The Apple Dog Tea Towel of Our Discontent

Dave reports that the angry pea shirt had a good reception at his place of employment today. Of course it did. Who doesn't appreciate an angry pea?

Too late, I thought: I should have made his banner say "CAN IT!"



I had kind of a weird day. I'm not sure I can explain it.

I've been doing a lot of craftzying lately, a lot of embroidery. Here's the latest:



Unlike the angry pea, this little tea towel dog came from one of those iron-on embroidery patterns. I used to find those patterns charming in a retro/kitschy kind of way, but now it was just a bit tedious to work one of them from start to finish.



I remember when I was a little girl, my grandmother had these kinds of embroidered tea towels and I was fascinated by them. I don't know exactly what it was that drew me to them. I don't remember the designs, I just remember being struck by them, by their texture and colors, by the idea of decorating something so ordinary. There was something, too, about the difference between the front and the back. I don't know.

Maybe it was making that dumb dog tea towel that unsettled me.



Certainly doing embroidery reminds me of my grandmother's house and, by extension, of my grandmother, my mother's mother.



There's a picture of her, taken when she was probably not much older than I am now.

Ah, my grandmother. My feelings about her are very complicated. She was, like me, not a particularly nice woman. I don't mean that she was mean like some grandmothers are, I just mean that she wasn't particularly cuddly or sweet with us, her grandchildren.

My friend Erin once posited that everyone has one nice grandmother and one mean grandmother. One calls nice grandma something like "Grammy" or "Grandma." One must call mean grandma something like "Grandmother Peterson" (to use Dave's own maternal grandmother as an example). You get one nice grandmother and one mean grandmother. Those are the rules, yo.

Like I said, my maternal grandmother wasn't my mean grandmother. She was actually my nice grandmother. The mean grandmother honors went to my paternal grandmother. Now that woman was a real piece of work.