Coming and going

May 18, 2021May 18, 2021 ~ Liz A ~ 6 Comments

I’ve been thinking recently about “audience,” which is to say, who is in my mind as I stitch.

When I made Remember 2016, it was all about Logan (then 11 going on 12) …

Jackson (3 going on 4) …

Griffin (also 3 going on 4) …

and Jace (1 going on 2) …

These days, it’s very much about the new littlest ones, Parker (who just turned 4) …

and Ellis (1 going on 2) …

in hopes that they will find themselves in the patches of Remember 2021, just as their older sibling and cousins find themselves in Remember 2016.

And so in these most recent patches, a nod to Ellis, who is learning to talk and sing. Each visit gives us new glimpses into her growing vocabulary. And when we’re not there, Meg sends us milestone videos, like this 45 second rendition of the ABC song …

But better yet was our most recent babysitting adventure, when Ellis began to sing along with my Backward ABC song, which Griffin and Parker then joined in (because of course I taught it to them when they were “1 going on 2”).

While there was no video evidence, I did confess to Meg that she should probably let the pre-school teachers know about E’s latest addition to her repertoire … lest they wonder … yet again.

Last April patches (with addenda)

May 16, 2021May 16, 2021 ~ Liz A ~ 9 Comments

Austin Kleon’s newsletter on April 23rd included a love note to paper dictionaries. And I quite agree with him, but I confess that I rarely use my trusty 1970s vintage Merriam-Webster Collegiate (received in 1974 as a high school graduation gift). These days I prefer to use m-w.com …

Even when it’s a word I know how to spell, I very much like to double-check definitions … and perhaps find an even more apt word in the list of synonyms (who needs a thesaurus?)

Here, for instance, is what I found when thinking up the Global Weirding patch on a day that included a forecast of baseball-sized hail (which fortunately did not make an appearance) …

Wait, what? Weirding isn’t a word? Well fine, then show me weirding out …

Yeah, that fits. As suggested by Thomas Friedman …

the term global weirding makes more sense than global warming (although both are certainly true, with the warming causing the weirding).

So I found a stormy patch of cloth and stitched some imaginary hailstones …

then ironed out the erasable marks, because that’s what the cloth wanted that day.

Addenda:

Food is love (continued)

May 16, 2021 ~ Liz A ~ 8 Comments

My mom was born on May 15, 1931 … 90 years ago. And in a lovely bit of synchronicity, May 15th was celebrated as National Chocolate Chip Day by Sandra Boynton …

One of my first blog posts, entitled Food is Love, was about making Toll House cookies with my mom …

So I decided to riff on chocolate chip cookies in her memory. Research was in order, of course, so I looked up not only a current Nestle bag of chocolate chips, but also one from the 1960s …

I especially liked the stylized “s” on the old bag, not to mention the white circle for the price.

That in turn reminded me of my first summer job, working as a grocery store cashier for $1.65 an hour using a cash register that looked much like this (grody) vintage model …

As I recall, ringing up items for 19 cents was quite the digital challenge.

But I digress.

I looked through my recently organized bits of cloth to find the proper red and school bus yellow for the patch … then decided to go with the old-style Nestle’s lettering.

And when I was done, I celebrated with some snack batch cookie dough …

Happy Birthday Mom 🍪