15 minutes, On the Horizon

Oh. My. Gawd. What a day.

I am a weird combination of morning-person and not-morning person, in that I wake up early, but am completely useless for the first hour I am awake. My usual routine is to pour myself the first of many cups of coffee and read my email while I wait for the caffeine to kick in. So this morning I was doing just that... poured coffee, stumbled to computer, opened inbox. Four emails, one birthday-present-shopping related, one from Brenda Dayne, one ebay reminder, one junk.

Rewind. Re-read. One shopping, one ebay reminder, one junk and ... Whaaaaaa. . .

A couple of weeks ago after I posted my Stitches in Time blog, I realized that I had inadvertently titled it the same as a recent episode of one of my two* favourite podcasts, Cast On. It then dawned on me that the piece might actually be a good fit for the current series and, in a brief and rare moment of courage, I submitted it. I didn't even dare hope that I would get a response: Cast On is arguably the godmother of all knitting podcasts, it's long-running, wildly popular, and really, really wonderful. It is my Saturday morning ritual, the hour a week I really do set aside for myself to just knit, and listen, and drink coffee, and be quiet. The essays are almost always my favourite segment, though Brenda has a voice and manner that I would listen to even if what she was reading was the phone book. That she talks about knitting makes it wonderful beyond measure.

I almost regretted having the audacity to submit my little piece, and promptly forgot about it. And today, one shopping, one ebay, one junk, one Brenda Dayne.

I opened it, fully expecting what a fundraising colleague of mine used to call "KFO letters", Kindly... well, you get it. A polite form email thanking me for listening, and taking the time to write, and... thanks but no thanks. She liked it. She read it. And she likes it. I had to read the email about 4 times (this was after all only coffee number one) before it sank in. Brenda Dayne liked my essay. And is going to use it. On the podcast. For real. I'm still reeling.

*other favourite: Limenviolet.