Sunday, May 14, 2006
Left: My grandmother with her children (my mother is the one in the back, head poking out)
Right: My mother as a very fetching 21 year-old
Mom at 27 with her first (and only!) baby.
Duck flew back home last week, and my dad left on business in Uganda the same day, so it's been an girls-only slumber party down here. It's been really nice spending time with my mother. She makes breakfast every morning - bowl of fruit, pastry, a cappuccino - then I work for a few hours, then we go out to a long lunch, or shopping, then we talk about what we're going to have for dinner, then knit while watching Pride & Prejudice (movie version) on DVD.
The past few nights we've been going through boxes and boxes of old photos, all musty and curled from age. My goal is to take a bunch home with me, scan and archive them for prosterity. Those photos don't deserve to waste away like that. While it's been fun to see pictures of me back in the day in various stages of my growing pains - the missing teeth, and the 70's fashion sense, the 80's big hair, the BAD high school graduation photos - it's been much more fun and interesting going through photos of my mother back when she wasn't one yet...photos with her own mother, with schoolmates, and group trips with college friends which included one very smitten and very skinny future husband (haha Dad you were so funny-looking!).
I got a weird little sniffle in my nose and a small burning sensation behind my eyes as I went through all these old photos of my mom. She was so. Beautiful. My mommy!
I just hope she's enjoyed being a mom, to me. I don't think it was always easy, or fun, due to that requisite period when I was a complete and utter snot. But thank god teenagers are not teenagers forever.
Although I wish I could have seen my mom as one. Look how cute she was!
Mom (second from left) in high school.
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And now...knitting content!
My mom's been making this crochet shell from the Kidsilk Haze I bought her ages ago. She had tried to knit with it first and couldn't understand how I ever managed to produce Butterfly ("So many haaairs! Is so steecky!!"), and declared me the superior knitter. Hee hee! She tried crocheting instead, we picked out a stitch pattern together et voila!
We went to Hancock Fabrics yesterday for fabric and ribbons. She is also making me a needle case. Yay!
And I'm making her a summer sweater. The stitch pattern is from my book, and I'm using Hempathy (hemp/cotton/modal blend). It's going to be Orangina and Celia-like, with raglan shaping and small sleeves. I could have done this in one piece, top-down but don't have long enough needles and didn't feel like buying any. She's really excited to get something handknit from me, her little knitting protégée.
Filed Under: Life