A little more than two years ago now, my grandmother passed away. She and my grandpa had moved down to my home town a few years before so we could take care of them. I brought them groceries once a week, helped them write checks, fixed tvs, and found lost things. I was really close with my grandma.
In addition to her hilarious personality and dry wit, one of my favorite things about her was that she was a painter and a crafter like me! She used to crochet, and I took her to the craft store a couple of times so she could get more yarn and books on crochet. But her arthritis and the shaking in her hands kept getting worse, so she eventually had to stop.
She kept her most recent project, a granny square blanket, safely packed away in a plastic bin. She told all of us she was going to finish it one day.
Her hands never got better, and when she got sick, and we found out it was cancer, she rapidly deteriorated.
After she passed, I went to work helping my mom clean out my grandparents apartment so we could move my grandpa in with her. In our frantic cleaning, I found that bin again:
DOZENS of granny squares, dozens of half used skeins. I asked my mom what she wanted me to do with it, and she said she didn’t care. I set it aside and later took it home.
Maybe a month later, that tumblr post about the Loose EndsProject was going around. It felt like a sign–I was never going to learn to crochet in order to finish my grandmother’s blanket. But they might be able to help!
So I filled out the interest form. They got back to me SUPER quick. And maybe 2 weeks later, I was paired with volunteer in my state (only 2 hours away!) and the box of yarn, granny squares, and my grandmother’s crochet hook were in the mail. That was at the end of January this year.
Over the next couple of months, my “finisher” emailed me regular updates on her progress, and asked me questions on my preferences for how she constructed the final blanket.
At the end of August, the blanket was done!
I had always intended the blanket to be a gift for my mother. So I cleaned it up, put it in the only bag I had big enough to fit it, and drove to my mom’s. I gave the blanket to her and she was gobsmacked. I explained to her all about Loose Ends, and how someone volunteered to finish the piece for us. She was speechless. (I was quite pleased with this, because I am not the best at giving gifts, so this was a pretty exciting reaction!)
She said that it was the most thoughtful gift she had ever been given. She said “your grandma would love this”. To which I replied, “yeah, I know she really wanted to finish it a couple of years ago”. But that was when my mom dropped the bomb of a century on me–she told me that my grandma had started making those granny squares OVER 30 YEARS AGO. She had started the blanket when my grandpa was staying in the hospital, but that was back when my mom was younger than I am now! My grandma had packed them all away, planning on finishing it, when my grandpa was sent home from the hospital. Then it went from house to house, from condo in Chicago to their apartment in my hometown. All that time and my grandma had wanted to finish it, but couldn’t. First because she was busy, then because she forgot how to do it, then because of her arthritis, and then because of the cancer. My mom said she had given up on expecting my grandma to finish it.
She said I brought a piece of her childhood with her mom out of the past.
And really, all of this is to say, if you have seen or heard about the Loose Ends Project and have an uncompleted project or piece from a loved one who has passed away–these are your people. They were so kind and treated my project with such care. That box probably would have been found by my own grandkids one day if I hadn’t heard about Loose Ends.
Five stars, absolutely worth it!
(From what I understand, you can sign up to volunteer too! If you have time to share, it might be worth checking out!)
Tags:
#PSA #death tw #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
#turtles #adorable #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #embarrassment squick? #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
One time my rabbi told us, “imagine you had a box with a little bit of god in it. What would you do with the box?”
So we were like ?? “We’d protect it and keep it nice and clean and polished” and he was like “your body’s that box. Stop eating markers”
Every time I come across this post the last sentence smacks me in the face
Tags:
#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #Judaism #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #poison cw? #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
got blood work done today and i just remembered a time i got blood work done as a teen. after the nurse drew like 6 vials of the stuff, i asked him “is all that mine?” and he said “not any more” and walked off
Tags:
#got a point there #I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog #fun with loopholes #overly literal interpretations #medical cw #blood #embarrassment squick? #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #overly literal interpretations #art #comics #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
i like that you girls like to see boys kissing cause im bisexual so i want to kiss boys and also want to be attractive to women, but i dont actually want to be in one of your sexual fantasies cause bad things happen to those guys, does that make sense?
zoe fantasies perfec t place for put boy in to! inside very Soft and Comfort boy kiss sweetly put boy in zoe fantasies. Put Boyy In Zoe fantasies. no problems ever in Zoee fantasies because good Safe and Supportive for boy sex. Azoe Fantasy yes a place for a boy put boy in zoe fantasy can trust zoe for giveing good love to boy. friend zoe
Tags:
#sexuality and lack thereof #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #inside *is* very Soft and Comfort‚ you have to admit #nsfw text? #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
I captures these frames from this set of (amazing) opening titles for Big Brother UK, if you want to take a closer look: https://vimeo.com/292127899
John says: “This is pretty funny. The code is from the Linux kernel groups.c file which is used on the Hacker Typer website where you can pretend to be a cool programmer by typing ridiculously fast: https://hackertyper.com/”
Tags:
#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #(also I went to that website and it’s even funnier) #(very hackinginprogress.gif) #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
Somewhere out there on a planet very far away is a civilization that has included our sun in a beloved constellation of some animal we couldn’t dream up if we tried
Tags:
#aliens #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
Trying to find an old post we searched the word ‘blood’, which caused Tumblr to deploy a therapy bot that said it can’t provide qualified support and instead tried to put us in a groupchat with a bunch of other people who had searched for blood so we could work through our feelings
This really is the pdf of websites
Tags:
#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #Tumblr: a User’s Guide #(sort of) #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #embarrassment squick? #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
Brinens and Things - Tumblr Mirror 