Day 18 Grasshopper Rug

I have the basic rug completed except for the last motif, the second horse. I still have some details to work on, then I'll surround it with an antique black border with an odd shape, sort of flowing in between the motifs. It's hard to get this rug into a photo and it's going to be even harder once the second horse is added.

I've made a lot of changes as I've gone along - the center pair in dresses have been a real problem - maybe because I wasn't even sure in my mind what they were doing. When we were in high school, we belonged to a YWCA group called Y-Teens. I mostly remember going to and presiding over meetings. I'm sure we must have done other things, but I can't remember them, so I thought I drew a fashion show, but in my mind they kept on being speakers at a meeting. The month I turned sixteen, I travelled by train for a couple days and nights from Detroit to Denver for a national YWCA convention. I had to speak to fifteen hundred people. I read a speech written by another teenager who couldn't take the trip. I practiced the speech a lot, but when I stood up to read it, I accidently left the last page at my seat. I never told anyone. I just stopped reading at the end of the second to last page and sat down. No one ever asked me about the abrupt ending. The other strong memory I have of that trip is that an anonymous donor paid my way. I never found out who it was who was so generous. It was enough money that even now, half a century later, I still think it was a lot of money - so that kindness and all the memories of my first train ride and the huge wooden YWCA where we stayed in downtown Denver were in my mind all of the time I was hooking and reverse hooking that part of the rug.

I think I've taken a photo I can use for my next rug - which also might be a runner. I'm going to post the photo on my gibbydogblog since it's a farm picture - shows my last four horses.