Nice idea.  Spent a lot of time on it today.  Good thing I swatched before I launched into it on a grand scale.  Watch me frog.  Watch me hit the delete button. ‘Bye.

Nice idea #2.  Spent a lot of time on it this evening.  Realized it won’t work well with the idiosyncracies not to mention the quantities of the yarn I’m wanting to use.  Nope. Try again.

Nice idea #3. Hey. I like this one!  Careful consideration of yarn qualities and quantities taken into account. I think I got it this time.  Nope, haven’t swatched–I ran out of day.

There’s a reason redwoods are so tall: they live along the ridgeline of the California coast, between a near-desert climate and the ocean and where heavy fogs roll in at night.  They are designed to pierce the fog with their height, causing water droplets to condense and run down their trunks and water them–which is also why they have very shallow roots. They typically reproduce by having new ones shoot up from the roots, with the new ones joining in to help form a wide underground lattice of roots that supports the whole community of redwoods together.

Which is also why my treedling might actually make it.  There was no depth to the bit of earth it was clinging to when I pulled it out, probably no broken roots.

All that said, I gotta say, “bonsai redwood” to describe it is one of the funniest ideas I have heard in awhile.  Totally nonpsychodegradeable.  Thank you, Carol!

(Oh. Right. The shawl.  Tailor of Gloucestor alert!  Heh.)

Specs: One skein Casbah from Mary’s stash, size 11 (7mm) needles, Faster-version Julia shawl through the yoke, then I switched to the Michelle pattern for the body, it being a 6+1 lace pattern as well, both of them in “Wrapped in Comfort.”  This did not make a very big shawl, the Casbah being a thinner yarn than the original mohair, but it’s good for a small person.  Lying flat, it’s 19″ long.  It’ll stretch out a bit held up when it’s dry.

Here is the Knitpicks Bare merino/silk, reblocked to a smooth edge. This is the smaller version Water Turtles shawl, 24″ long laid flat, about 27″ long on, 880 yards/200 g, with 16 g left over, dyed in Jacquard Acid in less-than-full-strength Navy.

After I finished it, I picked up the long-neglected purple Maple Creek Farm merino/bamboo shawl that I’d started during the weekend of my son’s wedding–it kept getting put aside for projects that needed to be fast-tracked, but it was so close to being done.  I decided, just spend one single day and let it be done.  I’d forgotten which pattern I’d been knitting it in…

Smaller version Water Turtles. Huh. Well, it might make for slightly repetitive knitblogging, but whatchagonnado.  I knitted it down to the very last five grams, and it’s ready to block too.

Happy Fourth of July!

Something I learned in spinning surprised me: you could fill up a bobbin, fill up a second bobbin, and then when plying the two together, get most of the yarn of both of those onto a third bobbin before you ran out of space.  Shouldn’t it be just half, twice?  Shouldn’t one full bobbin plus one full bobbin make two full plied bobbins? But no, over and over I would get most of the way through the singles as I plied: the plied yarn was denser, but it didn’t take up that much more space. I got really good at spinning just enough of the singles–a little more than 2/3–to fill the plied bobbin just to the tippy top.

When I’m joining yarns from different skeins together these days, I apply some of what I learned from that.  If it’s a multi-plied yarn, I break off a few inches of half the plies (one if it’s a three-ply), knot the two strands just at the points where I’ve thinned them down, and then wind each thinned-down yarn end tightly around the full thickness of the strand I’m attaching it to, both directions.  The tip of my needle is pointing towards where the doubled-up length is after I’ve done this.  You can see in this picture at the bottom of the smooth loop to the right the slight bulge where the knot is–not the knot itself, but the joining strands arcing slightly away from it right at the knot.  But that disappears into the knitting.  I do dampen that doubled area and rub it vigorously between my hands to help it felt together if it’s not a superwash yarn.

I know. Knots are Not Done.  But I’ve heard too many stories over the years of people’s knitting coming apart at the skein seams in the wash, and I refuse to go there.  How tightly you tie the knot affects how it feels in the finished garment or whether its presence is even discernible, and I am careful not to overdo it.

