5KCBWDay4 — Conversations Between Workers

Blog prompt: Write a few short paragraphs from the point of view of one of the tools you use for your craft. Then, write a dialogue between yourself and this item.

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We’re not much to look at, you know. A simple pair of Boye size 10.5 aluminum needles. But we’ve made a lot of things in our lifetime…truthfully, we don’t even know how old we are.

Once upon a time, we belonged to a wonderful woman named Miss Ethel.

That’s her there in the center, surrounded by her daughter and her granddaughter. Miss Ethel was 92 when that picture was taken in 2002, and we’d been with her a long time then. A few years after that wedding, Miss Ethel had an accident — ran the riding mower into a tree and injured her leg severely — and had to go into a skilled nursing facility for a few months; then she went to live with her daughter. We, along with all her other crafting supplies, were packed away in boxes and put in storage in her daughter’s garage. After the accident, Miss Ethel just couldn’t concentrate on her needlework any longer.

A few more years went by while we sat in the dark, waiting patiently for Miss Ethel to pick us up again. One day, our box was moved. It felt like we were being put in a truck. We rode for a long long time, and finally were carried off the truck to another truck and then handed to someone who hand-carried us to a stable flat surface and opened the box.

That was me. I’m the granddaughter in that photo. You came to live with me after Miss Ethel, my grandmother, passed away at age 98. Grandma taught me to crochet when I was very young, so when my mother asked me if I wanted anything that had belonged to Grandma, you and the rest of those crafting supplies were the only things I wanted. I feel so privileged to have you, and carry on my Grandmother’s legacy by using her tools. You are beautiful to me. And there’s no other set of Boye size 10.5 aluminum needles in the world that will ever mean as much to me as you do.