Love by chocolate
Tuesday February 13th 2018, 11:35 pm
Filed under: Family,Food,Friends,Life

My friend Karen dropped by today to pick up the amaryllis I’d promised her (thank you, Dad!) and we ended up chatting awhile.

One of the things she told me was something that in 30 years I’d never known about her: that her family had had an older neighbor who’d never married and had no family around and they with their seven sons had just kind of adopted him as their local grandpa and he loved it. They had had him over for dinner at least once a month for forever and made him theirs.

When he could no longer care for himself and needed to go to a memory care unit, they helped him with that move. He’s 96 now.

She was talking to someone who worked at the nursing home and that is how she found out that the residents got fruit for dessert: but no chocolate. Never chocolate. There was just no reason for it in the caretakers’ eyes, I suppose, nor for the expense.

“Not even, like, brownies?”

Nope.

Well that was definitely something she could do something about–she knew how much he loved the stuff and went to his room and asked him if he’d like some chocolate.

Now, he might have some dementia but he remembered chocolate. Definitely yes. Yes please!

So now she has something she know she can do to cheer him up, to connect to him wherever he may be in there, every time she comes.

And I thought I would pass the good word along. If you don’t know how to visit or what to say to someone in a nursing home–bring them chocolate.

And if it’s ever me in there, dark would be great, thanks.



Cone-iverous yarn
Monday February 12th 2018, 11:46 pm
Filed under: Knit

It had felted to itself a bit in the scouring and was a pain to separate, yard after yard. I knew that going in–I’ve done this before (but I wanted to preshrink this as much as possible in the expectation that it would go through the laundry later.) It was 332 grams and the length to match. I pretty much knew that, too.

But today I told myself my Sabbath day of rest was over and it was time to tackle it anyway, and with visions of finding the perfect swift and big-ball winder at Stitches next week so as to avoid this next time, I gradually created what my husband calls a yarn planet to continue the afghan from. Knowing I might have to do this one last time for it. Maybe not.

Subtract 36 g for the cardboard, and that cone still has 572 grams left vs. the 332 scoured and plumped up next to it.

The afghan. It’s coming. Slowly, but it’s coming.



Brown, blue, what else do you knit for a guy?
Sunday February 11th 2018, 10:34 pm
Filed under: Friends,Knitting a Gift,Life

As of just now there is a second soft, washable wool beanie (Bobby Blue to go with the previous Stonechat brown mix) to mail to my friend with the massive skull scar curving widely from the top of his head and halfway down  in front of his ear. The good news is that it was a slow tumor, and there are treatments in trials for curing it. They couldn’t get it all, but they believe they bought him plenty of time before they have to face it again and there is great cause for hope. Thank you for all your prayers and good thoughts Jerry’s way.

The best news is that he feels completely himself again with it gone, and that was no sure thing going in.

(Note to self: Malabrigo Rios, size US6 needles for the body of the hat, 80 stitches was the right number in stockinette. I considered doing cables but thought, nah, he doesn’t need the extra warmth where he lives. He just needs not to look quite so Star Wars bar scene-ish while his incision line gradually recedes.)



Stitches pre-Stitches
Saturday February 10th 2018, 11:54 pm
Filed under: Garden,Knitting a Gift

The rest of the Tropic Snow peach flowers have opened and the tree is just glorious.

I had to wind, scour, and let dry the next 300+ grams of the coned afghan yarn, having run out of what was ready, so knitting-wise I had a day or two on my hands.

Thus this cowl of long-hoarded Handmaiden’s Camelspin came to be. Lovely stuff, from lovely people, made mostly of silk and it puddles just so (lack of selfie skills notwithstanding.) Nova Scotia was the colorway, if I remember right, and there’s a bit more green to it than shows here.

I really, really like this. I really like even more anticipating surprising the person it’s for.

There’s enough yardage left from the one ball that I could make a second cowl, and it wouldn’t have to be too much smaller.



Skyscape
Friday February 09th 2018, 11:45 pm
Filed under: Friends,Life

I almost missed it. There was the most stunning sunset going on, deep pink and blue streaks as far as the eye could see from right to left and up to down. I walked out the front door to see if it reached clear to the east as well.

Which it did. But more importantly, an older neighbor was out front as well and I went over to say hi; I don’t get to as often as I’d like.

