Threading Coincidences

I’m clearing out the basement of my mother’s house. Ma très chère mère died six years ago, but we’ve rented the house out as much as possible since then and haven’t ever had the time or inclination to do the job fully. Since I’m (forcibly) in the US for many weeks (please pardon my complaining about the UKVI process!), this seems an excellent time to get done a good portion of this important project.

I needed to sew something and pulled out this cute little sewing box from a trunk that belonged to my paternal grandmother. Some very vintage items in here.

It’s funny – just a month or so before I left Beverley, I bought one of those wooden sock darning forms at a “yard sale” for 10p. Now, here are two of them. I constantly have the strong and deep impression that everything I need is here at my mother’s house, that she continues to provide for me. I do hate getting rid of some of these items. Will they be appreciated by someone else? If I knew that for sure, it would be so much easier. I have to simply say a prayer that they shall be.

In the sewing box was this little vintage card of tapestry needles:

I particularly like this for two reasons. One is that I’m often using tapestry needles and seem to need to buy them a couple of times a year if I’m not careful with keeping track of them (I usually have too many knitting projects going at once and tend to leave my finishing needle with the unfinished project, in a careful but not permanent place). Second is that it made me smile because of the company name. “Boyes” is a store in Beverley we often shop at and where I likely WOULD have gone to get more tapestry needles should I need them! I love these little cosmic jokes.

I had another one just yesterday. I might as well include it here now. I posted a picture of this framed poster on my instagram account:

What in the world was this doing in my mother’s basement? Besides the fact that it is full of mildew (oh dear…), the shock factor for me was that it comes from a theatre I live very close to in Columbia County. My mother’s house is on the eastern tip of Long Island and I was living here in 1979. The MacHaydn is in a beautiful but pretty sleepy town five or six hours away. My mother has never been to the MacHaydn and was only ever in Chatham after I moved to that area sixteen years ago. It was a very, very odd colliding of the worlds to find that yesterday.

Of course, I then figured that the poster was a find at a thrift shop or yard sale (sources of all good things, before TJ Maxx came to town) for its frame some years ago, but still – what are the odds that a thrift shop out here would have a poster from up there? I wonder how many years it’s been down there? I’m quite certain it was acquired long before I moved to Columbia County, before I was even aware of its existence. My mother would often buy frames for her NYC aunt’s art projects – this was in the 90’s. That aunt was no longer living by the time we were house hunting in 2000. I still can’t shake the feeling of how odd is this coincidence.

What little messages does the universe constantly send us that we may or may not be aware of?