Several years ago, we were having some work done on our house, and one morning I noticed that Chris, the contractor, had his dog sitting in the bed of his pickup while he was working that day. We have a fenced yard, and I asked the guy if he’d like to let the dog run back there and stretch its legs? Sure, he would love that! While he was working, he saw me working at my spinning wheel and asked me a few questions about it. You really spin your own yarn? Yes. So the next day, it being summertime, he surprised me with a small bag of very soft white fur he’d combed that night from his Samoyed. Very cool!
Chris had two small daughters, three and four years old. I spun the fur up into a ball of 2-ply yarn, went out, bought a pair of small teddy bears, and knitted up soft, white, fluffy teddy bear sweaters for them.
But. One of the things you do when you spin is rinse the skeins to set the twist, and I went to wash any doggyness out as well, although, Samoyeds make an exceptionally clean yarn that way. But when I got the yarn wet!
“Chris!” I asked him when I saw him, apologetically, but, um, there was a problem. “Did your dog get skunked?”
He was mortified. “Yes, but it’s been a couple of months. I tomato-juiced her, I…” Poor guy. Totally put on the spot, when he’d been trying to be so nice. The dog hadn’t smelled when he’d combed her, he’d made sure of that!
“Just don’t let those teddy sweaters get wet,” I chuckled, and sent him off in great hopes that his little girls would treasure their surprises.
I was googling the other day, looking for a local supplier of cocoa in quantity. I’m no longer interested in buying it by the 50 lb bags like I once did–that’s a blog post in the future–but 5 lbs, sure. We do enough chocolate decadence tortes and hot cocoa from scratch around here.
Somehow C&A Builders of San Carlos came up on that cocoa google. Huh? Hey! That’s Chris! So I shot him an email saying hi, and he in return emailed me a picture of those two teddy bears side-by-side. He mentioned that his girls were teenagers now. (How on earth did
I can’t tell you how much it meant to me that they’d still hung onto those bears. The dog passed away a few years ago, and her fur is still there to remind them of a great dog and friend of their childhoods.
And if you live in my area, and want a contractor who’s a nice guy, who takes great pride in a job done well and in great honesty, I know just the one.