'I think angels are watching out for me'

Linda Graff of Walnut shows some of the angels she's made over the past few years. Graff said she began making angels in memory of her mother, who died three years ago; and gives them to friends and family. Her most recent angel (in the forefront) was made from her day lily plants. (BCR photo/Jessica Gray)

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WALNUT — Sometimes an emotional scar in your life, a loss, can lead you to places you never expected.

That is only part of the story of Linda Graff of Walnut, who’s always on the hunt for a new craft project to create. Graff crochets and knits, makes gift boxes out of old Christmas cards, and even made the corsages for her elder son’s high school proms.

Her purpose changed course after her beloved mother died three years ago, and she began to make angels each Christmas to give to family and friends in memory of her. Each year, the angels vary, from those made from wire to those made from old ball ornaments from her husband’s grandmother.

One year she made angels whose halos were made from the pearl necklaces given to her by an old friend who had died.

“It’s a memory of (my mother), and it honors all my friends who are angels. I feel by doing that, my Mom’s memory lives on not just through me, but everyone who gets one of my gifts,” she said.

Last year, as the Christmas holiday loomed, she was still struggling to come up with a new angel idea. In the past, she’s pored through craft books and gone to craft fairs, searching for the one bright idea to come to her.

This time around, all she had to do was pull a few weeds in her garden.

She had thought she could create angels with old corn husks, and went to a farm and picked them up off the ground. She stored them in her basement only to find they had dried up the next day.

As she was on her knees in her garden one day, she began to eye her day lily plant leaves.

“I looked at them and thought, ‘I could accomplish the same task with a dried up flower.’ And it worked out beautifully,” she said.

She ended up making 15 individual angels from her day lilies and even shipped a few in the mail to friends and family. When people received the standing angels, they were green but gradually dried out.

Graff braided the angel’s halo around its head, wrapped a colored ribbon around its neck, gluing it in place with a small bouquet of artificial flowers.

“I started off making it for all the women in my family, all the women get a girl gift. Now I think they look forward to it every year — ‘Oh, what’s she going to make this year?’” she said.

Graff said for the time being she doesn’t sell her angels but will make them for those who want one.

“My mother was just an angel of a woman, and I think angels are watching out for me. Somebody has to be because my life is going very well. I look for the guidance of angels. I just feel everybody needs a little sign of peace and to know there is an angel following them, so I give it to them,” she said.

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