Finished these socks last week. Good colours, zippy patterning. They took a bit longer than usual – I didn’t knit my usual 20-30 rows each evening – maybe because I wasn’t feeling like knitting. Anyway, they’re done and added to the sock stash.

I started a new pair – can’t leave the needles empty but that knitting has been interrupted with Danish Paper Stars.

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I’ve been handing out Danish Stars to neighbours and friends for the past six years. Everybody knows where they come from when they find them on their door handle. Some have become so bold as to ask whether I’ll be making more this year. No way out of it – I had to make another batch of paper stars.

I started by cutting the 1/2″ strips of legal paper and began making stars. Two evenings of paper folding and I have 18 stars. I will need at least 40 (more likely 50) before I’ve finished. I’ve used up the paper I prepared; I need to cut more paper today. The knitting is suffering – I’ve had to put it aside to make time for star construction!

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My sister Barb called me on Sunday evening to sing me a verse to a song wondering whether I remembered it and might know where it came from. Sounded like a Disney song from something like Snow White – except it wasn’t. Two hours of searching with Google and ChatGPT returned nothing. Usually if I ask Google for lyrics using the bits I remember a song turns up. Not this time. I finally gave up.

The next evening however it dawned on my it might be a song from our childhood, one we learned in school. When I was in 5th grade (1953) the woman in charge of music for the city schools recruited a group of girls from our class to sing some songs from the songbook being used in the schools at that time:

I was one of that select group and I still have that vinyl recording! A very long time ago I managed to have the record digitized so I have the 22 song tracks on my computer. Didn’t I find the song there in the first group of four songs!

Going To The Fair

The birds are singing, the bells are ringing
There’s music in all the air, heigh ho
As altogether in golden weather we merrily go to the fair, heigh ho!

We have no money for ribbons bonny,
Our clothes are the worse for wear
But little it matters in silk or in tatters
We merrily go to the fair.

The lads and lasses, the time it passes
?????????  [There’s fun to be had everywhere], heigh ho
As altogether in golden weather we merrily go to the fair, heigh ho!

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There’s that one line I can’t make out on the recording – it has to be something like the lyrics I’ve guessed.

I called Barb to tell her I’d found the song – I still can’t find the lyrics anywhere online although I know the song must be in the “unison” High Road of Song Book One for elementary grades.

I learned that song 71 years ago! Imagine still remembering it.