Saturday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Can’t forget to note that, though some years I do, like National Gorilla Suit Day (January 31). Supposedly Long John Silver’s, the fish joint, was giving away fish for Talk Like a Pirate Day if you said something pirate-y, and even fish meals if you dressed like a pirate. Naperville – the nearest LJS after the one in Hanover Park closed – was too far to go for that, and it drizzled most of the day anyway.

As it did today, with bursts of stronger rain. Good to listen to drifting off to sleep, especially when the rain doesn’t come with dangerous winds or close cracks of lightning. Or, for that matter, when the volume of water doesn’t seem enough to overwhelm local drainage. So it proved. Your house is always the second-best place to experience a storm, anyway. The best place to enjoy a more vigorous storm is always a rental property.

After we were done in Elgin last week, at Yuriko’s suggestion, we went to Wool & Co. in South Elgin, out at the edge of the suburbs in new-looking development.

The entrance doesn’t much hint at the colors within.

I don’t knit, but I do like the colors.

I thought the shop might be part of a chain, but no. The South Elgin location is it, for now. As its web site puts it: “Visiting Wool & Co. is akin to being at a friend’s house… a friend with over 10,000 skeins of yarn!!!”