Turns out it was a day when things were going a little rough for her medically, and though she’s not one to complain, today she just needed a listening ear. But first she told me, It IS a beautiful sunset! And that set the tone.

Her triplet grandchildren are in college already?! How on earth did THAT happen?

She laughed: I know, right? Then she told me the suddenness of the empty nest was an adjustment for her daughter-in-law. “She’s a *good* mother.” A few minutes later she said it again, wanting me to know just how much she thought the world of the woman her son had married.

I’d caught her between her car and her front door, which when she went through a few minutes later, she no longer felt so alone.

And all because Someone had nudged me: Hey. You. Look at this sky I made–no, no, go, Look.



Cashmere and cotton
Friday February 09th 2018, 12:13 am
Filed under: Knit,Knitting a Gift

I had this afghan I needed to make that I’ve mentioned from time to time for several months now.

The first try ended up being cast off and declared a scarf–spending more time on its yarn was not making me like it better. Done.

The second try got started but was put aside while I tried to decide if I wanted the lace to be a great big border around a drawing in knits and purls of the recipient’s house. Which I have never been to. And which I didn’t know how to ask for a picture of without having to explain why I wanted it–when simply continuing the lace would make a perfectly fine blanket. I dithered. Which means I stopped.

Aside from an hour here and there, which gradually, naturally answered the pattern question, it got put aside again for all the Christmas knitting: ten hats, who knows how many cowls, things that all had a definite time limit–while the afghan reproached me. I’m not good at having multiple projects on the needles but it was just too much to try to get that big one done and out of the way first.

I took it with me to a knitting group get-together Tuesday morning to make myself really dive back into it at long last, but as it dangled from my circs, it was inwardly embarrassing that another knitter couldn’t instantly peg it as an afghan and it made me determined to get it at least to where it was obvious what it was, fast. It was long overdue.

Today, after three straight days of putting my all into it, it is nearly half done and after all this time that feels just unbelievable, and very encouraging.

Part of what happened was I realized I did have a deadline after all: Stitches West. It’s only two weeks away and you know there are going to be new toys that I’m instantly going to want to play with. Anticipation is way more fun–and I’ve finally found that place where there’s great anticipation in this afghan, too. It’s gotten really pretty. I can’t wait to give it to where it’s going.

 



Well I guess they wanted to plant local species?
Wednesday February 07th 2018, 10:35 pm
Filed under: Garden,Life

The unseen unnamed people who bought the house down the street have been re-landscaping it, and one of the things they did was to plant some plants in a tight row in front of what I assume is a bedroom window, about ten of them and all about two feet apart. So that the spaces between will fill in nice and densely.

With redwood trees. I did quite the double take. Redwood trees?! Under the eaves of the house, no less. Okay, they’re pretty and maybe you guys are new to California but didn’t you at least google the name on all those tags?!



Peach flowers
Tuesday February 06th 2018, 11:24 pm
Filed under: Garden

Gorgeous flowers. Click for the close-ups.

The forecast is for no leaf curl disease this year because I paid a professional to spray my peaches this time, but also because the foreseeable forecast is for no rain. It’s been bad.

My Tropic Snow is the only tree I didn’t get around to pruning this winter–mostly because it grew so little last year while barely surviving the loss of so many leaves.

But wow, look at it now.

For whoever else might need to know this, the guy who did the work said that raccoons won’t climb chicken wire: too unsteady and flimsy feeling. Meaning I *can* keep them out!

(The squirrels, though, I dunno…)



Hoping for seconds
Monday February 05th 2018, 10:57 pm
Filed under: Family,Food

When the baby steals your chocolate chip cookie and suddenly realizes that your food tastes better than his food…



For Suzi
Monday February 05th 2018, 12:06 am
Filed under: Knit,Knitting a Gift

Walked into Cottage Yarns in South San Francisco Friday, and just inside the door was one single skein left among the other colors of Malabrigo laceweight baby alpaca/silk.

“That’s exactly what I came for!” I exclaimed to Kathryn. Archangel. Perfect!

I had some cashmere, red plied with a nearly tan off-white, a bit thinner than I wanted to work with. The silk content with the alpaca wasn’t so high as to make the strand snag and slip out if I knitted these two together but it definitely added a sparkle, and the mostly-salmon colorway bridged the colors in the cashmere.

The fabric they made is SO soft.

