My Dad often encouraged me in the middle of a conversation about how something I had done was unacceptable.
I was boiling the sausages before simmering them in jarred spaghetti sauce, as Mom’s list told me to do after school. But the sausages were still raw inside. Dad himself was home from work a bit early (the traffic must have unexpectedly eased) and was horrified (he didn’t know about the simmering to come – or perhaps he mourned the lack of frond from browning the sausage?)
“Christine: would you follow a list of instructions in a chemistry lab if you didn’t understand why you were supposed to do each step? You will be a good cook, you are a good chemistry student, but use all your brain, don’t just follow a list!”
Somehow I heard the encouragement and forgot the rest – it was probably unsuitable for a business blog anyway.
When I headed off to school to study chemistry, what was my graduation present (besides a trip to the Science Museum to see the traveling exhibit of Ramesses the Great) – all the back issues of Threads magazine.
The sweater I attempted for him didn’t fit. It didn’t help me that he’d lost 30lbs while I’d been away at college. There weren’t many fitting tips for knitting for large men in 1990, at least not ones I’d found. Dad said, “You make beautiful fabric, you just need to get the proportions working to fit real people. And you need to keep trying because you’ve got the eye.”