Sewing Circle

I grew up in the Mennonite Church, and one thing that the Mennonites are famous for is "Service".
Being the hand of God reaching out to those in need. The women in the church are very talented and crafty and they are always making things to give to missions. At my Mom and Dad's church these ladies gather together once a month for "Sewing Circle".

There's a business meeting....

And special projects....

Like boxes of treats for people that can't get out of the house during the holidays...

And the boxes are pretty too!

Beautiful quilts are displayed....

Hand made, of course.

My Aunt Erma is one of the expert quilters.

Here my Mother and some of my other Aunts are stuffing fabric pressure relieving pillows that are used by bed ridden patients in the hospital. (Where are you, Aunt Ardys? I know you were there somewhere!)

 I have many fond memories of running wild in the church sanctuary with the other kids while our Moms were busy working in the basement. It was fun exploring all of those scary forbidden rooms behind the pulpit.

Along the North wall of the basement there are a lot of built-in cabinets that house the electric sewing machines. They can be pulled out for sewing and then stored away for the rest of the month.

 There are a quite a few drawers for supplies and notions too.

And now, it's confession time.

When I was a very little girl I was exploring alone in the basement while my folks were busy upstairs doing church work. Out of boredom I started snooping through the sewing drawers.

 And I found a metal needle threader. One that looked sort of like this...

 
But the one I found was purple. A bright, shiny, glorious purple. A purple that couldn't be denied. I was so drawn to that beautiful needle threader.....like a raven is drawn to a bright shiny coin, and I just HAD to have it.....so I took it. I took it home and hid it in my room and I didn't tell anybody about it. I felt guilty of course, and eventually, by the time Christmas rolled around, I decided that I needed to get rid of it. So, of course I did the only logical thing a little girl does in a situation like that.....I put it in my Mom's Christmas stocking.

I remember when we opened our presents on Christmas Eve that my Mom found the needle threader in her stocking and was so confused. I averted eye contact and never said a word as Mom and Dad passing it back and forth trying to figure out where it came from. I can't remember if they asked me about it. If they did I'm sure I lied about having anything to do with it.

That needle threader sat right beside my Mom's sewing machine and haunted me for years. As I grew a little older I realized just how bad it had been for me to steal something, no matter how small or pretty it is, so one day I decided to fix the situation. My solution - I took it out of my Mom's sewing room and back to church. And when noone was looking, I put it in back in the drawer where it belonged. Problem solved.

So...now what do you think? Did 2 wrongs make a right?