what a wonderful weekend

It started early on Friday morning with a trip to the airport to pick up Sharon. I had only met her face-to-face once before and on that night the time had flown by all too quickly. This time we would not be returning her to the airport until Monday evening - and the children would have a car-picnic on the way home.

She was the Most Wonderful House Guest Ever. She made her own bed and took the sheets off on the final day, she washed dishes and vacuumed floors and made her own coffee when I didn't think to, she engaged children and even offered to take one of them home, she didn't leave anything in the bathroom sink and she didn't snore.

Not that we slept much.

Friday night I had a group of friends over ~ Sharon went out to visit with her own sister, but left us Brand Spanking New Only Just Arrived From Amazon The Day Before craft books to pore over......and she still managed to spend a couple of hours with us all as the other friends* didn't leave until their customary 12:01am......*these ones: Jenna who doesn't blog, Jess and Karen.

Saturday night we had even more crafty-type friends over. Fifty of them if you count the kids and partners. For Dinner. But my Father Bear went out! Well, do you blame him? He marched back in the door along with Midnight before All The Guests* had taken their leave.....*I'm not listing the blogs of all that lot!
On Sunday we dropped some kids off at church, picked up Karen and headed out. Sharon and Karen disappeared for the morning to a slightly-disappointing eco-tour. I took J12, K8 and L6 to make felt in a friend's garage.


This was a Massive Hit and there are now Big Plans to make a fullsized blanket! Thankfully the expert-felt-making-tutor who had never done it before, but had googled a lot was happy for me to sneak inside to the house and play with yet another friend's swift and wool winder.

Was it the wildly spinning swift or the bright roaring fire or the two-late-nights-in-a-row to blame? I wondered if I looked as cross-eyed as I was feeling to the girls sitting round the table with me - girls whose blogs I would link to if they wrote them, but they don't.

Dropping off Karen after lunch was.........well, it should have been deeply-something. I mean, it was the last time it would happen for a Very Long Time. She would be leaving town the very next day. Maybe the momentousness of the occasion was softened by the fact that she'll be back for a midnight craft night in three weeks!

We returned home to Chocolate Cake in the Late Afternoon.

The problem with this is that it always means dinner is late and the smallest kiddlies who didn't get chocolate cake end up scratchy. But hey, as I said, Sharon was an impeccable guest and her only comment was that her own son squeals much louder and longer and at a higher pitch. How polite can you get?

Fortunately when you get to that time of night anything is bearable, because you know it's now a matter of minutes and not hours until the angels will be tucked up in their beds! And so it was not long until we were sitting in the lounge with yet another bowl of chocolate cake (*bowls* this time, to contain the overly generous dollops of whipped cream).

We sat. We knit. The tv was on. We browsed through the craft books again. We knit some more. We hardly even talked. I realised it was a moment of "companionable silence" I had first read about in Trixie Belden (at the time I thought I'd plagiarise that phrase one day! The Day Has Happened!)

Monday we sat, knit and talked lots. It was The Last Day. So we made the most of it.

Sharon finished a wonderful baby cape, I finished a project I had started the night before from one of her new books (using wool I had wound into balls that afternoon). It will always remind me of Sharon, of the weekend, of the new friends....even when I'm wearing it in deepest Mongolia!

You see it's a little collar to keep your neck warm - just like a scarf but without being as big as a scarf - we're trying to keep our packs Not Too Heavy remember! This will be just perfect.

But back to the present...yesterday's airport trip was just to the domestic terminal.

And Sharon flew home.