(Detail near the top of the river from yesterday’s photo.)

I looked up the hotel confirmation email. I had one hour left to cancel or forfeit. It had to be done. Canceled.

I’ve been dragging my feet on the plane and the car rental. But when you’re waiting to see if the thermometer hits 102 to tell you to run for a strep test–although we’re not there yet–um.

You don’t get on a plane, expose a ton of people, and then bring that to your 93-year-old mom, you just don’t.

I did knit all but the last two stitches of a raptor at the tops of the trees and felt great about getting something useful done.

Okay, Morgan, don’t look, some knitting friends wanted to see it. (Not like my wanting to show off would have anything to do with it…) Picture taken at noon half a row of trees ago. Nature preserve on one side of the river with tall trees and the moose, pruned trees with the farm on the other.

And yes I have done the barn door sides in duplicate stitch twice now and ripped it out. AnneS had an excellent idea, but by that point it would have meant ripping it out past a color change and the ends running behind it and I had so far to go at that point that I just kept on going.

The thing was only 32″ long when I booked those plane tickets for three weeks out. I didn’t really think it was doable. I’m almost done.

(Photo mishap: there are three evenly spaced upper zig zags of plowed field, not the shadowed hodgepodge that the camera thinks.)

Twenty rows this time. Two more and the color work will be over with and it will just be a single yarn from there to the finish line.

This has been such an intense knitting spree that I’m going to feel a bit lost–thrilled, for sure, though–when it’s done. Till the next big project, whatever it’s going to be.

Meantime, this is General Conference Weekend, a good reason to do row after row. It was interesting how many leaders of the Mormon Church felt a strong need to say today that contention and anger are not of G_d and have no place in our personal nor political discourse. Compassion and kindness and reaching out without judgment are how we follow the example of our loving Savior.

Amen.

Seventeen? But I started an hour earlier today. You can’t let yesterday beat today!

And so rows 18 and then 19 (hah! Take that, yesterday!) and the first of the three colors at the top of the barn got finished, at ~22 minutes per row. That should speed up a bit as the extra strands from the intarsia work get done with.

I’d even show you a picture, if my phone would hurry up and send it.

Knitted from ten a.m. to nine p.m. including three breaks for icing the hands and letting them warm back up again. It’s nuts–and if I can pull it off for the next six days straight I’ll have it done in time.

I did the first row of the upper window on the barn, so those strands are all carefully counted and aligned and set up, and then called it a night.

108F by our thermometer, 104 in our zip code per Wunderground today.

And I was sitting there with pounds of wool, super grateful for power and for air conditioning and not running anything I didn’t have to to avoid stressing the grid.

When we left on our trip, I had set up the barn with its first row and six strands on the needle. It was a sleep-deprived trip leaving early and coming home late, and when I picked the afghan back up the next row was a wrong side row and I was too fuzzy-brained to think, wait. Turn it around and take a good look first.

I didn’t need to; I knew what I was doing, right? It was ready, just go.

Which is how I went merrily on my way without knitting the vertical bars at the sides of that big barn door. It hit me today as I finished that part just why it vaguely reminded me of a Union Jack. Oops.

If you look at the top right you’ll see the lonely little remnant stitch from my trying to duplicate-stitch (ie embroidering it on after the fact) my way out of that problem. Clumsy looking. Out. I still have lengths of white yarn at the top to work with but that attempt wasn’t it.

Maybe I’ll try a crochet hook next.

Somehow working from the bottom up feels easier. But then the extra ends.

How would you do this?

The vice presidential debate tonight: Walz was earnest, Vance was slick and fast and a clearly well-practiced gaslighter and liar. Trump capped the price of insulin at $35!

I was waiting for the moderators to say no, Biden did. Democrats had been trying to set price caps on Big Pharma ever since Medicare added drug coverage and Biden finally got Congress to pass a phase-in over several years of the most prescribed meds. This was huge.

Vance complained to the moderators that they’d promised no fact checking. Which, the Washington Post pointed out, was a complete lie. And even if it had been true, wouldn’t you WANT the facts to be presented?

Etc.

It was good to see how civil the two men were to each other. It was surprising that they seemed to agree on things like childcare to help young people make it ahead. It was gratifying that Vance was horrified that one of Walz’s children had witnessed a shooting.

It was astonishing and deeply disconcerting to hear how easily and quickly Vance lied about just about everything. Millions cut out of housing because of illegal immigrants? Just how many people who can’t get a Social Security number did he think were signing closing papers on houses, or even just rentals? My husband as a Red Cross volunteer responded to a two bedroom apartment fire that left twenty-two immigrants homeless. They were so poor and so crowded they slept in shifts. The Red Cross didn’t ask about their papers; they cared about the people.  Whom did Vance think were building those houses while being unable to afford one themselves? The Post wondered if he’d added up every bed in every homeless shelter to come up with that random number?