I like this shawl. I’m not quite entirely sure yet it’s the one.  Purlescence is closed this week for the LYSOs’ vacation, and when they open Monday, I’m going to go put this one next to the Casbah one of mine I loaned them for display.  If the Casbah feels more right when I see it, that will be the one going off in the mail to Marc’s wife.   (Nathania, Sandy, Chloe–I’ll knit you another one.  Bring on the Handmaiden.)  But I’m finishing this one up quickly so as to have a good choice.

I have an ancient curling iron that long ago lost its on button.  I am not a fan of the old gray plastic department-store-type knitting needles, so it gave me a way to put an unloved dpn to good use–in ten years of poking it into the on switch, I’ve never bothered to replace the iron.

The TSA inspectors must have dropped it out of the suitcase and the flying public is now safe from my deadly weapon.  I had to go looking for one of its mates in the Unloved Needles case.  And found–my old casein needles!

I’ve always thought these were pretty. I wonder, though, who ever thought that milk protein, of all things, would be good for knitting with.  There are urban legends of them melting horribly into one’s knitting in hot cars, but I don’t know.

I picked them up just now, curious.  The 9″ set I bought way back when turned out to be too long for comfortably knitting socks, so they’ve never really been used.  I pressed into them and then raised my thumbs and they came up partway before detaching from my skin and falling back down.  Hmm. Might be good for when you need the needles to hold onto a silky, slippery yarn.  Dunno.

I wonder what the strangest needles and uses for needles others have encountered are.

I don’t wonder what the strangest knitting material I’ve ever heard of is: that would be the salmon skins knitted into a jacket that won a prize at a World’s Fair in the early 1900’s.  Hmm, thought I read about that in “No Idle Hands,” but it’s not in the index.  Googling for a reference led me to these.  (No, those are not leather.  Not in the traditional sense, anyway.)

Should I ever buy one, I’ll keep my casein needles out of it.  Just in case.

I have occasionally mentioned here and on the knitting lists my idea that if you want to get an idea of how your crumpled tin foil-y-looking stuff will look like in real life once your lace project is done, or if you simply want to like it better or show it off better while working on it, rinse it gently in tepid water, still on the needles, and lay it out to dry overnight to let the stitches settle into their natural patterns.

So, knowing this was probably a dumb move, I did that last night. With about 300 stitches of a thicker-than-my-usual yarn on one not terribly long circular needle (knowing full well I should be using two or one unusually long one), all bunched up. Okay, you can see the outcome already, and so could I, but I really really needed to know how long this was getting to be, having never put that yarn with that pattern before and knowing that some silk yarns have a tendency to stretch out when wet. The overall weight of the shawl affects the hang of it more than you could learn from a small swatch, which is one excuse for why of course I didn’t swatch it; the other being, I already knew it would fit when I was done, so hey. But I did need to know that length now.

Which is why I winced but took the hairdryer to it this morning. No, it’s not as long as I thought, no, I’m not done after all, and I do need to finish it today. No, I do not recommend potentially shrinking your shawl with a hairdryer, so I set it on low in penitence. Before I turned it up in impatience.

1. A bird’s-foot view:

Lene posted a photo she took of bird tracks that were probably made by pigeons, and it instantly hit me that if you turned them towards you and drew a circle around them, you had the Peace symbol. The Dove of Peace–I wondered, whoever drew the original, was that their inspiration? So I googled, found this, and have to think they did not make that connection. But it’s fascinating how well the two symbols converge.

2. Catapulted:

I was reading reviews of the Shake Awake, a silent alarm clock to put under one’s pillow, and had to laugh at one person’s descriptions of why it was such an improvement for her sound-sleeper hearing-impaired son: she said that before that, they’d had to throw the cat at him every morning to get him to finally stir.

3. Toucans help too:

I had a cardiology appointment this week, and if ever a doctor is likely to be suddenly interrupted and delayed, it’s a heart specialist. (It was just a follow-up to verify that yes, I’m fine there, my cardiac cough went away when that lupus flare did this past winter.) Definitely a bring-your-knitting appointment. As I waited, a very well-dressed elderly woman was wheeled into the waiting room by her attendant, who caught my eye, nodded at my stitches, and silently smiled at me.

