Last month we had a lot of work done on my car–an almost 7-year old VW Passat with 80,000 miles on it. The work was expected, but expensive, and our repair-guy, Johnny at Takoma Auto Clinic, was friendly and fair and even gave us a bottle of wine to help soften the $3000 blow.

On Saturday night, when we returned from our trip to Arkansas, James realized the alternator on his truck was broken, so we took a shuttle home and left the truck parked at airport parking. AAA towed him home the next day. James bought a new alternator and was going to replace it himself when he realized he didn’t have the right kind of wrench to get the old one out. Instead of messing with it any more, he called Johnny and brought the truck and the new part in there. A few hours later, when James picked the truck up, Johnny said, “No Charge, you’ve paid enough.” It wasn’t a big thing, but it felt really good. Johnny has a customer for life and he’s only out an hour or so of his time.

Since I have no elegant way to segue this story into anything fiber-related, I’ll just say that last night we had a particularly lively SSK (Silver Spring Knitters) meeting. Our normal haunt, Adega Wine Bar, was closed, so we went to Lebanese Taverna down the street. They were very accomodating, the food was great, and we even had a few new people join us. David showed off his first ever completed sweater, Wallace debuted his “I.D.E.A” fair-isle stocking, and Hillary was working on a woven stitch scarf (a great stitch pattern she and I both discovered by watching Candi Jensen on the Knitty Gritty).

As soon as I get my camera and my christmas stuff in the same room, I’ll show you a picture of the carpet bag my mother-in-law gave me. It was her knitting bag and before that, she thinks it belonged to her grandmother. It has Bakelite handles and very pretty colors. It needs a little cleaning, so I have to figure out how to do that without damaging it, but it’s in terrific condition.

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Not so random acts of kindness