Back to Jungle Jim’s!

Tuesday
This morning was Knitting Fellowship.,we were a rather sparse group to start with, but several people arrived late. We had a guest today from the local charity Crayons to Computers, which enables teachers to provide their students in need with the tools to succeed in the classroom. In November and December they have a special drive called Keep our Kids Warm, where they seek donations of cold weather items such as scarves, hats and mittens to keep the children warm on the playground, and she had come to collect our donations. Our group donated 50 scarves and almost as many hats, which have been knitted during the year. I had a scarf and a prayer shawl I had completed that I took in today. I left a bit early today, so I could get back home, in time for us both to go down to Music Live at Lunch downtown. It was a dismal day today with rain and extremely low cloud, so the tall buildings and radio masts downtown were disappearing into the cloud! Today’s musical ensemble were Heri et Hodie (Latin for yesterday and today), a group of 7 young ladies, a professional treble ensemble that specializes in Medieval and contemporary music. Today’s focus was focusing on “yesterday”, that is ancient and medieval music focusing on the Christmas season. It may sound as if it would be rather dry, but the way they presented it made it very pleasant listening, their faces and voices being very expressive and bringing the music to life. Much of it was in Latin, but they were mainly fairly short pieces, and they read a translation of the piece first.
From there, we drove up to the northwest of the city to Jungle Jim’s, a huge and eccentric supermarket and international store, which is visited by people all over the state. We usually have a trip over there in December to stock up on a few English food for the holiday. I blipped about it last December, but there’s plenty of scope for photographs, and since it was such a dreary day out, it provided me with a more colourful blip! The weird fruit I used for my thumbnail photograph is Buddha’s hand fruit, which is in the citrus family, and looks rather like a large lemon with long finger-like segments growing from it. The origin of this kind of citron is commonly traced back to south or East Asia, probably northeastern India or China. It has long been used as an offering at Buddhist temples, and symbolizes happiness, a long life and good fortune.
When we got back, I got a start on writing Christmas cards.