On Saturday, Kate went with her fiber posse to a yarn rally, which I think is one of the warm-up events to the big one coming up in May. I had some more “yarn rally::motorcycle rally” comparisons in here, but they weren’t coming across as clever — by now, it’s pretty obvious to me that these two hobbies and the social life that surrounds them are very similar except for some details (reek of: {lanolin | gasoline}, chromed: {exhaust pipes | thimbles }, use of: {GPS units | “ketcha-ketcha” row counters }.

Plus, I now know how much specialized knowledge, technology, skill, and expensive materials go towards making, say, a fisherman’s sweater. If you are a knitter or are married to one, you’ll know what I mean — making a fisherman’s sweater, in skill, duration, effort, and materials, is roughly equal to building your own canoe. I realized a while ago from looking over Kate’s shoulder at some of the history of this stuff that knitting, and other “women’s work” wasn’t about the comfort added after the menfolk had provided for everyone’s survival. Without a high-tech, high-materials, high-investment fisherman’s sweater, your 1700s fisherman’s ass would be frozen, drowned, dead, and washed up on the shore unidentified because the patterns sewed into the sweaters acted as dog tags, too. Even though my hobby has to do with hot things and loud noises, Kate has the more primeval hobby — I’d have to be in the back yard hunting squirrels with a fire-blackened spear if I wanted to keep up. So the existing state of affairs is good news for everybody, especially the squirrels, I guess.

Anyhow, while Kate was off protecting the safety of the species, her dad and I were in the back alley on a beautiful, sunny day. Bob is re-fiberglassing my fender and my battery covers and I was rebuilding both my carburetors, a job which involves using caustic chemicals to transfer thirty years’ worth of oily grease from small brass objects to your own fingernails. Kate’s brother Matt and his friend Kristen showed up from NYC, and so we all walked into the center of town to have lunch — Bob with his flip-flops, Kristen in her red leather stiletto heels (she works for Dolce and Gabbana, and the ability to walk miles, on bricks, in stilettos, is apparently one of the super-powers you get), and Matt in red checkerboard Vans, with a chihuahua on a leash named Katherine that he’s fostering. And Lydia on her tricycle, which she’s incredibly proud of and twists the grips on when she climbs on it. This was a high point of the weekend, as it made me feel like possibly Lydia has been born into one of those entertainingly eccentric English families where the child is going to grow up and be Important and also Stylish.

On Sunday, Lydia had her very first Easter egg hunt. It has come to my attention, though hearing stories of many of my relatives’ and acquaintances’ approach to Easter egg hunts, that this ritual is an important indicator of developing personality, kind of like a toddler SAT or something. Lydia, I am delighted to report, ambled around the back yard expressing surprised delight when she saw each little stack of jellybeans sitting on a rock, and did not start demanding that we initiatiate a full perimeter search with grid lines.

Also on Sunday, Kate finished the hand quilting on a quilt she’s been working on for eight years. Eight years! Forget about a canoe, this is her DeLorean with a working flux capacitor in it. And just to continue that theme, I buttoned my bike back up and oh hallelujah it started and runs pretty well even before it’s been tuned, and so now I can start attaching the tripod mount to the sidecar in preparation for upcoming Guerilla Drive-In showings this summer.

The only fly in the ointment is that SEPTA has finally gotten wise to the three parking spots in the Exton train station that didn’t have a corresponding coin slot, so two years’ worth of free train parking is now over. They’ve repainted all the parking spots slightly smaller, with an especially bright, vehement yellow where magic spots 101, 102, and 103 used to be (now spots 59, 60, and 61.) SEPTA is unable to dampen my good spirits, though. Happy Easter, fare collector! Happy spring, SEPTA!