- The way it was

Retrospective (7/25/2016)

Patch #203 Sometimes stuff happens ...

Original Post

My father passed away in 2012, but my brother and sister-in-law are still sorting through all the "stuff" he left behind in his house on Shelter Island. Every so often, they find something they think I might be interested in and stick it in a box. When the box is full, they send it off to Texas.

This is one of several things that arrived in the mail last Thursday ...

I was probably 8 or 9 years old, but I remember buying this kit at Claudio's Marina in Greenport on a rainy day during our annual Shelter Island vacation. No doubt it was intended to keep me occupied on the days we couldn't get to the beach. What I liked most about it was the departure from the stamped cross stitch that had been my initial training ground. And I thought it was beyond cool that you got to combine threads of different colors to stitch the clouds and the waves.

My current-day self was aghast at the subject matter: the harpooning of a whale. Likewise, I lamented my parents' use of Masonite as a backing board, the acid from which effectively "cooked" the cloth.

Still, a memory is a memory, so I cut a patch of blue sky ...

and added it to my July 14th post "Learning as I go" ... which seemed apt.

The rest of the day was odd ... two patches just didn't work out so I switched to stitching the patches for the first half of July onto Remember 2016 ...

Honestly, I think the convention coverage has gotten to me ... and there's still another week to go.