I Had a Dream

Last night I had a dream that I was working on a sock and had finally gotten to the point of trying it on to see how close to the heel I was. Well, there was a big ole hole at the ball of the foot. Bare naked skin was shining through. I was very upset and said to my Grandma Schultz, "This is the first time knitting has ever made me cry." And I cried. Of course there was other weird stuff and jumping around, but as we say in the teaching reading biz, that was the main idea.

It was nice to see Grandma Schultz again. I guess I was thinking about her because at work we had been talking about learning to cook and sew. She moved in with us when I was about 9 or 10, I think. We shared a bedroom and she had an ancient electric White machine in a cabinet with a knee control. That was a great machine. It had 4 drawers and one whole drawer was all buttons, wonderful buttons, which I've been using over the years. This is not a picture of the actual machine. I found this pic on the Internet. Our cabinet did not have a curve and was a different shade of brown. It also had a light bulb in a little cover. I think the one pictured here is a treadle model. Ours looked something like this, but I don't know about the belt. It seems like I remember a belt, but I don't remember it ever breaking or needing replacement.

Grandma was a consumate saver and maker-doer. Afterall, the first half of her childhood was spent on a farm and she was a single parent for a while during the other Depression. (Sometime ask me about what I used for my period at first and how to get rid of a tapeworm.) The button collection has now dwindled alarmingly. I try to replenish it, but it isn't the same.

I say it with pride that I get some of my make do-itiveness from her. Some people see this as fearless creativity. Once I had wanted some little black boot type shoes (read 1980's) and couldn't afford them, but I found a pair that was black leather except that they had large, army green canvas sections that I would probably like now. So I bought them and took a big magic marker and colored the canvas sections black. I had some friends who thought this was highly creative. I don't know about that, but I did get the shoes that I wanted.