When I was a little girl my parents and I were on a bridge watching a train which had stopped in Back Bay just before proceeding to South Station in Boston. A man stepped out on the platform of the end carriage and he waved to us. IT WAS THOMAS DEWEY. (He was a candidate for President in 1940.)

Who would have thought that 2 “elderly” ladies in an Assisted Living facility in Seattle became best friends even before they discovered that many years ago they had each bought looms for weaving. And furthermore they had made these purchases in New Zealand.

No, they didn’t purchase backstop looms as pictured in the painting below.

Mocha was a mix but with the name Mocha I’m going to call her a Chocolate Lab.. That dog was devoted to my mother and the 2 were great pals.

II was prompted to search for this picture from my files when I recently received a postcard and receipt from one of my postcard enthusiasts. The receipt included a picture and information regarding his Chocolate Lab named “Mouse”. Mouse sheds enough hair to knit a sweater – no hair was inadvertently included.

Here we are well into March and I want to see some sunshine.

From a very young age I wanted to make rugs. My initial efforts consisted of pompoms sewed on to a canvas backing. I soon moved on to braided rugs and made several for my own use and as gifts. Included in my repertoire were hooked rugs – mine were very amateurish – not a patch on those hooked by my female New England ancestors. But when I got into making rya rugs I was really getting somewhere, both with color and design. After some years though, I finally got a substantial loom for weaving and then my textile efforts really took off.

The little girl holding her dolly just celebrated her 81st birthday. She joins her sister and cousin pictured on either side of her, also in their 80’s. The others pictured, mothers, great aunt, and 2 cousins, are all long deceased.

Photo taken in Belmont Massachusetts, 1940’s

Almost every day I devote some time to my genealogy, mostly adding ancestors to my family tree and trying to find more information on particular ancestors. There’re lot of win goose chases involved in this process but usually it yields interesting information. In March 2019 I had 17,481 ancestors on my family tree. Today, March 1, 2022, I have 23,941 ancestors on my family tree (Janet’s Family Tree). An increase of over 6,000 ancestors. Mind boggling I would say, and fun in the process. Ancestors stretching back to the 14th century. Knights and nobles and ordinary folk through the ages. Most of these people located in New England and their forebears came from the British Isles.

According to Ancestry.com my ethnicity as determined from my DNA is as follows:

England and NW Europe. 65%

Scotland. 15%

Sweden & Denmark. 9%

Wales. 5%

Ireland. 5%

Norway 1%