So, you remember my description of the real blue room, right? (Check out the sidebar here if not.) Quick summary: childhood home in the 1970's, tacky colored carpet everywhere, blue (and I mean blue) guest room. Well, I just happened to find this old picture of me at about four or five years old sitting in the blue room. The carpet's not in the picture, but I suspect that the wallpaper is enough to give you the idea. Of course the chair is also blue. No wonder we just called it the blue room!

And you know what I'm sitting next to? My mom tells me that was the sewing machine! It's a drop-in cabinet thingie. I vaguely remember us having a sewing machine, but I don't remember my mother sewing often and I had no idea that the machine used to be in that room. How neat that out of some strange childhood fondness for it, I just happened to pick the blue room to "house" my knitting web pages (I was even planning on adding a page or two when I start sewing) and that was where the sewing machine was in our house. Cool.

My mother also tells me that my grandmother knit. This is news to me. She had rheumatoid arthritis and had stopped knitting before my time. My mother says she still has the last sweater that she made somewhere. It's nice to know that I'm carrying on this hobby of hers, even though she couldn't teach me. And one of my great aunts (she'll be getting one of the hotties) is a wonderful sewer. I hope that when I start sewing, I can do her proud. So there's actually quite a bit of tradition behind my taking up knitting and sewing. Not bad for someone who learned to knit at thirty from friends and books and is just taking up sewing. Must be in the genes somewhere.

My in-laws are coming from Germany to visit for couple of weeks and so I got to thinking about that side of the family tree as well. My husband's grandparents had a beautiful old sewing machine that they brought to Germany from Hungary after the war and they apparently also kept the whole family well supplied with knitted socks. And his grandmother on the other side was a professional seamstress. I'm looking forward to getting a few sewing tips from my mother-in-law. Maybe she can help me get over my fear of the sewing machine and help me make my first stitches. Daughter/mother-in-law bonding over needlework. A new tradition perhaps.