When I count blessings, friendships figure high on the list. And within that category are four women I met at my first writer’s conference in 2000. Two years later, I returned to that conference with an apron project I’d been working on since 1999. My friends were at the conference, too, and we made arrangements to get together and catch up.

They are women of academic and artistic accomplishment, and I, a homemaker and writer wannabe, felt honored to have even caught their attention two years earlier and thrilled they were available to re-engage.

What I hadn’t imagined was their interest in my apron journey, which they greeted with incredible generosity and opened doors for me that I never imagined to even knock on.

Susan Keller showed my apron project to the Santa Barbara Arts Commission, which booked Apron Chronicles for its inaugural exhibition; Rose Jonas made me a bracelet withG.R.IT.S. hammered into the metal – a code word for Stay Real; Rise Delmar Ochsner, introduced me to Jean Rather, who introduced me to Ellen Levine, then editor in chief of Good Housekeeping, now executive director of Hearst Publications, and Judy Foreman called a friend who’d done a favor for a friend of Julia Child, who then arranged for my personal interview with Ms. Child.