Tuesday is Museday -My Mum

I got a birthday card from my mum last week. She had typed the message in the card but had addressed the envelope herself. Her handwriting is getting very wobbly and spidery and almost illegible unless she tries really hard and then its just legible. It frustrated her no end till she made herself accept it. Even her typing is not what it was. It is hard for her but she bares it bravely and accepts her limitations without bitterness or anger although I think with regret. She gets the shakes very badly. I think its related to some of the medication she takes particularly for her eyes. She has glaucoma and has nightly drops to keep it under control but one of the side affects is the shakes. Go blind or put up with the shakes. She chose the shakes.

But despite this - her shakes - she only recently gave up playing the organ at church. When she resigned after 32 years in the job at the particular church she has attended on Sunday and Wednesday nights she was given a wonderful send off, as was appropriate. She still plays for devotions on a weekly  basis at the Aged Care hostel she has lived in since Dad died in 2008. She is 92 this year. She has  been playing the organ for church  in the various places she has lived and worshiped since she was 12.... that's almost 80 years.

Mum at the organ playing for devotions at her aged care hostel

She also keeps herself busy doing fancy work. This is something she learned to do at her mother's knee, just as her mother and grandmother before her had learned to do it from their mothers. It bemuses me that her handwriting is barely legible but she can still manage to do lovely stitching. I keep her supplied with fabric to fancy work - tracing off patterns from magazines and elsewhere for her to her to embroider.

Many of these I incorporate into quilts for new babies in the family.

 

Lucca's quilt

William's quilt

Lucy's quilt

Lucy's quilt a bit closer

Bluebirds quilt. My sister in law, Christine, designed the embroideries and mum did the fancywork. I made the quilt. This is on my bed most of the time now. Kym from PQS did the quilting

It was a block of the month pattern featuring a bluebird on each block. Top row was February, depicting Valentine's Day. Bottom left is April, depicting ANZAC Day and bottom right is May, Mothers' Day

Top left... it was something obscure for September... national cup of tea day or the like. Top right Halloween for October Bottom left you can just see a smidge of November - bird on horseshoe for Melbourne Cup Day - Australia's major horse race (known as The Race that Stops the Nation) and bottom right is Christmas.

Christine blogs at Bluebirds and Bumblebees

Mum recently completed 8 doilies, embroidering one for each of her children. They came from the stash of my Aunty Doris, who died aged 99yrs 9 months back in September 2012. Doris was my father's sister who married my mother's brother.

Inside the card that my mother sent me this week was another sample of her hand work. This time it was a crocheted coaster for my coffee cup. Its beautiful and I will treasure it just as I treasure the wonderful woman I call Mum.