My father came up with this one day.
I loved it. We tried to come up with other fractured sayings and did.
I liked this one so much that I embroidered it on a sampler. Yes, my parents were beatniks, not hippies, but my mother loved crafts. She was an artist and was into practically any craft. Well, excluding "homemaker" crafts. She eschewed homemaker crafts. She did NOT like sewing, no knitting, remedial crochet. Paper mache, pen and ink, oil and chalk pastels, watercolors, we had all the art supplies anyone could dream of ever. She gave us art lessons. We resisted, of course. She did crewel work, so even though sewing was avoided, embroidery was encouraged. I was born in the early sixties, so I sewed ribbons and embroidery on my jeans. We got beads and studs too.
I decided to do a sampler. This made my mother roll her eyes, but it was partly her fault. Instead of Barbies, my sister and my three female maternal cousins and I, were given china dolls. Eight inch ones, that were age 10ish. My mother had her mother's china doll, a 12 inch one with much more bust and a tiny waist. I was given that doll. It had clothes, sewn by hand, with tiny stitches. The clothes were mostly made by my great grandmother.
At the lake in Ontario, we all learned to sew. I had two boy cousins, but one was older and aligned with the adults. My younger boy cousin got a china doll too. We started making things. My grandmother could and did sew. She made 9 patch baby quilts and we all made small 9 patch quilts for our dolls and beds out of pieces of pine and made quite elaborate doll houses and clothes in the woods. No electricity up there, so no tv, no radio, we were it. And no neighbors either, so it was play or fight with each other. We did both. We made elaborate doll clothes with lace and petticoats and hoped for the tiny books in crackerjack boxes.
I was given or bought a kit for embroidering a sampler. My sister and I read enough that we knew about samplers and there was an old framed family one at my grandmother's. I picked an elaborate alphabet which turned out to be a pain. I did not like embroidering very much. I don't think I ever finished the alphabet, but I did finish the saying. Old samplers often have a wise or holy or improving saying. Mine has one that is either silly or profound, depending on one's mood.
ironness