I love mending. So when Don popped a button off the cuff of this 20+ year old shirt, I happily reinforced the hole that resulted, and then reinforced the other cuff button to prevent future breakthroughs …
While I was at it, I also tackled what I had long wanted to do: removing the collar of the shirt and turning it so the ragged, yellowed side would be hidden and the like-new side would be visible …
I also did a bit of design mending on a new-ish pajama top with plackets that had an annoying tendency to not sit well …
I filled the lines of cloth with Old Man Crow’s lyrics, but ran out of room before the verse was complete …
So I’m debating whether to continue the verse on the cloth below, or leave it as is.
In the meantime, here’s a little background on the cloth … it was a thrift store find, a child’s jumper that I deconstructed, resulting in the lines of what Jude calls “seam Shibori” …
BTW, the lettering was done with water erasable ink, which I have yet to wash out. And as you can see, it’s not consistent size-wise … the letters increasing in size as the pen began to dry out, causing me to re-ink the lines. A calligrapher I am not.
But I am a mender. And so, on a completely unrelated note, I saw a post on Instagram from the authors of this lovely tome …
Now this much-loved and frequently-used fork that my mom gifted me from a long ago yard sale, will once again be useable. And I will no longer stress the wooden handle by ab/using the fork to torque chunks of Haagen Dazs out of the container (oops).
Yesterday morning was spent altering a pair of delightful flannel pjs that were gifted to me at Christmas …
They fit just fine, but I have a long-standing aversion to exposing my ankles, so I took out the cuffed hems to lengthen the pants … then reverse engineered them, putting the piping along the bottom, and seaming the raw edges together with a whipped stitch.
As I worked, I thought about why I’ve insisted on wearing over-long pants all these years (decades really). Upon reflection I decided to blame it on my mom (wink), who made me among the very last in my cohort to get a pair of bell-bottomed jeans (because she was sure it was sure to be a short-lived fad), which were way too short (queue a long wail of teenaged angst).
I never got over it, which is why to this day all my jeans have ragged back hems … ha!!
Yesterday also saw the beginning of what we hope to be once-a-week solo visits by our youngest grandchild … fondly referred to as “Littlest” by her doting nana. E’s two older siblings were similarly indulged during their respective pre-school years (although P got short shrift due to Covid).
I picked Ellis up at pre-school after nap time and sent a picture text to her mom once she was snugged into her car seat (yes, we roll with car seats, lucky us) …
Being new to the whole idea, Ellis asked if we were going to her house.
Nope.
But what about Parker?
Not today … you get to go to NanaPopPop’s house all by yourself!
I’m not sure that she was entirely on board with the idea, but we arrived without incident.
And so we spent a few golden hours together … painting with PopPop, mixing up cookie dough with Nana, making dinosaur puzzles, sorting sea shells, and eating a rainbow dinner of cherries (on ice cream for dessert), carrots (just a little bit), avocado (for yellow and green), and blueberries (for blue and purple), along with homemade chicken fingers and rice …
And if there is a decided dearth of pictures, well you can chalk that up to NanaPopPop being in the moment. Fortunately, there will be many more opportunities for picture-taking to come.
Last, but not least, when we took Ellis home, we were treated to Parker reading us a bedtime story entitled Elephants Can’t Dance by Mo Willems. The pictures were actually taken the night before by her Mom …
so we were able to relax into enjoying the encore performance … complete with questions at the end to check our comprehension. Our retired-teacher selves couldn’t have been more delighted.
I'm Going to Texas (version 2.0) 