Incoherent Scribblings

Cuz I’m a copy cat, you can check out my Johari Window here.

I have been diligently working on my square for Laurie’s Seasonal RR the last couple of days. Her choice of patterns is four “Prairie Schooler” designs and I have chosen to do “Winter,” though the proper title of this pattern is actually “Christmas Eve.”

Instead of starting in the middle like I usually do, I started this pattern by stitching the border and have been working my way up the chart. I was required to do this because Laurie only left one stitch around her basting stitches for the pattern and if I didn’t get it exactly centered it wouldn’t fit in the allotted space. Therefore for the first time in my stitching career it seemed wiser to start in the corner as opposed to the center and amazingly enough it has worked quite well thus far! (Knock on wood.)

Since tomorrow is my SAL day with Cathy I plan to devote my stitching time to “Catch the Wind,” but I estimate that “Christmas Eve” is about 40% done so if I don’t get distracted by something else I think I can probably finish it this week.

Because I no longer have a room of my own at either of my parents’ houses, when I go back to Small Town Iowa to visit my family I am required to take up lodging in my mother’s guest room. I don’t mind staying in this room, but whenever I step into it I feel like I have entered a time capsule.

On the surface the guest room contains my maternal grandmother’s bedroom suite, a few pieces of furniture from my childhood, a closet full of clothes that should have been taken to the consignment store years ago, and various other things that my mother labels as her “antiques.”

However to my surprise, as I peered into drawers, opened boxes, and looked under the bed I found more than junk and ancient relics. I discovered reminders of my other lives: There were boxes filled with nearly-forgotten souvenirs of my high school glory days, mementos of my often idealized college years, and evidence of my life as a single career girl.

And as I listened to the cassette tapes of my favorite “hair bands” on my dorm-sized stereo while teaching my six year old niece to arrange books in alphabetical order on the bookshelf that my grandfather made for me when I was her age, I had a thought: The room wasn’t so much a time capsule as it was a living memory.