Thursday, June 9, 2011

Housecleaning, Harris Tweed, and a Wild Ride

Today, I'm still cleaning and sorting and rearranging -- the house goes on the market on June 22, and at the moment its a wooly, dusty shambles.  Friend Jean Rudolph stopped by and hauled off most of the Harris tweed that I bought years ago when I visited the Hebrides, some of it purchased directly from crofters working in their small homes on Lewis and Harris, the rest bought at mills on the north side of Harris.  All of it is wasted in my third-floor rooms; Jean is a tailor; so it goes to Jean.

On Saturday, I plan to leave Grosse Pointe Park in what Enterprise Rental Cars calls an Intermediate automobile -- that means big, in my view, but what do I know? -- and drive pell-mell to Columbus, Ohio, where the annual summer TNNA convention occurs.  (TNNA stands for The National Needlearts Association, the main trade group for people in knitting, crochet, needlepoint, and -- to a much lesser extent -- other forms of embroidery).  The winter TNNA event is in California, and it's usually smaller, less well-attended, and given over mainly to warm-weather fibers, which don't appeal to me as much as do animal products.  So I only go to the Long Beach meeting every two or three years.  Once I get to Columbus' convention center, I'll go through the market to see what's being sold this year, hug some friends, have dinner (I have hopes of connecting with a couple of colleagues, with luck at one of the truly great restaurants on High Street), and then drive pell-mell back to Grosse Pointe Park, collapsing in a heap on the sofa and probably sleeping the next day until ten in the morning.  I'll let you know if any of this happens.

svb

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