If I’d counted right when I started my project, I wouldn’t have learned how to make the first lace pattern flow so beautifully into the unexpected new one nor would I be planning what comes after these two.

I should stumble more often. I am really really really pleased with how this is coming out–it was hard to put down.

As the afternoon wore on, to give my hands a break I was reading and then grumping over some news: Arizona’s House approved a bill that went below and beyond to actually allowing employers to demote or fire any employee who uses birth control even if it was paid for out of their own pocket. This sentence was removed from the old law: “A religious employer shall not discriminate against an employee who independently chooses to obtain insurance coverage or prescriptions for contraceptives from another source.”

Their Senate looks ready to pass it.

Wow.  Anyone who’s ever had a bad boss (I certainly have), raise your hand… I wonder how fast the Supreme Court would take that one on.

And so I turned on the stereo, looking for relief from all that.

Alison Kraus began singing a cappella.

A young dove flew in and settled in on the patio. Watching me. Learning a new song. Tilting her head up to pay particular attention when I sang too. She relaxed into her spot on the concrete and stayed there as long as the album played, the very model of being still within the world.

Acknowledging the gift, I turned back to that beautiful, radiant yarn and knit in increasingly happy anticipation of its arrival home.