Here’s what I was working on. Got it down to the last five yards. Close!

Meantime…

Fragile Handle with Care, said the box.

A loud hard THUMP as it hit the ground in front of my door this afternoon.

Wait, box? Addressed to me? I wasn’t expecting any box.

Inside were this yarn bowl and tea mug, hand thrown pottery that I had admired in Angela Ingram’s Etsy shop but certainly hadn’t ordered; I sent her a note to make sure that hadn’t been a mistake. I sure didn’t want to stiff anybody.

She got right back to me: these were a gift from (name deleted in case she doesn’t want me to tell on her, a friend both online and in person), but that person hadn’t stipulated putting a card in. Don’t worry, everything was cool.

It definitely is. Very. Ndicsdwmttoh–you are so busted. Thank you! And a thank you to Angela for packaging these so well so that they weren’t.

The Malabrigo Rios made itself quite at home immediately in the bowl, trying to proclaim itself as next project in line, and I have a daughter who loves her herbal teas; now I can wave a cheerful mug at her as incentive to fly home to visit.

Thank you!

Hard to stop to go blog when it’s turning out so pretty.

Back to the knitting!

She liked it! Hey Mikey! Thank you, Deb, whoever you are, and so I felt inspired to launch into another blue and green hat. Funny how that works.

Malabrigo Rios in Teal Feather and Azul Profundo for this one.

Purple or pink. The purple was in my stash of finished projects (that seemed too lazy), the pink a ball of yarn that caught my eye today: it had been tucked away forgotten because there was just one ball left.

Thin, yes, not a lot of yardage, true, but still, especially in this mild climate, I thought I could make do with that–and it’s hard to go wrong with baby alpaca and silk.

I cast on as Michelle went off to her friend’s wedding and then made it up as I went along, hoping it would work.  Then I wrote what I did so I can do it again.

That doctor Tuesday was a peach and I want to make sure she knows that. You never know who could use a lift.

I went to knit night determined to finally finish that baby hat. Which I did. But when I pulled it out of my bag, I got asked point-blank if it was for Jasmin’s baby.

Yes it is.

Good time, good LYS, good friends, good yarn, and now it is done. (No, no picture, I have to keep some surprises, you guys!)

Meantime, if you have a moment: Lene has written a powerful post that is being voted on for a best blog post award in Canada, and it would help her in her effort to raise the profile of disability and access issues if it were to win; one-time voting goes till Jan 20 here if you are so inclined.

I was at the OB/GYN office today for a test and while waiting for the appointment started in on a small pink baby hat.  One nurse, then a patient, then someone else happened to walk past, and as they did I caught each one noticing my gray hair, my baby knitting, and then discreetly (they thought) checking out my belly to make sure I wasn’t the one expecting.  Uh, that would be a no.

I was at a meeting at church tonight with it in my hands again.

One young mom said something that made it safe to ask her the obvious–yes, she was due in May–and she clearly wanted to…but stopped, embarrassed, just happening to mention it was going to be a girl.

Right, then, I should have a little left over when this is done. It’s always more fun to knit for someone you know is going to appreciate it.  No, I didn’t hear a hint, did you? No worries there.

Then she wondered if I could teach her how to knit?

Absolutely! (And I am most definitely going to knit a little something for her baby!)

Meantime, just for fun, there’s no place like home.

Looked at the clock, thought no on the reading, knit, you want to be able to brag that you finished that hat. (My timestamp’s an hour fast.)

Right. Back to it, then.

And other than blocking (nope, just did that) and running the ends in… The leaf hat is done!

Overdid it yesterday; 63/43 bp this morning made it hard to move. Richard rescued me with a glass of water. Slow all day.

I got a package in the mail in the afternoon, a long out of print book I’d bought via Amazon. The seller charged me something like a buck plus the standard 3.99 shipping.

Only, they’d written “first class” on the envelope that with that heavy book in it clearly weighed way more than they could ship that way; at the post office, rather than sending it via media mail and slow, then, they’d opted for Priority and tracking–for $13.20! I’d paid all of $5.

They didn’t have to work so hard to make me happy but they did. I loved that the return address was within shouting distance of Richard’s late grandparents’ house they’d built in the 1930’s in Washington, DC. Back home.

And also in that package was the woman’s business card, decorated in shades of green.

I’ve been needing something to push me back into feeling productive again, just one specific project to grab me to get me going.  It took some stash diving to find just those shades. You know someone wouldn’t put a colorway on their card to represent themselves to the world by unless they liked it.

I had a fingering weight strand of pure  merino sock yarn from Fleece Artist and a matching strand of the same from Creatively Dyed, and together they would make the perfect quick but pretty hat.