I knew before I started this morning who it’s for: a woman who is generous in every way, so her cowl needed to be, too. It came out a good size, and I ended it with a right-side row of yo, k2tog across (and then a purl row before casting off) to let the bottom edge fan out just a bit without having it sag or to have to add anything more than that. I wanted to be able to call it a night with a sense of accomplishment to the day.

Suzi was wearing something today that exactly matched this. Nice. Not that she knows that yet.

Nine repeats across and seven repeats down on size 8US later, it is drying.



Redwood hat
Saturday February 03rd 2018, 11:38 pm
Filed under: Friends,Knitting a Gift,Life

(Photo from Richard’s phone, since mine’s still on strike. It embiggens.)

I started to cast on with something else, but a ball from stash that I had not seriously considered got louder and more insistent with each stitch till I ripped the other off the needles and started again with this one. Why yes, my yarn is the boss of me.

Each row of Malabrigo Rios in the beautifully-named Stonechat was like a slow drive through an old redwood forest,  glimpses of light peaking through the quiet shades of brown.

And then there are the near-black stitches popping up here and there.

Redwoods can be hit by lightning and catch fire, as any tree might–but unless it gets to the canopy, the tree itself, I was told by a park ranger when I was a teen, gradually puts that fire out, even if it smolders for months. The flames simply don’t take them down.

The Stonechat was right. It was definitely the right yarn.

Note to self: size 6US needles in the body and 84 stitches. Kept to beanie length because it’s to cover the surgery scar on Jerry’s head rather than purely for warmth, given where he lives.



The pinwheel toy
Friday February 02nd 2018, 11:32 pm
Filed under: Friends,Knit,Knitting a Gift,Life

She loves orange, she told me last June. And blues. I didn’t have much orange in my stash–but I had this old ball in Lisa Souza’s Joseph’s Coat colorway.

I found the pictures. They were taken at night and by the bright light of day and the cowl was mostly somewhere in between, and maybe some of you remember it. I sure do. It came out so unexpected.

It started off with all the colors kind of melting together into an almost-purple, but then when I added a few stitches to widen it it changed the whole thing abruptly: individual colors stood out on their own and became like the brightest sunrise against the darkest clouds. I expected them to go back to how they’d been after I added a few more but they simply formed a new pattern altogether yet that continued off the second one.

No matter its quirkiness or even faults, of the three, this was the one she wanted to take away as a memento of the years they lived here.

I heard the news.

She’s a young mom.

Whose husband is now fighting a brain tumor.

That which they had gauged their plans by was suddenly thrown to the winds and what they are going through now is radically different from anything they’d wanted or expected. And yet there he is in his hospital picture, smiling, same as always.

In a hospital cap.

He needs a soft handknit one, stat. Even in San Diego.

If you feel inclined to say a pray or to Think Good Thoughts in Jerry’s direction and his family’s, it would be lovely. The G_d that I believe in honors either as love: and love is what we are sent here to learn and do.

May that great Love sustain them through all that lies ahead.



Yes you
Thursday February 01st 2018, 10:07 pm
Filed under: Family,Friends,History

A story I got to hear my dad tell last week.

When Reed Smoot arrived in DC from the then-new state of Utah, his fellow Senators challenged him and refused to seat or have anything to do with him. And not only was he ostracized for being a Mormon, his wife was shunned, too, and she found herself very, very lonely in their new town.

Note that my grandmother’s book tells of how, in the early 1950’s when she was the new Senator’s wife from that state, her husband being a freshman, she was expected to put on white gloves, a hat, and go from home to home in order of seniority of each of the other Senatorial wives bringing her calling card. One was to comply with longstanding tradition. My Western-raised grandmother found it all very strangely Victorian.

The Smoots arrived nearly fifty years earlier. I imagine there were no such getting-to-know-yous–Mrs. Smoot’s presence was not wanted.

My parents as newlyweds attended the same ward (Mormon congregation) in DC as the Smoots’ son.

And this is what he told Dad:

The President was throwing a party at the White House, and when the President threw a party, the protocol was that no one was to leave before he did.

He knew full well what was going on.

(I should let Dad tell this, and correct me if I got any details wrong, Dad.)

When the time was fully spent, Teddy Roosevelt announced that it was time for him to head upstairs to bed. He then turned to her and her alone and pronounced, “Good night, Mrs. Smoot!” Then away from the crowd and was gone.

And that act of acknowledgement and kindness changed everything for her.