A comment on the forum about looking for new holiday traditions got me thinking about how different cultures can bump into one one another and cause friction; and how difficult it can be to blend them.

Each of my sisters and I married men from different cultures than ours- 2 Hungarians and a German. The first two son-in-laws were not interested at all in learning about our family's traditions. This made it very difficult for my sisters to incorporate anything special from our celebrations into their own little families.

When I got married, my mother wasn't going to see this happen again, so she told me this little story. Seems that back in the 20's, one of her uncles, her mother's brother, a married man, took up chasing after another woman. My great-grandfather was so disgusted by this public display that he took his DIL and her young children into his home. He was well-to-do, so this was no hardship for him.

His family had come from a fishing community in Scotland. Seafood was always a part of their holiday meals. He was not going to let those children suffer, so at great expense he had fresh oysters shipped by rail to northern Michigan every year for New Year's Eve. The three little girls grew up, had their own families, and, even though everyone hated them, including the three girls, oysters were always on the menu for New Year's Eve.

My mother thought this was ludicrous to incur such an expense for something you didn't enjoy, all for the sake of tradition. Her point to us was to keep the traditions you like and discard the ones you don't. Steve is more than willing to try something new. Happily, we have been able to incorporate most of the traditions. His family celebrates Christmas Eve. We have ham, kolbazs, cucumber salad, and strudel. My family celebrates Christmas Day- we do roast beast, rumbly-thumps, and triffle- veddy, veddy British. My kids have had the best of both worlds.

And the leftovers- I make scalloped potatoes and ham, shepherd's pie- good eats. And after a week of all that rich food, we have a new tradition. Our New Year's Day celebration consists of homemade soup and sandwiches- very low key, very relaxed, and not an oyster in sight.     

Did I get your attention? This isn't about looking for a pattern, but rather about finding one.

Magyar is the word Hungarians used to describe themselves and their country. Until recently (the last 15 to 20 years), Hungary did not have a quilting tradition.

I have long wanted to do a special quilt for my husband since he is so supportive, even indulgent, of my hobby. He is always right there, helping me pick out fabric or books or sewing machines, and he loves to look at all the gadgets! We've been married 18 years and he is just now getting his first quilt (it will be a Christmas gift.)

Our favorite restaurant is Hungarian; each table is covered with a beautifully embroidered cloth with traditional Magyar designs. The walls are adorned with embroidered items and Magyar pottery. Near the door is a display of more Magyar folk art. One day while admiring all the beautiful embroidery, I got the idea to translate the designs into appliqué.

So I spent the next several months trying to find authentic patterns. Finally found some books in a gift store at a cultural center in New Jersey. Remember, I'm from the Midwest- isn't the internet great! The first two arrived today (they were out of the other two). I was so excited I couldn't decide which to open first, the books or a letter from my mother. The books won out, sorry Mom, but it is your own fault for teaching me to quilt.

One of the books identifies the region where the design originated; one of the books on order is a more scholarly tome on the same subject- don't think it has patterns, just illustrations.

At about the same time, I discovered that our local cultural center is beginning new Hungarian language classes. When I called to get the particulars, the woman and I began discussing my idea. She has tons of patterns in her own private collection which she will loan me, plus she says there are books at the center I can borrow. Anything that is in Hungarian, she will help me translate. We’ve never even met- what is that saying about depending on the kindness of strangers?

She brought up lots of points I hadn’t considered. Do I want to make a sort of Baltimore album quilt where each block depicts a motif from a different region of Hungary, or do I want to just use the designs from where his family originated. I’m not even sure where the two sides of his family are from. I know his two grandmothers cooked the same recipe in entirely different ways. Do I want a black background or a white background? That will influence what motifs and what colors I can use.

