Hide My Stash

I began knitting when I was 8.  Barbie doll clothes.  I learned to knit from the Coats & Clark learn-how book.  For some reason I learned the Continental method.  The instructions were English style.  I don't know how I made the switch.  My mother knew how to knit but did not enjoy it.  Every time she set her knitting down, when she picked it back up, she had no idea where she was at.  Her passion was for the sewing machine.  I hated the sewing machine.


My mother and I had a deal:  if anything happened to her, I was to go to her house and hide her stash of fabric, so folks would not find it and think she was nuts.  Likewise, if anything happened to me, she was to hide my stash of yarn.  When she died about a year ago, she left me about 2 pickup truck loads of fabric.  [Here in fly-over country, a pickup truck is an acceptable unit of measure.]  I am still trying to figure out what to do with all of it.


Today, I went to see my Dad.  I worked up his tax return.  He has been ill lately and is not fully recovered.  My daughter, Laura, went with me.  She got out a box of old photographs.  These were the wedding pictures of my aunts and uncles from the WWII years.  No big weddings.  No white silk dresses.  Since my mother died, my cynical core has been penetrated; those pictures bring up the tears.