Pieces of the Whole
Not to be outdone, Jake is looking quite dashing…
As promised, I made Jake a top hat…but it was his sister Marceline who made it work.
Today I was helping a friend pack up multiple boxes of household goods to give to various local charities. She’d had a garage sale a couple of weeks ago, and we were clearing out what remained.
This was in her previous home, which she plans to put on the market as soon as it’s clear of clutter and the carpet is replaced. Until the last few days, the weather has been mild, but the temperatures dropped below freezing last night, and the inside temperature when we arrived was 48 degrees.
Jo handed me a coat she planned to give to Goodwill, asking me, as she helped me put it on, if I had a good winter coat. “This one’s vicuña,” she said with a smile. I turned around. “It looks good on you.”
It fit, too, but I have a winter coat, and declined her offer. Later, I got to thinking about. Vicuña — isn’t that a luxury fiber? I’d just been wondering what coat I would wear if I had the opportunity to go somewhere dressier than my usual haunts (that is to say, something that required more than jeans). I hated to see such a lovely coat go to Goodwill…it could end up belonging to someone with no appreciation for vicuña.
Vintage vicuña, at that. A coat like this can go for thousands of dollars today. I accepted her offer.
Suddenly, I felt like a princess. Trust me, this coat isn’t being worn on a regular basis. It won’t be stuffed in a locker at work or thrown in the back seat of my car because the day has warmed up. It will be treasured.
Vicuña are the endangered cousins of llamas, adorable creatures whose wool was once only permitted for the clothing of Incan royalty (you see why I felt like a princess). Fiber made from this precious fleece is like spun gold.
I’m running out for cedar blocks to hang in my coat closet. No moth better even think of chomping on my coat.
I’m in awe of this treasure, and thankful my friend thought of me.
Some days bring unexpected blessings.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay
Aw, da kittums.
Not long ago I re-blogged a post about a book with knitting and crochet patterns for cats, Cats in Hats. I bemoaned the idea of dressing one’s cat up in costumes of any sort, but was wise enough to leave the door open for the possibility I might give in to those really cute hats.
Wise, because predictably I’ve bonded with a co-worker, Asia, over our love of cats. So much so that when I found out her kitty Jake will wear bow ties, I told her about Cats in Hats, knowing full well I was about to knit a hat for a cat. Not because she would ask me to do so, but because I couldn’t resist crazy cute.
And if I wasn’t hooked by the idea of her big orange cat wearing a knit hat, this dinosaur cap completely did me in.
IS THIS NOT CRAZY CUTE? Jake wasn’t quite as enamored of the cap as Asia and I were, but he looked adorable.
Next comes a top hat to go with his bow tie. I’m going to have to create a pattern for that one, but I’m figuring it out…after all, it’s a tube on a flat circle…should be easy.
Yes, I did try it on Walter, but he immediately shook it off and gave me a dirty look. So my cats will be staying home this Halloween.
By the way, Cats in Hats was so popular there are now multiple books available with knitted kitty clothing. We really are a crazy bunch.
Today I called my brother with some upsetting news. Once again, factors beyond my control were thwarting my plans to move forward.
He was the only one who would fully understand how challenging it would be for me, because he’d been with me from the start of the events that led to the distress of today.
My brother was there for me before I even knew I needed him.
Growing up, we weren’t close. It was my brother and sister who were allies, often, it felt, against me. Certainly I was on the outside.
Yet we share a history, sometimes a laughable yet now bonding one. Once, he asked if I remembered the cookie-eating bear from the Andy Williams Show, a popular variety program in our childhood.
I didn’t, and he was legitimately shocked, because I have a tremendous memory. He calls it memory for useless trivia, which is a little hurtful, because my memory includes much more than that.
Some months later there was a two-hour A&E biography about Andy Williams that I watched start to finish, just to see if this cookie-eating bear would be mentioned. He was, almost as an afterthought, in the last 30 seconds.
I sat through two hours of a biography I didn’t give a rip about just for my brother. I’d do an incomparable amount more if I could.
At the end of my phone call today, I gulped out a thank you for listening to me. He said, with a bit of surprise, “of course!” He’d said the same thing several years ago when I thanked him for flying out, at great expense, to be by my side at a time I can’t conceive of surviving alone.
He took over when I was absolutely lost, and later let go when I’d regained my strength, focus and independence. I’d never known what it was like to have someone value me that much before.
He’s two years younger than me, an age difference that become irrelevant sometime around high school. We started to connect more then.
I remember a sweet, red-haired girl who had, to say the least, a huge crush on him. We had a class together, and she talked about him endlessly to me. I really wanted him to reciprocate her feelings, but I knew full well he did not.
I was, however, proud of the way he treated her. Although he was clear he wasn’t equally interested, he let her know he thought her interest was a high compliment. Of course that just intensified her feelings for a time, but it was the right way to handle it.
Now he has a daughter, sixteen years old, who no doubt brings all the frustrations a girl that age can carry. I hold my breath, then relax, as I watch him value her in the same concrete ways he values me and valued that cute girl in our high school years.
He’s proven there isn’t anything he wouldn’t do for me. In a lifetime we may or may not be lucky enough to fully show our love for those who mean the most to us.
I’ve been blessed to be on the receiving end of that love and sacrifice from my brother, a humbling and heartening experience for me. It has changed the core of me, my essential self.
A special thank you to those of you who have been following my blog long enough to remember this post!
My World With Words 
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