Catching up on the fly.

My daughter has been home since last Tuesday night, and has inspired me to greater things which keep me from the computer keyboard. I have been knitting. A project I began last spring, and which I despair of ever finishing, is almost completed, but has been put aside because I don’t see how I can possible pick up 104 stitches for armhole ribbing when the edge itself is plainly too long for that. Also, I have a fear I will run out of yarn, so I am postponing the end.

When I visited Little Princess in Toronto months ago, I bought a skein of 50% silk-50% bamboo yarn, beautiful stuff in shades of pinks and mauves. It took me a long to time to find something to knit it into, but I finally decided on something that is fancy enough to warrant such expensive yarn, and simple enough to show it off. I’m making a lacy scarf that I will wear like jewelry. It took several false starts before I got it right.

I’ve also begun a sweater in a worsted-weight 70% wool-30% soy blend in a raspberry colour, yarn I also bought on a shopping expedition with my daughter. So while my hands and brain have been busy knitting, my computering has suffered.

Saturday was an absolutely gorgeous day, perfect for the wedding Little Princess had come home for, and to which her parents were also invited. The ceremony was brief in the chapel at the university and the reception was at a fine restaurant in town. Everything was delightful. The bride was a delicate flower, all 5' of her, and her groom was handsome and strapping at 6'7" tall. They are decidedly an odd-looking couple, but we who know them have ceased finding anything unusual in this. The wedding cake was served for dessert, cut by an uncle of the bride with his sword. Yes, his sword.

We sat with our daughter and her boyfriend and his parents, an arrangement which terrified me at first. They are fundamentalist Christians and I feared the worst, knowing that they disapprove of their son living in sin with Little Princess, and having more or less told him that until he returns to the path of righteousness, he is no longer welcome in their church. He doesn’t mind in the least. But dinner was very pleasant. We had a very nice conversation and they really are very fine folks. The mom even invited Little Princess over for lunch the next day so they could talk about knitting.

Yesterday morning early Hubby left to catch a flight for points west, and ended up cooling his heels in Calgary waiting for the next shuttle to Banff since he’d missed the first. Because of bad weather, his flight out of Toronto had been delayed, and his luggage hadn’t caught up with him by the time I spoke to him around midnight (my time). I can only hope he’s got it now.

Later in the afternoon, just as my brother called me from the Tel Aviv airport to let me know he was sleepily awaiting his flight, the doorbell rang and the diarist known as Essaywriter arrived with her friend D. slightly off course while en route to their writers’ workshop in Vermont. I made an extravagant dinner of barbecued Pacific salmon, quinoa pilaf, sautéed green beans and a salad, all washed down with my favourite Baco Noir and we ate and drank and talked and did needlework. What a life!

This morning I made pancakes with the berries my guests had brought with them, after which they headed back the way they’d come.

Tomorrow Little Princess and I take the bus to Toronto where I will sleep on her couch and spend time with my mother. I don’t know how much updating I’ll get done while I’m away, even though I shall bring my netbook with me. My mom isn’t doing that great and I really feel I should spend time with her. But I’m also going to enjoy the city and try to see some friends. Little Princess has promised to take me with her to her Thursday night knitting group.

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