Some things you just have to take on faith. The back side of unblocked lace always amuses me by how it seems to have no possible relation to what the thing will be.

The pattern is a mishmash of doodle and old notes finally coming together. I thought I’d be out of yarn by now (Manos Allegria from Purlescence) but I’ve got 40 more grams out of the 100. So I’m knitting more and writing more and finding out more and I’m liking it more and more. (And this time it will be repeatable.)

It was the most colors I could think of to pack on the plane in one skein last week. It’s hard to put down.

Called my sweetie adorable, and he says he’s not a-door-able, since he has to duck to go through them.

Silly person.

Meantime, same pharmacy, different clerk, again, this one looks at the total and is staggered. I try to explain that $468 is so much better than last time. Now I think we’re at least where we’re only having to pay 20%.

This doesn’t seem to make her feel much better.

(Yeah, me neither.)

But while I was sitting waiting for it, another knitter watched my first few stitches for my new project and promptly plunked down next to me and we had one of those wonderful conversations that a shared love of yarn helps happen so easily.  I told her all about knit night at Purlescence, a store she didn’t know about, and that it was tonight…

…And then, my apologies, I just didn’t make it there. Things got done that needed to get done but I simply ran out of time to make the trip.

But I do hope I get to see her there next week. *waving hi*

Milk Pail‘s fresh almond paste has a higher almond and lower sugar content than the stuff in tubes elsewhere; amount will be random, but aim for the .5 to .7 lb range slab. Cut it up a bit and Cuisinart it with 2/3, or, if you like it sweeter, 3/4 c sugar, 3 eggs, 1 tsp almond extract, long and hard, then add in 1/4 c flour (of the type of your choice, I imagine, though with Sam gone home I just used plain old plain old) mixed with a tsp of baking powder. 8″ springform pan 35 min at 350. A near-instant recipe.

Michelle wheedled and threw Bambi eyes at me when I got home from Purlescence tonight and then pounced the moment it was cool enough to unlock the pan. No added fats, unlike the original Fanny Farmer version. Eggs and almonds and no allergic reactions, hey, guys, save some for breakfast.

And while I was at knit night…

Nathania got everybody’s attention: Pamela had had an idea and they’d thought it was a great one. Since the shop had moved into its bigger space (in the same shopping center), they’d had this big white bare wall. Purlescence has always tried to offer a sense of community to all who love to work with yarn as they do; Pamela’s idea was that we could all pitch in and create a community wall of–knitting, weaving, crocheting, tatting, you name it. Square, round, funky, big, little, Nathania asked, whatever appealed to you: like some of the get-well afghans out there (boy did I feel proud and happy and blessed by so many friends and lucky all over again as she said that) and then they would move the furniture out of the way of our knitting-group area and sit and piece together whatever comes in the door with this idea. Put a piece of yourself up on display with everybody else’s. Let’s make ourselves a giant wallhanging, a permanent display of who we are in our community.

My one request, she continued, is that it be purple. Your purple, or your purple (gesturing to one person, then another) or yours, or mine, whatever appeals to you and whatever you define as purple.

And it needs to be done by Stitches.

There are several celiacs in that knitting group. Maybe I could make some almond cakes with Bob’s Red Mill safely non-wheat flour to help celebrate when this big project is done. Pass the purple blackberry/raspberry sauce and dig in!

My friend Lynn used to live in Ft Worth and knows my in-laws–and me, through knitting. Typing this into my phone, I’ll link later to the post of when we met in person last year the day after she got engaged, a very happy day then and since for her.

She picked me up tonight and took me to her old knitting group. I grinned that yes of course, knitting groups are always on Thursdays!

Earlier in the day, Richard and I had run an errand with his dad and I had googled for the Madeline Tosh retail shop; I knew it was around here somewhere, but I didn’t find it. Huh.

Guess where Lynn’s knitting group met? My stars, how perfect was that! You should have seen me grinning when we pulled up!

I got to meet Amy, the dyer behind it all; like my friend Lisa Souza, she has a degree in art and a love for yarn and put it all together.

I bought one skein, all I could do for now, and I am very much looking forward to it. But I love that this lovely woman who dyes this yarn got to see me swooning over her work as it so well deserves.

It was great to see Lynn, too.

She took me on a brief tour of the local sights. I got her into her first- ever Trader Joe’s store.

And a wonderful time was had by all.

