my little daktilithra

What a good night.
I got home in time to quilt outside again, and I even got a few pictures of my progress:

I wasn't outside for more than a half hour before Rena appeared on her deck and asked what I was making. A minute later she had re-appeared with her pale yellow shopping bag that holds her embroidery. I invited her over to stitch with me... the first thing she said upon examining my piece close up was something like, "you'll do all the stitches the same?" implying that all the quilting would be done in a running stitch. "Yes," I said, "it's called quilting."

I was kind of in shock at her comment... that brief moment of realization where I see our "similar" hobby is actually quite different.

We sat there, sometimes chatting in our broken English & Greek, sometimes silent, stitching away for the next hour or so. For the creative side of me, this was probably one of my happiest moments in my own home. It felt so peaceful. Every now and again I'd stop to watch her, or she'd stop to see what I was doing. If the sun would have stayed out, we could have continued like that for many more hours. It made me think I should take a day off work just to stitch in the sunshine..Even when Priamos emerged after his bath and came running to my deck with his popsicle, she didn't put away her project and go to him. She set it aside, gave him the attention he needed, and when he ran off again to play, she went back to stitching. This is what I have to remember, this is what I want to be able to do when I have kids.

She taught me the word for thimble, dakthilithra (i still haven't figured out how to blog in two languages, if anyone can help, please comment). I remember when I taught Costas this word in English. It was one of the few that he didn't know when we met. Now I know it in Greek too.

Here's the piece she has been working on:


All of the circles will be filled in with color. The circles themselves are quite stunning in my opinion, but I'll admit that I can't yet imagine what it would look like finished. Of course I'm anxious to see her progress.

And as the sun sank lower, Allie, the neighbor on the other side, came out and said she had something for me. My parents had sent some flowers for our anniversary, too sweet. The minute I saw the african violets I knew they were from my mom.. Grama Gleiter used to have tons of african violets, and like fuzzy navels are our family coctail, I think they're our family flower.