Patches

Does anybody else remember this song? It's kind of stuck in my mind today, after what turned out to be my major accomplishment of the day.


A couple of days ago, I noticed there was a small hole in the knee of one of Meital's pairs of sweatpants. She is so slim and long-waisted, the only pants that are comfortable for her are sweatpants with an elastic waist, so these get a lot of wear. And we all know that holes like this never get any smaller.


So I set out to put a patch on the hole. Good thing I always save the leftovers whenever I hack off the extra length on, er I mean hem, sweatpants! Yup, I keep them for years and years in my fabric stash. Which is really odd, because I hate to sew, so what am I doing with a fabric stash?? One of the truly existential mysteries of the universe. But I digress. I have always added extra patches whenever I need to cover a hole, so that the result looks (or so I hope) more like a fashion make-over than a mending job. And since lately I am fascinated by the work of Kristin Nicholas, I decided that plain old squares just wouldn't do.


This is a photo taken mid-process. I ended up putting on three patches; one on the offending hole in the knee, one near the bottom of the opposite leg, and one on a front pocket. They are all double-layered stars, all with a lazy daisy in the center. Now, although I am only an occasional seamstress, and an almost-never embroiderer, it wouldn't have taken even me all day to complete this project. But we had a steady drip, drip, drip of small editing and translating jobs come in today. It seemed like every time I got my rhythm back with needle and thread, there was another rub at the lamp*. Er, I mean another job came in.

Naturally, I didn't get any cross stitching, rubber stamping, card making or just about anything else done today. But that's okay. I've been wanting to do some embroidery like this for awhile, and it was nice to have this excuse. I asked Meital if she thought the kids at school would tease her or think her patches were babyish, and she told me she didn't care what anyone else thought. She thinks her patches are cool, and that's good enough for her. What a kid!


In other news, I received a treasure trove from my friend Daylene. Being the wonderful stamper and friend that she is, Daylene responded to my plea a week or so ago for a single stamped image. But then she sent me approximately 28 of those images, in all different colors, with and without embossing. But that's not all! Daylene also sent me this gorgeous card you see in the photo, and the stunningly fabulous necklace made from a curved domino. How cool is that?!?! And that's not all! Daylene also included two beautiful bookmarks for my girls (do you hear that? It's the sound of my heart melting). I didn't get a photo of them before the girls whisked them off with cries of, "It's wonderful! Tell her thank you! Tell her I'm going to use it in my English book!" (Note: my girls read novels in both English and Hebrew, so they always have two books going at one time).



Yes, I'd say today was a pretty wonderful day. Patches and all.

*Lizzie, that one was for you!