Fiber Raven Soiree

Eva and Georg

Picture it-- the time is the early 1940's, and the place is England. World War II is raging. A family named Wilson, fearing the worst from ill-mannered enemy soldiers, decides to send their daughter Eva to Victoria, British Columbia until the war is over.

About the same time, a Norwegian prince-- whether actually of nobility or merely a ranking military officer of that country, I do not know-- somehow finds himself in Minnesota. His wife and two children remain in Norway.

Eva Wilson travels to Minnesota for a summer camp, where she meets this Norwegian-- let's call him Georg-- and they fall in love. When Eva returns to Victoria, their correspondence is confined to letters. She keeps them all, re-reading them hundreds of times. Georg eventually plans to return to Norway, divorce his wife, and marry Eva.

You may imagine that Georg's wife was not pleased. Subsisting on nuts and berries, fending for herself and two young children during the German occupation, and waiting for Georg to return was not fun. Georg wrote to Eva that he could not do this, he could not divorce his wife. And in the last letter, Georg says to Eva "I am being sent to Stalingrad".

(Stalingrad was the most brutal battle of WWII, it is doubtful that he survived.)

Heartbroken, Eva places all of the letters into a beautiful French silk purse-- perhaps she chose a black one on purpose, and was it coincidence that the colorful silk embroidery was the Chinese "forbidden" stitch? She carefully hid the purse high upon a rafter in the basement, and disappeared from the earth. Nobody remembers her, no records lead us to find her.

Many years later, we find the young textile artist Judith MacKenzie supplementing her income by restoring old homes in Victoria, where she lives. One day she reaches up to the top of a basement rafter to find a beautiful example of textiles and a heartbreaking story of love and war. She searches in vain for anyone who remembers this girl and failing, she adds the purse and its letters to her textile collection and tells this story when she speaks about silk.