Griffin’s school has gone back to virtual learning, so most days we get to listen in on his morning lessons. This Friday his class was working on personification, after which he had an independent assignment (called asynchronous learning in these Covid times) in which he was to choose a phrase and illustrate it.

This is what he came up with, which I immediately said I wanted to copy …

My mind filled with associations as I stitched. How G’s illustration reminded me of the animated clock in Beauty and the Beast, of Coconut the owl currently living in Austin Kleon’s palm tree, and of the messenger owls in Harry Potter…

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I think I first heard the phrase “time flies …” in high school, where my chemistry teacher, Mel Rosenstein, said it virtually every day in his never-ending quest to keep a roomful of antsy sophomores from zoning out. He also taught us how to use slide rules, but beyond that I don’t remember much.

Nonetheless, the phrase stuck, enough so that I asked someone to translate it into the Latin “tempus fugit cum se oblectat” so I could stitch it not once, but twice into samplers …

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Coming soon: I want to figure out how to use some of J’s artwork, too …

Process notes: that rich gold floss is Deb Lacativa’s and the variegated green dyed cloth is from Fiber on a Whim.