Finally, Fitz Enters the Scene

There are so many excuses not to get weaving done, aren’t there?  Here’s my most recent, best reason.  My daughter Margaret and her husband Jeff have a new creation, Fitzgerald LaFleur Weber, born October 6 at 4:37 pm, weighing in at eight pounds, eight ounces and measuring 21-1/4″ long.

Good friends of Margaret’s recently had difficult pregnancies and relatively smooth birth experiences.  Margaret was unfazed by pregnancy, but then faced nearly two days of labor followed by three hours of pushing. Thank goodness the result is so positive! Here, Margaret and Jeff are walking in the hospital halls, still in the “I hope this happens quickly” stage of perky excitement. Note Jeff’s shirt. Prescient.

Waiting around for this event, I managed to get through the whole first pass of copy editing the new issue of Tapestry Topics and finish up some embroidery.  Since the tour to Norway, I’ve been carrying a bag of thread and a beautifully indigo-dyed napkin from my friend Jan Hayman.  I planned to embroider animals and birth details to put in a quilt, but Margaret and I decided Fitz has enough quilts.  He has a great one with Dr. Seuss fabric in it from Gretchen Carew.

I made curtains for his room and included scraps from Gretchen’s quilt.

He has the quilt I made for Margaret.

… and the one I made for Joe.

So I made the few embroidery pieces into flags for the wall: one with his name and a small sheep embroidered on a bus in Norway; a deer outline that I sketched for Cora when she was visiting (at my first attempt, before I looked at Google images for help, she said, “No Grandma, that’s a cow”); and a cat similar to the ones in a book I love, Wanda Gag’s Million and One Cats. Hiding on the back of one of the flags is a word I embroidered while I was helpless in the face of my daughter’s hard, hard work–pushed.

She will rock Fitz in the rocking chair I rocked her in.  It was covered in a color that didn’t go well in the room, so Margaret and I made to trip to S.R. Harris, where is it SO DIFFICULT to find the right fabric, even if there are a billion there.

Naturally the one we found was on the bottom, a huge roll covered with other huge rolls.  A very large Russian man got it out for us, but said we didn’t want it.  “Is outdoor, for outdoors.”  We didn’t care.

I just need to add some ties to the back of the bottom cushion, but our cat has already pronounced it adequate.

Fitz went home today, and a new chapter begins for Margaret and Jeff.  For Grandma Robbie, too.