag” and is an interesting design. When sewn together the folds created in the main fabric pieces create pockets inside the bag. I do need to finish the tab closure.

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Happy sewing, knitting, weaving and ironing!

7.3.09 Summer Memories

There are very few things in life that conjure up more memories than smells, scents, fragrances, odors. Memories both good and bad. This is a fact and I am not going to cite references but you know it is true. Hospital ICUs, cat litter boxes, sweaty girls after field hockey games. Perfumes, your mother’s lipstick (for my mom it was always Revlon Honey Bee Pink), tree pollen in spring, freshly cut grass, swimming pools and rubber flip flops in summer, leaves and bonfires in autumn, snow and wool in winter. Freshly ironed, hand embroidered, crochet trimmed pillowcases all the time.

What brought on this train of thought??? I was ironing. With a new-ish iron on a new ironing board pad. Linen. With Niagara spray starch. It. Is. The. Best. Memory. The room sprays and fabric softeners that are made to smell like it do not come close.

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I learned to iron from a woman who came in to help with us kids (my younger brother and me) after my baby brother was born in June 1963. She cleaned the house and ironed everything that needed it. She taught me to iron. With one of these, the best iron ever. My dad’s handkerchiefs, undershirts and dress shirts. My little hankies and shirts and my mom’s cool floral cotton clothes. Pillowcases and sheets. There was plenty of opportunity to learn.

Nancy was really a nice teacher and not at all critical. I don’t remember anything like “do it again, that is not right”. After all it is just laundry. Handkerchiefs and pillowcases were the first thing I learned. Then on to the other items. We kept the things to be ironed rolled up in a plastic zipper bag in the old fridge in the basement after they were washed and dried and sprinkled with water from an old Coke bottle fitted with a plug that had a metal sprinkler head. <img src="IMG_2225.JPG” alt=”null” />

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Maybe you have an educational summer memory. You might be able to learn from this book that I found online if you didn’t go to Summer Laundry Camp like I did.