T-minus three days and counting until I board a putt-putt plane and head down to Maryland! People laugh when I tell them where I'm going. "A sheep and what festival?" (A rolling of the eyes usually follows.) But I consider it a replenishing of the soul, being around all those enthusiastic folks who love this stuff as much as I do.

Meanwhile, Grace Robinson in Freeport, Maine, is looking for good summer help. If you want to work (hard) in southern Maine's most upscale yarn shop, let me know and I'll hook you up with her. I hate to see a good job go to waste.

Spring still hasn't sprung at home. Despite the presence of snow briefly on Friday, I spent the weekend plotting out the new garden beds. I asked a farmer friend to plow a small vegetable garden for us in the back field, forgetting that "small" has different connotations here in Maine than it does most elsewhere. In no time flat, he had plowed a plot that was bigger than my entire apartment building back in San Francisco!

Sooooo.... We dumped bags and bags and bags of lime on the soil, followed by a nice big truckload of aged manure, and there the garden sat all summer. But this year it's ready for action.

There'll be a permanent asparagus bed, plus a raspberry patch in back. With any luck I'll also have onions and shallots, pole beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes, carrots, lettuce, sorrel, spinach, basil, chives, cilantro, and dill growing by the end of the season.

If it ever warms up.

Images of Maine in April. The snow has almost completely melted, the pond has thawed, and the tips of the trees are growing heavy with buds. Could it be that spring is finally, finally, finally nearing this region of the country?

   

Whew, I finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I've been knee deep in gruesome forum administrator mode these past few weeks, a difficult and often demoralizing task.

The problem: A strange, edgy malaise seeping into the place, a tone veering away from our normal lighthearted, friendly, and respectful spirit and getting a little too much like the KnitList. It manifested itself in only a few spots, but if the hundreds of emails I've been answering are any indication, it was upsetting a lot of people—myself included.

After weeks of darkness and muddlement, the answer became very clear: Time to state the rules and enforce them. (I know, "duh" is your proper response.) So that's what I'm doing now.

As a reward, I just booked my ticket to Maryland for the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. Few places feel as wonderful to me as a good old-fashioned sheep and wool festival—and the Maryland show is the gem at the top of the tiara.

Tag board has been temporarily disabled. Some no-lifes have been filling it with garbage, but I've got their IP address and am having a delicious time hunting them down. Beware, kids. If there's a knock at the door, it might well be me.