He remembered! The old miscommunication.

He was reading a good book and I was trying to redesign a pattern that had been almost good enough for way too long–Christmas knitting was over, it was time to get down to work.

At one point I announced into the quiet, just to get it out of my system, that I had just been counting stitches (and ripping) for an hour.  And then I got right back to it, glad to finally be on my way with the thing.

Till I got to–oooh. Oh that doesn’t work, does it, I mean you could, and I did last time, but, why? No way. The only thing to do was to go back almost to the beginning, and so I ripped and ripped yet again, the fifth time now, my determination to have that soft, gorgeous Tahitian Blue come out perfect being my one solace in all this.

And as the long waves of phone-corded baby alpaca/silk piled right back up in my lap my sweetie looked up from his page.

“But aren’t you using Frog Free yarn?”

Thank you all for the support; I’d been putting off saying anything but I really did want to be able to go back and remember when the Graves’ was diagnosed. Hey, if it distracts my immune system away from other stuff while being so treatable, good.

Meantime, we had someone drop by today and when he rang the doorbell, I asked the guy, You want to see something?

And so he stepped inside and followed to where I was pointing and there was the hawk on a post, framed by the sky, and I got to see the moment of wonder in his face.

He left and Coopernicus finished his meal–then flew not away but closer, landing at a nearby spot on the fence, shaking out his feathers a bit against the cold and basking in the last of the sun.

Then to the other side of the window, right there. I didn’t get anything done for a little while but just sat and enjoyed being with that beautiful bird. I had moved something out onto the patio and he had to explore every inch around it, gauging distances, hiding places. Hopping up on the metal seed can at the last and simply people watching me back.

I later came across some long-stashed possum/merino yarn I’d had no idea was still kicking around–thought I’d given that away. And yet, at last, it was just the thing: I’d wanted something with no dyes to crock that I could put on my hair when damp, having lost my white one, so when Richard asked what I wanted to do for New Year’s, feeling a bit under the weather, I answered simply, Knit a hat.

And so I did.

And without realizing it till I finished, I knitted the stripes in the tail and the beat of the wings.

A Happy New Year to you and may all of 2014 be a blessing.

(Oh, and, my New Year’s resolution? To finally get around to correcting that time stamp re Daylight Savings. The night is young.)