I'm sitting by the fire on a beautiful rainy day, reviving a half-forgotten skill: knitting. Cleo rests on my arm, a feline vibrating machine. Steve is playing bass in the other room. I think of getting some hot chocolate, but I'm too lazy to get up. Anyway, it would disturb the cat.

There are worse settings in which to turn 60.

This morning I went down to Aqus Cafe for the "Action Circle." Apparently it wasn't an action type of day, since the only other person who showed up was John Crowley, the Cafe owner. But some friends drifted over with Canadian relatives in tow.

There are people who believe in the hidden synchronicity of everything, that certain things are foreordained or meant to be or proof of a cosmic design. Not me. I find a view of the universe as essentially without meaning much more profound.

Still, up pops this Canadian couple who are--I'm not kidding--knitting instructors, just when I had been accumulating some technical questions about the hat I was attempting to knit. (Using the knitting needles I picked up in McMinnville, Oregon, thanks to Howard Hughes, but that's another story.)

Anyway, these knitters from Ontario (Eugene and Ann Bourgeois) are possibly having a knitting workshop on Tuesday, to demonstrate their unique simplified Fair Isle knitting technique. They're also interesting in that their whole operation is local--the wool, the spinning, dyeing and knitting.

As an aside, Eugene told me a chilling--er, frightening--fact: Christmas 2006 was the first time in history that there was no snow all across Canada. So much for Canada as "the frozen north."