I confess it took a brief moment of letting go of what I thought I was going to use that Fleece Artist for–and yet. It totally makes it. I’ve had it nearly a year, and every time I’ve tried to sit down to start what it was supposed to be, it refused to continue. It’s New Year’s Eve, and starting with a fresh idea to put some good directly into the world starting right now–it feels like that’s what it was waiting for.

Of course I don’t have to do it. And neither did she. That’s why it’s so fun.

(Oh, and the book? My much-laughed-over copy of The Mother’s Almanac got destroyed by a leaking roof during our remodel when my youngest was in first grade. I wanted to have a copy around; it’s a great book for anyone who loves children, and I now have both that again and, as of today, Almanac II.)

The yarn is wound, the brim is done. Things are speeding up.

I went to deliver a Christmas present. Drove over. Rang the doorbell.

Her car was in the driveway but there was no answer–till suddenly I saw the window sliding across at the bedroom next to the front door: she was sick, one of her kids was sick, she was glad to see me but she sure didn’t want to come close.

So she screened my calling on her. What a pane.

Well then. After a few moments’ chatting, I told her I was going to doorbell ditch her present, then. She laughed. (It seemed time to let her go lie back down.)

I stepped back to the right, put down the gift box with the handknit inside, rang the doorbell and took off in my car. Take two-strandeds and don’t mall us in the morning.

The tree was decorated by the shortest person in the house. There are no balls above where I can reach and everybody’s quite fine with that.

A blue Malabrigo hat went where it was supposed to go, the giftee thrilled at the handknit; a good wool couldn’t ask for better.

Another gift got finished today and is blocked and drying. Just in the time of Nick!

Wow, did I really get off this easy this time? A little joint inflammation that dissolved away like the ocean fog by mid-day, a little in the eyes–but no loss of vision this time. A few cardiac-cough spasms that gave up and went away and were nothing.  So far so good. So different from other sun-exposure episodes.

Thank you for your prayers and your Thinking Good Thoughts: to me, it all matters, whatever your religion or lack of it. It’s all love in God’s eyes. Caring makes the whole world blessed.

And so I am blessed by people I know and whom I wish I could. Again, thank you.

Tonight I finished the baby alpaca hat I began on that mountain.  When it is right it will tell me whose it is, and then it will go from being knit for the whole wide world to just one person in it. At its time.

Part One.

I had no idea what the place was going to be like or even quite where it was going to be. Which was okay, I was going to be the passenger.

My friend Nina was taking part in a small–very small, as it turned out–holiday craft fair in Sky Londa today, immediately down the hill from Alice’s Restaurant.

Phyl was sure it was going to be held indoors and safe for my lupus, and it’s always good to see Nina, so up twisty Highway 84 we went.

Well, there were doors, that much turned out to be true: a stand-alone room of a building with the doors wide open and most of the crafty goings-on out in the fresh air, with Christmas trees over to the side being picked out and bundled onto cars, attracting people driving by to or from the coast. Come.  You see all these trees all around? Bring one home with you, pine-sized. Buy a handknit woolly scarf while you choose in the chill.

The sky was a dense fog, the ear-popping elevation not limited to the tops of the redwoods. I had on two layers of sweaters, wool knee socks, and a good wool hat. Nina was cold in a down jacket and thick hat and I realized that my heating-impaired house had gotten me more used to colder weather than I’d realized. (One site says it was 46F there today, one, a bit more.)

Checking the blog, it was Wednesday that that skein of Malabrigo Rios jumped onto my needles for no reason I knew of and just absolutely demanded that I knit it into a hat, and fast. NOW. And there seemed to be only one stitch pattern for it. That was that.

It wasn’t for my Christmas knitting queue, either. Don’t ask me how I knew that, but it just felt obvious all of its own. Well, huh.

So it got made. I knit it into the pattern that surrounds this blog, except done with yarnovers to make fern lace. I ran the ends in to finish it this morning right before Phyllis came to pick me up; whoever it was going to be for wouldn’t mind if I wore it just this one day, would they?

Ferns grow freely among the redwoods, the fronds echoing the green needles above; the Azules colorway echoed the California coastal sky, bright blue and foggy mixed together. With a touch of green. The ferns.

There was a seat just behind the window next to the door. After admiring Nina’s knitting for sale and visiting with a few friends, (side note for them: my brother Bryan’s Jeppson Guitars is here) I sat down there, figuring the glass would give me a little bit of UV protection on one side at least, pulled some yarn out from my purse, and started another hat while listening to a singer with his guitar who was seated in that room too and whose sound had drawn me in there in the first place.

