Chinese saying: Yi cun guan yin, yi cun jin, cun jin nan mai jun guan yin(i.e. one-inch time, one-inch gold, but inch-gold cannot buy time)
TIME IS MORE PRECIOUS THAN GOLD
Photolamb1
I am trying to do Lesson 3 of Web 2.0 and pondered about what to share under my Blog of "Stitch to Patch". Several ideas surfaced up in mind and I finally decided this blog title to share with fellow bloggers.
Christmas is just around the corner and one can't help noticing the Christmas atmosphere everywhere especially in shopping malls that decked out all the Christmas goodies. These
prompted me again to go through the annual cycle of now trying to stitch in time my own DIY Christmas cards NOW! Annually after the last -minute stitch and patch, I make my resolution that I would do better the next Christmas, but looks like I have failed again this year.
Talking about my passion to stitch and patch my own greeting cards,I feel it is more "personal touch" when I create my own cards with my chosen designs. I am one who does not like the as the online FREE greeting cards because to me there is no "feelings" as a sender from me to my recipients of my cards -- too commercialised. The disadvantage of my choice to DIY way is I have to spend a fortune on the postage, which is going up every year.
Whenever I sit down to do the stitch and patch, I often feel thankful that I have family members in my life who inspired me to developing a hobby to stitch and patch when I have the time. One is my maternal grandmother and the other is my beloved mother. The former was so skillful in sewing her 6-inch soft shoes to fit her tiny weeny feet - not because she was born with such small feet, but she was obedient to her parents' demands to have her two normal feet bound to that size at a very tender age ...in fact, it was a forced deformed act to stop her beautiful normal feet from growing. I always stood by her side, watching her patiently stitch by stitch in sew her own pairs of embroidered shoes with her two delegate hands. I admired her obedience to her parents who in her time had meekly submitted to the society's demands to have girls in the family with bound feet; the smaller the feet, the better a girls with such small dainty feet were accepted by the soceity. I admired my grandmother's patience to the DIY stitching of all her foot wears. btw, I still have two pairs of her hand sewn tiny shoes - may fetch a small fortune in antique auction fair.
Another person who truly inspired me to learn basic stitch to is my beloved mother. She was fortunate not to have to go through the torturous process of having her two feet bound to that 6-inch size, she was "liberated" by the society to even be allowed to go to school to be properly educated. She learnt how to sew as father, in marrying her, bought her a "Singer" sewing machine for her to learn a new trade as his wife! She did succeed in being able to sew every body's clothing, from the young to the old, including father's pants and boy's shorts and shirts and oh, I was so fortunate having pretty frocks, long or short, with Peter-Pan collars, sailor's collars dresses, using polka-dot, striped or beautiful floral materials, highlighted with puffy frilly sleeves or pockets of different shapes and sizes for the dress. Her knowledge and skills was really useful to "stitch in time" in war time when poverty struck and one has to know how to darn our old old clothing...now I just wonder how many people darn their socks when there is a small hole? I seldom do, not because I never know how to stitch and patch, but it is plane laziness and when my big toe protrudes out of the enlarged hole of my favourite sock, I simply bought a new pair and discard the pair with the big hole into the recycle bin, but often with a tinge of sadness and guilt that I did not stitch the small hole in time and have to part with my favourite colour pair beyond salvation.
My childhood education also prepared me to know the basic stitch to patch techniques as my elementary school back home has included in its weekly curriculum teaching girls how to stitch, how to embroider, sewing sample handkerchiefs, pillow cases etc with different motifs and learning different types of stitches. btw,I still have a few pieces of my primary 4 "master pieces" well preserved by my mother without my knowledge and when I "discovered" them a spring cleaning after my mother had died, I was so touched to know the love of my mother to have kept them. I think she was proud of my "talents" and probably was comforted that her daughter had inherited her genes with some ability to stitch to patch needlework. The only problem I face now is to find THE TIME to do diligently...This "Stitch in Time" habit is going down in my New Year resolution in my 2011 Calendar Plan.
Well money cannot buy back my lost time, I shall try to do as best as I can with whatever time I have been given.