Kaye at Purlescence messaged me: my spinning wheel was done! My Ashford Traditional, the one that has been broken so many times, so many ways, the one that was the better wheel I always used, even after it fell out of the back of my minivan and broke the flyer and maiden (always seatbelt them in), even after a kid tripped over it and broke the replacement flyer (and I had to buy the whole maiden assembly again for $120 from somewhere else, just before Purlescence came to be.)

It never did work well after that last time: it wobbled so hard that at times the thing simply fell apart, the maiden twisting with the vibrations and the bobbin simply falling to the floor.  I had to clean dirty sewing machine oil out of silk. Kinda put a damper on the spinning thing.

This is the third wheel she and Sandi have repaired for me. One, bought at an auction, had never worked at all; they got it going and I sent it happily off to a great home, gratified that after fifteen years it had finally been made to work and it had gone to exactly where it needed to be. That’s why I’d still had it: so they could get it. So worth it now.

The second wheel, an Ashford Traveller, the Purl Girls did a great job on, too.

And once I had that one back I pulled out some merino/silk in a beautiful blue that I’d bought half a dozen years ago from a place that was closing down. Finally I had a wheel that would do it justice again.

Only…

The bag was mismarked. Clearly. It was Romney wool or its equivalent: good for making a rug or perhaps felting into a birdhouse, maybe knit straight from the roving, quick and bulky and for baby birds to poop in, but by no means was it worth hours upon hours upon hours.

Did I never put my hand in the ziploc bag before and actually touch the stuff? Boggles the mind.

And it kinda took the wind out of my sails on spinning for the moment.

But then today there was that message. My favorite wheel was repaired, the flyer replaced, the wrong metal part finally gone so that the spindle can lift up, not out, and other than the cup of Welch’s grape juice a then-teenager of mine once tried to balance on the sidebar, graffiti-ing it permanently (hey, Kaye, no need to apologize for not being able to get it out, it’s a bit of family history anyway), the thing is as good as new. At last.

My folks gave me some super-super-fine 90s merino for Christmas one year. Lots of it. After two afghans, there’s still a little more if it around somewhere–and I have my Trad back. Let’s finally put the spin back into that spindyeknit. Been too long.

I was knitting away at Purlescence tonight, chatting with friends, and about a half hour into it Ava was standing behind me and got my attention.

AVA!

She lives in Colorado. I’d totally forgotten she was going to be teaching a class here tomorrow; she’s shop-owner Sandi’s former mother-in-law and still Mom and friend forever. And she was to be teaching the class with–I mentioned as she and I talked that I would *so* love to meet–

–She’s in the back, Ava told me.

I exclaimed loudly, jumping: DONNA DRUCHUNAS was my TECH EDITOR for my BOOK!!! as I leaped to my feet to go back there along with one very happy Ava.

They’d been neighbors and knitting friends together where they live. (Donna just moved away last month, though.)

Donna greeted me with the hug I had so much for so long wanted to give her. We had long promised someday we would meet. We worked so much together via email on Wrapped; I told Ava, as we all chuckled, that at one point on the write-up of the how-to-knit-lace section at the front of the book, she’d emailed, puzzled, Do you really *do* that?

Me: Wait. Do you really do it that way?

Yes, we did. And her way and mine both work just fine. We had quite a laugh over that, six years ago and then tonight, all three of us.

Donna did a ton of work on that section. Those visuals? Hers. The charts that I cannot write nor work from due to a brain injury? She wrote them. There was a listserv for designers pre-Ravelry and she went on that list and proclaimed to the world of professionals in the knitting industry that she had never before tech-edited a book with zero errors in the instructions. Mine was the first. And then she told everybody they had to have that book.

I cannot begin to tell you how much I owe her. And I finally got to meet her. I am in awe of her, and I finally got to tell her thank you in person!

And to see Ava Coleman again, after her health struggles and mine since the last time we saw each other in person. She’s a generous, gentle woman I aspire to be more like.

Wow. What an incredible day. And it’s my mother-in-law’s birthday: celebrations all around!

I missed it the last two weeks with that flare going on. I got my blood test results back yesterday–1.9 on the neutrophils is what it was like when I was on chemo for six and a half years, what’s up with that? Going and being in a crowd was just not the wisest thing to do; things are settling down and the bleeding seems to have stopped and the cardiac cough that was bugging me is almost gone too, so, why would I want to risk revving up my autoimmunity by being exposed to anything?

