Crocheted teacup: a work in progress.

Last night I made a cup of tea. I’ve almost finished it. There’s no chance it’ll go cold, because this is a warm, fuzzy, crocheted cup of tea. Have I mentioned that I have a mad desire to crochet everything? Like, everything? I walk down the street looking at trees and letterboxes and thinking about how one could render them in crochet. I know. I’ve got it BAD. Anyway, this cup of tea is to give to Mum because it’s coming up to three years since we said goodbye to Dad.

Steve and I happened to be visiting at the time, with Bertie the Lab. Deb and her family lived around the corner. So everyone was there, available, and it was pretty-well the ideal time for Dad to drop off the perch, as he’d been threatening to do so for some time. So once we were all in position, he made his exit. Steve and I changed our plans from a holiday up the coast to hanging around with Mum until the funeral. It was a profound time, throwing up the inevitable existential crisis – who am I now that one of the great overarching personalities of my life is no longer sharing this earth with me? -combined with the need to make a lot of odd choices, such as what does a person wear for their cremation? Mum got a full set of clothes ready, including underpants and socks and shoes, and put them in an ordinary shopping bag. For some reason dropping off this bag at the funeral director was far more disturbing than going to see Dad laid out in hospital a couple of nights before. Then, he’d looked perfectly peaceful, like someone sleeping. The nurses gave us a cup of tea. We sat companionably with him for a while, drinking our tea with him as we had done all our lives. That was quite nice, really. But dropping off that bag of clothes, the last clothes he’d ever wear – that was a much harder call.

I hadn’t rediscovered crochet at that time. It would have been a perfect companion through those strange days, but I didn’t think of it. The crochet obsession kicked in about six months later. Anyway, I’ve been going round the house looking for bits of wool to finish this cup of tea. I found some gold metallic yarn to suggest the gilt rim on saucer and cup; I’ll stitch a frog motif on the side of the cup because one of his nicknames was Frog. I’ll curve a bobbly length of crochet into a handle. Anyway, I’m glad there’s always cups of tea and I’m glad there’s always crochet.