Unexpected Pleasures ~ and six degrees of separation

A phone call from our neighbor earlier in the week - -
"We're having a little get together Saturday evening hope you'll come - Mike and Ellen are coming, and so are Nancy and Jim"

(Ellen is in my spinner guild - her husband is an awesome bluegrass musician - Nancy - you read about her on New Years...)

When we get there - the living rroom is filled with music -



And these are not your every day, garden variety musicians, I quickly realized - Our neighbor used to be in a bluegrass band, so one of his old band members was there - plus I have heard of, but never personally heard Laurel Bliss - who plays the dobro guitar like an angel - (see the spirit circle above her head? These little balls of light appear occasionally on my pictures - but not randomly - they appear on pictures of special events - lamb births, special people - I first thought that they were just dust spots, but then I realized that these spots were not on any other pictures in the batch - they just seem to appear on "special pictures" so The Shepherd and I finally decided that they could only be spirit circles)

I love to sing.

I love to sing harmony.

Mostly this freaks people out. They stop singing what they were singing - and try to sing "with" me - Drives me nuts. But not tonight - Bluegrass doesn't exist without some harmony - and mine was welcome. IT WAS WONDERFUL!





Oh, and the six degrees of separation?

When I had my 50th birthday party we invited many friends and neighbors - John & Wendy are neighbors, but Wendy and I have know each other for many years earlier as members of the Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship - Our friends Nancy and Jim came to my birthday party and discovered that Jim & Wendy's husband John were old friends, having gone to grade school together - but had lost touch with one another.

Then, there was Ellen, from my spinner guild. Last year at Nancy's New Year's party, Mike and Ellen came, as did John & Wendy - Turns out John and Mike knew each other from playing bluegrass music together. And the wife of the fellow playing banjo tonight and I looked at each other and went "HI?" - Oh, my gosh - we took spinning class together last spring.

And then, there was another neighbor there tonight - when she & The Shepherd were talking about our sheep and when the next lambs were due, they got to talking about professions and turns out that her husband (who was there playing guitar) is on the board of the local Food Co-op -

In his other life as "The Landscaper", The Shepherd just finished the landscaping at the new Food Co-Op location here in town.

And the other great thing? Those of us who weren't holding a musical instrument in our laps? We were holding knitting needles, crochet hooks, or embroidery hoops. What an evening....


And did you notice these?

Go back up and look at all the windows in the other pictures. Our friend Wendy makes these beautiful decorations - they are kind of like doilies, but have beads crocheted into them and they are hooked onto a metal frame to make a sort of a "sun catcher" - and get this - (which drives me nuts - I can barely make a granny square) - she crochets them "free hand" ie. she doesn't use a pattern! How does she do that?