If It's Worth Doing, It's Worth Doing Right!

A strong streak of perfectionism runs through the women in my family.

If you were to visit me and see my housekeeping you might be dubious when I tell you I am a perfectionist. It’s just that I don’t direct my perfectionism to being a perfect housekeeper. My grandmother was! It wasn’t hyperbole to say you could eat off her floor. You really could! But, of course, she would have been aghast at any food falling on her floor. My mother complained that Gram’s housekeeping came before everything else when she was a child, that when the family headed out the door for fun they often had to wait while Gram finished cleaning.

My mother rebelled before me. She went to college and to work. Although she told us she didn’t want to be like her mother, we cleaned the house every Saturday morning. She never had any reason to fear a drop-in visit from the minister, or anyone else for that matter. The unexpected guest was always greeted with a clean house. One afternoon Mrs. M__, who lived across the street, gossiped to my mother that another neighbor washed her kitchen floor but never washed her baseboards. My mother laughed thinking she didn’t wash hers either.

“Oh, but you work!” Mrs. M__ was quick to recover.

I saw my mother washing the baseboards after that.

Before my mother went back to work she stayed home, hung starched and ironed ruffled unbleached muslin curtains in the living room, refinished antique furniture and embroidered. She did a sampler in cross stitch when I was very young which hung over the small kitchen table where my family ate most of our meals all the years of my child hood and all the years of my children’s childhood.

Now she is moving out of the house where the sampler hung and whose baseboards she washed into a one bedroom apartment. She wants her daughters and grandchildren to take her things, hoping we will value the things she valued.

I read the embroidered words,

“Hearts are happy, health is good, where loving hands prepare the food"

I told her I had always liked it, that it was a warm memory from my childhood.

“Here, take it now,” she handed it to me.

I held the wooded frame in my hands and looked at the stitching. It was not well stitched. I felt a moment of embarrassment for my mother. She had not known to carefully separate each of the plies of the embroidery floss before stitching with two or three to prevent the threads from twisting. Nor had she known to make sure all her stitches crossed in the same direction. The sampler had hung next to a beautifully stitched sampler a friend gave to her on her retirement. Had she known her own work was of an inferior quality? Did it bother her?

After she went back to work she decorated with the knick knacks, paintings and other souvenirs she collected on her travels rather than with things she had made. Those aren’t the things I want from her house. I want the sampler. That it was not well made did not make me value it less. It spoke to me of home, of a good time that is now gone. I took it for my son and daughter-in-law and now it hangs in their kitchen.

I wonder if my mother gave up hand work because she didn’t have the time or interest to do it better. I wonder if she felt that if it she couldn’t do it right, she shouldn’t do it at all.

A Week In the Pines with Friends and Fiber

Sunday after dinner we covered the dining room table with felt and plastic table cloths. Nancy and Kay set up their machines at each end of the table and I laid out my appliqué supplies in the middle. We set up an ironing board in the kitchen.

Monday morning we got right to work. Nancy is the most disciplined of the three of us. She finished three traditional two colored quilts from blocks she had pieced at home and had ready to sew together.

Kay sewed the blocks of what will be a beautiful batik quilt and I started work on my appliqué. Kay and I took frequent knitting breaks.

My appliqué was not a success. Although I thought I had started it 10 years ago, Nancy corrected me. I started it 5 years ago when she and I went to Asilomar together. In any event, my skills have declined and my fingers have stiffened since the last time I picked it up. The first day went well. I stitched the long smooth lines of the trunk and branches of the tree of life and remembered how much I enjoyed appliqué and had ideas for lots of applique in my future. But the second day I worked on one of the flowers and couldn’t get the petals or the leaves to point, the v’s between the half circles in my scallops turned into curved u’s. I wasn’t at all happy with my work. The third day I ripped out what I had done.

I have two choices: give it up and never finish or find another way. I’ve decided to try the machine. I’ll free motion stitch around the edges of each floral piece. This will give them a slight frayed edge when the quilt is washed. After the pieces are all down I’ll free motion quilt with colored thread, silk or sulky, repeating the shapes of the appliquéd motifs. It should work. And, this way there is a good chance it will be finished someday and it won’t ever be finished if I stick to what I started.

After I put the appliqué away, I spent the last days knitting. More on that later.

Getting To Not Getting Away

I’m off to join two friends for a week of sewing in the mountains.

