Small, Small World

The older I get, the more opportunities I have to look at the tapestry of my life and see all the intertwining threads. What’s really fun is to find where people and situations intersect—especially the ones that appear, at first, to have nothing to do with each other.

Sunnie took this picture of me and Sarah Anderson at the pie social a few weeks ago (I’m on the left and Sarah is on the right):

Sarah is a spinner and knitter and author of the book The Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs. Sarah started reading my blog a few years ago after a student in one of her classes mentioned it. (I think that’s how the story goes, but Sarah can correct me if I’m wrong.) Sarah and her husband were planning to move from Seattle to Kalispell to be near their son and his wife and the grandkids, and then we discovered that the house they bought was only a few miles from me. Sarah has joined our sewing group that meets on Thursday and it’s like she’s always lived here. She also helped out with our pie social in the spring and brought her three sisters in from the midwest to attend the fall pie social.

[The apron I happen to be wearing in this pic says, “Borderline Spinners” on it, which is the name of the spinning group I belonged to in Pennsylvania before the husband and I moved to Montana.]

I’ve mentioned before that I listen to the Living Free in Tennessee podcast. I’m also active in that community’s chat group. Nicole Sauce, podcaster and homesteader extraordinaire, is learning to spin. (She also knits.) The topic of spinning popped up in the chat yesterday morning. A couple of us there have spinning experience.

I posted this picture of Sarah and me, and one of the other members—who lives in Denmark—said, “I adore that book!” I told Sarah that she has a devoted follower on the other side of the planet.

Sarah knows JC Briar, too, who was my tech editor when I was publishing knitting patterns and books. JC and Sarah were at the same Visionary Retreat hosted by the late Cat Bordhi.

Sunnie, who took this picture, has a dear friend in Texas named Bunny. In another bizarre twist, we found out a few years ago that Bunny knows a woman named Staige, who went to high school with the husband in Baltimore. Staige and Bunny are both active in the national organization for their college sorority, Delta Gamma. I am friends with both Staige and Bunny on Facebook.

The world is much smaller than we think it is.

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I was supposed to have four students in my serger class yesterday. When I got to the store, I discovered that one student had switched to the November class date because of a conflict. Another student—Cindy—was already in the classroom setting up. Cindy has taken two other classes from me, including the Serger 101 class and the apron class.

The other two students never showed up. The store staff tried to contact them without success. I get paid whether or not students attend the class, so it was no money out of my pocket, but the students forfeit their class fee.

Cindy and I had a lovely day of serging. She has come such a long way from that first class when she was terrified of her machine. She is comfortable enough now that she was willing to try some things without needing to be shown. We started out by making a table runner. She made this gorgeous Christmas version, specifically designed to fit her dining room table:

Cindy also mastered rolled hems and pintucks, and she’s going to experiment with some flatlock projects at home. I told her to bring some of her projects in so I can see what she has made.

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That air scrubber has been running intermittently for two days and I am amazed at how much better my allergies are. My eyes often bother me because of the gritty dust and I’ve noticed some relief from that discomfort, too. We’re supposed to get rain for the next couple of days. I think I might take the living room apart and wash the valances and slipcovers. That should stir up more dust to be filtered out. Once I have the downstairs cleaned up, I’ll have the husband move the air scrubber upstairs and repeat the process. (It is much bigger and heavier than I thought it would be.) After that, I should only need to run the air scrubber periodically.

I’ll be out in the garden today doing more cleanup before the rain. Digging up potatoes is on the schedule for Saturday morning. The husband is going to help me with that.