The photographic evidence. These took a great chunk of True History of the Kelly Gang (not all its 14 hours), all of "I, Claudius" (13 episodes) and all of a six-episode "Mansfield Park" that had to recommend it only that it wasn't the "updated" 1999 version (Edmund Bertram is not hot, let alone in a 1983 bodice-ripper way), and seven hours of I Am Charlotte Simmons. I'm a little slow.
Emlet's was a bought stocking. Sewing her name into place took eleventy-nine years because I had to reach further and further into the toe for each letter. I beaded her name in red seed beads, sewed on the letters, covered the joins of beaded loops with pompoms where necessary, added the red velvet cuff atop the made one, and strung and sewed the bead and jingle trim to the cuff.
Siblet's stocking went a little easier. Emlet's was the last of the made stockings in the store, so I had to cut and stitch Siblet's from fabric, but I could do that after I sewed the name down. My embroidery hoop to hold the fabric taut and its not yet being a tube made that much easier. I figured out, possibly by the final E in Emlet, how to close loops of wire, hence no pompoms in the latter two stockings, but I was still clumsy shaping the letters, hence the squarish O in Siblet.
When I bought the red stocking fabric, a day or two after the first supply run, I didn't find green velvet so I used red furry stuff instead. I had already sewn it, completely butchering the join of leg to cuff necessitating the four-pompom camouflage (seen between cuff and leg), when yet a third supply run netted me SFR's green velvet.
I could find only red and silver jingle bells, not the green jingles I had envisioned. I might have used green or red seed beads instead of silver for the trim of the silver-jingled ones, but after completing each name I hated those beads. The straight, unshaped trim didn't drive me nearly as much to distraction.
SFR's stocking is a little bigger than the other two because I felt really bad about Siblet's, which I sewed from fabric, being accidentally smaller than sister Emlet's prefab one--I patterned Siblet's on Emlet's but then took too much hem. But SFR's being significantly wider and longer shouldn't register on the unfairness scale, since she is in a different family. It's the (slighter) difference between Emlet's and Siblet's that worries me. RDC says that it's okay because Siblet is smaller than Emlet: but that is older-sibling rationale right there, OMFB. She won't always be smaller, only younger.
My favorite is Emlet's, even though it's the messiest. I like the red bead on green better than the green on red, and I like the contrast of leg and cuff. I am not sure I'm done with Siblet's, though the rule of this sort of thing is To Know When To Leave It the Hell Alone Already: it wants, or I want, more green. Hmm. Maybe I could redo the trim with green seed beads instead of silver? SFR's cuff is too long, maybe to the point of out of proportion, and still needs a loop to hang it by.
Overall, though, I'm quite pleased.
Another illustration of how my mother is ready to think the worse and not the better of me.
With some backstory: one summer in the early '90s my mother accepted my suggestion to go to the White Elephant Sale. Wishing to avoid the clusterfuck of little bluehaired old ladies much more skilled at rummaging through others' castoffs than parallel parking, I parked farther from the Congregational Church than my mother would have wished. She complained of the distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile, despite my having offered to drop her closer, and she complained that I walked too fast. "It’s not a race," she chided me. I wasn't racing but walking, and told her she could opt to keep pace with me as well as I slow for her. She tried to make me guilty for not adopting her head down, eyes on toes gait, or for having a healthy stride, or uncomfortable for not pairing up. This was hardly incentive for me to stay by her side, and I continued at my own pace.
While she didn't, I am glad to say, increase her volume to keep me within range, she did resume the haranguing when she got to the churchyard where we waited. She said something about how "everyone" must think me very rude to walk away from my mother. I didn't contradict the obvious weak bit in that, that passersby and driversby were unlikely to have noticed or judged our relationship, and that unlike her I didn't care if people looked at me funny.
Whereupon one of the little bluehaired ladies turned and said for herself and her companion, "We're looking at you funny." Now, she might have meant "Stop arguing/ with your mother /in public," but she was laughing as she said it, because she had said it while making a silly face: she was looking at me funny. I laughed at her, and smiled at my mother, saying, "My point."
Meaning, that this woman had just bolstered my point in this discussion, which is that no one was judging or dismissing me for failing to escort my 50-year-old mother along the sidewalk by her arm, or even for quibbling with her.
But my mother, anxious to see the worst in me and not engaging the interloping, ready to be chatty old woman, said, "You always think everything’s a competition. No one’s taking points." Just as she saw my walking my usual pace as trying to compete with her instead of just...walking.
Physically, of course, it wouldn't've been hard for me to match her pace. Emotionally, I had nothing but criticism to gain by accompanying her. And, I confess, I was thoroughly enjoying, at long last, my own automobile; and I wanted her to experience a morsel of my years of frustration at reprimanded for being "late" when I arrived at a meeting place at her dictated time rather than reading her mind and showing up five or three minutes early, as she had, and thus wasting her whole day. My car: my control. I didn't care if she couldn't or wouldn't keep up with me, or if she felt manipulated. I could have gone to the sale on my bike and spared us both the togetherness and the spat. Oops.
So anyway.
As I said, the Charenton cookies turned out better than the Denver ones. That is, most of them did, but I burned the first tray. HEBD crunched into one and opined, "That’s the best-tasting charcoal briquet I've ever had."
Later I told her, "One way I know I’m better is that your saying that didn't hurt my feelings."
We were bringing dessert to the lunch table at the time, so my mother heard the "One way I know I’m better..." sentence without any background or context. She criticized, "Listen to you, Lisa! You're 'better'?!"
At the time, it didn't occur to still naïve moi that she assumed that her younger daughter of course was comparing herself to others, at all and then daring to do so favorably, so I said simply--or arrogantly, depending on your point of view--"Yes, better. Once it would have struck me to the quick."
HEBD said, "I know exactly what you mean."
And why HEBD knows is that she listens to what I say sympathetically instead of critically...something I can do with almost everyone but my mother. I do recognize my own hypocrisy. Some of it. Sometimes.
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Earlier I called my mother to tell her about the sharp-shinned hawk and the progress on the stockings. Blake was "helping." I had given him a couple of inches of wire-edged ribbon to pick apart, which was fun for a while; and he had his shoelace; and early in the beading process I made him his own little bead string to nibble so he wouldn't want mine; each of these things, because they were his own, quickly became unfun. His latest desire was the big plastic heads of straight pins, and then, possibly because they're shiny but possibly because he's just not that bright, the pointy ends. So on the phone with her I asked my mother how she had managed to sew with a little kid scampering around, although I granted that even I probably hadn't wanted to gnaw on straight pins. This she granted, and then she said something that really pleased me, because it showed that she remembered something:
"You just wanted to play with the cowboy and the horse."
I laughed and laughed. I had recalled the same thing when threading my own sewing machine. Her old Singer take-up and maybe tension levers moved both up and down and back and forth, and the upper one was a simple eyed doohickey while the lower was longer and had both an eye and a slot. To toddler me, these were cowboy and horse, galloping along, and even the thread became reins. My own sewing machine (surprisingly, I do own one, though this stocking adventure was its first time out of the box in many many years) has only a horse, not a cowboy.
She doesn't remember my first word or step from years ago or my goddaughter's name from minutes ago. But she remembers the horse and cowboy. That's something.