The old one in her string of pearls and silk sat there in her wheelchair looking terribly bored and unhappy; it took me awhile to glance down from my knitting and notice that her lower legs were scabbed over in signs of old sores, many of them. Her shoes were perfect but her skin gave her away. She avoided eye contact. I noticed her attendant had pearl earrings on too, and I thought, you’re both generous souls, then; good for you.

I thought about it, then searched in my purse, looking for a particularly bright and cheerful one. And intricate. I wanted intricate. Something particularly nicely made. I found one, a toucan-looking bird, and just as the nurse opened the door and called my name, I reached across the small aisle between the seats and offered the old woman the finger puppet. A child’s toy? But an adult’s delight as well in the skill and pride that someone, somewhere in Peru had put into creating the piece.

The old woman’s face totally lit up in surprise and delight, and behind her, her attendant’s did too. So did the nurse’s. I didn’t want to delay the office by stopping to describe where I get those from, that no, I didn’t knit it, so as the door closed behind us going down the hallway, I mentioned to the nurse. I figured, if the patient wanted to talk to her about it, she could tell her herself. If they had time. The nurse’s call, not mine; the important part had already happened.

It’s hard to be old and lonely. Saying to somebody that they are noticed, even just in a small moment, can make a world of difference to them, and the rest of us too. It was so easy to do.

4. Now she sees it:

My daughter had an eye doctor appointment and I don’t even remember why I came with and waited for her, but I brought my knitting and did. A woman, I’m guessing Chinese, was walking past, saw the work in my hands, and stopped on the spot and came over and sat down next to me. It is amazing what you can convey with pantomime: she had never seen circular needles before. I demonstrated how you use them just like straights, and that no, the circular shawl I was knitting wasn’t a closed circle, it was back and forth; I pulled out my book and showed her how it would look finished. Oh! Then she wanted to know how to do lace. I taught her on the spot. Ssk, slants this way, k2tog, slants that, purl into a yarnover this way. By the time I left, she had it and she was thrilled. I couldn’t ask her how long she’d been knitting, I couldn’t ask her anything not communicated with waving hands and needles. But there is a universal joy in sharing knowledge and in learning how to do something new. I can just picture her running to me, wherever she is now, with her needles in hand to show me what she’s making now.

5. It’s all your fault:

And if you bought ME a Shake Awake, this being California, I’d probably need that cardiologist, thinking the San Andreas was going off bigtime.

I was standing in a local yarn store about two months ago, looking at the Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca Silk. I love that yarn. I love the kindness of the women behind that brand–I’ve mentioned here before that I once had trouble matching a dye lot and got a phone call from New York City at dark o’clock one winter morning as a LYSO there called me back the next day, having no clue that the person who’d inquired was on California time. My husband startled awake, grabbed the phone so I could sleep, and then woke me, grumbling, “It’s your New York City boiler-room yarn pushers. They want you to know they don’t have your dye lot.”

Busted.

When I told Blue Sky, they promptly checked, found they could match it themselves, and mailed me two skeins and insisted it was on them for my troubles.

So here I was thinking how I have such positive associations with that yarn, and I felt, buy the white. You’ll be glad you have it. Buy the white. I had nobody in mind, just a strong feeling.

I was going through my stash (again!) looking for just the right yarn for Jessie’s wedding present, and that Alpaca Silk leaped out at me and I thought, I am SO glad I have that! And then it hit me that that matched the thought I’d had in the store.

So did I immediately cast on? Was I satisfied? I confess no. I argued. I had cones’ worth of plain baby alpaca, less impressive looking, perhaps less soft, but already balled up and ready to go. I had this, I had that, and the Alpaca Silk would require prep time and I was tired. I went and watered my baby plum tree, it being about 8 pm, no UV to speak of, and then the apple trees. I splashed at the bluejay that scolded me that this was its territory (and it actually, for the first time in weeks, shut up. It’s been keeping my daughter awake at night, and it actually stood there on the branch above me, looking at me, opening its beak a few times and then not chattering anything. I do believe it finally gained some respect.) I avoided the yarn some more. I wrote a note to a friend.

