Great Stay in NC

Great Stay in NC

Had yet another wonderful stay with mom at her comfortable abode…

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Here are some of the sights and scenes from my recent visit with mom in North Carolina. There are three basic themes in this blog post: (1) The natural surroundings, (2) farm animals, and (3) a house full of needlepoint.

But first I will briefly mention the aspects of the trip not covered by the below video and photographs. Mom and I spent the days going swimming, walking, getting fresh food at the farmer’s market including fresh butter beans(!), and talking over home-cooked meals. And of course we visited with some of her many friends. Mom said I had a “busman’s holiday” because while away I attended yoga classes every day. And she did her gym workouts. Essentially, visiting her at 87 seems no different from visiting her at 77 or 67. And perhaps that’s the best part!

After walking out the door of her house you can reach here in just a minute or two…

While there are many animals around, those sheep you see near mom in the above video are actually stone sculptures.

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 What’s life without a stripe

In this planned community and working farm, everybody has got to have a stripe – you see – it’s a way of life. And throughout the community there are open pastures and gated forests of goats that are very well cared for. And you ARE allowed to feed them. So when out for a walk, you bring your 3-day old bread and vegetable scraps and you will have 20 goats approaching you in no time. Here below is one of the little guys…

Here are some of his buddies…albeit some are splashed with a stray dot or two…

Next are the originators of this striped trend – the famed belted Galloway cows of Fearrington are named after their homeland of Galloway, Scotland.

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A House Full of Needlepoint

Mom’s house is open and full of light – and well-maintained on all fronts, so it is a delight to walk into. And it is nicely decorated as well – classic and tasteful, I’d say. Yet one of the things you’ll notice while walking around is that there are elaborate, needlepoint works all over the house. Some are large 3ft by 4ft wall hangings. Some serve as runners along the wood floor. Others have been made into pillows, and “throws” to drape over the couch. And some have been framed in glass and mounted on the wall. There are works of needlepoint everywhere. What do these needlepoint pieces all have in common? They are all very intricate, extremely well-crafted, and, the best part, they were all made by Dad. But the story does not end there…

The above wall hanging is around 3+ feet in length

You see, dad made all these after years and years of recovery – i.e. in the aftermath of a devastating accident that left him essentially without the use of the right side of his body (though he was not paralyzed and was ambulatory). Most central of all is that he suffered severe frontal lobe damage and was thus a head trauma patient. It was an accident that depleted him of many of his physical and mental faculties & talents (of which he had many) – but it never could dampen his indomitable spirit to champion on and strive to be himself.

So he did all this remarkable needlepoint work one-handed (i.e. the left hand, when he was a born righty) and without the experience of ever having done needlepoint before. Mom got him a large needlepoint desk / table that would hold the barren canvas. Then dad would painstakingly sort out the vast array of needlepoint yarn – often with colors with shades nearly indistinguishable from one another. And then he would get to work. To pull the string through on rare occasions he could grab it with his right hand, and generally he would bring his left hand (i.e. the same hand) around to grab the needle, and when needed he would use his mouth to pull the needle through. Whatever got the job done!

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The first work he ever did (not shown here) he brought back to the shop, and the local artisan who was a real expert could not believe he did it – nor could she believe that this was the first one he had ever done.

As he continued on in his work, the designs became more elaborate (he specially ordered them from around the country) and he began inventing his own stitching patterns, using several different patterns on a single work to create different visual effects. Unfortunately, my photography skills are limited to pointing my cell phone in a single direction and firing away – so often my shots here do not do justice to the work at hand, nor do they give a sense of the size of the piece.

The above piece is a large wall hanging and the below one is a stuffed pillow. None of the works are smaller than pillow sized, many the equivalent of 4 – 6 pillows or more…

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The below work has a heavy duty backing and is used as runner; and it was difficult to get a clear picture of it – suffice to say it is quite intricate.

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This below piece might well have been one of the top ones he ever did – #7 of the famous Unicorn series titled “The Unicorn in Captivity” – and it was framed in glass – hence the light of my flash in the middle of the photo.

One day when they still lived up in New York we went to the Cloisters museum (a division of The Metropolitan Museum of Art) along the Hudson River, where they had this original work on display. It was a grand and massive presentation that was nearly as good as Dad’s!

Here is another shot of it with less glare and no flash…

The below pillow shows how many different stitching patterns he would employ on a single project.

Hope you enjoyed seeing some of Dad’s work. As artistic as these needlepoints are, I think they speak greater to the ideal that no matter what happens in life – regardless of the lot you may have – with the right outlook, determination, and effort, you can still create a beautiful and lasting impression on this earth. Dad’s accident occurred Sep 1980 and he left this world in Nov 2003. In those 2 dozen years in between he lived countless lives, overcame every struggle, and passed a happy man – with a glorious trail of needlepoint in his wake…

(In total, we are not sure how many needlepoints Dad did – they were prized commodities and everyone wanted one so he gave many away – so now we just say that they are everywhere.)

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