Weekend Activities

We are a family filled with a passion for the arts, both performing and visual, and with myriad artistic interests. We play musical instruments, sing, write, take pictures, and make things with our hands—all sorts of things in all kinds of mediums. We are artists. We create.

These passions have extended to the third generation. Ridley can hardly sit still without having a drawing pad and colored pencil in her hand. In her house and mine, she knows right where to go to find all her art supplies. And Boston is very interested in my fabric and buttons and thread.

I had the babes overnight on Friday, which became sewing and dyeing time. Boston has been wanting me to make him a snake that is hollow inside so he can feed it things. Friday night we ran to Jo-Ann's after supper at Panera and picked out some fleece and some silky lining. Once home, he decided the shape of the snake's head, and we cut and sewed. He had told me the snake would have a zippered mouth and a red tongue that rolled up into the mouth when you wanted to zip the zipper.

Two or three times on Friday night, I threaded my Bernina 1630 and each time said, "Over this, around that, up the right, down the left . . ." On Saturday morning while I was fixing breakfast, he decided he wanted a different color thread, so sat down and successfully threaded the machine. By himself. At eight-and-a-half years of age. With no help from me.

Anyone who sews will tell you that threading the machine is difficult. You must make sure you pass the thread through each of the eight or so nooks and crannies or the machine just won't sew. Well, he got all the nooks, crannies, and the tiny little eye in the needle. I was astonished!

Ridley spent time looking at all my bottles of fiber reactive dye, and chose "antique gold" (although she kept calling it an-tee-cue) and "lilac". Then we dug a silk scarf out of my stash and gave it a base bath of gold, then folded and clamped and finished our mini-shibori experiment with lilac. She said, "It's going to be cold today. I think I'll wear it to my soccer game to stay warm." I had to explain that a silk scarf is something you wear for dress-up, not for warmth.

I love that my grandkids think that I, with a needle and thread, can do everything there is to do. And I especially love that they want to learn to do everything I do.

I said to Ridley, "Do you know how you are like Grandma? Because we both have lots of interests and not enough time." She smiled.