It’s the writing that did it–when in doubt, write it out. It hit me that thinking that that was just the right yarn and then not using it because I didn’t want to roll it up into balls and I didn’t want to have to splice them were just such dumb reasons not to use a yarn that I knew felt right. Get real. And I only had to ball up the first for the night, the rest could wait.

I can’t tell you what a relief it felt to get going with what was then sitting in my hands, going, See? See? I told you so! at me.

I didn’t want to make a Wanda shawl from my “Wrapped in Comfort” book in white and have Jessie’s exactly match my sister Anne’s. I wanted her to have something more unique. I spent some time hashing out lace pattern ideas and swatches, noted the wedding date–uh, ain’t a whole lot of time there, folks–and decided I’d have to leave room for ripping and redoing and redesigning for later on on that one. The result is this:

I cast on and started following the directions for the Constance shawl, but in size 6mm (10) needles. (As always, remember that I am a very loose knitter.) Then row 6, I knit plain. Row 8, I omitted. For the yoke, I did the seaweed pattern of the Monterey shawl, and will continue with the Monterey from there; the original had 361 stitches across the body, this will have 292 (three more than the Constance because the jellyfish pattern is a 12+4 whereas the Constance is a 12+1.)

Got all that? Good. Basically, this gets you a less-full Monterey shawl on larger needles, fewer stitches, and less time taken, but in a wonderful yarn. It will have 13 stitches more across than the Wanda shawl in the Wanda yarn, and the Monterey is a mesh-type stitch with a great deal of give to it. It is emphatically NOT a beginner’s lace; it’s complicated and requires lots of attention, it aggravates occasionally especially when you’re not used to it, and it comes out absolutely exquisite in the end, especially knitted up in a yarn like this.

Which is why it feels like the perfect one to knit for newlyweds. Not to mention, it looks like they’ll be taking a job here. I can’t wait to show them the Aquarium in Monterey.

Lene tagged me yesterday with the meme about picking up a book, turning to page 123, starting at sentence five and reading the next three. The first two books I picked up, I looked at and went, nah, so I turned to Rachel Remen’s “My Grandfather’s Blessings,” knowing I would likely find something good there to share here.

Remen’s patient, who had been very afraid of her upcoming cancer surgery to the point of having put it off for months, had finally gone in to see the surgeon. He was Japanese, and he had made her a beautiful white paper crane, eight inches across. Remen’s patient told her, “The man who is going to operate on me tomorrow can make such a thing with his hands. And he made it for me. How could I possibly not heal?”

Remen writes, “I have wondered for years why some surgeons have far better outcome data than others who are equally well trained,” adding, “Perhaps some have found their own way to strengthen the will to live in their patients long before they meet them in the operating room.”

The surgeon had taken the time to create something beautiful–and one can create beauty with caring, it doesn’t have to be something physical–but he had given her a tangible, visual manifestation of his wanting her to be well.

Like we who knit do with yarn ourselves. There is great power for good in the work of our hands with our hearts.

(With thanks to Brynn, who, while in elementary school, made me this paper crane to wish me better while I was in the hospital. Five years later, I keep it proudly on display on our organ.)

We went to a delightful wedding reception tonight; the groom grew up with my kids, and we got to meet the bride’s parents tonight, very nice people. Dan and Caitlin are like Richard and Kim: they bring out the best in each other. It was beautiful to see. (I teased Dan for a moment about his dandelion corsage, which startled him into checking real quick–no, it was a baby yellow chrysanthemum, honest, Dan!)

It was my first chance all day, and seemed clearly my last, to participate in World Wide Knit in Public Day. I pulled out my needles during a quiet moment, felt guilty, cast on about a dozen stitches, and stashed it quickly back in my purse.

On the way home, our daughter said she needed to stop at Kinko’s a moment. Huzzah! WWKIP Day, here I come!

While she was printing out some materials, I looked around: one guy looked sound asleep, waiting for his stuff to be done, another looked grimly busy, two were semi-oblivious, and one caught my eye, noticing the oddball with the yarn by the windows.

