UFOs, Two Aunties, and Me

I just read on Google Homepage that statistically when Mars is closest to earth, we have more UFO sightings. Well, okay, but I am not talking Little Green Men when I am talking UFOs. In embroidery parlance a UFO is an Un Finished Object. Maybe not as exotic but a whole lot more troublesome.

I know people who have years of unfinished projects, maybe decades. They take a class or start a chart or buy a kit; work on them a bit; and then lay them aside for the next bright shining object that catches their eye. I am not like that and two of my friends are not like that either.

Carole and Ann are the Aunties. This is a title bestowed upon them by Carole and reinforced by life's experiences. The niece in question is my daughter Barrett. Barrett was in the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso in western Africa for two years from 2003 to 2005 right after graduating from college. She was ill on several occasions and even had to be med-evacuated back to Washington DC at one point. But she went back and continued with her goal--to finish the two years. When her leave time came in the middle of the two years, my sister Albie, Barrett's biological aunt, offered to send me to Ouagadougou, the capital ,for two weeks for a visit and to see the sights. It was wonderful of Albie to do this--and I still thank her for the thought. However, there was no way I was going to Africa after Barrett had been so ill there. So I asked Albie if she would send me to London where Barrett could meet me. It was, I thought, a wonderful solution--it got Barrett out of Africa for two weeks and I got out of the US to see Barrett.

The First Gilded Halo Angel
Hardanger on painted cotton

That plan was set up and then I asked my two best buddies to come with me, Ann and Carole. Ann and I have been best friends for fifty years. We have been through thick and then, high and low, marriages, children, grandchildren, and moves on both our parts to foreign countries. Carole and I met in the 80s while she was teaching and drumming up memberships for EGA. I was living in Utah at the time and she was in NM. And so the three of us met Barrett at Heathrow, got in a car with Barrett driving and preceded to let England see us. We took care of her, fed her up, made sure she was rested. And they became the Aunties.

Gilded Halo Angel

Hardanger on painted cotton

A completed angel, she has several sisters not completed

Well, back to embroidery and UFOs--I live my life essentially UFO free. Occasionally I have had some lag time having to start a new project before finishing the one at hand, but then I complete the two of them and move on. I have had many chances to create a UFO list, but I have enough baggage I drag along in my life--I don't need UFOs too. When I take a class and don't finish (the vast majority), I strip the project of materials that I can use in something else and put the rest in a file folder for reference. If I start a project of my own and it is not working out, I abandon the work, strip it of usable stuff and throw it away. Right now I have one unfinished project that is languishing, but I feel no need to ever finish it unless it is accepted as a proposed class. That UFO consists of two or three Hardanger angels in various stages of completion.

Carole works in the same way, or nearly the same way, finishing each project and moving on to the next. Being a professional embroidery master judge, she has to take a lot of classes just to keep up with the current trends in needlework. She does original work too, so she is busy all the time.

Ann is a little newer to the wonderful world of EGA. Just before she retired from one of her jobs, she joined EGA as Life Member. The only EGA meetings she had attended were with me. Right now she is a MAL--member at large--and is looking for the right chapter. Because she lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming she doesn't have many to choose from in her immediate vicinity. I taught Ann colcha one morning several years ago. She took that technique and ran with it and now turns out original colchas. Colcha is not only the name of the native New Mexican embroidery, but is also the Spanish word for bedspread. She makes colcha colchas. Ann works like I do--virtually UFO free.

I am planning my next project while I am working on my current one. There is always a next project. They key here is not to buy stuff for a project too early. That project may not get started, let alone done. I have a good stash that I have built up over many years. I try to work out of my stash if I possibly can. The stash is generic rather than specific.

So now I am within a day or two if finishing my Bee Book--I will show it to you when I am done--and I am in the planning stages of my next project. Easy, peasy.