Day 82: shout out to my Mum

I've been a bit busy today, and although I've done my flower I've not done anything else even mildly interesting. So this is a shout out for my Mum, who hasn't been well of late.

My mother has forgotten more about sewing, patterns, knitting and embroidery than most of us will ever know. I remember her sewing to make money for the family when I was a wee nipper. I was never interested until I was about 15 and asked her to make me a top and she said 'make it yourself'. So I did. it was a shirt with double contrast top-stitching. What was I thinking?? Since then there have been more disasters than successes, I'm sorry to say.

Mum used to sell stuff in a market that was where the downtown carpark now is. After that she opened a shop. This was just on the cusp of New Zealand's Great Economic Downturn (in my view there has only been one and we're still in it) and while the shop did OK for a while it gradually got more difficult and eventually it closed. These days there are almost no small independent clothes/shoes/knick-knack shops in the suburbs: big box stores with super cheap imports have squeezed most of them out. Us Kiwis do like our cheap shit.

Soon thereafter she started quilting, and that led to embroidery work and dying, and now she is moving on to beading. We both love beads and colours and patterns so I am encougaing her to make a beaded waistcoat. Maybe like this:

In the meantime, stuck away in a cupboard somewhere are Mum's grandmother's lace tatting set and whalebone needles that are, I am told, so worn the bone has worn through to the metal core.

Get well soon, Mum. We need to go for lunch with Miss Dana.

http://byrnefifi.blogspot.co.nz/2014/02/knitting-needles.html