My mom as needlewoman

Mom and I feeding the pigeons on the State House lawn, Columbus, Ohio, 1952.

My mom would laugh and brush off the thought that she was a needlewoman, but although she has never been a seamstress, she can knit and embroider up a storm. She patiently taught me to knit when I was in elementary school. My patience was not so great then and I never got the yarn tension worked out until I picked knitting up again in college. By that point, my mom was making knitted afghans for the entire state, it seemed. She was cranking them out at a great rate. It's a terrific rippled pattern that's super simple, but looks great. This is an afghan I knitted using baby yarn.

This is one I made for Dan.

My mom, like me is an anxious person and likes to keep busy. She never just sits and neither do I. We are either reading or doing some kind of needlework. Mom embroidered pillow cases and pillow tops and she actually cross stitched a quilt top when I was in college. To finish it, she found out that some women from my aunt's church got together to quilt, so she got Dad to make her a quilt frame and she invited those ladies over to quilt her bedspread. It was the first time I ever saw a group of women around a frame quilting. How I wish I'd thought to take a picture of that! I love cross stitch, too. This is a sampler that hangs in our bedroom.

Thanks for your patience, Mom.

Me, Mom, and Anna in Crawfordsville, Indiana in 2003.