Sticks and Nets

It's been pouring rain here lately, packing an April's-worth of showers into just a couple of days. Everything is in bloom and mistily green.

Earlier in the weekend, though, we had a beautiful soft spring night and went to see the Yarnstruck nephews in their latest sport, one that involves sticks and nets. Boys with sticks and nets make me think of picking fruit, or maybe shaking pecans from the tree. But, of course, they weren't in an orchard. They were playing lacrosse.

I don't really know a lot about lacrosse, I'm afraid. One thing I did observe is that, though its fans are clearly avid, it doesn't pack the stands as football and basketball do. That makes it a perfect place for... an impromptu one-person stitch-and-pitch! Plenty of room and not so many people to think you're strange.

Perhaps I didn't learn as much as I could have, that night, about the sport of lacrosse, had I only watched a little more and knitted a little less. But I made very good progress on the Merino Lace socks.

I did draw a few odd looks. The little red-headed boy there in front of me sat commenting, older than his years, expertly to his father on the game, the coaching, and the calls. He also cast quite a few narrow-eyed sidelong glances over his shoulder at me, obviously wondering what on earth I was doing and what that thing was in my hands. He looked as if he had a pretty fair suspicion that I was up to no good. Eventually, I happened to look up at just the right time -- or just the wrong time, from his perspective -- and caught his eye, whereupon he immediately glued himself face-forward to the action on the field, never to peek again.

Alas, in the end, the Yarnstruck nephews and the rest of their plucky but inexperienced team got a drubbing from their opponents. (Incidentally, out of curiosity, I looked up the word "drub" in the dictionary and was highly entertained to learn that its first definition is "to beat with a stick." Perfect, isn't it; it lacks only a net! Isn't language wonderful?)

No matter, the Yarnstruck nephews took it philosophically. Afterwards, as world's-most- patient-husband and I walked out to the parking lot, a flowery scent filled the air. We looked up, and saw this mature crabapple tree in full bloom, lovely even in the dark with a camera flash.

So there was my orchard after all. Just a little too early in the year for picking fruit.