But then he already said he makes up stories to illustrate his political point. I have no doubt he slandered the Haitians in Springville Ohio because they were the darkest-skinned immigrants he could think of and he knows his base.

Trump lies every time he opens his mouth, but at this point you don’t know how much of that is his dementia. Vance–his eyes gave him away a number of times–knew exactly what he was doing and he did it anyway. Get elected, Article 25 that Alzheimer’s idiot at the top and it’s all yours, buddy, he seemed to be saying to himself.

Walz finally asked him point blank: who won the 2020 election?

Vance’s gish galloped off in the opposite direction just as fast as it could run.

This time, I remembered to pack her some needles and a yarn that was easier for a beginner than the loose single-ply Mecha had been.

This time, Maddie got right into it and the only mistakes were from when she grabbed the cast-on tail end rather than the working yarn, and that was my fault for leaving it too long and having it be confusing.

Again this time, Spencer pleaded for me to teach him to knit, too, and I told him that when he was nine I would. (I did not want him to start out in life thinking knitting was too hard for him. Let his brain catch up to his wishing. Let him happily anticipate. He’d only been six for a few hours.) Meantime, Hudson and I laughed that Maddie got to be the cat this time for playing with yarn–and Spencer again got his own little ball to at least experiment with. Which he did.

I quietly mentioned to my daughter-in-law that her oldest had really wanted that ocean afghan but the reason he didn’t get it was that I’d have to make an intarsia one like that for all six grandkids before I gave one to one. But that I planned to give it to him as a high school graduation present.

That completely made her day. Which completely made mine. I told her, I’m enjoying this landscape knitting–so if there’s any special photo or place or something for any of them… Let me know….

(Found the photo. I’d forgotten about that light band. Parker might need a do-over on his.)

Today was the 29th, not yesterday, so Spencer got to be told Happy Birthday by me two days in a row and he was cool with that. All the more celebrating.

We took a late plane home. G’night.

Suddenly realizing, as I started the next beanie carry-around project, that that’s the same yarn and color as the time grandson Spencer got hold of the ball and played with it while I laughed (and kept my hat from unraveling.) He put his sister’s beginning knitting swatch on his toes. “Spencer is a cat!” And for a few minutes there he got to pretend he was.

He is no longer that little preschooler. Tomorrow (correction: Sunday) he will be six. I wonder if he’ll recognize the yarn.

I learned something cool!

Did you double-check? he asked. Just because you read it online….

The great Google Deep Dive later, site after site after site said the same thing. Some called it ferrous oxide, some called it rust, one spelled it out: ‘ferrous oxide (rust)’.

I had wondered for some time why old barns were such an iconic red and how, no matter where you are in the country, they all got to be about the same shade (with fading on the older ones, sure.) Having read “No Idle Hands: a social history of American knitting” I knew that red in Colonial times was the least colorfast of colors. This is still mostly true.

And that in George Washington’s day, women riding properly sidesaddle into Valley Forge with rescue supplies nearly got shot because their red petticoats were showing and someone had to yell at an overeager soldier that no you idiot the Redcoats (British) aren’t coming, it’s our wives and girlfriends! Who had apparently freshened up the dye job on those underclothes to look pretty.

But I digress.

So: your barns held your entire next year’s food supply and it needed to be protected. The wood planks the barns were made of needed to be free of decay, they needed not to let fungus or moss grow on them in the rain, and they needed to last year after year and hold up against the weather. Things needed to stay dry inside.

Linseed oil from crushed seeds from their flax plants mixed with rust created a kind of varnish and the rust turned the oil red while killing off the stuff that would damage the wood.

Sometimes limestone was added, sometimes milk (which makes one wonder about the smell on hot days but never mind) but the basic recipe was those two things. The effect was not only useful, it was pretty, and it made it really clear from a distance what that building was and where to find it.

My friends at Cottage Yarns today found just the right colorway for a slightly faded barn with specks of brown in Rio’s Jupiter dye to finish the look. I bought it, Kathryn’s husband went to go wind it up for me–and then I saw the Cereza. A single skein. It was brighter but not too bright. It was that perfect shade of red, with a steadier hand on the dyeing–not monochrome, but a bit heathered rather than a mixture of colors coming together. Bought it too.

I spent a lot of time today under every kind of lighting I could get while the sun was still shining.

And then I went with the Cereza.

The moment it actually went into the afghan it settled right in there like it had been looking for this all of its life.

I was so intent on getting my row count down last night that I actually forgot to write, and was surprised to find this morning that I had not posted.

And yet, I’ve often thought if I had to lose knitting or writing, I, well, writing is like breathing.