I can see that I still have a bit of research to do and this is going to mean that I have to talk to his father- ugh! We haven’t gotten along too well this summer, ever since he started telling people that I was trying to stick him away in a nursing home. It was just for PT for 6 weeks so he could regain his strength and go back to his house. When I finally got my Irish up, I told him that I had had the family’s blessing because they were not available to do the legwork and make inquiries and that I was not the enemy. I was his biggest supporter for keeping him in his own house. The alternative was him coming to my house and I’d slit my throat if that ever happened. He has avoided me ever since. Maybe now he believes that a Hungarian temper can’t hold a candle to an Irish one.

I figure with the research still to be done, and then to formulate a plan and do the actual appliqué, I should have this done in time for our twentieth anniversary in two years. Will keep you posted.

The single greatest influence in my life is without a doubt my dear beloved mother. I can remember being so fascinated watching her iron. This was in the days before permament press and everything had to be ironed. I begged her to let me do it and finally she relented. She would sprinkle Daddy's handerchiefs and unplug the iron. I could just about get through a week's worth before the iron grew cold. Then I realized if I slowed down she would have to plug in the iron to re-heat it. Boy, did I think I was getting away with something! I was about three and a half.

Because my dad attended frequent conferences out of state, someone gave him a travel iron. My parents thought it was broken, and instead of getting it fixed, they gave it to me. One day, Mother noticed the wrinkles were really coming out of my doll clothes. Much to her shock, the iron was blistering hot.  She took it away from me and had my dad remove the plug and wrap the end in electrical tape. My dad was an electrical engineer and I had spent a fair amount of time in his workshop. Not only did I know where the wire strippers were, I knew how to use them. 

Down the basement stairs marched one indignent little curly-head. I removed the tape and stripped the wires and marched myself back up two flights to my bedroom where I plugged those bare wires into the socket. When Daddy found me, the iron was still pugged into the south wall of my bedroom. I was lying against the north wall in a daze. I can still remember how much my fingers and arm tingled!  Not a single light in the house or the garage worked that night, I had blown every fuse! 

In spite of my electrifying experience, Mother continued to let me help her with the ironing. I worked my way up to napkins, pillowcases and Mother's aprons. My parents played bridge; every so often there would be several tablecloths for the cardtables after they had hosted the group. Eventually I was rewarded with the task of doing Daddy's white dress shirts. He wore a suit and tie to work every day for 30-something years, plus one for church one Sunday. Even after perma-press became more common, he still wanted me to iron those six shirts for him. Said they were more comfortable to wear after they had been pressed.

One cold February day in 1958, I pieced my first quilt- I was four years old. My mother had agreed to watch my best friend, Susie, because her mother had a doctor's appointment. Susie was 2 years older than I, and I frequently struggled to keep up. She should have been in school that day, but because of a school in-service, she had had only half a day. Susie wasn't dressed to be playing outdoors (girls always wore dresses to school in those days regardless of the weather) so we explored inside until we got too rambunctious and Mother decided we needed to do something more ladylike. She was planning a big family dinner and did not want any last minute cleaning to do. She grabbed her scrap bag and cut some squares and began showing us how to do a running stitch. Susie was all thumbs and she struggled all afternoon to sew a straight seam. I could see almost instantly that this was the first time I excelled at something she could not do. I didn't exactly gloat, and I knew it would be rude to let her see me so pleased with myself, but it was so difficult to contain my overwhelming joy at her expense. Needless to say, it was probably the one and only time Susie was glad to be rescued by her mother who ran a pretty tight ship at their house.

I still have the quilt. I know the exact date because I also have the picture Daddy took of us that night; Mother and me and the quilt and the dozen red roses he brought home for her birthday.

From that point on, I pestered her constantly to let me use the sewing machine. Eventually, she began to draw large spirals and zigzags and geometric shape on typing paper. She put a dull needle in the machine and let me practice by piercing the paper. When I could pierce it exactly on the line, she would let me sew. This was much harder than I expected, but I did eventually get the idea, and the rest as they say, is history.

Mother taught me the basics of embroidery, but I am largely self-taught as I am with tatting. Never learned to knit or crochet- couldn't see the point of making baby booties when I was four or five, seemed lile a total waste of time to me then. Of course, by the time I was a teenager, people were making some pretty cool swaeters and bags, but by then I had a total mental block and have never been able to learn even though I've tried several times.

