A Little About Me

For those curious enough to want to know more about me, my name is Peggy. I'm past the half way point of my life now and live in a small town in eastern Ohio. I have been divorced for many years and live with and care for my mother in an old brick home overlooking the Ohio river. I have created an outline of my stitching history through the links above. Pretty sketchy until the 90's but lots of progress I think. There are also pictures of my family and a tribute to my cat.

The people in my part of the world show no interest in needlework outside of quilting so I have no stitching friends locally to play with. That also means no shops. I can buy floss and a few other supplies at Joann's Fabrics or Wal-Mart but when I really want to shop I head up to Pittsburgh to the Noble Craftsman, a great shop over an hour away. With our current home situation, I don't get there often so my favorite mail order source is Elegant Stitch. I still add to my enormous stash, but not nearly as much as I'd like too!

My mother suffered a heart attack in late 1998 and just could not pull herself back together afterwards. It was fairly mild with little damage and angioplasty was sucessfully performed. Following this, however, she fell into a serious depression and I left my job as a bank teller to stay home and care for her. Another mild heart attack followed in early 1999 and then a mild stroke in June. A catharisation in August showed a blocked artery to her right kidney and angioplasty repaired this the following week. Unfortunately, we found that she had developed an allergy to the IVP dyes necessary for these procedures and her kidneys began to fail. My mother had been a diabetic for many years and suffers from extensive diabetic neuropathy (nerve damage). This also had caused a gradual decline to the health of her kidneys over the years. By late October dialysis became necessary. Through all of this my mother's depression became overwhelming. She lost all interest in life, stopped talking and eating, and had very little chance of surviving. During hospitalization, we were able to force her to take medication for the depression and she is finally eating again and slowly progressing.

All this wreaked havoc on my stitching time. Now most of my stitching is done in the hospital waiting rooms with poor lighting. As you will see in my XS Gallery these are mostly small simple pieces. At least they have air conditioning! We don't have A/C at home so our hot, humid nights have ended my stitching evenings with the big, involved pieces under my bright light until the fall. Then I'll be back to my favorites, samplers!