Yarn

This post is about Great Grandmother. Yes ma'am, not Great Grandma or anything like that. She was Great Grandmother. She was full-blooded German and she, her mom, and sisters  came over to the United States just ahead of Hitler's regime. As I remember the story, her father didn't make it over here and no one knows what happened. All of the records were destroyed in Germany during the war and no trace of him was found in either country. 

She was a very proper lady. She wouldn't come put of her bedroom without being fully dressed and made up. She had her way of doing things. She was strict, very strict. And she could crochet like you wouldn't believe. She taught me how. 

She taught me basic stitches and then started me on an afghan. I was around 10-12 years old at the time. I worked on it for several weeks and took it back for her to see. I'd gotten about a fourth of the way through the afghan. She inspected my work, while I beamed with pride. Then she saw a skipped stitch. It was in the second or third row, way at the beginning. 

"Did you see this?" She asked. 

"Yes, Ma'am."

"When?"

"When I was about two rows past it."

She very calmly ripped out every stitch until she came to the mistake. She looked me in the eye and ripped out a few more stitches. 

"Anything worth doing, is worth doing right.  We don't cover up mistakes. We don't make excuses. We don't make mistakes."

I never finished that afghan. And I still, to this day, get angry with myself for making mistakes.