My husband came over a moment to where I had cast away those cast ons and started over and knitted from there, and I explained what the day was all about. He rolled his eyes. “No, really! It really is being observed worldwide today!”

He came back with the perfect answer for a man married to me: “I didn’t know it was a closet sport.”

Now is it easier to see? The Constance shawl, after I listened to the galloping horse whinnying “Neigh!” Reknitting from the double-wound tube was enough of a tangle when I first picked it up yesterday that I knew I had to get past that point before I put it away in the ziploc again for the night. So I did, with no problems after that initial moment.

Nancy’s penguin trying to claim credit for the blue ocean of Bare yarn.

Diana trying on my mother-of-the-bride Camelspin-yarn shawl at Purlescence’s knit night last night. The pattern has memories of strawberry picking with my family, growing up, and the wide, flowing Potomac River knitted into its stitches. I have a tradition of always dipping a toe into the water along the banks of that river every time I fly home. Now I can take it with me without having to crash through the canoe.

The pelicans we saw going to the post office yesterday.

“Is it fragile?” the clerk asked.

“Lemons from my Meyer tree for someone who misses California,” I answered her. She loved it.  We just hoped the box doesn’t start leaking juice before it arrives. We put it inside one of their all-weights-fits-one-price box (good thing!)

It took me five hours to make myself get to it. I snuck glances at it, wondering if maybe it and I could still be friends. Nope. It was definitely a tadpole. The in-laws were up at Dad’s sister’s for the day, Aunt Mary Lynn showing them where the major fire three weeks ago had missed their home in the mountains, and as they drove up there, fire trucks raced towards the new Bonny Doon fire.

I had nothing whatsofreakingever to complain about.

I wanted to get it done while they were gone. The rip, rip frogging’s not so bad, it’s that last little bit. Tinking the last row back onto the needles, hundreds of shawl stitches curving and overlapping into chaos, with the silk mercilessly slippery–but the cashmere strand helped steady it. I wound them round the empty end of the silk’s tube. I alternated leaning on my elbows, lying on the floor, hunched way over, trying to make the task more comfortable. I needed the slight friction of the rug’s surface to try to hold it more still to cut down on any one stitch’s running away from home. Lifeline? Me? On a simple pattern? My pride would have guffawed. That’ll teach me.

But while I was avoiding the whole thing, I got out the Knitpicks Bare merino/silk that had been sitting there staring at me a couple of weeks while the wedding was going on. Ran my hands down its length, pleased again at the texture of it. Nobody home but me. I can stink up the house (*I* think the dyepot in action smells of creativity and possibilities and oh cool.) Jacquard Acid dye in navy, not too much, and at first, the yarn turned a deep purple. I really liked it and debated snatching it out of the pot then and there. I’ve done that before, although knowing that the half hour of simmering is what sets the dye. One time, I grabbed a yarn out of the pot right after it hit the water, set up a dyepot of plain water, and made it do its time in that–it cost me a little of the depth of the color, but it stayed the same overall. Next time I’d probably snatch it out and zap it in the microwave for the rest of its heat, now that I’ve finally dedicated one large glass bowl to the dyezone.

Anyway, I let it go its full time, and the purple gave way to blue, with a little brownishness exhausting out of the pot when I was done. I’ve seen that before, and it makes me want to tour a dye factory and go do research.

Going to a brief doctor’s appointment, I grabbed a UFO on my way out the door. Got that project closer to being done, and I was glad to have it back on current-project status.

So it was a good and productive day. And then I glanced at the clock, remembered when the folks were expected back, knew I didn’t want them to watch me being uncomfortable with my butt high in the air while leaning on my elbows, growling at the silk running away from the tips of my needles, stitch after stitch after stitch, thought again of Diana’s words which rang so true for me: “I’ve seldom regretted frogging, but have occasionally regretted letting something be. not always, but occasionally.” And I frogged the bleeping thing. I did it. It’s done.

And then, as the Bare dried, I knitted the other WIP a little more just to show the silk who was boss.