Because it was knit night. And I missed my friends. And Pamela’s moving away soon.

Coming onto the main drag on my way out, there it was. A Cooper’s hawk, quite possibly my male Cooper’s hawk. On the phone wires running just this side of the train tracks, looking down on the road I was on.

And at that moment I felt like everything would somehow be okay.

It was a very good evening to be at Purlescence. (Hey, and if you want a really good lace shawls book *cough* they’ve got it.) I was so caught up in the drama of go/not go that I’d utterly forgotten that Pamela and Sandi had been working on repairing my spinning wheels. Pamela had wanted to learn how for the sake of when she will be far from the expertise of the shop.

One turned out to be ready for me to take home.

Years ago I found a friend-of-a-four-times-removed friend who had bought an Ashford Traveler spinning wheel. Cute little thing. As far as I could piece together, she put the drive band on too tight and couldn’t get the darn thing to spin worth beans. (She also had her roving separated not in lengthwise strips but short fat wads.) Maybe someone told her she couldn’t get a high enough ratio on so small a wheel to make those linen curtains she was dreaming of spinning and weaving?

So. She bought a second wheel, an Ashford Traditional. Uses the same bobbins. Got a distaff for the flax.

They sat in her garage for years till the day we found each other. She sold me everything: her wheels, a goodly stack of books, all her fiber, getitouttahere, $150.

Eighteen years later, my Trad has had a hard life. One kid tried to balance her Welch’s grape juice on it and  stained it a permanent purple puddle; another kid tripped over it and his teenage foot smashed the flyer. That was after the wheel had fallen out of the car and smashed the original flyer and maiden. I bought new parts, again, but after the second blow it was wobbly and a pain to to use–the uprights had a tendency to wiggle apart as I spun and the flyer would simply fall out.

The Trav fared a little better but it was always stiff and arthritic, whatever the drive band. If you pumped the treadle just as hard as you could and then let go, it would turn maybe seven cycles before stopping. I read an article in Spinoff years ago that said it should be closer to 100. As if!

And now the Trav is glorious. It’s scrubbed, repaired, lovely, it works and looks fabulous. They’re not quite done with the Trad, but give them a few days. (Don’t worry about that purple, guys, it’s part of its charm now.)

I can spin again. Do you hear me, life? I can spin my own yarn on my own working wheel again! Thank you Pamela and Sandi!

Today I had to return some Lands End dress shirts because they quit selling 38 sleeves, and hoping didn’t do a thing to make a 37 length do the job. I told Richard before I left that the nearest Sears store was 25 miles away and it just happened to be near Cottage Yarns in South San Francisco.

I kinda wonder if that’s why I’d chanced it.

And so a little extra Malabrigo filled a gap in my stash–I’d needed a skein of superwash Rios in guy-friendly colors. The little bit of Finito added in will be justifiable only when I see someone’s happy face when it’s done. I’ll have to get to it, and soon.

Coming home down 280, the self-proclaimed “most beautiful freeway in America,” the coastal mountains and reservoir to one side and hills to the other giving intermittent glimpses of the San Francisco Bay and valley, what was probably the peregrine who lives near the Flintstone house soared overhead, coasting on the thermals. Glorious.

Back home to real life. That new yarn staring at me did it. I had been dithering over my new niece’s gift, unable to pick just one pattern and just one idea. Enough. I grabbed my needles, cast on, ribbed, doublechecked the stitch count, debated, and dove in for Eden Alison. Pink sheared mink.

Somehow it turned out like this. I didn’t see till I took the picture that the lace echoed the wings there.

And somehow I didn’t see till I was well into it that what I was knitting was a crown for our sweet little princess.

Holly was not only in the States but San Francisco today. Hey!

And so she drove down and we spent the day sitting, knitting, and chatting along with Michelle–who does not quite yet see why what we love is so enticing, not just for us but for her. But the yarn, it calls. She knows what sweater she wants. She knows what fibers she does and does not want it to be. She knows I will not knit argyle. Holly (thank you Holly!) told her how much she was going to love making it herself. (I once did not only argyle, but argyle Kaffe Fassett style. In cotton. Eighty-one, count’em, 81 strands of laceweight cotton *per row* some rows. It was nuts and it never quite got finished.)

And so…

Richard got home and joined us. Dinner was eaten. Holly and I went off to Purlescence.

