I'll never forget this shade of Pretty Punch pink

A trip down memory lane — thanks to eBay — and a foray into the Loose Ends Project, which finishes projects loved ones left behind.

A short delay to our previously scheduled Nashville content. (You can read Part 1 about seeing country music legends at the Grand Old Opry here.) 

But I couldn’t wait to bring you a delightful little eBay discovery I made last week. 

When I was a kid, I did a little modeling for my dad’s craft company, Pretty Punch, whose products you can still buy on eBay.

Earlier this month, I was trying to explain Pretty Punch to some friends of mine.

“It was this company my dad and my grandma owned in the ‘80s when I was a kid growing up in Florida,” I always say. And then dive into a poor attempt to describe the craft and its very specific tool: a pink tube you hold like a pen to punch thread into fabric, which creates a raised texture on the back of the fabric that is actually the front. 

During my early years, I grew up surrounded by the craft industry thanks to my dad’s involvement in this company. My parents took me along as an infant in a car seat as they sold Pretty Punch at a booth at a flea market. I was so familiar with the tool, the yarn and the endless patterns used to make these kitschy designs with Tweety Bird and a cat in a teacup. 

I’m not sure whose idea it was to put me in some Pretty Punch outfits and become one of the models for the catalog, but I loved the attention and getting to represent their company. 

Pretty Punch yarn, which came in more than 100 colors, was a big part of my childhood. I have kept this ungodly bright green spool on my altar as a keepsake of that time. Now I have a whole kit.

Pretty Punch was built around a shade of pink that was suspiciously close to Mary Kay pink, but in my mind, my grandmother might as well have been driving one of those pink Cadillacs herself. She had a huge house and lots of jewelry and fancy cars. They were living The Life.

Well, that was until the business started to fail, and I realized that I was a bit of a performance. That maybe she didn’t know exactly what she was doing. That my dad couldn’t run with business with her and he couldn’t run it without her.