The summer camp I grew up with means quite a lot to me--I consider it one of the best and most stable circles in my life, even though I typically only see and interact with the people in it from May to August. Having worked there 12 years, I've grown up around those folks and seen those folks grow up around me.When our tech guy started, he was probably 11 or 12, and for the first three or four years, he didn't speak to anyone but his siblings (there are five of them total and all went through the program). I wanted nothing more than to be the one he'd open up to, but even when he nearly broke his ankle in capture the flag one summer, he never made a sound. During a staff meeting soon after that, our boss gave him the ruse of a heads-up-seven-up game to break his silence to all of the staff at once.
We grew closer after that--a lot of the staff didn't put forth the effort to get to know him even after his first words, and I quickly realized that he wasn't shown the appreciation he so readily deserved. He made sure all our computers, video cameras, and still cameras worked and were in top condition. He made sure the yearly video was compiled, edited, rendered, and playable across platforms. He made sure the theater where we watched or listened to anything was functional. But he's quiet and shy and standoffish, so no one realized how much he did.
I try to make sure he knows he's appreciated. He's a huge fan of Adobe products and I had a friend start working in the office a few blocks away the summer of 2013. That friend was able to get me into the company branded store and I picked up a Photoshop mnemonic pillow for him because they were sold out of Premiere. This year, I decided I'd make the Premiere pillow.
It took a lot longer than I anticipated.
I picked up a ball of Red Heart Soft in Black and one of Lily Sugar'n Cream in Soft Violet to get started. I worked in square rounds starting with four in a magic circle and increased on the corners until the square was roughly a foot across. I edged it in about an inch of the violet, made a corner using the back stitch, and did another inch to give the pillow some width. I made another black square the same way, edged it in about an inch of violet.I used the violet to make an upper case P and a lower case R. The P used a bar of sc about four inches by a half inch and a sc arch about five inches long by half an inch wide. The R started with a bar of sc about three inches by a half inch, then I attached a partial arch about two inches by a half inch. I stitched them on the first square with a yarn needle.
Then I started joining the two pieces together along the violet edges, stuffing when only half of one side was still open. I didn't stuff it quite as much as I should have--the corners puckered--but it turned out very well and was received happily. I finished it in the van ride as all of us as a staff were delivering thank yous to various service sites on our very last day.
