Pineberry Lane Progress

Saturday:  I had just a little time in the morning to do a bit more stitching.

The rest of the day was consumed by a nephew's wedding.  The Nuptial Mass was at 3pm and the Reception was at 6:00pm.  Now, I love my nephew but I do dislike the folderol that is the modern wedding.  My first pet peeve is the current practice of leaving a two hour gap between the end of the Mass and the beginning of the reception so that the bridal party can engage in a photo shoot that rivals that of a top designer's introduction of his new Spring line.  Oh, and we have to leave some more time for the bridal party to get drunk in a party bus while their guests twiddle their thumbs for two hours in a parking lot somewhere.  Luckily, my Mom had a little interim gathering for those few relatives traveling from a distance who attended both the wedding and the reception.  Most of the relatives faced with this dilemma just attended the reception.  Since, to my way of thinking, the actual marriage ceremony is the most significant part of the day, I consider this a crying shame.  Then, there is the reception itself: an over lavish, noisy, crowded party that the guests are expected to subsidize by giving a cash wedding gift equal to or exceeding the cost of their "plate".   We left the reception as early as we decently could at 9:00pm with the excellent face-saving excuse that my 85 year old mother couldn't tolerate the noise anymore and asked us to drive her home.   She had come with my sister Kate and her husband Tom, who like to party and end up staying till all hours.  The perception was that Bill and I made a sacrifice but the reality was that we were delighted to leave early.

The next wedding will be in October, in Boston, so there will be travel, hotel and meals added to the mix.  Since there are 9 more single nieces and nephews in their twenties I can only expect this to go on for a couple more years.  The things one does for family!  I know I must sound like an absolute Scrooge but I really don't understand why this generation of middle class kids believe they are entitled to have weddings that rival those of  the rich and famous.  The only one of my three children to marry kept to a sensible budget since my daughter-in-law's single Mom was not in a position to throw a lavish wedding.  The kids paid half and we, the parents, paid half.  But my siblings and their children are far more status conscious whereas I am an aging hippie with a whole different set of values.  My attitude about weddings can be summed up in the phrase, "Keep it simple."  And definitely, don't go into debt for a wedding that is, after all, just one day in a lifetime together.

Sunday:  The Open House for my Good Shepherd Catechesis atrium went really well and I am hoping to have at least 10 students in my free four week pilot program.  A good number of parents and grandparents took applications.  The pilot program will be a kind of shakedown cruise for the official opening of the full year program in September.

As to Sunday stitching, I finished the Autumn on Marigold Lane sampler and got back to stitching on the Town Square Bakery.  I have plans to stitch three Town Square pieces in a row so as to catch up to my goal of one Town Square ornament a month.

Monday:  I continued stitching on the Bakery from the Town Square series.  I had no time before work to stitch but I did manage 3/4 of an hour on my lunch break and a little more after dinner.  I was slowed down a bit by the need to frog out the word Bakery.  It just wasn't popping in the charted colors and my brilliant idea of back stitching it in white only made it look messy.  So, I frogged the whole word, back stitching and all, and restitched it in white.  It was an annoyingly fussy and delicate task to frog out the back stitching and the letters but it was worth the aggravation.  Once I have finished a few more Town Square buildings, I'll get back to The English Band Sampler.  I think I over dosed on the charts that kept appearing in my Goals lists each month and needed a break from them in March.  So I am easing my way back into the whole process of stitching UFOs and Class Projects, alternating between the lists when choosing projects for my monthly goals lists.  When I finish the sampler from the UFO list, I'll get back to working on the Mystic Smalls from the Class Projects list.  When finished with that, I'll choose a project from the UFOs list and so on and so on.  I'll slip in some new starts to keep the variety going strong.    Two years working on only old projects has made what used to be a joy into a chore.  I am reclaiming the joy.

Tuesday:  I did a bit more stitching on the Bakery from the Town Square series and am nearly done with the piece, just the window displays left to stitch.  I'll start on the Shoe Shrine from the same series next.