Where to begin.

First, I am fine. Totally and completely fine. I complain about being tired and not having time to make things and there’s too much to do around the house blah blah blah, but actually, it’s all fine. I have a roof over my head, food in my belly, enough money to pay my bills, and things to make other things out of. I have friends and family who I love and who love me back.

I wove a set of eight napkins for my friend Kathy (hi, Kathy!), but since they are not quite right (perhaps due to my lack of skill, the coarseness of this particular loom, or, the fact that different colors of this brand of yarn seem to shrink at different rates when wet finished), I am going to weave another set out of (probably) more reliable yarn on a different loom, thereby increasing the chances of solving the problems.*  I still need to hem them, so there will be more pictures soon. Here are the stripes:

There have been a couple of family emergencies (no worries – everyone is okay, just very stressed out) and I’ve been trying to make sure I am in the place where I can do the most good and be the most helpful as often as possible.

I’ve started a new pair of socks, and those have been following me hither and yon. Recently, they came with me on a trip to visit a dear friend:

This dear friend is one from college. We met each other when I moved to Germany studying on exchange, and being the only other American on the dorm floor (okay, there was one other, but she mostly lived with her boyfriend on an army base…that’s a longer story), and both of us being lovers of books and language, we generally got along fabulously well. I was so afraid of making mistakes, and he kept prodding me on telling me I was doing fiiiiiiine, then he’d suggest a list of books I could read that might help. And then we’d sit at the kitchen table and read the American Heritage Dictionary and laugh so hard, we’d cry. I made many, many fond memories during my two years in Germany, and those are some of the dearest.

He’s very deeply extremely academically minded. And brilliant. And right now, he’s got cancer in a pretty bad way. So, I went to visit him and his partner because I can and they wanted me to and it was pretty damned awesome.

There were so many fine things: books, and much laughing, and eating bags of cherries because they’re in season, and tiramisu, and creme brulee, and tea, and a picnic in the afternoon, and talking about Europe, and woodworking, and knitting, and visiting the neighbor and her awesome dog Hank, and there were cats rolling around being silly and meowing their heads off pretty much all the time, and there was Monty Python. And I truly can’t wait to see them again!

 

I flew home, knitting my socks, thinking deep thoughts about life and death and what that means, and thinking about what’s important and what’s not.

The making is important.

The spending of time with your family and friends omgrightnow is important. People, this is really important.

Staying in touch with friends is important.

Hugging those family and friends is important. Tell them you love them.

Eating the sandwich AND the cookie is important. Just eat the damned cookie. It’s delicious. And you only get to live once.

Sometimes, something comes up and you have to think hard about that last phrase. You look it squarely in the eye and see it for what it is. Eat the cookies, cherish other people, love with abandon, cry in public, laugh as much as you can, live.

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This weekend, I did something I’ve been wanting to do for years and years: I took a class on basket weaving.

And we used the world’s cutest planes to accomplish this:

And this was waiting in front of the bakery when I came back to work last week:

 

I have some cherries waiting at home for me. And a couple of really good audiobooks to go with the hemming of napkins. I might glance at my list of projects that need doing, but I’m not going to worry too much about that right now.

To my friends and family: I love you so much I can’t adequately express it. Every last one of you. Even if you don’t hear from me for a while, please know that I still cherish you and our friendship.

 

 

 

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*I may have acquired another loom. Ahem.