What Friends Do

Melissa and I had two-person grrl camp, much of it right here on the front porch.  We had two full days in town but started mornings here and ended evenings here.  One evening Ian stayed out with us and we just chatted and watched the full moon.  We crammed in visits to Joe Winter's and Dale Pappas' pottery studios, a intro class on canning at the Great Basin Food Coop, lunch at our favorite Vietnamese restaurant, a visit to the art museum,stuff I forgot and two separate shopping sprees at Macy's.  I need clothes to wear while subbing. That was my excuse.

We had no shortage of material to spin as Melissa brought up two bins crammed full.  She lives very close to Redfish and insisted on leaving some of her stash behind.  Lucky me!  As much as she wanted this to be a get away, she had to spend one day with the accountant for their business, plus phone calls to put out small fires.  In spite of that, she insisted that this was a great retreat and that she slept well.  We sure laughed a lot.

When she offered me this wool/silk treat I could not say no. 

It's shaping up like this - I'm spinning for another scarf.

Melissa and her husband are in an industry that builds things so she wanted to take a look at my Dorset and see if she could get it to the point where I could lift out the heddles, and she did.  I still have to replace the string heddles with Texsolv and clean the heddle bars but now I can.

We had a little excitement for her last night here.  An electrical storm moved through and started a fire on the same mountain as the last one, bringing the total up to three fires along that ridge in the last two years.  I can't imagine that there's anything left to burn, should lightening strike there a 4th time.  We live close to the Stead Airport, home of the Reno Air Races, and they deployed three tankers and one helicopter.  They didn't mess around and had it out before dark.

Mim caught this image of the fire helicopter getting water from our valley pond, which is very close to her house.  Click for big - it's pretty dramatic.

Five days just flew and we prepared to leave at the same time this morning, me to sub in a high school library and her to drive back to SoCal.  She spontaneously bought a Subaru Forester a couple months ago when her old car needed expensive repairs.  I'll probably buy another one in another 150,000 miles or so. Melissa named her's Rosy.  Eleanor looks a bit diminished parked next to her but she's not diminished in spunk.

This is what Melissa left me from her stash.  I forgot to say that we watched a Jacy Bogg's video at the same time while trying to make thick and thin yarn.  Melissa has done it before but it was my first and very frustrating first time.  I feel like the Little Engine That Could - I think I can, I think I can, I know I can, I know I can..  We visited the heck out of these past five days and get to keep in touch by FaceTime until the next visit - it's what friends do.