We had a wine-and-cheese get-together with the neighbors last weekend. Before we set off on the two-house trek to the host house, we prepared a platter of veggie balls and grabbed an unopened bottle of cocktail sauce to serve with them. As the cocktail sauce hadn’t been opened before, I took the precaution of using our jar-opening device on the lid, before I screwed it back on, so that we’d be able to get the jar open at party time.
Imagine my surprise when, as my honey delivered the veggie balls to the kitchen, I reached into my Topo Designs bag for the sauce jar to find the bag awash in the sauce. It seems I hadn’t replaced the lid securely. Certainly not securely enough.
The chatter in the kitchen was well underway. From the hallway, I had to shout, “Anne!”
“Yes?” she answered as quiet settled over the conviviality
“We have a cocktail sauce emergency!” I’d started to lift the sauce bottle before noticing the lid had come off. Now my hand was dripping, and there were great splats of the blood-red stuff decorating Anne’s white tiles. The hallway looked like the scene of a disaster, when everyone arrived to inspect the CSE. Paper toweling fixed up the floor, but there was so much free-range cocktail sauce in the Topo bag that we didn’t even try to clean it up till after the party.
My sweetheart tackled the project when we got back home. He’s an ace with nutty clean-ups, and he carried the day with this one, even without the aid of the fire hose I’d thought he’d need. He also figured out how to hang the bag to dry on the line downstairs. That feat alone took three clothespins and a hanger with clips. The bag looks great again, but it carries a definite whiff of cocktail sauce.
The Thrift Shop is having a designer event. Our excellent merchandisers have been saving designer apparel and jewelry and home goods until it reached critical mass. Starting Monday morning, it was all available for sale. A customer who was there then said the experience was intense. Customers were competitive, rather than their usual genial selves. Things had settled back down by my shift yesterday, but if you were looking to save two hundred twenty dollars on a brand-new, tag-bearing blouse, you would still have been in the right place.
The Ann Arbor District Library had one of its own terrific events last weekend, the annual Fiber Arts Expo. This includes talks, demos, opportunities to make things yourself, and aisles of vendors. It’s a popular, well-attended event and a chance to be up close and personal with spinners, weavers, knitters, crocheters, dyers, embroiderers, quilters, and felt makers and what they make, along with merchants offering the tools and raw materials to support the others.
My friend Loris is a fiber artist herself, although she participated in this event as a spectator. She and I went together, and it was a perfect match-up. I didn’t have to worry about lingering at an exhibit, as she’d be doing the same thing either at the same exhibit or at another. We both enjoyed the gorgeous work on display, and Loris found herself inspired to create more of her own.
We also listened to Barbara Schutzgruber’s talk, “Tales from the Weaving Loom,” on textile history, imagery, and metaphors in folktales and myths from around the world and down through time. Loris’s favorite line was, “The original magic wand was a drop spindle.” Mine was, “We are women. We spin straw into gold.”
Of particular interest to me was Schutzgruber’s discussion of weaving using nettles, which were what was available to those without access to other raw materials. It turns out the sting of stinging nettles comes not from thorns but from chemical burns. The women gathering them would bring along pails of milk to protect their skin.
The weather here has continued cold. Even now that we’ve climbed back up to the high side of zero degrees, the days have tended to start in the single digits. At the wine-and-cheese, a neighbor told us that she shivers every time she sees one of us walking by with our dog.
“You know what, though?” I answered. “I’m getting used to six degrees.”
The temperature clawed its way to the high side of freezing one day this week, though, leading to such unaccustomed behaviors as untying a scarf. Removing a glove. Or both gloves. And turning off the seat heater in the car. We could get used to being warmer. We’re certainly willing to give it a try.
13 February 2026