The Ugly Vase

In high school, my favourite class was art class.  Mr. Gombai was an artist, and judged our works perhaps a bit harshly.  If you got a 90, you knew darned well you deserved it, good grades were not handed out easily.
Sometimes, one of our fellow students would sit on top of the counter at the front of the class and the rest of the class would work on copying that image with pencil into our sketchpads.  I do remember mine looked a bit distorted, and I learned I could NOT sit and draw with my pad flat on my desk.  One model was tall to begin with, by the time I finished my drawing, he looked even taller and thinner.

One assignment was to paint a vase.  This was not an ordinary vase.  It was a mottled green vase with a black 'rim' around the top, and was slightly figural.  We teased the teacher about it, and he told us the vase was one he had smuggled out with him when he left Hungary.  To this day, I am not sure if the story is true, or one he made up just to put us in our place.

Hungarian vase, photo is property of bellaroni on Etsy and is used here with permission.  This vase has been sold and is not available for purchase, but bellaroni does have other  vintage items to check out!

Sometimes, my brother and I will reminisce about art class and Mr. Gombai, and usually, the topic of that ugly vase comes up.  Looking back, it wasn't really so ugly; perhaps the years have added beauty to it in the memories that it brings forth.

Saying goodbye...

...to crochetsal.com.
And boy, it's taken some work, even considering the work is all done with me sitting on my tush.
For now, all my free patterns are listed in a new Facebook group I started.  The drawback to that is their file feature is somewhat limited and you can't have different folders .  BUT, I did discover that if I comment under each file, the words in the comments are searchable, even though the title of the file itself is not. 

I will also have to edit all my free pattern links on Ravelry, and may eventually add the free patterns there, but wow, I tried yesterday and instead of getting easier, it seems to have gotten more involved listing a pattern. 

On a non-crochet note, my father brought over 3 boxes of old books.  Now, I remember a lot of these from living at home, most of them came from my Grandma Dobson's house after she passed away:  she had shelves and cupboards of books and when I visited her one of my favourite things to do was look through them all.
Two of the books are from *my* high school days.  Which don't seem like that long ago, but are still vintage according to Etsy's standards (20 years).  Some are my father's books from school, and several are my grandmother's school books!
There is even one book from 1873.  Wow.  Sadly, looking online, these books that are such treasures to me, with names of loved ones in their younger days, are not treasures to the rest of the world, not even the book-loving rest of the world.

I have to admit, my husband was not too happy to see 3 boxes of books taking up space in our small living room, even if they did make our living room smell like an old library (mmmmmm), so I assured him, I will go through, pick the ones that I want and list the rest online.  The Sherlock Holmes book is going no farther than the bookshelf in my bedroom.