Dancing Daughter

Daughter Molly's last performance with the Terre Haute Academy of Dance was Saturday night. She was Carabosse, the wicked fairy in Sleeping Beauty - very creepy to see how evil she can be but her dancing made us so proud! There was also a wonderful duet with Jenna, another young woman who is leaving the Academy this year, too. It was Dueling Dancers, done to Dueling Banjos, and it was a wonderful witty piece that juxtaposed Molly's modern dance with Jenna's ballet.
Molly and Jenna were the last of the Garage Gang, the 14 girls who started with the Academy when it was in Patti's garage 6 years ago. So there were many tears shed as they both leave to go on with their dance adventures at Indiana University. Before that, Molly is headed off for 6 weeks of intensive dance at the American Dance Festival. She attended this program last year and loved it -she gets to see performances by the premiere modern dance companies, take master classes and otherwise dance for hours a day.

Instead of getting flowers for her this year, I got her this book:

The Dance: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)

and these:
I've been buying these dancer pins one by one on eBay since last summer. My favorite pin, the one at the bottom, was also Molly's! Flowers are beautiful (and older brother Shaun got her a dozen gorgeous pale pink roses) but ephemeral and she'll have these pins and the book to enjoy far longer.

So....it's a pretty emotional week in an already uber-emotional time.
Blessed is the knitting, the constancy of it in my life!
The other day I sat on the back porch all afternoon, with three projects on the table beside me, my journal and my knitting notes. I thought the table looked so pretty (esp. with the rose I brought home from the Flower Communion service at church Sunday morning), I took a picture for y'all.

In my next post I'll give details on the projects (one of which is....modular knitting with shell shapes! whoo hoo, I'm really doing it!)