Please keep my friend Julia, who comments here periodically, in your thoughts and prayers over the next few days. Her mom died Thursday afternoon after battling advanced-stage cancer for the last few months. Julia has spent most of this year in Texas at her mother’s side. Selfishly, we wanted her back home in D.C., but not this way.

Julia (and Michael), I send my love.

We know little
We can tell less
But one thing I know
One thing I can tell
I will see you again in Jerusalem
Which is of such beauty
No matter what country you come from
You will be more at home there
Than ever with father or mother
Than ever with lover or friend
And once we’re within her borders
Death will hunt us in vain.

  ~from “Four Poems in One” by Anne Porter

Folks, my friend Sarah, who comments here sometimes, lost her dad today after he suffered a sudden and massive stroke this morning.

I’m sure she and her family would appreciate any good thoughts or prayers you can spare in the hard days to come.

The Day the Tree Fell Down
          ~ Jack LaZebnik

crumbling. It died of old age,
I tell you, like a man. We wept.
We had worn our time upon it, put
our arms around to touch fingertips
and we measured ourselves, our feelings
on the years. We made our calculations
pay, then. Now, the fears, age,
daily mathematics. The tree held
the green. Birds, squirrels, coons
made memory there until the day it fell.
They got out. It groaned for twenty minutes.
I tell you, it sighed as it bent,
its branches catching the dull fall,
the soft turning in wet dissolution.
the body lay exposed: a gut of grubs,
a lust of hollowness. We wept,
as I say, more than it was called for.

Thank you to everyone who participated in my pre-blogiversary reading conversation. Twenty-three of you contributed suggestions to my library list and I’ll be picking several of the books off the list to bring home this week.

I’ll also be picking several names to win prizes — which I’ll do tomorrow once I have some prizes to show you.

My second blogiversary was spent quietly. I made scones this morning. I read (Jasper Fforde’s The Fourth Bear). I cuddled with cats. I ate grilled cheese and tomato soup in honor of the final official weekend of winter. I wound some yarn — to start my Bloomin’ Socks and to begin the front of my Everyday Cardigan. We watched basketball. I napped. We ate pizza. I thought about, but did not do, any laundry. A quiet, but good, Saturday.

Check back tomorrow for the winners of my drawing and what they’ve won. It should be good!

And thanks again. I blog because I like to, but you guys sure do make it more interesting than talking to myself!

I’ve been wearing green all week.

For those of you who grew up outside the Northeast, this might explain why.

Connecticut has some of the highest percentages of Irish and Italians in America. This means that even if you don’t fall into one of those ethnic groups, for all intensive purposes you might as well…

And, for the record, I never heard of pinching someone not wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day until I met people in college who’d grown up elsewhere. Jenn, Debby, or Grey Kitten — Have you ever had someone pinch you in Connecticut if you forgot to dress up? Anyone else from the Northeast want to weigh in?

For those far from green-wearing brethren this season, I offer you this clip of “Early Riser,” from Robbie O’Connell. Robbie is a nephew of the famed Clancy Brothers, with whom he used to tour. We knew him from our summer vacations camping in Cape Cod. You never had such good sing-alongs around the campfire…

(If you like what you hear, you can download the album from iTunes.)

No, that’s not an allusion to a crazy tv show. Nor is it a mix-up about a blockbuster movie that opened this past weekend.

Instead it signifies a milestone for this blogger: 700 posts.

That’s right. This is my 700th entry at Sprite Writes.

Scary, eh?

Even scarier? Saturday is my second blogiversary.

The odds of these two occasions falling within the same week have not passed me by.

So, in honor of these events and to thank you all for checking in occasionally, I’m celebrating. And I invite you to celebrate along with me.

We’ll have a little pie, play some tunes, and maybe get a bit giggly by the time we should head home.

If you were here in the Burrow, I’d ask you for book recommendations. (Okay, you’re probably glad now this is a virtual party, aren’t you?) But ask I shall, nonetheless, and those who feel inclined to offer an answer can do so in the comments. Those who don’t can just have another slice of pie.

The question: What book is:

• a) your absolute favorite read (one that you come back to time after time — the literary equivalent of comfort food);
• b) the best you’ve ever read (a book that was such a masterpiece that you immediately went to check out the author’s other works and that you bought for your best reading buddy so you could have someone to talk with about it); OR
• c) the most important book you think was ever written (a work that changed the way you view the world)?

Yes, I am a geek. But I’m okay with that. And I really do need something new to read.

A party isn’t a party without presents — from me to you since my virtual pie is a bit flavorless. Anyone who leaves an answer (or answers, if you want to take a crack at all three categories) to the above question by Saturday (the 17th) at noon EDT, will be entered into a random drawing for prizes still to be determined. There will probably be knitting- and non-knitting-related prizes, however, so if you are NOT interested in fibery goodness, please leave that in your comment, too.

I saw daffodils this weekend. A few of the magnolia trees have flowers. Sitting outside seemed like a luxury instead of a punishment.

Hooray!

After spending three days last week sick with some nasty bug, Friday night seemed to bring some relief. I slept lots and pulled out the decreases of the hat I finished last week. I’d realized that every time I put it on, I tugged at it incessantly. In other words, as I’d realized at the time, I really did need three full pattern repeats. I re-finished it Friday night and have been wearing it non-stop since then. Much better.

Saturday dawned clear and nearly 70, so I headed to Georgetown to hit the local yarn store‘s sale. I purchased no yarn, but I did buy Folk Shawls at the suggestion of a fellow customer to make something with the yummy alpaca Gramma gave me for my birthday. I also bought a copy of the new Interweave sock book, which I spent a full hour ogling when I got home. [Confidential to Suzanne: I’ll bring it in when next we have knitting group for you to peruse.]

While out, I stopped at an Austrian restaurant hidden away above the canal. I wanted to eat in their courtyard but the wait was longer than my patience, so I picked up a cup of tea and a Sacher torte to go. I ate chocolate and knit and bopped away to some tunes on the iPod, amusing the college aged guys sitting across the water who could see my feet swinging away in time to the music. It was the sort of afternoon when you felt glad to be alive.

I concluded the waning sunlit hour with a walk along the canal. Even the ten (!) dead fish I counted couldn’t dampen spirits lifted by seeing green shoots and sprigs. I returned home in a better mood than I’ve had in months.

Sunday, after our weekly jaunt to the farmers’ market, we went to hang out with friends and pick our baseball ticket dates for the upcoming year. We finished early enough that we were able to swing through Eastern Market, wander Barracks Row, and hit the grocery store, and still have time to take our books to the Starbucks patio to read in the afternoon rays.

All in all, a truly lovely weekend…

Click here to see more photos from my Georgetown walk.