I worked on the baby sweater and would have finished it, wanted to finish it, but my hands needed a break from knitting tight and small. One more day (again), I guess.

The baby blankie, which had maybe a foot done, is still not found. Ah well, there will always be a baby who’ll need that UFO come the day. And I still had questions about cashmere, especially after googling for Rios in the colors I was interested in and getting nowhere.

It finally dawned on me: if I had questions about machine washing cashmere, of course I knew whom to ask and where to find the best. Lisa Souza! Shot off a note just now, admiring the color in that upper right corner there. Nobody else I’d rather have dye it for me, for that matter; she and I go back twenty-odd years, to when I first met her spinning in her redwood-ring faerie eyrie at Kings Mountain Art Fair.

Yes it would be very expensive.

You only get born once.

Waiting to hear back. Not setting my heart on it. Yet.

——–

Editing to add the next day: Lisa says that her friend Holly makes lap blankets of that 8-ply Lhasa cashmere for the elderly, very lovely. It could certainly be done–but the scruffication that would come with the use and laundering a baby would require of it is something that just would be a reality.

I hemmed, hawed, and at last went with (I found some!) the superwash Rios that I’m much more familiar with. Three blanket-years in, it’s fulled without being too fuzzy, no pills, so soft, and  the blankie is still the same size.