This was the very nearly bare branch at the back in yesterday’s picture–we’re up to six baby figs tonight with the tree sprouting everywhere now.

Meantime.

We were in the longest and I mean longest line at Trader Joe’s. Ten minutes it didn’t move, and the others weren’t much better.

I gave a dad with an antsy little girl a finger puppet–and only afterwards realized she had a hospital bracelet on her wrist. She needed it all the more, then.

I had time to exclaim to the woman standing next to me over her purse, which was clearly hand knit and hand felted with inner and outer pockets (that takes skill in the felting process), a flap, a full lining sewn in, she showed me–just a beautiful piece of handiwork. Had she made it?

Oh she wished! But she did knit; her friend had made this.

Did you go to Stitches last weekend? I asked her, sure of my answer–I mean, this local, how could she not have, right? Where we were standing was less than ten miles from the venue.

The look on her face! Like she was almost afraid to ask what she’d missed out on but oh goodness she HAD to know! A hesitant, No… What’s that?

About a hundred fifty to two hundred vendors and ten thousand knitters at the Santa Clara Convention Center. People fly in from all over for it.

Sacramento? she asked. (As in, far enough away she didn’t have to regret missing it?)

Santa Clara. At the Convention Center.

There was both profound regret and a deep excitement in her voice now. She hadn’t seen any advertisements. I wondered in return if you had to know by word of mouth, more or less? Next year, she said. She was going! Next year!

There is no question in my mind she went straight home and looked it up now that she knew to. And I hope her friend who does such beautiful work goes, too.

I came away really glad Richard and I had both felt too tired to tackle Costco so we’d just gone to the much smaller grocery with the short lines. Which thankfully weren’t.