Was talking to FloridaDeb last night in the new chatroom and promised her a story about taking out the trash in Florida. Deb, this is for you-

As many of you know, I grew up all over the United States. I was as close to being a military brat without actually having my dad in the military. My mother used to tell people that he was a migrant worker- he worked in the aereospace program. My father really was a rocket scientist, which as Deb and Sara and our other friends in Texas know, easily explains my presence in those two states.

We moved to Florida just before the end of the school year (7th grade) so I didn't know too many kids- fortunately there were girls my age on both sides of us plus across the street and two houses over. None of us girls ventured out of this circle very much, even tho the other girls had been there forever. Way down at the other end of the street was a girl my age that I barely knew from school and her younger sister. No body like them much because they were kind of snotty and always bragging about everything they had, which was considerable for the times. Remember, the Beatles were still a group at the time of this story; kids didn't have every little gadget their heart desired. Truthfully, there weren't that many gadgets to be desired. But what there was, these girls had. Each girl had her own room with a TV and a phone and whatever was the latest in hi-fi equipment for their records (Records? They were large flat discs with a groove in it and you put it on a turntable and placed a needle in the groove and it reproduced the music. Turntable?....) They also had 10-speed bikes at a time when most kids were still riding balloon tire bikes, and even a 3 speed or English bike, as we called them, were uncommon.

They also had the stupidest dog I have ever run across. He was a big, gray, goofy looking Wiemeraner named Herman. Herman had a nose for trouble and that usually involved somebody's trash. Invariably, Herman would get out the night before collection day and, you guessed it, he dug through all the trash on the street. It wasn't bad enough that he tore through the bags and strew the contents across the lawn; he took your trash into the neighbors yard and their trash into the next and so forth on down the line. Have

you ever picked up trash? Doing your own is bad enough, but at least you know what's there.

I must also note that these were the olden days when it was still safe enough to issue a student directory, so I had this family's number in my copy. Every week, Mother would call down about the dog being loose and every week the answer would be the same, "Oh, not Herman, Herrrman's playing Barrrbie's with the girls in the sunroom!" Thirty seconds later,we'd see both the girls tearing through the streets on those ten-speeds, looking for Herman.

Did not take long for my mother to get a belly-full. Into town she drove the night before collection day, went to the butcher and purchased the finest filet mingnon in the shop. Then she waited and she soon was rewarded for her watchfulness. Down the street with his now-famliar gait came Herman. As soon as he was distracted with tearing up our trash, out she went with the filet to coax him into the garage. Then she made her phone call. "Oh, not Herman, Herrrman's playing Barrrbie's with the girls in the sunroom." "You don't know how relieved I am to hear that," my mother replied, "because we've got a dog that looks just like him in the garage and my husband's loading his shotgun!"

"Oh, oh, oh, we, we, we'll be right down," came the surprised voice on the other end of the end. Almost immediately, a strange car appeared in our driveway and out got a strange man- I'd never seen their father before. "You've got my dog," he stammered to mother. Mother promptly gave him his dog, the very moment he cleaned up all the trash in our yard.

Now you might think that's the end of the story. You'd be wrong! The next day, my dad came home from the missle plant (as we called it) in a really foul mood. Mother asked what had happened that upset him so. "So and so (his boss) found fault with everybody and everything." Mother couldn't imagine why Daddy's boss would be so unreasonable and said so. It seemed, according to Daddy, that some fool woman locked his dog in her garage last night, accussed him of tearing her trash, and wouldn't give the dog back until all the trash was picked up. Neither Daddy nor his boss realized that they were neighbors and that the "fool woman" was Daddy's wife! My mother and I exchanged furtive glances and said not one word. We were living in the mid-west before she told Daddy the whole story.

It became a  private joke between my mother and I. When one of us wants the other to come for a visit to quilt, we call and say we want Herrrman to come play Barrrbie's!