I buckled down and finished the fourth motif on Spot last evening.
Please tell me what this flower is!
I thought it might be an iris from the outline, but once all the colors were added, it wasn't. I'm also thinking that maybe it could be a fancy tulip, or possibly an exotic plant of some sort. The 1600's were a time of exploration, but the descriptions of the animals and plants the explorers saw weren't always accurate. The various faces on illustrations of lions are a good example.
I asked Dearly Beloved what he thought it looked like, and he said a face. So now that's all I can see.
And this face has harlequin glasses on.
If you're of a certain age, you might remember those fancy glasses that ladies of a certain age propped on their noses. They especially remind me of Miss Bess. If you're here for the stitching, you can stop reading right now.
Miss Bess was a character in my hometown. In her youth, she went off to NYC to become a famous actress. Apparently she became a flapper and danced on tables with a cigarette in one hand and a gin & tonic in the other. It's said that her father dragged her home and told her she had to behave herself and get married and settle down.
She did get her teacher certification so that she didn't need Daddy's money. She also became a constant member of the local Little Theater's casts.
By the time I was aware of her, she was up in years. She taught 4th grade at the elementary school I attended and she sang in the same choir as my father. (She is the reason that my father said that sopranos should retire at 40, with very few exceptions.) She also lived in our neighborhood so we saw a lot of her. She always wore Lily Pulitzer flowered shifts. In the winter she teeter-tottered around in very high heels. In the summer she clip-clopped around in gold slide-ons with big flowers across the pedicured toes. She wore big clunky jewelry and bright blue eye shadow. Her hair was an improbable shade of red.
She loved the sun, to the point that her skin looked like well-tanned leather. Wrinkly leather. Which may have led to the reason why she stopped teaching.
Apparently, according to the story my father was telling my mother very quietly, thinking that no small and curious person was in the area, she was "layin' out nekkid" which is Southern for sunbathing in the nude. It seems a neighbor found this offensive and called the cops. When they arrived, she met them in the door in the altogether.
And invited them in for a little drink or two.
My father told my mother that the two young police officers didn't know whether to sh*t or go blind. It was said they called for back-up.
Anyway, the result was that her teaching contract was terminated. It seems that she had lied about her age for so long that she was actually beyond retirement age, but her paperwork indicated she was ten years younger. I do not know what the resolution was, but we then saw her driving around in her convertible at all hours. And when I say driving, I mean that her foot was on the gas and she was more or less pointing the car in the direction she wanted to go.
She lost her license.
Her nephew put her in a home.
She escaped. Several times.
Nephew finally found a live-in caretaker who could tolerate and handle her, and that's the way she lived out her days.
She died when she was 97. She had a drink in her hand and a cigarette smoldering in the ashtray next to her.
