The letter…

Dear Eric Lancaster,

We find it necessary to inform you that our pediatrics practice will no longer be able to serve as your doctors.  Our office treats patients from birth through age 20…

I knew it was inevitable, one day my kids would be grown, and life without them would be so different.  This simple letter from my son’s pediatrician was sort of a smack in the face, a reminder that they are almost grown, my son (who reminds me daily) will be 21 in 20 days.  Tomorrow it will be 19 days.  The day after that will be 18 days…

Still, the letter was a sad reminder that the years spent with my son as a child are over.  Can I take a minute to say that I love this doctor?  I love the way he always listened, the way he could assess a situation in about four seconds.  I met him in the hospital the day my son was born, and he has been our family pediatrician for 20 years.  I’ve loved and admired his common sense, his honesty, his discretion, and his humor.  He has served my children well.  The letter goes on to mention how to have records transferred once a suitable physician is selected.

Most of my children’s milestones have been sort of celebrations, “This is my last back to school night…” , This is my last winter fundraiser…”, This is my last HS football game watching my child play in the pep band…”  But this letter is sad.  It has been a wonderful 20 year relationship where I can truly say I trusted this doctor and he never steered me wrong.  He respected me as a parent, and I respected him as a doctor.  I feel like that about my oncologist and surgeon who navigated the ship that steered me through the perils of cancer.  But this is even more poignant, because of the length of the relationship, and that it involved my child.  Who isn’t my child anymore.  He is a man now.  He is finalizing his paperwork to go active in the US Army.  I am proud of who he turned out to be…

And with that, life goes on, and it certainly has in my studio.  One of my resolutions for the new year that I promised myself, is that I wouldn’t let dust grow on my sewing machine.  I wanted to quickly get another project in the works.  One of the things I love about having my blog is the records it keeps for me.  I can do a search and find exactly when I first wrote about something, and then find out it was more than two years ago…   Ouch…

Anyway, assuming most of you haven’t been with me since December of 2008, and if you had, you more than likely wouldn’t remember, so I’ll give a re-cap.  My husband, world traveler that he is, brought me home for Christmas of 2008, two skirt lengths of beautiful handwoven wool plaid from Avoca Handweavers in County Wicklow, Ireland.  He made 10 trips to Ireland in 2008, I read on my blog.  I hadn’t remembered.  Anyway, I made one of the lengths into a skirt, which I wear all the time, and the other I wanted to try something other than a skirt, but wasn’t sure there was enough for a dress.  The fabric was 60″ wide, and I knew I wasn’t that big around, so chances are I’d be able to lay all the dress pieces across the length, and be able to match this very large plaid.

I had made this dress up earlier in the fall, it is the paprika silk one, and I liked the way it fit, with a little extra in the hips.  I’d probably wear it with tights, so it made sense to give it a squoosh more room.  I grabbed the pattern, from Burda World of Fashion Magazine, and laid it out last night, and got the whole thing cut out.  I just have to cut out the underlining, an old piece of Sibonne I’ve had in my stash for 20 years.  I pre-shrunk it, and it is ready to cut tonight.

And…  I finished another pair of socks!  That’s three pairs since May.  My stash of socks is growing.  This pair I will say gave me grief.  It showed how anal I am.  This is engineered sock yarn from Berocco.  I expect that the repeat is perfect and that provided my tension remains consistent, the socks will match.  Sadly, when I got near the foot of the second pair, the yarn ball had a splice in it.  The problem was, the splice knocked out about 3/4 of a full repeat, and I was not able to find the right section to make the two toes match.  Can I say that it bugs me?  What is sort of funny is how many in my knitting club thought I was on drugs just for trying to match the socks in the first place.  I want my socks to match.  I’m curious…  How many of you sock knitters intentionally try to get the socks to match up, and how many of you don’t care?  I guess it says something about our personalities whether we try to match our socks or not…   (FYI, my children don’t care about matched socks, hand knit or otherwise.  Two socks of any type are all that matter to them, one on each foot.   They never match.  They can’t really be my children…)