Going to Maryland Sheep & Wool

It's my turn to have some yarn fun. Thursday I leave for the Maryland Sheep & Wool festival and am looking forward to some time to myself. I'm taking a class from Margot Johnson on knitting vests from side-to-side with two contrasting yarns. I'll probably use some of the Blue Faced Leicester and a ball of Andee that I dyed into a shade close to chartreuse, very pretty.

This year I'm staying with an old high school friend who lives outside Baltimore. We met up a couple of years ago at our high school reunion and have maintained contact since then. She had not been knitting for years and after hearing about Wool2Dye4 and the classes and festivals, her interest was peaked again. Now, she's going with me on Saturday and may even bring along another friend.

It's funny, but when you attend a high school reunion and see the faces you knew as a young girl, you feel comforted in some way. We all are getting gray and soft, but it's in the eyes where you see the old friend you knew years ago. Several of us have kept in touch, and I even took a trip with one classmate to see another who had retired to Costa Rica. I trusted them both because I knew them so long ago and they were wonderful people even then. I hadn't seen them in forty years, yet I still felt at ease with them. It has been a wonderful experience, really, and I love opening my e-mail and seeing a note from these old friends.

Now I'm planning to meet one of my customers after my class on Friday afternoon. We only know each other through the internet, but we have been writing back and forth, and somehow I trust her, too. So, we each directed the other to our blogs and our pictures, and decided to meet at 4:00 outside the fairgrounds building where my class is. I think I'm probably a few years older than she is, but she is wise and smart, and I'm looking forward to strolling the aisles at Maryland with her and getting to know her.

The personality of so many of my customers comes through in their emails. I can honestly say that there has only been one instance of ... well, here in Virginia we would refer to this sort of behavior as bad manners. By far, my customers are delightful people who share little bits of their lives with me, and make my little business a real pleasure .

So, no shipping for three days and lots of work when I get home, but, boy! am I ready for a break.