Sunday, April 21, 2013

Stash Report - You Are Going To Be Entertained!

Have I got a treat for you!

I didn't get much done, in fact I don't think I got ANYTHING done this week.  It was a wild week with Frank spending a week in the Houston Airport one night.  (Think about that one for a minute.)

But I have great news.  You know how I have to clean up my quilt room, DESPERATELY   Well I took a step in that direction on Saturday.  But first let me tell you a story.

When Frank and I got married 40 years ago, we were really poor.  Like $400 to our name poor.  And we moved into an apartment in Baton Rouge for him to finish college at LSU.  And we had no furniture.  My friend had made a sofa.  I sure wish I had pictures of it.  It looked sort of like a huge bean bag.  And it was the most comfortable thing ever.  Her husband bent over to pick up the newspaper one day and threw his back out.  No more low-on-the-ground sofa for them!  So we got it.  After we were able to afford a real sofa, my cousin got it.  And she used it until she got married when she turned 40.  It was certainly a comfortable and well loved thing.  

My dad was a fairly good woodworker and he offered to make us three bookcases.  They would give us our 3rd, 4th and 5th pieces of furniture ever.  After he graduated and enlisted in the Air Force we moved those bookcases from Baton Rouge, to San Antonio, to Wichita Falls, to Abilene and back to Kenner, LA (a suburb of New Orleans where we grew up).  When we bought the house in Hammond, north of us, there was no place for the bookcases and Frank's mother took them in Shreveport, LA (the very farthest north of Louisiana).  And when she moved to Baton Rouge to die they went to my mother in Laplace and then to Baton Rouge when she moved to Assisted Living.  Now, with her in hospice, they live in our storage shed that holds most of the stuff that used to belong to Frank's mother (because he can't get rid of it).

So this long story has brought you to my quilt room.  I was impatiently waiting for Frank to get off my computer and I was folding up some fabrics.  I imagined being in a library with a bookcase extending into the room and holding all my stuff that is sitting in the middle of my studio floor.  It hit me that I needed a bookcase!

So we have struggled for the last two hours, putting one of those bookcases into my studio and cleaning up some of that center room area.  I think I can get a lot of stuff into that bookcase.  It is currently standing in the hallway, waiting for me to make room for it tomorrow.

My hallway? you inquire.  Carrie and I painted it when she was a wee girl of maybe 12.  I can't imagine painting over it.  She designed it, created the stencils, and chose the pattern and the paints.  She was a designer even then.  That is a commissioned watercolor of my beloved Max, my greatest dog ever.  He was my shadow, my thoughts were his.

I am excited.  My room will be cleaned.  And my dad would be very happy to know I am still in possession of his work.  He has been gone since 1989.  Not all my memories of him are happy, but this one is.

Yes.  And I still have two bookcases left!  LOL.

2 comments:

  1. Those are nice shelves! You can't beat something handmade...and by your dad too! Even if all your memories are not the best, he's still your dad and glad to hear these shelves bring z bit Of a smile to you.
    The pix of Max is very nice and your daughters stencils...just z wonderful thing to have hanging out for memories!

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  2. Nice, very nice! I left all my book shelves back east when I moved. I really miss them.
    Love the stenciling on the walls. Had a friend who lived in a Victorian house that did something similar, loved hers too.
    If I did stenciling, I imagine it would be dog prints, vs. grapes or flowers!! :)

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