for his upcoming birthday, we thought it might be nice to have a commemorative patch made that can be taken off old shirts or whatever as he grows out of them and put on newer bigger ones! maybe someday he'll even want to put it on his school backpack.

in any case, after debating endlessly and procrastinating about whether or not to get him a birthday patch we finally decided to call around and see if anyone could get it done before the long holiday weekend.

eventually we found vera, the proprietor of "tailor made monograms" at 330 water street in ellsworth, maine which is a mere 60 miles away. after describing what we wanted over the phone in our usual rambling style complete with far too many details about how it was a very special present for a very special boy, she thought she could probably get it done that day despite having all manner of last minute orders to fulfill before she left for the holiday to meet family in eastport and ended the conversation with "now let me get off the phone so i can get some work done!"

ha!

so we made the trek to meet vera who is the kind of person who offers to drop a patch off to people she's never met in a town 60 miles away on her way out of town to meet family on a holiday vacation. but we had other errands to run and eventually decided that it'd be easier for everyone involved if she just left her handiwork in a bag hidden away in an agreed upon secret spot so we could pick it up after she left for the day.

vera is the quintessential down easter with a characteristic quick wit and the dry humor that is common with "old timers" ( and i mean that in the best possible sense ) in the area.

we had so much fun bantering about the specifics of the patch, getting guff from her about how we had thought about every detail that we couldn't not get a picture of odin with very extraordinary embroiderer!