Hello friends 🥰

I’ve been looking forward to sharing this story about my dad with you and I’m curious what you’ll get from it. I think stories have this wonderful ability to hold multiple meanings depending on who reads it and what they themselves carry inside.

But first, that photo above is of a pattern that I’ve had in my shop for yeeeeeaaaarrrrssss. It’s called “Henryk” named after my dad. It is colourful with a lot of variety and a lot going on. Basically like my dad, haha! He had a colourful personality!

(As an aside, that crocheted blanket that’s on my lap under the hoop is one I made for when my brothers first daughter Alicja was born. I haven’t seen a phtoo of it in years and I am now inspired to get back into crochet.)

Story time…

ooof…. it’s hard to pick a starting point, but let’s go back 15 years to when I was 39 years old and my dad was 73. I’m living in Australia and he’s in Poland.

One day I receive a letter from him.

Not unusual in itself, we have been writing to each other on and off since my mum and I left Poland in 1983.

But this letter was different. He starts in the usual way, latest news, health, annoyances at the government. Then he says to me that he has decided to start telling me stories from his life and that he will write one story in each letter from now on.

I got butterflies.

I knew very little about my dads early life. I know he was born just before the outbreak of WW2 and by the time the war ended he was seven years old. What a start to life.

This is the story of his first pair of shoes. When he was six.

He was living with his parents and older brother in a town called Stalowa Wola. At the start of the war his father was drafted into the army and they would not hear from him for years due to first being drafted into the Polish army and then ending up in a concentration camp. Food and resources were scarce. He shares a frequent activity where he used to accompany his mum on trips to neighbouring villages, to friends and family asking for food. “One person would give an egg, another would give a couple of small potatoes.” he wrote. Reading his words I imagined him as a six year old and saw in him a very different person to the one that would grow into a complex human with an alcohol problem.

It was common, he tells me, that young children during the war did not have their own shoes. Often shoes from an older sibling, stuffed with newspaper in the toes and tied with laces to hold them to the feet, was all that young ones could hope for. Sometimes pieces of leather and rags were tied together to cover the feet.

One day, my dad writes, he remembers seeing a Russian soldier quietly coming up the stairs of their home.

It was nearing the end of the war and the Russian army was gaining ground in Poland pushing out German troops. Poles were ordered to take in Russian soldiers if needed, give them a place to sleep and to feed them. “I remember him singing Russian songs and showing me things he made from leather”, writes my dad. The soldier was a cobbler back home and on the day he was leaving he presented my dad with a handmade pair of leather shoes, made just for him. The shoes fitted him perfectly. Soles cut to his size, the front and side panels stitched expertly and covering the ankles. Holes punched at even intervals for the laces.

My dad said that his mum burst into tears seeing the shoes and told him to say “spasibo” which means thank you in Russian.

There is no doubt that those shoes would have lasted him less than one year, the way children’s feet grow. But that’s not the point of course. Firstly my grandmother would have used those shoes to later trade them for something else they needed. And while they did fit my dad for perhaps 6-9 months, he would have felt like a king. The poverty and war he was living in the middle of, would have faded just a little for that short while.

You see? Hand crafting changes peoples lives.

As if we needed proof! When I think about that story, and I have thought about it A LOT over the years, I think about the things I make today for others and imagine in years to come that item carrying a story of care and love.

Maybe I’m getting overly emotional about this, but then again.. probably not. You know I have thought countless times about that Russian soldier. I have wondered about his life, his family and who else wore the shoes he made

Close Up

Well of course today’s close up will be of the Henryk pattern. How could it not be!

The below is a snapshot from the instructions and only shows a portion of the full design. For as long as this pattern has been available I have been told again and again that it’s so much fun to do because there are so many different stitches and there is room to change things up. Also it’s a pretty easy thing to do as you can see the stitches are pretty big!

One thing I want to draw your attention to are the leaves. Here they are done in a fly stitch (with big gaps in between) and a separate back stitch around the edges. As you can see each back stitch is the length of the gap between the fly stitches.

HOWEVER… you could do the leaves in a single movement and just use an open buttonhole stitch just like on the flowers. That way you’re just doing one thing instead of two.

Choices! It’s good to have them ☺️

Maker Of The Week

- MARY CHANDLER -

Mary shared these in our Facebook group saying she made them for Christmas gifts. Firstly… lucky recipients to be receiving these! And secondly I take my hat off to Mary for being this organised with Christmas gifts. Especially hand-made Christmas gifts.

From The Tribe

At the end of September there will be a new cohort of members coming in to The Wednesday Tribe which I am soooo excited about.

But what’s even more exciting for the newbies, is that they will have a tonne of past projects to get inspired by because so many current members are sharing their finished pieces.

One I am delighted to share today is from Amy Edwards who stitched the May design onto her green blouse. This is just another example of how creatively the designs are used and I never get tired of seeing more and more variations of my patterns.

I especially love the extra details on the cuffs and shoulders.