Raven and Sparrow

To Grandmother's house we went

The holiday flurry has begun. We spent Thanksgiving at my mom and dad's house with a large, but not comprehensive selection of relatives. It is always good to gather with the family. My aunt and her husband and my niece and her family all made the trip from Oregon and we were delighted to have them with us. The food was plentiful and delicious as always. Mom and Dad made the turkey and the mashed potatoes. Aunt Holly made the stuffing and the rest of us filled in with a really tasty selection of salads, vegetables and desserts. We felt the absence of our Aunt Myrt, who died about two months ago. No one would sit in her chair. 

My job was to provide the pies: two chocolate, one apple and one pumpkin. I made those ahead, so on the day I was free to play with flowers for the table. Usually arranging flowers happens amid many other chores and under pressure. This time I showed up with an armload of grocery store chrysanthemums and found that my sister had dropped off another similar bouquet, leaving me with an embarrassment of floral riches. I had the leisure to wander around my parent's yard with a pair of clippers looking for twigs and greenery to add. When my niece arrived I was reinforced by the help of her twin daughters. I wish it was always so much fun. 

I never even take my camera to family gatherings anymore because my brother Tim and sister Lisa are such good photographers. Lisa took the family picture and Tim took the one of the pie. Thanks to both! I hope everyone had as pleasant a Thanksgiving as we did. We have so much for which to be grateful.

The winter of my discontent

  Becky's Winter is hemmed and pressed. I happened to have an undercloth of the appropriate gray on my table so I spread it out to see how they look together. Many things are working well, but at the risk of losing my sense of proportion, I am not happy. The edges, which I have been struggling with since I began, are more wobbly than ever before. This, after two days of measuring, pressing, re-pressing over a straight-edge, pinning every half inch, pressing again...etc. I tried using freezer paper to stabilize the edges and did a test with heat bond hem tape, but after some initial hope, neither one worked worth a damn.  Pressing over my 48" straight-edge ruler looked very promising... hand smoothing the fabric over the metal, steaming and waiting for the fabric to dry before removing the ruler... it looked great at first, but after the hemming was finished it was as wobbly as ever. I am very disappointed. I honestly don't know what else to do. This is not a problem of inattention, but something is eluding me. I went back and looked at my older cloths and none are this bad, although the linen ones are wobblier than the cotton. I conclude that at least part of the problem is the cloth, but I'm not sure how to fix it. I have thought of backing it with harem cloth, but that will be a very lengthy process by hand and will result in little dimples...the cloth will become a quilt and it might not make any difference. I may have to try it though, just to see what happens. Maybe more starch will help. I already starch like crazy when I lay out the pattern (also done with a straight edge) and when I am ready to mark the edges. I know cloth is a flexible medium, but I also know others are able achieve neat borders. Why not me?

I think I am especially disappointed because this cloth has been a departure for me and has achieved the feeling I was looking for when I started the project. A Northwest winter day is what it suggests, and seeing it on the table makes me pretty sure it will work as a tablecloth...enough detail to be interesting up close, but perceivable essentially in bands of texture and color to give an impression of a rainy day. So many times during the process I thought it might be ruined or unworkable, but it kept coming through. I would have liked my craftsmanship to measure up, especially since it is a gift.

My grumpiness has not been helped by a new, worse round of flooding in the old house. It has been raining like the dickens and the driveway is a river. This time I wasn't caught by surprise so everything is up off the floor, but the water is deeper this time and more rooms have been flooded. We lived in that house for seven years and never had a flood but now there have been two in about a year. Insert bad words here.

Again, I reach for my sense of proportion....these are small problems in the scheme of things, everything could be much worse. I am so lucky everyday...even this one. 

Happy Birthday Brendan

My oldest son turned thirty two this week and we celebrated together on Saturday with a dinner for eight. Why is the passage of time so difficult to grasp? How does it slip by so quickly? I remember the day he was born clearly (well, most of it...it was a C-section). Pregnancy is a river that whisks you out of the life you had before and birth is the waterfall...everything happens to you and without you; once you are pregnant most "choices" are merely illusions of control. But in the end there is the opportunity to fall in love, which I did. For thirty two years I have loved Brendan imperfectly but wholeheartedly and watched him grow from a newborn baby into the man he has now become. In this transition joy and sorrow become indistinguishable.

It is perhaps asking too much for table setting to carry the real emotions that underlie such an occasion, but of course I did want the table to be special...masculine and autumnal, but welcoming always. I used the cloth whose pattern I took from the japanese maple tree we planted in front of our old house where the boys grew up. It is pretty simple...just a spray of leaves with no embroidery, but the breakdown of the wax resist turned out particularly well on this one. The natural linen undercloth supports the delicacy of the pattern. Centerpieces are hard because the indigo veining makes most blues blatantly wrong with this tablecloth, but the round glass fishing floats are just right in color and their transparency mimics the reversal of the leaves. The effect is both strong and fragile which isn't a bad metaphor for family ties.

 

Winter decisions

I am reaching the end of embroidery on Becky's Winter. I've done the water and the large drops in the sky. My final plan was to accent the falling rain by doing running stitches at the same angle as the waxed raindrops. I spent all afternoon putting in three short lines and I am about to change my mind. I found when I waxed the rain onto the cloth initially that keeping straight lines across such an expanse was really hard. Now, even when I draw with a straight edge, the running stitches are not straight. These three aren't too bad, but they have each been done at least twice and they are the easy ones. Also, all those stitches across the cloth will pucker and make it harder for it to lie flat. I don't think it will be worth the effort. Does anyone have any suggestions? Would backing the cloth make it easier to handle? I am just about to decide that the cloth is done. Well....after mitering and hemming and all that.