Old Lady Crafty Era UPDATE

IT IS DONE!  About a month and a half after I started this project, I am pleased to report it is finished.

I have to admit that this took longer than I thought it would.  There were quite a few color changes and it does take longer when you are working in the middle of the design.  As I've mentioned before, I'm one of those people who can't just sit and watch TV, so this was a great item to work on while I got my nightly Netflix fix.

I got this as a kit from a Ukrainian company that sells on Amazon.  It came with very clear directions and more than enough yarn for the entire project.  They have a large selection of designs to chose from.  You can also order the pillow backing from them to finish the project - more on that later in this post

                      

In the first photo, you see that the piece is pinned down to a mounting board.  This was part of the "squaring up" process - thank you You Tube for a detailed tutorial on how to do this.

I decided that today was a great day to finish off my pillow project.  I had to stay home today for prep for my colonoscopy tomorrow morning - IYKYK.  If you are too young to know about this "fun" process, enjoy your ignorance. 😀

Here's the finished product!  I'm pleased with how it turned out and it was very easy to add the velvet backing because it came with the invisible zip already inserted.  I can now check needlepoint pillow off my retirement craft to do list.  Now onto the next project....

Toodles until next time.

 

6 years ago

 

It's hard to believe that it's been six years since you left us.  This year's anniversary completely snuck up on me.  I literally opened my TimeHop app on my phone and the first memory I saw was my post from last year.  It hit me like a ton of bricks and I started to cry, feeling guilty that it had slipped my mind.

Then I gave it some more thought and I realized why I hadn't been watching the calendar as closely as I used to.  Daddy isn't here anymore to remember the date.  I always worried about how he felt on this day and how his mood would be.  It some ways this made even more upset, but in another way it felt freeing.

They are together again, as my dear friend said at my Dad's funeral, the Jack and Joan Roadshow had been reunited.

My parents were married for 61 years and they were the epitome of a team.  I remember when my father was in the hospital when he had his by-pass surgery.  I was at home with Mum and she started crying while doing the dishes.  She was so worried about him and I remember her saying that he was like her right arm and wouldn't know what she would do without him. The irony is that she went first.  Jack was three years older than Joan and told me how he would worry about what would happen to her after he died, because he assumed he would go first.  

I love this photo of Mum and it reminds me of our many shopping adventures in Target.  My mother was English and had her "stiff upper lip" persona but underneath was an absolute fun loving goofball with an absolutely wicked sense of humor.  I remember going shopping later in the evening one time and we couldn't stop laughing at some silly joke we had made when we first walked in the store.  We just kept going back to it and would crack up all over again.  It got to the point that we reached that doubled over, completely breathless type of laughter because we had laughed so much!!

I'm crying while I type this but that's because I'm all in my feels at the moment.  I can talk about Mum without bursting into tears each time - that's definitely progress.  *Unless I'm talking to my brother, I guess we have such a shared connection that it's still emotional.  I have so many great memories of the amazing woman who raised me to be a strong, independent woman (my sweet husband would insert completely hard headed in that description) and I'd like to think that I have passed those traits onto my own daughter.  I do know that she definitely inherited the Target shopping trait from both of us.

I'm sure I'll cry again today, but they will be happy tears full of Mum memories and love.