Reflections On Unfinished Things
My aunt's passing earlier this year, and the subsequent need to deal with her posessions put a few things into sharp relief for me. Besides having to deal with the vast extent of her packratting and hoarding, going through the unfinished projects was a sad business.
To backtrack, my aunt, as well as my mother and her two other sisters and my grandmother are all interested in fibre arts of various stripes (and various other crafty things besides). You name it, and one of them has done one or several of the following: knitting, patchworking, quilting, embroidery, cross-stitch, sewing, weaving, crocheting etc. You get the idea. My aunt though was the quintessential fibre artist, especially once her kids were grown up and after her divorce. She had a pretty impressive output, and was always working on numerous projects. As we would find out after she died, she was working on more projects than she could ever finish, even had she lived a lot longer.
It had long been kind of a running joke that she would buy up lots of stuff when various fabric and crafty stores went out of business, and we all knew she had enough to last her for ages. We realised once we started to go through her stuff that she could have easily opened her own store. And I only helped with packing and sorting one day, and I didn't see the full extent. In a way this in itself was sad, because it seems to have been indicative of a problem that ran much deeper than anyone had known about. I know that as her passing neared, she was extremely reluctant to hand over financial information to her sons, because it illustrated that she was in debt a fair bit because of the way she would buy lots of things that interested her.
Even besides the craft stuff and bales of wool and fabric that were taken from her apartment, there were boxes upon boxes upon boxes of cooking books and other books. It was amazing that so much stuff had even fit into her place. Though, from what I was told, some of the rooms had only a pathway left to get to places, so it was certainly getting out of control.
The saddest part for me was just the many projects that she had started and would never finish. Many of the unused items are easy (or easier) to try and sell, but partially completed projects not so much. Quite a few of these unfinished projects have been distributed amongst the family so that we can either complete them ourselves, or get someone to complete them. Those of us who adopted a project paid for them too, in part because often the materials had substantial value anyway, and to help offset the bills and debts that she left behind.
Besides getting a Matrushka doll that I had asked her for (my father had brought it back from a trip to Russia and given it to her, so it had significant meaning for me in that way), I adopted a cross-stitch project, one of a "Mandala" series that she had bought many of. My mother and both my aunts also bought one of the "Mandala" series, and I think some of my cousins also ended up with them or were at least interested. These are all elaborate cross-stitch projects, and my aunt had stitched parts of most of them. Never one to scrimp, my aunt went for the lush versions of all the materials (it could have been done with regular cotton embroidery floss, but she went for the nicer/more expensive option). The materials include nicer linen to stitch on, as well as real silk embroidery floss, and actual crystals and beads (including Swarovski stuff).
The Mandala I picked was the "Egypt Garden" mandala. The pattern is from an artist called Martina Weber (http://chatelaine-design.de/newweb/). She did a series of Mandala garden patterns. Of all the patterns that my aunt had, I was immediately drawn to that one, I've always had a fascination with Egypt since I was young. Lucky for me (and perhaps unsurprising really), what I liked wasn't what my other aunts or my mother had already picked for themselves, so it was still availible for me.
The finished version looks like this:
My aunt had stitched less than a quarter of mine, so there is a lot for me to do. It's a challenge, because it is also includes difficult stitches, and I haven't done cross-stitch in a long long while. I do however have other simpler projects that I want to do before I start on this, including a cross-stitch safari sampler for Dashiell.
This is a picture of the work completed by my aunt:
And two close-ups of the level of detail in the piece. You can also see the beads and metallic threads in it too, though the crystals are harder to spot:
I will say though that I feel lucky that my aunt did work on so many items, and that she left behind a large body of creative work, which her relatives can remember her by for decades to come. I also like the fact that I will be able to work on this piece, knowing that she too worked on it, and that it will be a collaboration of sorts.
The one thing though that her passing did underscore to me is that I need to work harder to actually focus and finish projects, and try and restrain myself from starting too many projects and never finishing them. There were unfinished projects amongst my aunts things that I know had been waiting to be finished for at least a decade, pieces that had needed maybe an hour or two more of work, but were then abandoned for a more pressing interest. That was one of the saddest things for me, the amount of unfinished potential I guess.
And so I will try to use all of this knowledge as the core for a New Year's resolution, though I do generally hate them. I guess though that it's more of an attempt at a permanent life change, rather than a resolution, as they never seem to be quite permanent.
