Crewel Tree of Life

What a wonderful discovery....I got email notices from Blogcatalog that a couple of people had marked me as "friends" and/or joined my "neighborhood". Now, I'm pretty new to blogging and I have to tell you I am not entirely certain what my "neighborhood" is as far as blogging goes, and how I get into other blogger's neighborhoods or they into mine. But, that said, I went to check out the blogs of those who had so marked me. This led me to a wonderful blog called Crafts of Texture which you can find here: http://sarastexturecrafts.blogspot.com/

Sara's post from Monday August 13 has some wonderful crewel creations from Tana Dixon, crewel expert. Her state fair winning "tree of life" design and another one she made in 2006 struck a very familiar cord. When I was young (probably 45 years ago) my mother was finishing up a crewel picture that had been started by her mother. I remember watching her patiently and lovingly stitch the picture (it seemed to take forever from my childhood point of view), then have it framed and hung in the entry way to the house. Tara's treasures sure looked a lot like the crewel picture I remembered.

In addition to posting to Sara's blog about this, I emailed my sister, who now possesses my mother's/grandmother's creation, in California, and asked her shoot a digital picture of the crewel for me. Now that I've been able to compare it with Tana's, I can see that they are different, but perhaps from the same artist or era. I'm pleased to post this photo of our family heirloom here and to say that I have now printed an 8 1/2x 11 photo of it that I plan to mat and frame so I can enjoy it everyday.

All this made me marvel at how the electronic age has truly changed our lives (internet, blogs, email, digital pictures allwere required to permit this wonderful discovery) and allowed me to spark this wonderful memory.