How I spent my summer vacation

My nephews, the adorable munchkins, started nursery school today.  They're going to a Waldorf School.  (If that means very little to you, it was new to me as well.  Check out the Wikipedia article on Waldorf education or the Association of Waldorf Schools in North America. ) It's supposed to encourage creative thinking, so I'm all for it.

Anyway, since the nursery school denizens are pre-literate, the school uses little symbols to identify each child's storage cubby and possessions.  Aidan's symbol is an owl.  Liam's is a pine tree.  Very cute.  Then the school told the proud parents that someone would need to embroider the symbols onto the boys' snack towels. 

Embroider? 

I should mention that my sister-in-law is in graduate school, finishing up her coursework and working on her doctoral dissertation.  I have no idea whether she has ever done embroidery, but now really isn't a good time for her to learn or relearn it.  They turned to Mom, who would gladly have done the embroidery, except that her arthritis cut short her needleworking career a decade ago, and even if her fingers were in shape for it, she's scheduled for cataract surgery this month. 

By the time I heard about the embroidery panic, my brother was getting ready to give it a try.  But his eagerness to tackle embroidery can be measured by the fact that as soon as I volunteered to do the needlework, he rushed off to the post office that same day to send me the towels--actually, towels-to-be; what I got was two little squares of terrycloth that needed hemming along with embroidering.  Oh, and two laminated paper medallions from the school, showing the owl and the pine tree, so I'd know what they were supposed to look--that's the two little graphics posted toward the top of this entry.

Mom pitched in by giving me all her old embroidery thread, since she had no plans to use it, and I conferred with a couple of friends who are more seasoned needleworkers, and then I dived in and created an embroidered owl and pine tree.  (At left: my pine tree.  The owl is below, on the right.)   Clearly I have a long way to go to achieve expertise in this  embroidery thing, and if Berkley is looking for someone to write an embroidery-themed mystery series, I am unlikely to be in the running.  But at least my owl and tree are recognizable.  I think.

One of my friends was kind enough to say that my owl looked more nurturing than the original.  Perhaps, but considering that I write books with bird-themed titles, I find it ironic that I seem to be better at embroidering pine trees than owls.

I finished the embroidery and hemming and dashed down to the UPS store to overnight the results to my nephews.  The towels arrived just in the nick of time to accompany the boys to the afternoon session of school today. 

Where my sister-in-law learned that the bags the boys' stuff goes in also have to be embroidered with the owl and the pine tree.  So it looks as if I'll get some more practice in embroidery. 

 

Comments

[Susan]

Donna,

There are also lots of kiosks at the mall and little shops that will do embroidery for you. I've been doing needlework for years and I'm guessing the bags their stuff goes in to will be canvass and you need to use waste canvas to work on...so that's even more work. Personally, for canvas stuff, I'll pay someone else...and it's normally not too bad in prices.