recycling and old friendships

My dear friend Marlowe and I met 25 years ago during graduate school at the University of 
California, San Diego.  I left school. She continued on and earned her Phd, went to Prague on a Fulbright the year I moved East and then by some crazy serendipity, she settled in Boston with her husband David and landed a teaching post at UMass Lowell. Besides our friendship, our most common denominator here in New England is our California roots.  We both still miss the smells of Acacia, Star Jasmine, wild sage and rosemary, the sights of magenta blooming succulents that blanket the hills above the 405 freeway,  the whipped up grape colored bouganvillea arbors over alley walls and the extreme pleasure of swimming the backside of the Children's Pool in La Jolla.  

We have both acclimated to New England and we'll probably never move back, which makes me even more grateful that I'll have her close by as the years go on.

Besides her teaching and writing talents, Marlowe is also an artist- her stained glass mosaics keep astonishing me.  ortsandfragments.blogspot.com

I've worn clothes she designed for me, I've been the recipient of her knitting projects, and sold her felted soaps in my shop. I revere her. I love her.  

But I shamelessly destroyed a little knitted shoulder warmer she gave me last year to pillage the beautiful yarns that didn't itch.  I had a vision for a hat.  Which may never materialize.  It took me three hours to extricate what I wanted to keep.

Here is before:

here is after:

The top ball is made of three strands of ribbon and fine, fine yarn.  The ball on the left is a moss colored chenille.  To the right is another ball of single strand ribbon, and at the bottom is a fine, fine wool in varying colors of blues and browns.

You'll notice the button in the top photo.  I chose this as the fastener from an extensive button collection.  It will find it's way onto my new hat.

I could feel guilty about ravishing the little stole; except that I know Marlowe would do the same.  She's like a little universe: flinging out her creations non stop.  Lucky me.