I had cast on shortly after she’d gotten here; I was a third of the way through my 440 yards by the time she left and she was close to done with her own. It is amazing how much you can get finished when there’s an interesting reason to keep the fingers going while you listen–the best part of course being the time together. Thank you, Holly! And Michelle for joining us.

Meantime, for anybody local: Cascade‘s reps are coming to Purlescence tomorrow, 5-8 pm. There will be new yarns to see. Holly and I are hoping to go, if her schedule works out that way.

Parker in the hotel crib last weekend after he let me snuggle him to sleep…

We took the freezer apart again. The resident small person who could squeeze into it got, well, drafted. This time, we knew that hairdryering the coils wasn’t going to keep the job done past a week even after all the vacuuming at the back last time, and after some fussing with a meter–after I got a connection apart and then put tips to tips while Richard behind me read the readoff–he was able to narrow down the cause to one, and a $70 part is on its way.

The two-day-56F milk has been tossed and replaced; things are cold again for now. I wonder if the mailman will deliver the defroster control box over next door.

The doorbell rang just after we finished up. Oh hello, come on in!

And then it rang again, only this time I was expecting it and helped Jocelyn puzzle out her sweater pattern.

Got to Purlescence, and… Got headed off at the pass. Just inside the door, Kaye and the visiting Anne warned me: someone was sick.

So I signed a book for Monica and then Anne and I walked back outside to catch up a bit. It had been too long.

What I didn’t know is that she had stopped by to drop something off for me: “You’re always making things for other people, so I wanted to make something for you!”

I was speechless. She loved it. I loved it. Thank you, Anne, and I hope you get your crabapple tree (from the comments there).

I wore it proudly to Trader Joe’s to get that new gallon of milk. I showed it off when I got home.  And when Anne, while we were chatting, shivered a bit in the foggy air outside the shop, I told her I had this really pretty shawlette I could loan her for a moment… She laughed.

I finally cast off on my blue silk shawl. I’d made two to give but really wanted to finally have one for me, too: gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous yarn. I had it soaking in hot soapy water to get the mill oils out like you have to do with coned yarns, and between doing that and when I got it blocked, the mail came.

I had sent the good folks at Colourmart a query as to whether they had any of their dk silk left in something close to white. There had been some previously, and Ravelry rumor says that sometimes there are extras not listed on their site. There were a couple of weddings coming up around here and I figured I could at least ask.

No, answered their Richard, but: and out of the blue (which, come to think of it, I almost am) he insisted on sending me two cones of a deep cream of wheat color. To play with. No no, it was on them, have fun!

Wait–what? But I– ! Okay, then, could I send them two copies of my Wrapped in Comfort: Knitted Lace Shawls book? (Whoa, looking at that link. Purlescence has them at cover price.)

Oh, just one, and that would be very nice…

Two can play at twos. One got signed to the good folks at Colourmart, the other simply signed. They can keep it; they can use it as a prize for a Ravelry competition if they don’t need the extra; they can play with it however they want.

Today’s shawl was out of just one cone. Two recipients and everybody who loves them are going to be blessed by their generosity, people they will never meet are going to be happy just because they wanted it to be so. They put some good in the world.

Gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous. I can’t wait to make it worth their while.

Ruth and her friend Margaret drove two hours each way from beyond Sacramento to come here for a visit, something we had long hoped and planned for. Ruth is the friend who gave me her treadmill. (Here–read way down in the comments for the huge surprise she gave me at the end of the post, and then here. I’ve used it very nearly every day since.)

The moment I laid eyes on Margaret I exclaimed, Oh of course! I’d met her many times at Stitches West over the years with Ruth. Ruth brought me dark chocolate, Margaret gifted me with some Avon goodies, lovely of both of them and the start of a wonderful day.

After chatting, knitting (well, they did, my projects were both ones that command attention), and lunch with Richard joining in, we went off to Purlescence.

There was a table set up for people to offer up stash yarn they didn’t want and for others to take it. I’d had no idea.

Ruth found two skeins of a lovely heathered gray and asked me, wondering, Aren’t these handspun?

Sure looked like it to me. I told her I thought it looked like it had some silk in there, too.

She hadn’t known and she hadn’t brought anything and she left them there. But they were soft and quite pretty and she kept wishing and going back to them.