But then some times more than others, so is knitting.

Adding sunflower petals now….

Years ago, someone I know opened a candy shop near both a university and a high school: target audiences. It did so well she opened a second one in another town.

The guy she hired to run that one was a recent graduate of a top-notch culinary academy, I guess getting in on the ground floor.

This was when political ads were being run warning of a bogeyman–remember when superpredator got smushed into its own single word for awhile? Ie big and black and tall and on illegal drugs that supposedly made him extra strong. After all, the Willie Horton ads had worked for Bush and Dukakis’s candidacy had gone down in flames.

Her employee was a large African-American man.

Her husband was the one who told me of the phone calls–multiple, he reiterated over my stunned disbelief, not just one and not just one person, of people telling them they would not step foot in that second store unless they fired the guy. They had walked in, seen him, and walked right back out.

Instead she offered him a job at the first store and closed the second and made a point of telling that town why. She wasn’t going to be in any way associated with a populace that treated a good man that way and they should be ashamed of themselves.

That was thirty years ago.

Today I was in that town. My audiologist is there, and my hearing aids needed cleaning. Since I have a lot of knitting I want to do on that afghan I brought it with me, carry-around project or not. They warned me it would be awhile, and I knew that, no worries.

So I had a front row seat.

A couple came in. Mid-eighties, easily. He was tall and stooped and walked carefully; she was just as old but more easily mobile. Perfectly coiffed in the kind of hairsprayed upswept curls my grandmother’s generation regularly saw their beauticians for, and perfectly sculpted and tummy-tucked in her skin-tight clothes. She looked seriously about 85 pounds but for the improbably large chest. There is a posh country club nearby and all they needed was the golf cart to complete the look.

He settled down on the couch and she went to the desk. I had started an afghan row with its five dangly balls of yarn.

I finished the row.

Started another one.

Finished it.

Finally, she walked back towards her husband and did a disdainful little yank with her head back towards the young African-American woman who had been trying to help her with all the graciousness one could ever ask for.

There had been others before her who had appointments (including me.) They were going to have to wait.

My friend’s story of long ago came flooding back and I knew I had to do something to show support without putting the young woman on the spot. How do you do this right especially when you know you didn’t hear everything. But I’d seen.

Turns out that technician was the one to bring my finished hearing aids out from the back room two thirds of an afghan row later (and after the couple had left.) The insides had collected water because I’d let it go too long since the last cleaning and that means it takes awhile to dry the electronics safely. So mine took longer.

No worries, truly.

As I put them in I looked at her and asked a little sheepishly, knowing it would be cutting into her work time, Can I show off my moose?

Sure!

I spread the afghan out a bit so she could see and she exclaimed over it and reached to touch that inviting, beautiful wool as I held it so she could. I thanked her; she beamed; she told me, sounding less convinced of it as the words were coming out of her mouth, I could never have the patience for that, while her face started to say maybe I could? I actually want to, no really want to now…

I said, You start off small and work your way up.

Her face! Made me wish I could have taken the time to teach her on the spot.

There’s a yarn store maybe two blocks away; maybe we will have a new knitter soon.

But I loved that the fact that I’m one gave us a means to make each other’s day and, as much as could be done, make up for that earlier experience.

—

(Let me add here that having written most of this earlier and walked away to think about it some more, I’ve reflected on how hard it is to be elderly and stuck being a caretaker, if that was their case. And as someone whose own husband is 15″ taller and quite a bit bigger I know there are limitations on how one would be able to manage. But you just don’t demean others who are trying their best to do right by you. You just don’t. She should have known by now at long last that treating others badly can never make her happier.)

Two wonderful speakers at church today. The second was a man who started off by saying that my husband and I lived in the ward he grew up in in New Hampshire when he was a teenager, and so, he joked, “They have signed a nondisclosure agreement.” Brought down the house.

The first was my Richard.

With a very simple message, quoting from scripture about how dissension and anger are not of G_d: that we can disagree, but it must be with civility. That if we give in to rancor we are failing ourselves and those we’re talking to and G_d himself, who loves us without reservation and to whom we so much owe love by loving His children.

Nobody ever changed their minds by being argued with, he said. Only love changes people for the better.

It was the shortest talk I’ve ever heard him give.

It was all that needed to be said.

That flu/covid vaccine combination is not great for the next day’s plans but I’m glad we did it. It was actually easier than some, it’s just that it made me keep falling asleep.

So.

Nature and towering trees on one side of the river, a farm in pruned trees and neatly plowed rows on the other. (Or, what you do when you have dye lots that look at each other and ask, Say what??)

I’m torn between a farmhouse or a classic red barn later.

I knit a row this evening. That says tomorrow should be fine.