Winding down
Friday October 19th 2007, 1:27 pm
Filed under: Knit

All these photos I can’t post yet!  But I missed getting one of the gust of wind capturing a goodly number of perfect yellow leaves and sprinkling fall confetti shimmering over the canal, a little ahead of my brother and me as we walked along the towpath at Swain’s Lock.  Gorgeous.

Bryan drove down from New Jersey yesterday to see us, and we had a delightful time visiting.  He and I spent several hours again today driving around, reminiscing, pointing things out to each other and generally behaving like a couple of homesick types glad to be back for a short while.

One of the things we were remarking to each other about is how growing up in Washington is probably different from other places: you learn early on to wear a celebrity-filter-o-meter.  We were chuckling over stories and memories of people we knew whose parents were names you’d often read in the paper: presidential candidates, ambassadors, you name it, but to us they were just Tom and Fabriccio (did I spell that right?) and the like.

We drove past the old homestead, and the contractor nicely allowed him the grand tour, too, like I got to do a week ago.  I gave the man an inscribed copy of the book and a scarf designed specifically to celebrate the rebirth of the house and how happy Mom and Dad were to sell the place to the woman that bought it; he promised to pass them along to her for me.  We drove past a couple more times in the afternoon on the slim chance the new family might stop by to check on the contractor’s progress–it would have been so cool to get to say thank you in person–and I waved hi as we passed by that last time, hoping we weren’t getting annoying by then.  (I’m sure we were!)
And that’s probably that.  Tomorrow we fly back west.


4 Comments so far
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I’m glad you’re getting to see the progress!

So glad that you’re still posting while you’re away. I so enjoy your stories, and I’m reading this while sipping my favorite coffee. What could be better?

Comment by Amanda 10.19.07 @ 1:35 pm

It must have been fun to “take a trip down
memory lane” and visit the old sites. What
a nice gesture. Can’t wait to see your
pictures!

Comment by Sue H 10.19.07 @ 4:35 pm

So glad you had a lovely time with your brother. Very kind of you to leave the gifts for the woman who bought your parents house. I hope she enjoys the gifts. I love the stories.

Comment by vicki 10.19.07 @ 5:18 pm

Hi, Alison.

I was thinking of you today as my daughter Daphne and I drove out to Rhinebeck for a few hours of retail therapy. 😉 The leaf colors driving through the Berkshires were amazing. We stopped on the way home to buy a half bushel of Empire apples which looked fabulous but were a tad disappointing for munching. They weren’t exactly crisp, but they are certainly good for baking, at any rate. I have just done a crisp and a grapenut pudding. Normally grapenut pudding wouldn’t have apples in it, but I have got to use up a half bushel, so I guess apples will be going in everything for awhile. Both the pudding and the crisp came out nicely, so I guess I don’t feel too badly about the apples not being perfect. 😉

I was moderately bad at Rhinebeck. 3-1/2 lbs of roving in various colors, another Golding spindle, and a Merlin Tree spindle. Then there was a big box of wool/cashmere yarn on my doorstep when i got home. Nothing to do with Rhinebeck, but I guess I have some dyework ahead of me soon.

I made sure I bought at least a pound of some of those colored rovings, as I hope to make one of your shawls from spindle-spun yarn in the not too distant future. Last year’s 1/2 lb of wool/mohair blend only yielded 560 yds — a sizeable hank, but not enough for a Big Shawl, alas!

I hope you’ll hear back from the woman who bought your parents’ house. So nice to know she is doing such neat things to the old homestead! I bet she’ll be pleased as punch with the scarf and book.

Comment by Paula 10.20.07 @ 6:49 pm



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