Losing a Friend….

As I learned at the funeral of my friend Patricia Hames…I must be ‘interesting’! Apparently she didn’t suffer fools gladly and only did things and hung out with folk that were ‘interesting’.

I first met ‘Miss Hames’ in 1966 when I came to Canada and started in grad 11 at Loyalist Collegiate and Vocational Institute….she taught ‘home ec’ as we called it back then. I was intrigued by her choices of fabric that she got somewhere very chic in Toronto and her sewing skills. I learned tailoring in that class…and decided never to do any ever again, though it has stood me in good stead in some of my sewing projects….and knitting!

At Pat’s funeral there was a biscuit tin of old buttons and we were invited to take some in memory of Pat. I found these two…at first I found only one but then I found another. I don’t quite know what they are made of but I will design something to put them on so I can wear them.

Pat made many beautiful jackets with wonderful embroidery on the back and perfect piping around the edges….I wish my sewing was so spot on.

These photos are of friends and carers of Pat who wore those jackets to the funeral. The photographs don’t do the work justice. One of her closest friends was Magaret Millar of Stitch by Stitch, here in Kingston, Margaret had dinner with Pat every Tuesday night and took her about while she was still mobile but unable to drive.

 Pat and I wend through breast cancer the same year, as a full figured lady it was obvious the evening she climbed my studio stairs for the opening night of the studio tour in 2007 that something was missing. Only five women were present that evening, all but one survivors, we quaffed wine and munched on nibbles and talked and talked.  She used to tell me about her hunt for a decent and comfortable prosthesis and one day, while I was in my Fanfayr booth, she told me she had a comfortable one….and I should feel it! I wish I had a photo but it’s in my mind’s eye…me with my hand down the front of Pat’s T shirt ‘copping a feel’!!!! 

Well, Pat, I have missed you coming up my studio stairs as you did so many times..with lots to share. I haven’t had you tell me that my dress was too revealing (a lovely sun dress  I had made in high school at exam time) and to go home and put on a cardigan…..yes she stopped me in the hall…hard to relate to the way kids dress today. I won’t be making you any more knits…and the one you, last month, asked me to fix….maybe I’ll just put it away safely in my studio.