February, a bit late, on International Women's Day

I was going to write this in February, but am traveling and couldn't remember the current password, and it took Google several days to send a link so that I could set a new one.  So here it is, International Women's Day, and even though I didn't plan it this way, an update.

(And yes, because I have snarky male friends, there is an International Men's Day - so there.  No saying "well, every day is Men's Day, which is why they don't have one", because they do.)

A quick update on my resolutions:  I finished The Fortune Cookie Chronicles and have recommended it to someone who wanted to know the origins of some Chinese-American food we were having.  The book also talks about chow mein and other well-known items, not just the cookies.

Currently working on charity items due to a delivery deadline.  DFW Fiber Fest is not doing Knit Your Bit this year, so I am going to send the scarves I am making to them anyway, or donate them locally.  Keep Hartford Warm is doing another distribution next weekend and I've donated a number of scarves to them, and a friend's church collects for the local shelter.  I'll get back to my UFOs soon, and I am trying hard not to join Marly Bird's Tournament of Stitches make-along although I am collecting the pattern pieces for the future; I'm already working on Franklin Habit's lace scarf-along, but not in the pattern yarn - I had a special hank waiting for a project like this.

Plus I have added to my want-to-do list, especially after going to Stitches West.  I helped some friends in their booth, which cut down seriously on shopping, which is good because I wanted to save funds for DFW Fiber Fest, where they have lots of terrific indie dyers, several of whom do only-at-DFWFF colourways, which of course I have to collect.  So this is the sum of my purchases:

They had Girl Scouts doing a coat-and-bag check, and of course selling cookies.  The buttons are glass, the Princess Leia being the last one the artist had, the others going on some mitts I am designing.  the Apple Fiber Studio yarn is in a colourway called "Notorious" after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, so I had to buy it.

I had other adventures at Stitches West.  First, I kept very quiet about going, because of this woman:

Alison Hyde is a lace designer and someone who has been part of the KnitTalk list since the beginning.  She goes to Stitches West every year, and when I started talking to my friends about helping, I decided to surprise Alison.  So I had to keep a sharp lookout for her, and since I had to work on Friday which necessitated me hiding out in an upstairs corner of the conference center for some random hours, I was afraid I would miss her.

Serendipitously, as I came back into the vendor hall once things were sorted, there she was!  Alison wrote her view of it.  Mine is that I knew she doesn't hear well, so when she didn't react to me telling her my name, I just held out my badge.  In the photo above Alison is holding some bamboo laceweight that I was saving just for her.  In response, she gave me the last two Meyer lemons she'd brought from her tree, and knew there was a reason she was still holding them after distributing all the others she'd brought.  Alison also had some chocolate she'd made, but I'm allergic to chocolate so she shared with others.  And the next day, knowing I am usually in a very cold and snowy land, Alison brought a wool hate which I think will go nicely with all my winter coats - black, grey, or teal:

It's much more glorious in person.

On Sunday, I had a surprise.  Many years ago, when I went to Santa Clara regularly on business, I was part of an online group of historical reenactors from various periods, one of whom worked as a printer at Old Town San Jose.  She and I got to be friends, and then lost touch after my travel out there abated and she moved to another part of the state.  She was a tatter, and has taken up knitting since we were in touch, because I noticed a very familiar-looking person coming through the booth looking properly dazed and overwhelmed at options.

"Marjorie?" I asked.  And sure enough, it was!

She's wearing both knitted and crocheted items of her own making, and I am wearing the shawl of handspun bamboo that I'd just finished, which is vastly simpler.  We did some catching up and I ended up going to supper with her and two friends, the wife a quilter and the husband who'd spent some time in our booth considering which yarn to get to work with some other he had in stash.  They took us to the kind of place where we were the only anglos in the room, and we all ate as much as we could hold and still had leftovers going home.  Well, they did, as I was in a hotel and heading to Texas the next day for work, so didn't really have the means to keep anything.  Except some of the bread, which became a tasty breakfast at the airport.

So that was February.  March began with a trip to see my grandmother.  Saturday the weather was wonderful so my grandmother and I did a lunch cruise.  The people were really kind and helped get my grandmother (and her wheelchair) on and off the boat and we got a prime window seat.  Sunday we went to my honorary nieces' school production of "Anything Goes".  It was really good, and we had a celebratory Chinese food dinner and cake afterwards.

This weekend is the North Texas Irish Festival, and I'm back as a Performer Products manager.  It looks like we will have great weather for it - the temperatures have warmed up quite a bit from the below-freezing numbers earlier in the week.

I haven't been home since I left for California, and after this I go to Chicago for a couple of days.  Much of this has also been for work, and happily in the Dallas area so I was able to attend a Dallas Winds concert after many years of not being in town on the correct night.  I splurged on a box ticket (still quite inexpensive compared to Chicago and Hartford) and made friends with the people around me, so that a couple invited me to the special donors-only reception afterwards.  It turns out I am well remembered from my days as patron, volunteer, and donor (OK, I do still donate, just not at the same level) when I lived here, so it was a great evening.  They played about twice as much music as was on the official program, with two encores and an unannounced premiere.  I hope work brings me here on the appropriate weeks again, so I can attend more of their concerts.