A yarny tail, and a sad tale

Ooooh...yoga bag, oh yoga bag!

So near the end!  If I can just sit DOWN en FINISH it:

Attaching the tube to the bottom...luckily crochet is sooo forgiving and you can force it to fit. 

We had a long weekend,

(16 June - Youth Day)
In 1975 protests started in African schools after a directive from the then Bantu Education Department that Afrikaans had to be used on an equal basis with English as a language of instruction in secondary schools. The issue, however, was not so much the Afrikaans as the whole system of Bantu education which was characterised by separate schools and universities, poor facilities, overcrowded classrooms and inadequately trained teachers. On 16 June 1976 more than 20 000 pupils from Soweto began a protest march. In the wake of clashes with the police, and the violence that ensued during the next few weeks, approximately 700 hundred people, many of them youths, were killed and property destroyed.Youth Day commemorates these events)

...so in between everything I sat down, but then Elle Pure Gold's inner devil came out:

Why you should roll a ball before starting

At this point I almost hoped the dogs would get to it:

Peering at the mess through the kitchen window

But on a Tuesday morning, there's nothing that a double-shot cappo with a friend can't solve!

Let's go on, then.

--0--

But then the week turned sour.

My friend Gené died.

She had kidney cancer.  

After I gave her the hat, I saw her twice, briefly, and then suddenly this happened.

She was a great teacher, a devoted mother, a brilliant, dramatic story reader. We'll really miss her.

--0--

And today is my dad's birthday.  He would have been 67 today.

We're adult orphans, my sis and I.  We lost our parents too early, as young adults, before we had kids.  It leaves you in a halfway space.   But I decided early on that I would not wallow on days like this, I'd choose to remember and celebrate.  So usually, on my mom's birthday, I'll go for tea & scones, my sis will bake a cake in Ireland, family members and friends join us in celebration and remembrance in Germiston, Potchefstroom, as far as Australia and Canada. Today, for my dad, there's a venison pie in the oven.  And sweet potato with cinnamon, and I'm thinking of souskluitjies for desert - is is cold enough!

Think I'll listen to this a bit.  Teary-eyed and all. One of his favourites.