Mersydotes

September feels like a new beginning to me- fall is coming with its fresh crispness and colors and pencils are being sharpened as the academic year gears back up.  In recent years, I've also associated another event with the beginning of autumn- the Yarndale Festival in Yorkshire, England.  I've never been (dare to dream!), but I've followed it from afar, especially each year's charity crochet/knitting project.   (image from Attic24 blog, link here ) This year, the charity chosen by the organizers is Mercy Ships, an international medical aid organization sailing around the world, providing surgeries and medical  help  to communities in need.  I can't imagine a better charity to benefit!  As you can imagine, many of the patients are children, and Mercy Ships is collecting handmade stuffed bears to distribute as comfort animals to little ones who are experiencing the stress and anxiety of medical procedures. The 2019 goal is to collect 500 knitted/c

We did it!  We made the great pilgrimage to Rhinebeck to celebrate all things fiber!  On a gorgeous October day, Miss M., Miss E., Mama Mersy and I drove up to the southern Catskills (one of my favorite places) and to the Duchess County Fairgrounds.  Even though the day became quite hot and sunny, the morning was crisp, and the trees were just beginning to catch fire.  A more idyllic setting, you just couldn't imagine.   And there were so many people!  That being said, not a single person was impatient, nasty, or rude, and that's really saying something when you're only an hour and a half out of New York City!  It just goes to show that yarny peeps are the loveliest group around!  We met up with friends from our local knitting group, and as long as I'm sprinkling around superlatives, let me just say that they are the warmest and most joyful folks I know! For my tastes, the vendor areas, while impressively vast, were just not enjoyable due to the crowd.  One spo

Growing up, I was fortunate enough to be very close with my maternal grandparents, and when I was in junior high and high school, I would see them every day.  Entering old age and adolescence are both difficult transitions, but there was a certain solidarity between us, and I knew my grandparents understood me more than anyone else.  All day long I would quietly glide through the school day hoping no one would really notice I was there, and the thought of coming home, seeing my grandparents, and then heading off either to my after school job or to my mother's old room to do my homework was the light at the end of the tunnel.  I could be me, and the world was suddenly bigger and more real than at school. I'm only just now realizing that food played quite a role in our relationship.  There was the summer I managed to grow exactly three peas and a single green bean under my grandmother's kitchen window, and the popcorn the three of us would munch as we watched Wheel of F

The weekend after our second full week here in Seattle, we woke up to a bright, clear Saturday with no clouds and no smoke taking away from the impossibly blue sky.  It was one of those days when you can feel the sun baking into your skin, but there's still refuge in the breezy shade.  And next to the water, things can be down right brisk.  I've heard that the summers here are short but precious, and I can see why- I've never seen such clear, clear skies in my whole life. So that morning we walked straight down the looonnnggg hill that takes us from our new home to the Puget Sound, and followed the signs for the ferry to Bainbridge Island.  We were all packed up with cherry tomatoes, mozzarella, boiled eggs, pretzels, and chocolate chip cookies (the Tate's gluten-free kind that are so good!).  The ferry pulled away from the pier with a deep bellow of its horn, and glided through the Sound until we reached Bainbridge about a half an hour later.  The island looked calm

One thing I have come to accept is that even though no one else will notice my knitting or crocheting mistakes, I will, and they will bug me to no end.   When joining together the granny squares for my Asbury Park blanket, I chose to do a single crochet join because I liked the textured ridge it created.  And since it's a stroller blanket, I thought that little fingers might like those ridges as well.  But......... ........on one row, I started from the opposite end, and those single crochet stitches were angled the wrong way!  Nooooooo!!!!!!!!  Thankfully, I caught it before I had finished the entire blanket, because I'm sure that I would have frogged the entire thing just to fix that one row.  Don't get me wrong, I'm all about the joy of wabi sabi imperfections in handmade items, but something about this little row just bugged me!   So, please make me feel better and tell me what little things bug you when you knit or crochet!  Surely I can't be the only on

Isn't it nice to have your faith in people restored from time to time?  To be forced to accept that humbling feeling that overwhelms you when someone does something truly kind?  That's exactly what happened recently at my knitting night.  On Thursdays, I meet with the warmest, most joyful group of knitters and crocheters that you could ever meet- I love them dearly!  One of group had heard that my grandmother, who taught me to crochet when I was wee, was no longer living independently.  A few weeks later, my friend came to our knitting night with a gorgeous package of vintage doilies that she had been collecting, little by little, and said that she wanted me to send them to my grandmother, to brighter her days. And wow!  Was my Grandma thrilled!  A few days later I got a call from her, and she was already planning out how to use each one to best effect.  And what makes this an even more poignant story is that just a few days later, my friend had to be hospitalized