Stitched, Hammered, and Woven

Just a bit more Richard III:

Gifts Stitched, Hammered, and Woven

Joy Dare: continuing to count 1000 gifts

44.  Stitched -- last Christmas my younger sister gave me a lap robe that she had made out of bits of fabric from our father's old coveralls. That she made it by hand was special. That she used the old work clothes of our daddy -- a treasure. Thank you, Georgi!

45. Hammered -- "On the Anvil: Stories on being shaped in God's Image" by Max Lucado

"The craftsman uses various instruments in shaping his tools - hammers, forges, anvils. Other tools are still on the anvil, being melted down, molten hot, malleable, changeable. They wait on the anvil, being shaped by the craftsman's hammer, becoming in the sometimes painful process what they were meant to be. They become tools of usefulness: sharpened, primed, defined, mobile. They lie ready in the craftman's tool chest, available to their master, ready to fulfill their calling."

"Does the clay say to the potter, 'What are you making?'"  

Isaiah 45:9

46.  Woven -- one of my favorite poems:

The Weaver

My life is but a weaving

between my Lord and me;

I cannot choose the colors

He worketh steadily.

Oft times He weaveth sorrow

And I, in foolish pride,

Forget He sees the upper,

And I the underside.

Not til the loom is silent

And the shuttles cease to fly,

Shall God unroll the canvas

And explain the reason why.

The dark threads are as needful

In the Weaver's skillful hand,

As the threads of gold and silver

In the pattern He has planned.