Two Weeks

So now I'm more or less up to date on the knitting front, I feel free to admit that the high point of the summer -- pause for dramatic effect -- has not, in point of fact, been knitting. It's been Our Company.

There was the getting ready of course, a summer's worth of it, but rather than go into that in exhausted exhaustive detail, let me, like Inigo, "sum up." First, the 3 deep 6 high incursion of storage boxes that has dominated my dining room since Last October(!) has been reduced to 3 boxes of recycling and 6 boxes of shred-first-then-recycling (All right, so the wall in my bedroom is now home to a 6 x7 row, but it's just a single row. There may be a few odd ones tucked stacked into corners). Secondly, we discovered the source of our chronic hanger shortage - they were nesting in the back corner of the Boys' Closet, unbeknownst to us because we haven't been able to get much beyond a foot on either side of the closet door for years. Let it suffice to add that the lists were impressive, and that we managed to get everything done and crossed off except for the two items at the top of List #2 that we could never decipher.

This is supposed to be a (mostly) knitting blog, so let me focus on that a little. There was Stitches Midwest, of course, but I'll save that for later. She knit and finished one project while she was with us, which means she pretty much knit every day she was here. She has a good start on her top-down model sweater from the Stitches class she and The Princess took. She may not be leaving us as a knitting convert -- I'm pretty sure she thinks we're a little mad, albeit in a nice way -- but that triumph of finishing a first knitted object is a pretty powerful thing.

So now it's the last day of Our Company. The word that comes to mind is "delight." The Princess, the Lord Protector and Their Father all approved her long ago. It was only two weeks, yet she slipped into our lives like she had a place waiting for her, a spot that was empty that we hadn't known about until it was filled. And yes, I know she's leaving today, but her place will remain intact, occupied.

Last night, she asked if she was a knitter now. We said that was for her to say. But we gave her knitting needles and a project bag for a going away gift.