October 21, 2014

THIS REMINDS ME OF MY DAD

He is a character and in his 40s, he took to knitting. It runs in our family, which is mostly from North Carolina. His mom was an expert at tatting, that insane procedure where you hand-stitch together lace. LACE! She would make whole bedspreads out of it, which could take a year. Even as her eyesight deteriorated. She loved busy work-the idea of never remaining idle cuz that's the devil's workshop. She passed it down to my sister as well. It's very beautiful and only done in white, as far as I know. Anyhoo, my dad would knit ski caps and send them to a very poor African village. He really went to town and must have exported hundreds of his creations. The problem? He has zero sense of style or color and while I'm partially color-blind, his designs clashed even to me! So I always giggled that there was some tribe in Africa whose attributes would be listed as "skilled in fishing, performs regular rituals and wears the butt-ugliest hats ever known to man!"