Bedazzled When It’s Done

Bedazzled When It’s Done

    I would have never guessed that our relocation from Maine to Pennsylvania would find us renting a house for four years. As soon as we moved in I put up curtains. Most rental houses are a neutral color scheme - all the more reason for adding color with curtains – but the curtains I had on hand were a safe-white, cast off from windows gone- by. “White is okay,” I thought, “after all, anytime now we will be moving again.”

    We are now in a house of our own. Just before the move various projects swirled in my head. No more neutral – Oh, to be surrounded with daring color. Peach paint – that will be a warm color for our bathroom. I lay awake during the early mornings, planning “colors” before I was up on my feet. I imagined a curtain fabric of a honey brown - with flowers, too; flowers that incorporated the peach of the walls and the white of the trim. Stepping into one of the many quilters’ shops here in Lancaster, I found exactly what I was looking for. I was elated. But it was months after I purchased the fabric, months after we had moved into this house, that the curtains were still a work-in-progress. I always have a work-in-progress. This time I had too many.

    Yolanda (married and living nearby) came by for a visit and after we had lunch I sprang it on her. “My curtain project is dragging on. I’ve lost my initial enthusiasm. Would you help me finish what I started before Christmas? All that’s needed is the hemming.”


    “Let’s get at it,” she said. She gave me more than moral support. She sat at my sewing machine and did the hems for me with perfection, right where I had measured and pinned them for her. We first decided upon the height of the tension rod. I wanted optimum light and optimum privacy. Within the hour they were up. “Aren’t they cute?” Yolanda said.
     “I knew they would be,” I smiled, eyes fixed on my new curtains.


    As Yolanda gave me the impetus to finish a work-in-progress, I wish to offer you friendly impetus, too, to enjoy your summer with either a new project or an old one. You will be bedazzled when it’s done.

    Your WIP can’t be as old as my toddler-size ladybug socks. Shall I admit to you that they were started before I needed reading glasses? I found the socks at the bottom of a box of yarn I unpacked and nestled the project in an inviting basket.

    I left off knitting (before our daughters’ weddings) just where I was about to decrease for the toe. Decreasing here is a bit tricky, as the fleur-de-lis pattern must be kept up nearly until the toe is completed. All excuses aside – soon I hope to say, “Aren’t they cute?”

   




    You can tell I am partial to red by the photo of the newest sampler I started. Ahh, another WIP. Just as I have several books started I often have several WIP. In both cases “I pick up the one I feel fit for.” How about you?

    “I know, some people get their thrills climbing mountains, but why go through all that trouble when a similar feeling of accomplishment can be experienced in a little time, with a little domestic thing?” Karen Andreola A Charlotte Mason Companion page 328.