A busy day for this knitter

WHAT a day, folks.  Looking back, the two most prominent parts are easy for me to identify.  Bet you won't guess them though... I'm not sure I would.

In fact, why not? Go ahead - make your two best bets:

1. Peaceful errand, with knitting.

2. A nice visit with my mum, no knitting.

3.  Drive to Port Hope, sooooo much knitting.

4. Lunch at Tim Hortons in a town en route to Port Hope, can't remember the name.  No knitting, but instantly sticky shoes.  I don't know - this was the friendliest, best-staffed Tim's I've been in ever (which is saying something) - and yet the entire floor area was sticky.  ???

5. Arrival at The Gathering, in Port Hope.  Such a nice event with yarny vendors' booths around the outside walls of the community centre's gym, and rows of chairs in the middle for visitors to sit and spin or knit.  So many wheels!  So much roving!  Tools, woven blankets, books, magazines, already-knit things that (dang!) I forgot to buy just as I was leaving, yarn, and - did I say roving?  It was mostly an event for spinners, you see.

6. A visit with Silvia from Stoddart Family Farm, which involved packing about a million conversation points into 5 minutes while we multitasked about getting more of her Romney/mohair items into my bag.  And if I didn't feel kindred spirity enough about Silvia by now, I saw we both use Joy spinning wheels.  Not that she was getting much chance to use hers.

7. Forgotten from The Gathering when it was suddenly time to go:  handknit handwarmers from the booth next to Silvia's - superdang, because they were so soft and pretty - and also the amazing array of Jacob wool products the proceeds from sales of which would go to maintaining the sheep that produced it.  I am kicking myself because I love Jacob wool.  Oh! and I forgot I really did need to say Yes Please to the offer of a vendor's list, because it had the date of next year's Gathering on it. GAH.

8. More driving, this time to Les' farm, and again: sooo much knitting.  Also more coffee because oddly I could barely keep my eyes open any more.

9. A stop at the cemetery near Les' farm to pray over various absent relatives.  Then a very long walk through the stones to revisit the extensive relationships between the families buried there.  Among those unrelated to me in any way was a woman who had buried her 20-something child, then her husband, then died herself at age 55 before WWII was even over.  I can't imagine what all that must have been like, but there were several other women there who'd outlived all their children, so this poor woman's life wasn't a fluke.  Some of the stones dated back to the early 1800s; it's an old cemetery by Ontario standards.

10.  A stop at the trout stream: the fish are starting to clump together in the stream to swim uphill.  So pretty.

11. Arrival at Les' farm to find a whole lotta trees came down over the winter.  Suddenly I understand what he did here every week for all those years when he drove out for the day from the city: he dragged fallen trees with the tractor and then either cut them up or left them somewhere safe to rot down.  I'm not sure how any of that's going to work into anybody's schedule now.

12. A long drive home: still more knitting, still not finished the socklets.  (but close!)  Passed by the offices of Viceroy Homes.  Briefly contemplated what Les' farm would look like with one on it, by way of adding an incentive to go and stay long enough to chop all that wood.

13. Pizza.  No knitting.

14.  Pure exhaustion. Definitely no knitting.

15. And... some typing.  This very typing, in fact.


Okay: what's your guess?  If this were your day, which bits would stand taller for you when you look back at the horizon from the end of it?

Are you ready for the answer?

It was those five minutes with Silvia, and the time in the cemetery reading all those stories over all those generations.

An odd juxtaposition if you ask me, but there it is - and now it seems to be time to fall over entirely.  Hope you're having a good weekend so far!  Come back tomorrow... or maybe Monday... for pictures of Silvia's most irresistible-to-me artwork.