Maybe some of you can walk away with the same intentions from what I have written. I hope so.
To backtrack, my aunt, as well as my mother and her two other sisters and my grandmother are all interested in fibre arts of various stripes (and various other crafty things besides). You name it, and one of them has done one or several of the following: knitting, patchworking, quilting, embroidery, cross-stitch, sewing, weaving, crocheting etc. You get the idea. My aunt though was the quintessential fibre artist, especially once her kids were grown up and after her divorce. She had a pretty impressive output, and was always working on numerous projects. As we would find out after she died, she was working on more projects than she could ever finish, even had she lived a lot longer.
It had long been kind of a running joke that she would buy up lots of stuff when various fabric and crafty stores went out of business, and we all knew she had enough to last her for ages. We realised once we started to go through her stuff that she could have easily opened her own store. And I only helped with packing and sorting one day, and I didn't see the full extent. In a way this in itself was sad, because it seems to have been indicative of a problem that ran much deeper than anyone had known about. I know that as her passing neared, she was extremely reluctant to hand over financial information to her sons, because it illustrated that she was in debt a fair bit because of the way she would buy lots of things that interested her.
Even besides the craft stuff and bales of wool and fabric that were taken from her apartment, there were boxes upon boxes upon boxes of cooking books and other books. It was amazing that so much stuff had even fit into her place. Though, from what I was told, some of the rooms had only a pathway left to get to places, so it was certainly getting out of control.
The saddest part for me was just the many projects that she had started and would never finish. Many of the unused items are easy (or easier) to try and sell, but partially completed projects not so much. Quite a few of these unfinished projects have been distributed amongst the family so that we can either complete them ourselves, or get someone to complete them. Those of us who adopted a project paid for them too, in part because often the materials had substantial value anyway, and to help offset the bills and debts that she left behind.
Besides getting a Matrushka doll that I had asked her for (my father had brought it back from a trip to Russia and given it to her, so it had significant meaning for me in that way), I adopted a cross-stitch project, one of a "Mandala" series that she had bought many of. My mother and both my aunts also bought one of the "Mandala" series, and I think some of my cousins also ended up with them or were at least interested. These are all elaborate cross-stitch projects, and my aunt had stitched parts of most of them. Never one to scrimp, my aunt went for the lush versions of all the materials (it could have been done with regular cotton embroidery floss, but she went for the nicer/more expensive option). The materials include nicer linen to stitch on, as well as real silk embroidery floss, and actual crystals and beads (including Swarovski stuff).
The Mandala I picked was the "Egypt Garden" mandala. The pattern is from an artist called Martina Weber (http://chatelaine-design.de/newweb/). She did a series of Mandala garden patterns. Of all the patterns that my aunt had, I was immediately drawn to that one, I've always had a fascination with Egypt since I was young. Lucky for me (and perhaps unsurprising really), what I liked wasn't what my other aunts or my mother had already picked for themselves, so it was still availible for me.
The finished version looks like this:
My aunt had stitched less than a quarter of mine, so there is a lot for me to do. It's a challenge, because it is also includes difficult stitches, and I haven't done cross-stitch in a long long while. I do however have other simpler projects that I want to do before I start on this, including a cross-stitch safari sampler for Dashiell.
This is a picture of the work completed by my aunt:
And two close-ups of the level of detail in the piece. You can also see the beads and metallic threads in it too, though the crystals are harder to spot:
I will say though that I feel lucky that my aunt did work on so many items, and that she left behind a large body of creative work, which her relatives can remember her by for decades to come. I also like the fact that I will be able to work on this piece, knowing that she too worked on it, and that it will be a collaboration of sorts.
The one thing though that her passing did underscore to me is that I need to work harder to actually focus and finish projects, and try and restrain myself from starting too many projects and never finishing them. There were unfinished projects amongst my aunts things that I know had been waiting to be finished for at least a decade, pieces that had needed maybe an hour or two more of work, but were then abandoned for a more pressing interest. That was one of the saddest things for me, the amount of unfinished potential I guess.
And so I will try to use all of this knowledge as the core for a New Year's resolution, though I do generally hate them. I guess though that it's more of an attempt at a permanent life change, rather than a resolution, as they never seem to be quite permanent.
Maybe some of you can walk away with the same intentions from what I have written. I hope so.