A string NOT too short to be saved

Going through my mom's stuff and found this carefully wound ball of string--strings actually. 
These are strings which once closed up a 10 pound bag of sugar, or a 25 pound bag of flour--(which was in a decorated cloth flour sack--many of which are still in her cedar chest).  
The longer strings likely held feed sacks closed. It took a bit of skill to know which end to loosen so the whole string chain unraveled in one long piece. 
I still like to work at that whenever I get a chance to open up a sack.
I could even suppose this string was saved by my grandmother, or my father. 
They all knew the virtue of not letting anything go to waste. 

So now is the time to pass this lesson on.
When it was time to plant the sugar snap peas my grandson and I started last month, I decided to use this string for the peas to climb. Since it was many smaller pieces of cotton string. I almost felt it wouldn't work, then decided to simply tie them together. They are very old so we are hoping they will not fall apart, but if so,there is more left with which to patch it. 
Patch it. Hmm, that's a thought almost as archaic as saving string. . .

                                

Go Seahawks!

My son and I were still in Ohio on Jan 11th and were able to watch the Seahawks/ Saints game while there with my cousin whose son had played with the Steelers, Ravens, and Jacksonville so that was fun, though a bit of a nail biter of a game.

Then we flew back home in time to join the festivities leading up to the 49ers game and the Superbowl!!. Go Seahawks!!

I had made some scarves for two of my cousins who were helping me with the funeral plans for my mother.  One had a brown wool winter coat and the other had a camel wool coat.  They have real winter back there! Both of them have reddish tones in their hair. My daughter said a teal color should work. So I went with some brown tones mixed with a teal, and again used three different wefts: a taupe, a brown and a black. . 

 

Again you can see the difference with the exact same warp threads yet how much difference the weft makes. All three scarves on the couch show, left to right, the black weft, the brown, and the taupe.  I also played a bit with the weft and added some plaid-type mixed color horizontal striping for interest instead of having plain vertical warp stripes.

     

Marie chose the taupe weft to go with her camel coat and Marlane picked the one with the brown warp. 

MOM

My father had this painted in Italy
 in 1944 from a photo he had of my mom

from one of my mom's friends

Mom with her parents about 1936

Hungarian chardas music for her 93rd birthday

Wow, it has been a whirlwind the last month.
My mom had a heart attack on Dec 21st, just two days after making the Christmas cookies. She was very alert and strong for another two days, but then peacefully passed away in her sleep Monday Dec 23rd.
My grandson sadly said he was glad he got to make those cookies with her. So mom is finally back in Ohio where she has been wanting to be with all her family who have passed before her. Trying to make all the funeral arrangements over two midweek holidays was a slow process despite having prearrangements made 5 years ago for both the funeral home here and back in Ohio. My son went with me gratefully since he travels frequently and helped me through the airline hassles. We luckily had the funeral in between the two sub zero snow events so family members were able to get there. The current priest had not met my mother, but he gave a wonderful tribute to her as the last of her generation in our families who grew up in that small town. Many of the residents of my generation who knew our families still live there and provided lots of stories about mom and her family. It was good to see so many of my cousins and school friends again and have my son get to meet them and find out things about his grandmother that he never knew.

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