Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Satisfaction

I've been knitting lace for the last few months. Can't seem to go back to the socks I started last winter. I finished an Estonian lace shawl (for my daughter) and an Estonian lace scarf (for my mother) and am now working on a shawl for myself. The patterns for these three come from "Knitted Lace of Estonia" by Nancy Bush. I really enjoy the nit-pickiness of the lace.

The chair in the photo with the scarf is from the home of my Great-Grandparents. It's an oak-leaf press-back wooden chair with a leather seat. It has multiple layers of old cracked paint. I love it exactly as it is. It is one of my very favorite possessions.

Here's the shawl. I knit it for my daughter to use on her wedding day. She was beautiful.
I will post again when I have some wedding photos of it.
Both the shawl and scarf were made of "Alpaca with a Twist - Fino" which is an alpaca/silk blend. Absolutely the most beautiful laceweight yarn you could imagine.
My next project (interspersed with some plain jane washcloths) is another Estonian lace shawl, this time for myself. I am using a silvery taupe yak/silk blend in cobweb weight. I got it from the "Pack River Yaks" booth at the Shepherd's Harvest Festival. Not sure about how it will go with cobweb weight yarn... so we'll see.

Monday, June 15, 2009

It's Over

We're done with the wedding. It was beautiful. Jess was a perfectly lovely bride and I was so proud of her. Tyler was great too. She got herself a manly man, and I'm glad for that. (I loved that he threw her over his shoulder as they left! She loved it too.) From my experience a truly masculine man is also the most gentle kind of man since he doesn't need to prove anything. (I hope that is who you are Tyler.)

They are so young. There will be a lot of stress, but I am committed to supporting this marriage, not supporting my daughter independent of it. She is joined to him, and the best I can give her is helping her in that. I will not (like many mothers I know) entertain criticism of him that leads nowhere. I don't really expect she will complain to me, but you never know.

If he's anywhere close to the kind of man my Tom is, she will be very happy.


Wednesday night just before 10:00 my mother called me, frantic. "Something's wrong with Daddy, They're working on him now, please hurry!"

When I got there I saw the driveway spilling over with emergency vehicles. Mom was in the livingroom standing with her neighbor Erin who had come over to help. They were working on trying to revive dad who was on the sun room floor. I could see by the faces of the emergency workers they had little hope, but they kept going, doggedly going, after I had given up hope they continued to work on dad.

They stopped and someone was kneeling in front of Mom as she sat waiting and told her that he was gone. There was nothing more to do. I was so grateful for the sensitive way they dealt with everything. Those people were an immense help to us.

Mom repeated the details of their last day, their last minutes together. She will miss him dearly.

For most of my life I haven't been sure if I really loved my dad because I had a callous over that part of my heart. I tried hard to honor him, to be kind to him, wanted to love him too, but couldn't really feel it. When he died I realized that underneath everything I did love him after all and I could finally feel it. I'm glad that at his funeral tomorrow I will feel that love as I say goodbye. Thank you to my heavenly Father for that.

Goodbye Dad. We will miss you. I will continue to pray for your salvation since I know that the almighty and loving God is there, outside of time, listening.