Embroidery Reverie

I am SEW (pun!) excited about this book!! I ordered it recently and it's on its way to me. This video shows some of the exciting projects and lessons I'll be learning from it.

I recently got back into embroidery after a much-too-long break from it. I learned embroidery as a wee girl from my Grandma Fitzpatrick. I loved doing it, and did pillowcases, dresser scarves, and dish towel sets back then. My little fingers were busy, busy, busy learning straight, lazy daisy, french knot, and satin stitches. It has been so much fun getting back into it. I look forward to making my first embroidery journal, or book of stitches!

Idyllic Summers

This song got me through one of my first periods of depression when I was attending NDSU in the fall of 1977. My dorm room mate was my best friend Kathy. I listened to this song over and over again, because it spoke to me with it's melancholy melody, and lyrics that reminded me so much of parts of my life at that time. "...riding on the roadside..." was to me, the idyllic summers my friend and I had riding our horses day after day, with no cares at all. We knew at the time it wouldn't last, so we drank it in and treasured it, even as it was happening. Days and days of sunshine, wind, and open prairie, cantering and galloping across the fields and dirt roads. This song brings it all back to me...

Garrison Keillor: I Understand Completely

"Rhubarb is the secret to the good life."

I read every word of his essay, and understood it to the core of my being. I feel exactly that way when I am researching and writing about St. Vincent. I love St. Vincent and all the people from it and all the people around it that made up our communities, our lives, our sorrow, our joys.

When my mother was nearing the end of her 97 years, what was most vivid to her was her youth. She said, “There is so much I’d still like to know, and there’s nobody left to ask.” So she ventured into the shadows to commune with her dead, which was a comfort to her. Nobody was alive who knew her in girlhood, so memory became reality. Some call it dementia, I call it imagination. At 71 I sometimes forget last week, but I clearly remember the big house on Dupont Avenue North where Corinne lived one summer when we were 19, and I blew smoke on her African violets to kill aphids. She and I had this idea to form a commune of writers all working away in their rooms, doors open, and when we wrote something good, we could walk into someone’s room and tell them about it. A sort of long-term sleepover. It was a perfect idea, and we didn’t bother with details such as Who and Where and How much, and because it never became a reality, it never came crashing down. It still exists in my mind. If I reach 97, I may finally go live there.

- From Keillor Geography

St. Vincent is my Lake Wobegon...

Art on the Wing

Monarchs are old friends of mine. Our area being one of the main migration paths, I saw them arrive and leave every year as far back as I can remember. It really saddens me to hear of their plight.

As a little girl, wandering around the garden, pastures, and ditches of our property, I would come across them on the many milk weeds scattered around.  There was no missing them, with their bright colors; Deep oranges, dramatically-outlined by black, wings catching your eye in bright morning sun.

When you're very young, everything is fascinating to you.  It's all so new!  For instance, one day I noticed the dryer vent on the outside of the house.  Mom was doing the laundry that day, and the weather was still too cold for her liking to hang out the clothes.  Warm air was rushing out of the vent forming little clouds near the ground.  I had to investigate, of course.  As I drew near, I could feel its moist warmth - it was delightful!  My little hands were cold, despite the wool mittens my grandmother had knitted me.  I thought, why not take them off and warm them up under the vent?  So I did.  I came back often as I played in the yard, to warm up there.

One day later in the spring, in that in-between time when the snow had gone, but the full bloom of summer is yet to be, I came to warm up at my friendly vent, when I saw something different there.  It was small, short, round...and a shimmering green in the early morning light.  I had never seen anything like it before.  It intrigued me, and I wanted to know more.  I ran in the house and told Mom about it.  She told me that it sounded like a Monarch butterfly chrysalis.  I didn't fully understand, and my confusion must have shown on my face.  She smiled and said, like a cocoon that brown and orange caterpillars I already knew so well, turned into before becoming moths.   Oh, I said.  She further explained that if I watched it everyday, soon it would turn into an amazing butterfly, one of the most beautiful ones there are.  That's all it took, I was hooked.  I think this was my very first scientific adventure; I was taking the step beyond just exploring, into focused and purposeful observation.  I was excited!

It didn't take long.  I went out one morning to check, saw it was open.  Upon closer inspection, I saw that the former occupant was long gone.  I was very disappointed to have completely missed the magic of seeing the chrysalis finally open, and the butterfly emerge.  But I did what I could, examining the opened "shell".  With a gust of wind, it detached and blew away before I could catch it.  Gone, just like the butterfly.

Homestead for Sale

Me and my teddy bear out in the yard, circa 1961

I would buy it in a skinny minute, as a retreat for writing, and it would be close to the museum for research. If only I could...

The house I grew up in, the one my grandparents built, is up for sale again. If only I had a spare $100,000  available. It needs a lot of TLC and capital put into it, but I'd find a way to do it if I could. I love that house, I love the land it is on. I love the town it is in. It won't make sense to many others, but it's not just a place. It's my family, my roots, my neighbors, my friends, my history. It's love.

Several people have commented about it, including those that have connections back home, or still live there:

Cleo Bee Jones: I know how you feel, I always wanted to get the land my grandparents farm house had been and built a new house on it and made the rooms bigger and more of them, so all of us 39 grandchildren and families could use it any time...  

Margaret Dykhuis: I agree with you, Trisha. When I drive by the house my father built, I wish for a moment that I still lived there. 

Last Mittens

Sleepovers at Grandma's house. Asleep in the big bed downstairs with Grandma. The one she used to share with Grandpa. The one he died in. Snuggling close to her and loving how her skin smells. Falling asleep feeling happy and safe. Next morning, Grandma makes me milk toast sprinkled with brown sugar, served with hot cocoa...

Among my Grandma Fitzpatrick's many talents, was handiwork. She sewed clothes.  She made pillow cases, dresser scarves, and dish towels, then embroidered them.  And she knitted.

The photos here show some of the last work she did.  She not only knitted, but she repaired what she knitted.  Usually she'd darn them with yarn of the same color and you'd never know they had been repaired.  On this example at left, she had to use what she had on-hand.  We didn't care.  As long as it kept our hands warm!

The pair on the bottom were the last ones she made.  Those who know their knitting will notice she did not have as steady a hand, and a stitch or two may have been dropped.  It was harder for her to see, and her hands were not as nimble as they once were due to arthritis.

No one has ever worn the green mittens, and no one ever will, if I have my way about it.  I have kept them - and a set of dish towels, several sets of pillow cases tucked away, tangible evidence of a woman whose hands made them.  I can look at them, and touch them, and along with memories, the love we had between us comes flooding back.  I will never forget you, Grandma.