I charge twenty bucks for three hours, materials and snack included. John has hinted that I could charge more, since it comes to less than my older girls charged for babysitting, but so far I'm sticking to it. 

There is one shelf of batik fabrics that they are not invited to use, since those prints cost twelve dollars a yard and a pillow case would use up two, giving me a net loss of four dollars. But five bookshelves of cotton, linen, velour, velvet, solids, Hoffmans, flannel, knits, and wool felt are at their disposal. The prints are on their own shelves according to category, such as animals, food, Christmas, flowers and ethnic designs. There are also baskets of lace, ribbon, and rainbow scraps, as well as drawers of velcro, zippers, elastic and beads. The button jar alone keeps five year olds enthralled for twenty minutes. 

One day last week a girl had a notion to make a twin sized quilt. I swallowed. Now we were talking about six yards of fabric, plus batting. I decided to go with generosity, and asked what color she had in mind. While I could have steered her in a less ambitious direction, I knew she had the skill to do it, and I wanted to give her the chance. So we pieced together a blue and green top with a star block in the middle. She picked from a bin my sister had recently gifted me from her stash, so the expense for the top was nil. Only the batting and back would cost me.

Then I got a text from someone who was shopping at Whole Foods. 

"Need anything?" He has done this before. He is going anyway and offers to pick me up something. 

"6 peaches?"

Half an hour later he brought me a dozen perfect, fragrant, organic, ripe peaches. When I asked what I owed him he waved me away. 

How about that. Generosity. Maybe it is contagious after all.