I tell you, he was good. I looked around for signs of CDs I could write a check for but saw none.

Another man had told me there would be four musicians together later, and I’m quite sorry to have missed that but I can only be outside so much. But while I could be there, the one playing then, I could have listened to forever.

Yarn winding in time around wood as he played helped keep me warm.

I (in my sun worries) thought we were there about an hour and a half; Phyllis later guessed about 45 minutes. Judging by rows finished, she’s probably right. She came to me to say she was done just as I was finishing up a needle; okay, cool–and just as the musician finished his song and said what he was going to be playing next.

He had a blue canister with the word TIPS painted prominently in bright yellow.

I was standing up to go but turned to him instead, glad that I could say something without interrupting–the timing had come out perfect. I said very briefly I had no cash with me (much though I wished) and major home repairs waiting. But this I could do: Malabrigo. Some of the finest wool in the world. I had just knitted this (and I took off my hat). I had made it up as I’d gone along, and it is a woman’s, but I was sure he could find someone to give it to; “I want to throw my hat in the ring” to thank him for his music, and with that I put it in his tip jar.

The new warmth in his smile was like no one else’s.

Part two.

We were pulling out when I went, “The honey!”

“Oh, right,” answered Phyl, offering to let silly me pay her back later (I did) and she pulled off to the left to where someone was selling local honey across the side street.

He had blackberry! My favorite! I told the man I couldn’t go to the Kings Mountain Art Fair anymore where I used to buy it; too much sun time.

He asked if I were sensitive to the sun?

Turns out he and his doctor have discussed whether he had lupus on his arm. He seemed grateful to be able to say that to someone who knew what the word meant.

I explained there were two types, skin only and systemic. If he has it there, don’t let the word scare you.

He told me as we left, “You take care of yourself.”

“You too.” And I assured him that systemic notwithstanding, I’d had it twenty+ years; I’m doing fine.  He was visibly comforted.

Part three.

Costco run. I grabbed my piano hat on our way out the door. If I was able to stay warm enough on that mountain I didn’t need more than a hat thrown on down here too, right?

There was a woman in the store’s motorized wheelchair wearing a set-up that I recognized from when my son had knee surgery: her leg looked tinker-toyed. She was offered a sample of smoked salmon and wanted to buy some, but it turned out to be set on a shelf high above her head and the person giving the stuff out was too swamped with customers to notice.

But I did. “Do you want me to reach that for you?”

“Oh, yes, please! If you would.”

Now, I have spent my time needing that chair before. I know that people in wheelchairs like to browse too: like not just having help getting something down, but also like not being forced to buy it or stash it in the wrong place after looking it over simply because there is no physical way to get it back up high again, the helpful person by then long gone.

So I hung around the salmon a moment, just in case, thinking, browse away, hon.

She asked me if I were a pianist?

(I didn’t say, not like my concert-pianist grandmother nor my organ-performance-minor son, but) “Yes.”

She was too! She LOVED my hat! Wait–I’d *made* it?!

Hey (bring on the brag). I’d designed it.

I showed her the inside: how I’d wrapped the yarn across the backs of every single stitch so it wouldn’t have long lengths to snag on things. But that had made it so the black shows through the white keys a bit across the front, and for later hats, I’d gone with the long lengths. (The floats, to a knitter.)

I did offer to put the salmon back up if by chance she needed that. She loved that someone understood how it was to be seated.

However long later, Richard turned back to get one last thing for me and then we headed to the checkout. With him at the cart, he picked a line.

Which turned out to be next to that woman. Her young sons had joined her by then, one quite small, one maybe six or seven. I knew it couldn’t be easy to have Mom having a hard time getting around for awhile, especially if that’s a change.

I said a quick inner prayer, wondering. In response I felt this: could I re-create the hat? Sure, in a day, two, tops. Could I re-create this moment? Not on your life. And so while she was turned the other way I whipped my hat off my head, stepped over and tucked it into her cart just as she turned back.

She was stunned. “NO!” in disbelief. A delighted butbutbut.

May I?

She shook her head in how can I let you and joy and are you sure. Yes I’m sure.

She exclaimed some more and her older boy admired it and put it on his head. She told me he played violin.

“I don’t know how to knit a violin yet,” I laughed. (Thinking, but just wait…)

Her husband joined them right about then and the next thing I saw, all of them were laughing and happy, and then the older couple behind them in line were happy for them and admiring their hat and loving being at Costco right there right then.

I had been exposed to enough UV earlier to burn my cheeks and wonder what my T- (ed. to add, and B-) cells would do next. But as I once told my friend Scott, “Sometimes you just have to LIVE!”  I was hoping the Decembery conditions would be enough in my favor, but it was a risk and I knew it and I weighed it and I took it. Maybe, hopefully, I’ll be fine. Some things are worth what you pay for them. It was a day well spent.