There were plenty of people in the store but nobody took them, so at last, when it was time for us to go, she picked them up again.

I asked Sandi if she knew who had spun those. Her face lit up and she said that she had, about ten years ago, that they were merino and silk and had just sat there in her stash unused. She wanted them to go to someone who would actually create something with them.

Oh, I’ll knit it! Ruth assured her, clearly thrilled.

So now it wasn’t just nice yarn, it was a gift from the heart from Sandi, and as I mentioned to Ruth later, those two skeins had sat there all day and nobody else had claimed them. (And I knew several people in there who would have loved the colorway.) This was for you all along.

We got back to my house, I opened my freezer, and they headed towards home with a chocolate torte and a blue-ice pack in Ruth’s insulated bag that she just happened to have in her car. I’d been telling her for two years that if she ever came to my house I was going to give her a torte.

And I sent her home with a box of Kara coconut cream, which for me is available locally, so that she could experiment with it for her friend, who, like our younger daughter, is allergic to dairy. A box of that and dark chocolate gets you a good ganache; the larger box, you’ve got enought to make my chocolate torte recipe, which makes two. The coconut cream substitutes straight across for extra-heavy cream and it can sit on a shelf.

Unless someone really enthusiastic about it gets their hands on it and uses it all up.

My mother once gave me some 100s Bradford-count wool for Christmas for spinning (after she asked and I pointed to a catalog entry). I expected a pound; she gave me five, which I gleefully dove into.

I have never seen that fine a merino roving available anywhere ever again, including that supplier.  (Although I would say that Malabrigo’s new Finito probably matches it.) To quote from Clara Parkes in the Twist Collective: “The average fiber diameter of an 80s wool, for example, is 17.70–19.14 microns, while that of a 56s wool corresponds to an average fiber diameter of 26.40–27.84 microns.”

So 100s would be… Soft. VERY soft. And I do love a good handspun yarn. It’s like nothing else.

My friend Mary has a spare spinning wheel that she loans out to whoever needs it just then.

I once read that a wheel in good condition can continue 100 cycles after you stop treadling if you do it just as hard as you can and then let go.

Mine does 12 if you’re lucky. It’s been dropped out of a car, it’s been tripped over by a big teenage foot and the flier and handmaiden have both had to be replaced. It wobbles since that last time and has been hard to work with.

Mary surprised me with the offer to lend her spare to me; it’s been wonderful to have.

But I decided recently that I really needed to get going again on my own, though, because I do have it and there are surely others out there who need hers more; I know when I was first starting spinning how much I would have loved to have had that loan. So I told Mary thank you and that I’d be bringing her wheel back. The good women of Purlescence told me I could bring it there for her to take home.

And every week for the last month I would get there and kick myself that I had forgotten it yet again.

Last Thursday I put it where it was in my way so I wouldn’t forget–but it was raining that night. Nope.

Tonight was the night.

And then I got a note from Kaye at the shop, and yes, tonight was definitely the night!

Richard helped me lift it into the car.

Sandi and Kaye told me quietly tonight why someone needed that wheel now. That story isn’t mine to tell, but I said to them, You know, I’ve been kicking myself all those times I forgot it. But if I had… It would have been loaned out to someone else, whereas… And that would have been good too! But I think this is the more important place for it to go. Clearly.

Maybe my forgetting wasn’t just me being such an idiot after all.

News from Sam (med denied by insurance) that made us catch our breath, and then news from Sam again today (insurance caved after all) that helped us exhale. It’s been an intense week.

Look! It was huge and it was in a tree across the fence, letting me see it only briefly but for the Cheshire-cat-smile of a tail still in view that moved again and again for balance as it ate its breakfast.

Hours later, there was a flash of feathers at eye level: it took me a moment to be sure. The side view is so different. They glide so fast.

And then in the evening, before I left for Purlescence, I looked up: and there she was yet again. The female Cooper’s, antsy at my noticing unlike her mate, taking off from the handle of the lawnmower that my little wrens were no doubt cowering under. Spreading those big wings and long striped tail wide, and again in an instant she was gone.

Breathtaking. So close. I’d needed that.

And then I headed for knitting group.

At Stitches last weekend, at Purlescence’s booth, there was a sample little boy’s sweater on display (middle one at bottom in link) in front of the yarn it had been made in, a microfiber blend that was very soft and very practical for that size of person. I admired it, thought I’d come back to it, never did, but filed it away for future reference: I knew I really ought to buy that and make that for Parker. I do love my wools, but still, it would be nice to make a handknit that I could be sure my son and daughter-in-law wouldn’t ever have to worry about wrecking. And it definitely met my softness standards.

