when I wasn’t sketching . . .

During the 30+ years after high school that I was not sketching, I couldn’t help myself — creativity found other outlets. One of which was embroidery.

Bill and I were married in Apache Junction, Arizona under the looming Superstition Mountains. In the early 1970s, they practically seemed to be in his mother’s back yard with only desert between her house in the outlying parts of Mesa and the mountains’ beginning. The last time we were in Arizona we were saddened to see how much development was allowed not only up to this iconic view, but also up the side of the mountain itself.

I cross-stitched this scene (using a purchased pattern) as a gift for his mom. Years later when she died, it was returned to me and it now hangs on our bedroom wall — a memory of both our times hiking the Arizona desert and of his mom.