So. It's my birthday.
I already opened the presents my family sent me - I figured, when I get home from swim class I am SO tired and SO just focused on getting the chlorine washed out of my hair and dinner made and eaten, that I thought it was better to open them this morning. My dad sent me an amethyst and pearl brooch, v. nice, the style of jewelry I wear (but, I have hardly any clothes right now that go with amethyst). My mom (via their cats; the brooch is I guess supposed to be from both of them) sent me a pair of St. Patrick's Day socks and a packet of kimono fabric from Ah! Kimono! (which, unfortunately, does not have a website).

The kimono fabric was the nicest surprise (I'm sorry - I like jewelry and all but I just don't wear it that much). My mom included a note describing a jacket she saw made from the fabric - now, of course there wasn't enough in the packet for a whole jacket, but there would be enough for a vest front. Or I could order another packet or two from the place. Or I could get some Japanese-print quilt fabric and use it to piece out. There was also the suggestion of making a patchwork shawl from the fabric (again, I think I'd need more, and I'd have to try to find something to line it with - which is hard here, because all I have access to are Wal-Mart, Jo-Anns, and Hobby Lobby fabric-wise.)

I'm leaning towards blowing some money on a couple more packets of the fabric and doing a jacket. I am guessing that is what I would wear the most. And I have a lot of vests already. The fabric packet she sent me is navy blue. So I'm thinking, order another one of navy blue and maybe one of burgundy/fuchsia.

Incidentally, these are scraps from old worn-out kimono. I think that's really cool. As I looked at the fabric, I wondered who wore the different kimono and obi that they came from - a businessman, maybe, for that small neat print? A young housewife, with the reversable floral? A geisha-in-training? (supposedly they wore simple navy blue prints).

That's why I love buying older things - I own a lot of "vintage" furniture and used books. I like speculating on who owned and used the thing before me. I like the feeling that someone preserved something and cared for it and it's come down to me (true, the reason most stuff winds up in antiques shops is that the descendants of the person who owned it don't like it or would rather have money than heirlooms, but still).

I've never sold or given away anything I've inherited from a family member. I don't know if I could do it. My dad has boxes of stuff from his parents - things like his dad's pipes and ashtrays - in the garage that he has never opened. I suppose someday they will pass to me and then I will have to decide what to do with things from a person I barely had a connection with. (I was much closer to my mom's mom than to my dad's parents. I have a few books and pieces of hand-crocheted lace from her, and also a piece of large, complex, and glass-fronted furniture which is still at my parents' house until I can figure out a safe way to get it moved here).

Actually, I take it back. I have my dad's dad's Columbia Encyclopedia of Literature. But still, I wouldn't know what to do with all those used pipes.