But that very awareness pushed me to choose not to be selfish but to grab the moment given me to make that family happy.

As that musician had made me happy by the depth of that smile that had lit up his whole countenance. He, too, had played his part to help make it happen for them.

We all arrived of our own choices where we were supposed to be.

Parker ready to read to his younger cousin: hey look, he saved her bookmark.

When Holly was here in town several months ago, I showed her a project I was working on.

She admired the yarn, but as she did so, simply having another set of eyes looking at what I was making it into made me face that yes it was a doodle but no I didn’t like how the second half was coming out.

Finally today I sat down and risked it catching on itself all over the place and carefully ripped half of that little shawl back and reknit the now-squiggly length back up and past that point. It feels so much better.

I just wanted to take a moment to thank all of you, starting with Stephanie, who have ever said you’ve never regretted frogging something that needed it:  at last I have a beautiful mink/cashmere project that I love and that lives up to what it should have been all along.

As it knit back up I gradually went from appeased pride, to, I can’t wait till the recipient gets it!

Meantime, Parker and his cousin, as usual, steal the show.  Birthday and Christmas season. Celebration times!

We were reading from newly-arrived catalogs at the table and giggling.

“Monkey sock wine covers, only 12.99 each. And if you buy two, you can wear them as socks afterwards!”

Him: “Star Wars Hans Solo frozen in carbonite done as a chocolate bar.”

And then he showed me the unicorn chopsticks: the horn is the stick part and the poor little horsey is tipped upside down while you get to eat; always spearing the food, never getting its own share. Oh, and can’t forget the Lil Vampire Pacifier: “If baby starts to sparkle, feed to werewolves immediately and make a new one.”

Spear the cod and foil the child.

(Those catalogs just go to show, you can foal some of the people some of the time, but you can’t foal all the people all the time…)

Hands down and hooves up, his pages totally trumped mine.

(Knitting: I frogged the bamboo/pearl yarn back to the ribbing, started again, frogged again, and finally gave up and kept it simple. Stockinette, straight up from the brim–amazing how much better behaved the yarn was for that. Zee hat, it ees done.)

A side note first in case someone out there needs to read this: last summer I started to make a chemo cap out of a bright white corn-based ribbon yarn, thinking it would go with everything for the recipient and not be itchy.

A few rows into it and it looked like I was knitting a great big garish hospital bandage to plunk on their head. I ditched it.

Today: I had to return something to Lands End. Rather than pay return postage, I looked up where there was a Sears store accepting such. Turned out I could drive south to a mall that I knew required a too-long walk in the sunlight to park, or I could go to the one in San Bruno.

You know, the one just a few streets away from Cottage Yarns. The fact that I’d knitted six projects in seven days, five from skeins I’d just bought there, needed showing off anyway.

The Sears parking turned out to be two car lanes’ width from the door, much safer for my lupus. Bonus.

I’d offered Richard to come with me to keep me out of trouble. (He’s on semi-vacation.) But no; returns and yarn just weren’t his thing.

When I was at the Cottage last Saturday, I bought a single, cautious skein of cotton/modal/I think it had some silk in it too, where’s that ball band, and knit a chemo cap out of it. My hands did much better than I expected; cotton and I are not friends, but I got it done by the end of that day with only minimal soreness.

So, back to the Cottage–only this time, knowing a little more now about gauge and effect in that kind of yarn and what needle size I could use, I took a more serious look at the Sublime Bamboo and Pearls. Again, not knowing the particular yarn yet, I bought just one skein to test.

I’m late blogging tonight because I could not put it down. 70/30 “Viscose from bamboo and viscose from pearls.” So soft! Shiny, just slippery enough to tamp down the effect of inelasticity from the celluloid bamboo, it just poured through my hands like water over pearls. It’s made of many strands but, being rounded well and with my sharpish Holz and Steins, it hasn’t been splitty.

But what surprised me, apart from the fact that it was almost as easy as wool to work with, was the warmth from the strand that suddenly caught my attention in my cool house. Cotton feels cold. I did not expect warmth. I don’t quite understand it; I can only guess the oyster is designed to stay comfortable in its ocean. That 30%, I am guessing, would have been made from what they shaved off the pearls to make them round for market. Purls from pearls knitted on needles of leftover wood from making musical instruments. It danced in my hands.

Kathryn was unexpectedly away taking care of her mom; I did get to show off to her husband, who loved the knits, but not her yet. They had more Sublime colors, you know…

I think I’m in trouble now.