I was quite surprised as I walked in the door tonight:  someone handed me a ticket with a number. Somehow the shop was really crowded. And there were the Cascade folks I’d met at Stitches!

Turns out the Cascade people were having a raffle. The numbers being called out corresponded to specific patterns and the yarns to go with: they would hand the winner (there were quite a few) a zippered logo’d plastic tote with some random pattern inside, and then they’d take you over to where there were sample books with snips of every color of the matching yarns. You would choose a color, they would take your name, and then they would be sending it to the shop for you to pick up later.

You guessed it.

No, really, you guessed it. I hadn’t even known that was a Cascade pattern. How on earth, and I don’t know either, but you guessed it: they called my number, and knowing nothing of any of that, they handed me a tote with a pattern to that very same little boy’s sweater in it.

The royal blue Cherub Aran yarn is on its way.

I’d better finish up my current project fast to be ready to go.

One of my husband’s co-workers saved a New York Times article a week ago and sent it home with him, wondering what we would think of it.  Front and center was all about what their food writer had declared to be Mormon cooking.  There was a big picture captioned “updated funeral potatoes,” a take on that classic dish for feeding a big crowd that was a novelty to the co-worker but not so much to us.

No I do not cook with canned cream of anything soup myself. Go for the classic au gratin here if anything, thanks. The writer would have you believe that means we’re a generation removed from living in Utah.

Actually, that part is true.

Meantime, a lot of life suddenly got squeezed into the last two days, too much. I hereby request a breather for a few, I thought earlier today.

And then I got exactly that. I got to meet DebbieR; she’s a peach. She was in the area briefly and we met up at Purlescence.

I opened that door, she was two steps away on the other side of it, she came towards me recognizing my face from the blog and told me she was Debbie and I instantly felt in the presence of a true friend. Everything there confirmed it totally. I feel so blessed.

She was traveling with some friends who were very good about waiting for us as we caught up as if we’d always known each other.

After they all left, I knitted quietly for awhile on a baby hat, getting my Sandi-Nathania-Kaye fix, and then excused myself: I needed to go home to babysit the phone I could hear on and my PC’s inbox.

I had gotten a message from Sam earlier: with ITP and lupus, there are episodes where you just hold your breath and pray real hard.  The last message we got sounded better; we’re hoping she gets a new med approved and that it will work because honey right now nothing else does.

Debbie had offered her to knit her fingerless gloves in her choice of color. Sam was thrilled. Debbie asked me if a lace pattern would allow too much UV exposure. Debbie is thoughtful and careful in addition to being generous with her time.

How do you thank someone who looks out for your child  and takes her into her heart as if she were her own? A shoutout to DebbieR: Thank you. It doesn’t begin to say it.

And yesterday.

My friend Andrea asked me a few weeks ago to make two chocolate tortes for her; sure. She brought me some of the ingredients, the most important to me being the manufacturing cream, because it is sold in an open-air store that has sun exposure issues for me.

So I had the rest of that half gallon of cream afterwards.  You can’t just leave it there. I baked. A spare torte ended up in the freezer.

Every time I asked Richard if he’d like it for xyz, for this group or that, for us to munch on or… ?, he would answer, not yet. No, let’s wait. No, let’s leave it in there for now. I thought I had good reasons to share it and free up the space; he just didn’t feel…

Okay, no problem. There was no rush.

Yesterday that co-worker’s wife got a call in the morning: her father had passed. She went off to work: where she was told she was being laid off after 27 years. She went to the doctor: she got told that yes, that was probably basal cell cancer.

She has a bandaid now for the part they could fix.

Richard asked his co-worker today to be sure. Then he asked me.

Oh honey absolutely yes.

And that is how the chocolate torte that Andrea made to come to be became a gift of friendship and community at the moment it was most needed.  Without my even having to go out in the sun to make it for them–I know how much that couple likes those tortes. It was something I could do. Did do, all ready.

They stood there in the dark in front of their house this evening, holding it gratefully, inhaling the thawing chocolate.

I thanked them for saving the article. We joked wryly over funeral potatoes. I told them chocolate torte was my real Mormon cooking.