Cell phones and celebrations

On June 13th, grandson Josh (pole vaulter, orator) and his girlfriend Kate (pianist, musician) took me to buy a cell phone.

Now I have never owned a cell phone. When I was housebound, I sure didn’t need one. Ernie had one that he used for calling Charlestown for a driver to pick him up from wherever he was. I used it occasionally for that purpose, too. We had not given anyone the cell phone number, so neither of us had ever answered it. After my recovery, I began to take Ernie’s cell phone with me.

Coming back from my brother’s house, I heard a ringing sound and said to my nephew-in-law, who was driving, “What’s that?” “It’s your cell phone,” he said. I grabbed it out of my pocket, but I couldn’t figure out how to answer it. That’s when I realized that since I am now out and about, I had better learn how to use it.

In fact, I decided that I should have my own cell phone, and I asked Josh if he would help me buy one and show me how to use it. Further, I decided that we might as well get rid of our landline and just use cell phones. At the store, I found out that Ernie’s four-year-old cell phone was defective and liable to die at any time, so I ended up with two new cell phones and a plan to “port” our landline phone number to my new cell phone. The porting, I was told, would take ten days–long enough for me to learn how to use the phone and get comfortable with it.

Five days later, Ernie tried to use our landline phone and it was dead! I was not prepared! Panic!

A few days after that, my son (Josh’s dad) phoned me three times. My cell phone was on the chest of drawers a couple of feet away, while I was at my computer. I thought I was hearing sounds from a website, that I was getting audio from the Internet. Michael’s third message was, “I hope you get this figured out soon!”

This weekend we’ll be celebrating Josh’s 17th birthday at his parents’  lakehouse in West Virginia. That’s why Michael was calling–to invite me. I’m going and Ernie will be staying at home. Our cell phones will get a workout.

Here’s the card I made for Josh.

Here’s a closer look at it.

Here’s the back of it.

And here’s the detail, the important part. Those chunky orange stitches are oyster stitch in pearl cotton. The initial came from a Dover collection of ornate initials. I used just the J shape, padded it, and covered that with gold kid leather, outlined in pearl sadi.

I just decided last Sunday to make a card for him.

After Josh and Kate took me to buy the cell phones, they had lunch with me at one of Charlestown’s cafes, then came to our apartment so that I could show them some of my work. You know that I have a number of stitched studies on my bulletin board. Josh singled out this one as his favorite.

And that was the inspiration for his birthday card. This is silk and gold metal thread embroidery, a study of various kinds of matrix fillings. Josh’s card was stitched on cotton with metallic, pearl cotton, and Rajmahal Art Silk threads. I worked out the design on graph paper, thus:

It was so much fun, making this for Josh, because I know it’s a design he will appreciate. And I know he likes texture and layers. This is multilayered.

So this weekend we will be celebrating, not only Josh’s birthday, but our country’s, as well–Independence Day.