Like The Queen
Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content.

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Friday, July 18, 2003  

I hate to put my spinning away. But I have to clear the dining room table so everything has to go back into the den. This wouldn’t be that bad except, the den doubles as the spare guest room and it will be in use tonight. I have to really put it all away, not just set it there. And since I’m going to have little girls around I’ll load an empty bobbin onto HeyBaby so they can “spin” some. She, I think, shall be allowed to join the party.

Along with HeyBaby, a Triplett harp lives in the living room/dining room and both of these objects offer endless fascination to little hands. The small ones who visit (and tonight’s wee guests are all familiar with the set-up here) are solemnly allowed to touch. Touch with great care and delicacy, but touch. How cruel it would be to have something as enticing as a harp right there in the open where you could touch it - and maybe she will sing, like the one in Jack and the Beanstalk - but to be told by evil giants “DO NOT TOUCH”. There are also 5 little carved wooden houses that may be taken off the dresser and played with - only, if the room is crowded, one is expected to take them upstairs and play with them in my room.

Then, of course, there is that magical place; William’s Room, of which I have written before. All this, plus ice cream cones and juice boxes, ought to take care of the under 8 set. The 10 and up have a combination of swimming and astronomy, or just lounging around poking fun of the grownups. Sadly, LittleDarling shan’t be here, for the mischief in his eye and his uncanny ability to make the most innocent walk into an adventure, always ensures a thrilling time. (Thinking here of the huge bed he made up next to the corn field, one year, so all the kids could lie out and watch the Perseid meteor shower and then, just drift off to sleep.) William himself is even more exciting than William’s Room.

Part of the fun of this evening will be the mixture of grown-up guests. They are all friends of the birthday girl, but several of them have never met before - and a couple, BigDarling has not yet met either. But I believe they will all be congenial and I have every confidence they will all be courteous. All that is left is to figure out which kind of beer to buy. I don’t care for beer and I have not been married long enough to BigDarling to remember what kind he likes. But there is no picnic in these parts that doesn’t offer beer.

There are 2 kinds of cake - since this is a birthday party - a strawberry angelfood cake with thin chocolate glaze for the WW guests and an almond pound cake for everybody else. Most guests will bring something, because party goers around these parts just feel more comfortable contributing to the fare. I’ll provide HD&H (hot dogs and hamburgers) C&D (chips and dip), fruit salad, the ubiquitous baked beans (another on my list of yucky picnic foods), sweet corn, tomatoes and drinks. Since there will be three of us WW folk, I’ve figured out the points of everything I know is going to be there, including the deviled eggs (1/2 egg = 2 pts). The idea is to see if I can offer a satisfying, party feeling, meal at 13 pts.

So, what’s left to do? Tidy up the things Sheryl won’t know what to do with. Take all my winter clothes to the attic (Yikes! I’ve just been piling them up on LittleDarling’s bed.) and get the foldup bed down from the attic. Make up the hamburgers. Make sure there are enough baskets and bowls. Glaze the cake. BigDarling will pick up ice and beer. Hmm. I guess that’s about it.

And not a word about fiber or knitting or anything, when I had such a grand afternoon with Jen and all her beautiful fibers. We poured over each other’s dyed rovings and spun up yarns, oooed and ahhhed over the samples of exotic fibers, experimented with some of the dyed fleece using handcards and spindle, and offered each other opinions and ideas and suggestions. The whole room crackled with energy and before you knew it 3 hours had flown! I even got a chance to introduce J to Jane, who developed our library web page - since she’s looking for help on designing the web pages for her family’s business.

All too soon it was after 5 and we had to part. Oh how I wish she lived closer. But we’ll be catching up with each other again soon and both of us are attending the Knitters Review Fall Retreat in November. And probably we’d never get anything else done in our lives if we lived close enough to visit every day. So best be glad for the status quo. And best be going to glaze that cake!

Good knitting to you all.

posted by Bess | 5:45 AM
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