Hello,
I hope everyone is doing well as we emerge from our cocoons of isolation. Please stay safe in all your activities. On my daily walk of about two miles in our city I pass by the homes of six seniors who’s high school years were cut short by the epidemic. I am glad to see the signs on their lawns. But my heart goes out to them as I recall all the joys of dances, ball games, honors, meetings and hanging out, that were a part of my last semester of high school. Even visiting colleges is done virtually for them. For a person who is a tactical and visual I am this sure would have stunted my senior year.
I continue to work and I attended another Zoom meeting Of FAB this week. Liz and I dyed again this week too. We are both doing a lot of over dyeing this season.
I completed the work from last week and my class with Merrill Comeau on Saturday. I really enjoyed building up all the layers with lots of stitches.
Then I finished my new assignment for Textile Artist Stitch Club for this week. The lesson was from Susie Vickery and we were using plastic bags in combination with embroiders thread to do the stitch work. I like the effect and will keep an eye out for more different colored bags to recycle into my work.
The plastic
has a lot of shine and one needs to think about the printing on the surface when cutting the strips. But I feel that adds interest.
Progress Report: Mayan Series- Jaguar Priest This work is nearly complete. I did a lot of quilting around the figure this week. It still needs a sleeve for hanging and a label. 
This is the second in the series. I really like the head of the Jaguar.
Mayan Series- Eagle Priest This is the third piece in this series. It took a long time to cut out the shapes and fuse them down, but well worth the effort. I am now ready to start outlining the shapes and adding details.
Layers This work is still building. The maze portions take a long time to cut and add to the surface.
SAQA 100 days I will keep working with this theme but I think I will go beyond the 100 so I need to think of a new title.
I really enjoy the hand work and doing variations on radial designs is something that I find very calming.
Scrap Happy I finished three scrap backs for these projects this week. I have only three rows of Garden Path stitch down to the base . It will just take effort to finish now.
Childhood Memories – Allowance
On Sunday morning before we went to church we got our allowance. It was sixty cents. To earn that full amount one had to have done all his or her chores. I don’t remember all Gene had to do, but we did share the drying dishes duty. It was a case of alternating days with the two of us working on Sunday. The other chores were to clean one’s room, a job also done on Saturdays before we went out doors to play. One job that I did alone was to empty the washing machine and hang the wet clothes on the line before I went to school on Thursday. I also had to take it down when I got home. I remember taking it off the line when it was frozen sometimes. I forgot on a few occasions and had to do that job in the dark. I also had to collect and empty the waste baskets every Tuesday evening because the garbage men came on Wed. The last chore for the week was to polish my shoes. Dad had grown up poor and went barefoot a lot. He only wore shoes to school and church and they were hand me downs many times. A a result, we always had three pairs. A daily pair for school and such. A pair that were play shoes, that were old schools shoes or tennis shoes. The last pair were Sunday shoes. I remember his teaching me to polish my Saddle shoes. First one took the laces out. The dark section was polished with a wax polish. One did one shoe while the first dried so one could buff the dark section and move on. .When both shoes were done with that first step, then one applied the white with a dauber from the bottle of liquid polish. When they were dry one had to buff the whites to make them shine as they dried with a chalky appearance. The last step was to put the laces back in the shoes. When Sunday saddle shoes became school shoes, the polishing still had to be done on them too. I liked it a lot better when I got a pair of cordovan Loafers as they were only one color. I was also allowed to add pennies when they became school shoes. We wore shoes all the time. No bare feet in our lives. If Dad saw you with out shoes he would say” Put your shoes on Lizzy, don’t you know your in the city.” The allowance was divided three ways. Ten cents went to the collection plate in Sunday school. Then a quarter went into the Skippy Peanut Butter jar that each of us had that was our savings. Mom had painted our names on the lids with finger nail polish. Birthday money and tooth fairy money went into the savings jars too. The money was collected until we had enough to by a savings bond, that would mature to a full $25.00 in seven years. I remember thinking that seemed like a long time to me. Some times we got savings bonds from our McElhinney grandparents for Birthdays. The last twenty five cents came to us in nickels and dimes with the words” Don’t spend it all at once” as part of it. I put mine in the jewelry box. That spending money was to go for things like dues for Brownies and treats. We were allowed to take loans from Dad if we were away from home and saw something we could not live with out. But it always had to be paid back when we got home. We got lunch Money on Mondays too as well as milk money and that was extra and had to all go to the school. Gene pushed for a raise in third grade. With his arguments the allowance went up twenty five cents for both of us. I recall thinking it was a bit unfair as I had live on the old amount until I was in 5 th grade. Gene was always more concerned about money then I was and he still is. Dad continued our money education as we got older, but I will cover that later. It was a good enough system that I did learn the value of saving and thinking about how I wanted to spend my money.
Keep Creating
Carol