Margreet put the box of threads on her beautiful, big desk and laid the large piece of cloth next to it. She looked for her sewing box and took out her scissors. She looked in the box and searched for the color she wanted to start with. Where did she actually want to start? At first she thought that, like Elly, she would have to mark out a horizon, but she decided to just start from the bottom and let whatever came out of her hands grow. She didn't feel the need to make a picture of it, like an imprint of reality. She just wanted to let colorful threads mix into a cheerful picture, where everybody could see in it what they wanted. Something abstract...

"Who would have thought it," she muttered to herself, "me and abstract, I thought those were opposites. Well, they attract each other sometimes, so I'm just going to give it a try."

She abandoned her initial plan to start with thin yarn. She chose her first color, a thick purple thread, cut a length that seemed convenient and right to her, though she had no idea what was convenient and right. She just tried to follow her gut. If it failed, she could still throw it all away. But no matter how many thoughts of doubt haunted her mind, deep down she knew that this was what she longed for: just go, just do it, just watch and feel how it will be and just move on. Just like that! She chuckled, it felt good, despite all the doubt and tension!

She laid the thread on her linen cloth and tried to feel how she wanted to place it, which directions it should go. With a few pins she secured it and began sewing it to the cloth with lilac sewing thread. When she finished with this thread, she stood up to look at it from a slightly greater distance. It was still only one thread, but it felt good; she knew she had found the right way to attach it. She decided to take another one of those thick purple threads, cut a slightly longer one than the first. She envisioned how she would run it roughly, decided not to use any more pins, she knew where it had to go. She sewed on like that, until Huib came to warn her that Annerieke would have the coffee almost ready. He looked at her embroidery from a distance and then very closely.

"How convenient, with that thin thread you actually put a kind of band over the thicker thread, so it got stuck. You can hardly see that thin thread, and I think if you had used the same color, you wouldn't even see any of it at all. But because of the contrasting color, it comes across as sort of speckled on the thick purple thread. Funny! Did you enjoy doing it?"

"Yes, definitely!" Margreet beamed. "And it's so much easier than I thought. And at the same time it's a kind of exercise to learn to feel even better, to combine looking and sensing. I feel about how long the thread should be that I want to put on it, I cut it off and put it on the fabric in the directions that seem nice to me. The first thread I secured with a few pins before sewing, after that I did it without pins, I just knew roughly how it had to come on and started sewing. Every now and then I had to stop to look, to experience if what I was doing was right. With some threads this is easier than with others, but because I knew there is no right or wrong, I could continue if it seemed a bit more difficult. And I already like the result."

"Definitely! It's going to be all right, I think it's going to be a fascinating tapestry!"

"I think so too, one of those tapestries where you can sit and look at it dreamily and see something different in it every time. I'll leave it like that for a while, then I can continue with it later!"

"Good idea, Gretel! Shall we go and see Elly? Then we can see what she has made today."

Margreet nodded and ran up the stairs with two steps at a time, with Huib following.

"Hi youngsters, is it coffee time already?" greeted Elly them.

"Yes, almost, but first we come to peek how it goes with you!" said Huib.

"What a cutie is this one! It looks like a kingfisher..." Margreet pointed to a bird with bright blue wings, an orange belly, and a hefty, narrow beak.

"You saw that right, I had that one in mind too. I like them so much, that's why I decided to keep a picture on my mobile phone with it, so it would be lifelike. So apparently it's going to be a collection of existing and partially fantasized birds."

"Super cool," thought Huib. "It really is so beautiful! I'm glad I get to dedicate a section on our website to your work. By the way, we looked at that building yesterday. It's simple, not too deep, and therefore really very suitable for my artels. Ha, nice word! If we can buy that property, would you like to paint something of a plant world or so on the walls?"

"Oh yes, very much so! A plant world, good idea, that would indeed make your woodwork stand out. But come, coffee first!"

Elly put her brush in the water pot and walked downstairs with them.

"By the way, how is the website set up going, Huib?"

"I took the pictures and downloaded the ones I want to use on the PC. I made an outline on paper and started fiddling with that website. The program doesn't seem difficult. I've already created some pages on it that I think I'll need, and placed a bunch of photos. They have an option to turn on or off the page you are working on. When I turned it on, I could see how it would look to visitors of the site. You can change the setting on the spot, so you can also see the difference between the website on a computer and the website on a mobile. And it didn't disappoint me at all! Simple, but quite beautiful. I'll continue later, and I'll show you this afternoon how it turned out so far. Now let's go to Mommy's Corner for a cup of coffee!"

To chapter 148. Memories come to the surface

Or to the Table of contents