In the past the three of us attended Empty Spools seminars at Asilomar together. The location, right on the Pacific Ocean, the activity, working with fabric, the company, other quilters, was wonderful. The Asilomar Conference Grounds, part of the California State Park system, with buildings designed by Julia Morgan, sits directly across from the beach in Pacific Grove. The rooms range from cozy and rustic with a fireplace to dorm like. The food was plentiful and good. And five days with no work other than that I chose to do with fabric was wonderful.

But when the Empty Spools schedule came out this year we couldn’t find a session that worked for all of us. We’ve decided to try a private retreat instead. We are going to my sister’s mountain home, snuggled in the Sierras between Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks, surrounded by pines, away from traffic and internet service. Only the squawking blue jays will interrupt the silence. We’ll take our fabric, machines and notions and get to work.

We’ll eat well too! We are all good cooks who enjoy cooking. Nancy is making her special triple ginger cookies, Kay promised oatmeal cookies. I just finished baking a dozen vanilla cupcakes, put together premeasured packages of ingredients for baking a cherry upside down cake and chocolate chip cookies. Three nights we are having main dish salads. Tri tip and curried tuna are two on the menu. One night we will have chicken curry. We’ll be driving south through farm country and intend to stop for fresh fruit and vegetables on the way. We’ve also packed nine bags of microwave popcorn.

I used to look forward to going to Asilomar to get away. To get away from the long hours and responsibilities of a demanding job and all that went with it, a commute that had me in stop and go traffic for an hour in the morning and again in the evening, an inflexible schedule. I looked forward to getting away from those things that stifled the inner artist I wanted to nurture.

I don’t look forward to getting away anymore. I don’t look forward to getting way from what I do everyday because today I do those things I choose to do, knitting lace shawls, baking cupcakes for 2 year old Clara, meeting a friend for lunch and volunteering that fits me so much better than the work I used to do. I don’t look forward to getting away from the husband who supports and encourages me. And I don’t look forward to getting away from the pleasant community where I live.

Instead, I look forward to getting to. Getting to the mountains, the pine trees, the quiet. I look forward to getting to the hand appliqué wall hanging I started in an Empty Spools class taught by Pat Campbell 10 years ago. I worked on it for 5 restful days with Pat's help, sitting with other women, talking quietly as we worked. I was pleased with my piece, the colors and fabrics I had chosen. I was happy with my stitching. But I brought it home, set it aside and in the distractions and busyness of life, never picked it up again. It still sits with my hand traced pattern basted to the front, many pieces are only pinned in place. Others haven't even been started. I’m looking forward to getting to it.

I’m not looking forward to getting away, I’m looking forward to time spent with friends, with nature and fiber. I’m taking my knitting too!

I am a woman who wears scarves (and shawls)

It is time to get rid of some clothes. Again. I’ve been taking bags of perfectly good working clothes to our women’s shelter for four years now, since taking early retirement and leaving the office. I hoped my old clothes would help another woman start a new life. I was starting a new life too, and I would not need the suits and silk blouses that were in those bags.

Our clothes express both how we see ourselves, and how we want others to see us. When I began my professional career in the late 1970s, a slightly built, young woman in a man’s profession, my clothes announced that I was serious and competent. Tailored navy blue suit. Neat silk shirts and blouses. Heeled pumps. Leather briefcase.

I had the look down but I was never entirely comfortable with that conformity. I wanted something that announced I was unique. I wanted to stand out, just a bit, not too much. I learned to wear scarves. Good quality silk or wool scarves casually tossed over my shoulders or loosely tied. I wore them almost every day.

As the years passed, my confidence grew and I learned I didn’t have to force myself into the male mold. There is a place for the feminine in the office. The lines of my suits softened. My skirts flared. I continued to wear scarves.

When I retired my life and my dress were blank canvasses. I had long empty hours not sure what to do. I gave away my work clothes but my Saturday clothes weren’t right either. My jewelry stayed in the box, my scarves in the closet.

My life filled again, caring for aging parents and new grandchildren, volunteering at work that feels important to me, knitting, sewing and growing my own vegetables. I am learning to be creative, learning to be free to fail, learning I am not dependent on success. Blue jeans replaced the navy suit, tee shirts replaced the silk blouses. Instead of neat button earrings, now my earrings dangle.

I am wearing scarves again. But it is time for the old scarves to go. Today I wear those I knit myself.