S ~ sy = sew

My Farmor and Farfar left with me such a rich legacy of love, heritage, family, and tradition. A huge part of that legacy is in the crafts they taught me to do. Today's word is sy which means to sew.

Pronunciation:

I got help from Best on today's phonics lesson. I was stumped as to how I was going to explain this to you. Of course, she nailed it. She has magic ears.

“See ya!” only you're in such a hurry that you kinda leave off the “a” at the end. Try it. Good, just one more time. I think you've got it!

I have way too many examples of Farmor and Farfar's work to display them all at the same time. At first it was only Farmor who did cross-stitch, but when Farfar retired (he was a plumbing engineer) he took up the hobby. Let me share a few of my favorites with you.  

Farfar made several of these.  The name of the piece is "Stjärngossarna" which means "star boys".  It's a reference to the December 13 celebration of Lucia. 

Here's a "real life" picture of boys fulfilling this role.

This next piece is a traditional confirmation celebration embroidery.  In Sweden, all (well most, you know every culture has its rebels) 14 year-olds are exposed to the gospel message of Christ dying for their sins, and spend a year in weekly classes, or a summer session of several weeks in camp, learning these lessons.  At the conclusion of the studies, there's a ceremony.  Afterwards, there's a reception, and lots of gifts are given.  Here's 14 year-old Tina posing with her gifts, and you can see the embroidery hanging off the front edge of the table.  A table which is now 1.8 miles from my Colorado home, at my parents' house.  The entire five piece furniture set was handmade, and in this picture, 3 of those pieces are visible.  

My Farfar also embroidered a long wall-piece of sunflowers for me.  This was well before sunflowers became my passion.  

I'm so glad I have these pieces of their love decorating my home.  What did your grandparents teach you?  Do you have any handmade family heirlooms to share with us?

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Just a reminder that on May 7th we'll be doing our annual reflections posts.  What did you learn?  Who did you meet?  What the next step in your blogging journey?  If you want to get an idea of reflections posts, here's mine from last year.