Snippets

Today I take a late-afternoon flight to Ft. Myers, Florida. My sister Dolores, her daughter Regina, and my mother all live in a rented house in a gated community down there, and my sister needs a break. So I get nine days of sunshine and a pool, plus a couple of nights out for fresh seafood – all in return for caring for my ninety-year-old-and-still-feisty Mom. Not a bad deal at all.

It’s hard to believe spring is coming in Minnesota in March. We have fresh snow on the ground, and the fact that the chickadees and cardinals have started singing seems like small comfort. So this time in sunny Florida will be very welcome.

Yesterday I drove a little over eighty miles to Colfax, Wisconsin, to see a traveling exhibit on the German POW camps established during World War II – only to find that it was in Colfax on Monday. Worse, it was too late to drive to Black River Falls and catch it there. It’s in Spooner today, too far to drive to see it and get back in time to catch my plane. But the librarian in Colfax said the exhibit didn’t have any German uniforms, and one major goal was to see one, just to see what color it was. There are a lot of photographs of German POWs, but they’re all in black and white. I’m sure there are other places I can find that information, but the exhibit also had other artifacts from the camps, including crafts, and I really wanted to see them, too. It was a sad drive home, let me tell you.

Earlier this week the model of the pattern that will be in the back of Blackwork arrived from Kreinik. It is very exotic and beautiful and features a witch’s hat set in a nest of blackwork. In a day or two visit my web site, Monica-Ferris.com, to see a picture of it, though like a lot of needlework, a photograph hasn’t got the impact of a model.

Just for fun, here are some edgy stitchers with a web site. Apparently they are part of a movement of people who knit and crochet things, like huge jackets for sheds, bands for the trunks and branches of trees, and plastic-bag crochet ornamenting pedestrian crossing: http://www.yarnbombing.com./ The photo is of a black and white striped ornamentation put on a Zebra Crossing marker in England, called that because of the black and white stripes painted on the street. (And pronounced "ZEB-Rah.")