She Lives
A few months ago, I wrote about my Grandma Rosie and what her creative legacy meant to me. This month has been rough. Last week would have been her birthday. This past weekend was also Father’s Day. And if you read my recent post about my Dad Project, you know why that is an especially emotional day for me. Then I walked into Goodwill and saw a piece of pottery that nearly brought me to my knees — I was immediately transported to her living room, plastic covered couches and everything. There she was, sitting in her little chair by the window working on a baby blanket. I fired off a text to my two aunts and my cousin with one word: GRANDMA. Right away all three of them emphatically agreed. She is everywhere — and I know she would have gotten such a kick out of what I’ve been working on lately.
In that post about her creative legacy, I mentioned that I had started a special crochet project that was supposed to be a Christmas present for my husband — a monster. If you know me well, you know that I do NOT like long term projects. It’s like a neon blinking light in the corner of my eye screaming at the top of its lungs to be finished. This project, however, was not something I could complete quickly. While I have played around a lot with amigurumi, there was still a lot I had to learn. The book I was working from, Crochet Monsters, is basically a buffet of monster body parts — different heads, bodies, arms, legs, tails, and more — that you mix and match to build your creature. Tom had spotted one he loved in a photo in the book, so I had a vision to work toward. But I still had to learn how to make each individual piece, how to stuff them properly, and then how to assemble everything into something that actually looked intentional. Plus, I wanted this project to be AWESOME and not just done.
I was excited to purchase yarn from a new-to-me yarn shop very close to my house called Wool & Co. The first time I went, I was blown away by the incredible selection and quality — yarns I had never experienced in my life. Grandma Rosie would have lost her mind in that store. I picked out my yarn, headed home, and got started.
Immediately I discovered there was going to be a learning curve. It took me forever to figure out how to create the gap where his teeth were going to be inserted. By the time I got that sorted out, it was clear I was going to run out of yarn. The holidays hit, which meant I dove headfirst into baking, and before I knew it, there was no way he was going to be done in time for Christmas. Tom was absolutely okay with the delay. He wanted him to be perfect — and so did I.
No problem — winter in Illinois is the perfect time to hole up inside and work on a crochet project. But things were super stressful at work, and I had taken on a crazy idea with Wanda Can Do Anything. My monster sat in his project box and kept getting moved from one corner of the Oodle table to another. Eventually he was shelved, and I told myself I would get back to him when I could — which meant he was not going to be ready for Tom’s birthday in April either.
I never expected to lose my job at the end of April. I’m not going to lie — it was a kick in the teeth to lose a job that I not only loved, but was really good at. But as the weeks go by, the silver linings are getting clearer. One of them was oodles of time to return to long-since-shelved projects. It didn’t take long to get back to work on him, and this week I finally turned a corner. The end was in sight. I was most nervous about assembling all the pieces — this is where he could look more like Frankenstein’s monster than an adorable creation of love.
I channeled Grandma Rosie like never before. I laid everything out, pinned the different pieces into place, and little by little started attaching them. I left everything untied so I could go back and adjust anything that was cattywampus, but shockingly, everything lined up just right. Tom was still in his office working when I finished. I told him to close his eyes so I could get the monster onto the shelf. He was delighted.
And somewhere, I’m pretty sure Grandma Rosie was too — proud that I took what she taught me and ran with it, all the way to a shelf full of monster parts and a husband who couldn’t stop smiling.