When I was a kid, Where’s Waldo hadn’t been dreamed up yet, and if you finished reading your book while waiting for the dentist to finish working on your sister so he could get to you, what you could find in that office for entertainment, well, let’s see. There were parents’ magazines and there was the little kids’ magazine to stave off boredom–but it was definitely for little kids and was felt as an insult to anyone over nine. BORINGGGG. Holiday, I think it was called. I well remember the “find what’s wrong with this picture” page and wishing it had something at least challenging on it.

So. Yesterday I picked up my knitting and tried to make up for lost time from Monday’s mess. I was pleased with myself at how much I was getting done while still playing hostess I think okay.

My brain must have been on Holiday.

It hit me. The whole day’s worth of knitting. Right there in front of me, the whole time, the whole day, every time I’d picked it up and put it down, and I hadn’t noticed.

The diamond I’d been working on is the one that would be at the center of the body of the shawl.

What would you do? Would you continue the one center diamond as a solid, then from there turn the diamonds upside down and continue with the open-mesh part pointing down now rather than up? Kind of like a fair isle, with a solid Charlie Brown zigzag across the center and then matching zig zag openwork lines above and below, marking definite horizontal lines across the body of the shawl? Or do I frog it and go do the Constance pattern as it was meant to be.

Opportunity, or, oh crud. Note that frogging two strands is always fun when you have to figure out how and what to wrap it around as you undo, but note also that it is well worth if it needs to be reknit.

I think there’s a jumping amphibian in my immediate future.

Dad Hyde asked, as he wrapped it around his arm, “What is it?” I answered, “My mom calls them yarn necklaces.” This is a scarf out of Ellen’s handpainted merino-silk from Half Pint Farm in Vermont, bought at Stitches East last fall. One of those little projects for stuffing in the purse and carrying around that somehow, to my surprise, actually got finished when I wasn’t paying much attention to it. (When the yarn’s gone, it’s done.) Just add water and block it–except, um, maybe not now.

The silk and cashmere shawl in Constance’s shawl pattern (with some playing around with the yoke) continues only slowly; I’ve got company. Richard and Kim have internships for a month in DC and are staying at my in-laws’ house; my in-laws are doing various jaunts to keep themselves out of the way of the newlyweds. They’re camping out here for ten days.

Camping out is more of a description than we’d intended, as we wait for the sewer services folks to show up this morning. My pipes are barfing. These things never seem to happen when there’s nobody around to enjoy the excitement but us. I think I’d rather go to the Aquarium if I want to show them an interesting day.

Thank goodness we live in a time and a place when such things can get fixed pretty fast.

We’ve got a few leftovers from Saturday. Gee, I bet we could come up with some interesting recipes–lox of luck… Hang on, hang on, I think we’re getting carried away here.

If you ever want a book with all kinds of interesting tidbits, “No Idle Hands: the Social History of American Knitting” has everyday life over the centuries pulled from journals held by the Library of Congress. I used to use it as my reference to make history more interesting to the fifth graders in our school district, bringing my spinning wheel, my carders and some wool for the kids to card while I talked about the level of work they would have had to do back in Colonial times in the US: there was one town, Hatfield, Massachusetts, where the town selectmen came in and assessed each family a fine if they didn’t produce the amount of yardage of handspun, handwoven woolens that was required of them. And we’re talking many hundreds of yards in a year.

Woolen goods were the prime export of the colonies, but the Woolen Act of 1699 suddenly forbade anybody in America from transporting by horse, cart or carriage any wool or anything made of wool between plantations, much less selling it overseas: you could only legally sell what you could carry in your hands on foot from your home to your buyer. England’s enforcement powers, however, were for the most part very far away.

My favorite story is of Old Ma Rinker, whose relatives owned a tavern and whom the Brits thought were loyal to the Crown, so they’d go there to discuss strategy against General Washington over in Valley Forge. The relatives would pass the word on to Ma, she’d write it down, wrap a ball of yarn around it, go out into the sunshine and knit while her flax retted, and toss the ball of yarn to the American soldiers riding by on their horses.

Or, as my hubby puts it: how knitters saved the Revolution.

Not to mention the feet of more than a few shivering soldiers who needed warm socks in that Valley.

I’m suddenly picturing their potential bewilderment at the concept of chocolate brownies, much less whipped cream in a can.