(Photo edited by request to after they’ve been chilled.)
Michelle made dark chocolate-dipped strawberries, but just in case that wasn’t enough dessert, pulled out the ice cream. (I am suddenly reminded of an infamous remark made by a family friend in our university days, saying, a BYU dinner is one where the dessert is bigger than the dinner.) Michelle and I were going at the strawberries, which was a wonderfully messy enterprise because the chocolate had not yet congealed. Meanwhile, the menfolk were mostly ignoring the berries and devouring a third of a box of ice cream between the two of them. Then a certain, um, blog minder says he’s too full to have more than the couple of strawberries he’s already eaten, at which point his wife might perhaps have mentioned that worrying about getting fat on strawberries (knowing full well what was on them but ignoring that little fact in her comment) was perhaps a tad silly if one eats large quantities of ice cream first. Said blog minder might perhaps have grinned and pulled out his cell phone and pointed its camera at his quickly-ducking wife–who now has threads of the melted bittersweet flipped across her face from ducking, and probably some in her hair. He might have said he’s going to post the picture on her blog. She manages to keep the back of her hair towards him as she runs for the bathroom to go clean up chocolate and avoid him. When she returns she does not go back in the kitchen but rather to the computer, having told him she can delete his photos as fast as he can take them. He has perhaps given her an evil grin in response.

Hypothetically, of course. Meantime, I ain’t goin’ back in there quite yet.

I have a doctor (bless him!) who believes in being careful (it’s that white cell count thing) but very much in still going and living your life. So with his encouragement and the help of my friends, live today I most thoroughly did.

My friend Nancy and I drove up the gorgeous 280 freeway, with views of the unbroken and blooming springtime hillsides to the west, over the Golden Gate Bridge, and on up to Marin Fiber Arts in San Rafael. There, we met up with Warren, the owner, and Patricia (right) and Niki (left) with Nancy catching me just before I burst out laughing after she snapped the shot. Patricia had set up a cruise ship with how many knitters? Was it 60? And they disembarked in San Francisco, chartered a bus, drove to Warren’s shop, and generally created happily packed-in pandemonium. Niki and Patricia had wanted to meet me, I had wanted to meet them after being online friends with the two for I don’t know how long, so, hey!

Niki, by the way, is the one who knit me these socks awhile back.

You can tell I’m a newbie at this author thing: someone tried on one of my shawls, handed her camera to Nancy, and all I could hear with the background noise was that she’d asked for a picture. Nancy pointed the camera at me, which utterly confused me–she wanted a picture of her in the shawl, what are you doing? Nancy laughed, She wants a picture of you!

Me? Why? Oh, (duh), okay, (there’s still a part of me that will never truly get why, but okay.)

And when I got home, another Picotee amaryllis had opened up, just to top off the day. Thought I’d share.