This last week, Nancy went to a conference in Tacoma (about 2 hours south). The conference, Association of Northwest Weaver's Guilds is very similar to the conference that Nancy chaired this last spring in Asilomar. The Pacific Northwest region is independent of Northern California. Nancy was interested to see how other people handled a similar event.
Nancy joined several of her friends from California and from the sound of things the girls all had a great time. The conference was held at the University of Puget Sound and the participants were housed in the dorms. She had great classes and workshops and lots of fun with spontaneous parties in the dorm rooms. The bad news was that it was so hot, with no air conditioning, everyone cooked the whole week. The Seattle area gets so little
Nancy left the conference a little early on Sunday so that she could pick up Alison, Sheila's daughter. Sheila, Nancy's niece, and her husband wanted to celebrate their fifteenth wedding anniversary with a trip to Las Vegas. Sheila's other daughter was away at camp and we invited Ally to stay with us. Nancy drove to a pre-determined location near the Seattle-Tacoma airport to meet with Sheila and pick up Ally and her stuff and her bike. It will be a fun visit.Nancy and Ally got home, unloaded the car, and off they all went to the local fair. Nancy was to do a demonstration for the spinning area. All three were going to go to the fair, but Jerry had a "help" call from the golf course and was asked to work as a marshal. When he got there, they had double booked and he couldn't catch up with Nancy and Ally who had already left.
I discovered a new hazard in crabbing. Saturday the neighbor, Bob, asked me to help pull his crab pots. The buoy rope had gotten tangled up with a jellyfish, a red jellyfish, the kind of jellyfish that stings. The tentacles on red jellyfish are used to paralyze small fish while the jelly ingests them. Even with the tentacles separated from the jellyfish, they still have their potency. When we were kids, jellyfish were the bane of anyone swimming in Puget Sound. The rope was coated with jellyfish tentacles (looks sorta like red thread.) and I got some on my hands. Then I transferred it to my arms and a little on my face.
The good news was that although it stung and was a little itchy, it was something I could handle and it didn't turn red or swell and it went away completely in an hour or two. When I was a kid, I worked hard to avoid jellyfish and I thought I was lucky and successful. Maybe I just wasn't very reactive.
The fruit trees are ready. Apples, peaches, plums and pears are ripe in almost everybody's yards. Several homes have set up little fruit stands at which they give it away. People don?t actually man their stands, but they do supply plastic bags. I harvested "blueberries" from our yard. Blueberries have always seems rare and exotic to me. So, to be able to eat them right off the bush was a real treat. Our bush only yielded about a pint of berries, but it was enough for a taste. The Island (and all of Puget Sound) is covered with blackberries. Every vacant lot and roadside has abundant mounds of blackberry bushes. We are planning a blackberry harvest. There may be a blackberry jam making session ahead of us.