My first success at trying to photograph it.

The new Cooper’s hawk hasn’t yet been harassed by the ravens–and so, for apparently the third time this week, he took his dove dinner to the middle of the yard, out in the open. (Pardon the broomstick.)

Just like Coopernicus did when he was young.

Meantime, I went off to Cottage Yarns to try to find me some seaweed colors, and I did find some dark green but I’m not quite convinced it won’t turn into cowls instead. It’s hard to match the brightness of that Cian colorway.

Here’s what I’ve got so far: I cast on the entire width of the afghan, figuring I would put most of the stitches on hold and work one strip upwards at a time. Right now though I’m not so sure I won’t just simply do it all of a piece.

It took till today to figure out what bugged me about the original pattern: it’s four squares wide. The eye is unsettled at low even numbers–it wants odd ones. It’s got to be five. My swatch said I needed five anyway.

I’ve got ten stitches for each side, eleven rows, and I’m calling that bottom border done.

I want a reclining octopus taking up enough of one side to help divide the interior into the visual thirds that it should be. The seaweed needs to extend well into a second row’s worth to help with its third.

I got me some finagling to do.

Did you use Turbo Tax? Go check right now to see if you got confirmation that your returns have been received by the state and feds. You have till midnight tonight.

I had a particular yarn errand in mind and found myself heading to Cottage Yarns today (So. Much. Malabrigo there!), where Kathryn’s husband and daughter were minding the shop. As they were winding my wool I found myself mentioning to him the phone call that had dragged on and on and on and had had us falling into bed at long last at 1 a.m.

He was suddenly very concerned. We compared notes. Had he gotten any confirmation of having filed? He didn’t think so. I told him we had only gotten confirmation from Turbo Tax that I’d paid the $25 to have the state return e-filed.

Yeah, I got that, he said. But he was suddenly pretty sure that that’s all he’d gotten, too.

I told him that it had bugged me till I’d finally decided I had to find out. The tech person we finally got connected to was overwhelmed, tired, and was chasing down every idea she could think of.

I saved him from the endless circular screens followed by nearly two hours on the phone that we’d had to go through to make sure we were doing the right thing. And it is this: check every email address and text message. Did you get those confirmations from the state and feds? No? Go submit those returns again. Right now. A known computer glitch somewhere between Turbo Tax and the IRS is why the deadline was extended to tonight, and clearly we tripped over it.

I have to admit it was highly gratifying to find that I was not the only one. I’d been told by them that I must just have missed clicking that submit button, when I knew I hadn’t. I’d seen that page before that congratulated me for being done.

He knew he’d done his right, too.

We got our confirmations today. But there is still no sign that we ever did it the first time.

I am so very glad that today I felt that it was imperative that I buy that particular shade of red Russ said his wife loves that I didn’t have in my stash–and that I felt I had to go to buy it from them.

Many happy returns of the day to all.

Cowl: damp. Hat: not so much, not yet.

I’m going to have to finish this game of yarn chicken in the morning. If I do run out–I don’t think I will, but if I do, then I could make the top of the hat a solid white and run diagonal lines of white weaving down through all the yarnovers. Or rainbow colors. Or something.

(Having typed that, I got up to weigh the remaining yarn: 16 grams.) Yeah, it’ll be close. What would you do with a shortage at the top? Note that there is, or at least was, one last skein of that dye lot at Cottage Yarns this week. (Hey, Kathryn’s website’s back up!)

(Phone back on strike, no photos yet, sorry.)

An expectant mom, so you know superwash merino is the only way to go. Not allergic to wool. Her favorite color? Yellow, she laughed, looking down at her butter-colored dress.

Let’s see, do I have… Hmm, no I don’t…

Coral, I love coral, too, she quickly added, trying to broaden my options.

You know what this means. I had an excuse, no, a need to go to the yarn store–when it comes to yellow anything I don’t even have the dye for that.

The rain mostly let up and I headed out to Cottage Yarns today, where the inventory is quite a bit bigger than the more local stores. Kathryn and I started to go through the aisles together: this peach? she offered. It was on the gray side.

I couldn’t see it. But there, that butter yellow is just the shade: is it machine washable? (It was a brand I wasn’t overly familiar with.)

Yes, and it’s very soft.

(Checking the label.) Extrafine merino. I was very pleased. And then when I actually touched it I knew that this was a yarn that could do no wrong.

I brought it home, ready to go–and cast on the Malabrigo Anniversario for the other person I’d asked Sunday, whose color preference was, with a laugh, “Everything!” Which that kind of is.

I think after making a lot of other people’s favorites last week I needed to tackle colors I loved for a bit to help keep the batteries charged.

And then the soft-as-butter. Its turn is coming right up.

Five skeins (four of those, and one 80/20 baby alpaca/bamboo) bought at Green Planet on Tuesday.

I have small remnants of the first four and one repeat’s worth left on that fifth, and I really want to finish this cowl but my hands need to stop. It’s the chunky baby alpaca blend, super soft, and I thought I was just going to get it started so as to have a small carry-around project for tomorrow. It kept insisting, You need to knit me right now! and the next thing you know I had nearly run out of yarn.

A hat and almost a cowl (I might yet. After the icepacks. Maybe) in one day. For me that’s a record.

But the camera on the phone is in no-go-mode so I can’t show off. Maybe I should confess that the thing landed out of my purse onto the front of the car while I was out and about and the thing is so old that no self-respecting car thief bothered to touch it.

Putting it off meant there were now 18 of them. That’s a lot of wool socks. I washed and rinsed them in the sink but there was no spinning them out–there was nothing for it but to squeeze each one long and hard away from the waiting ones. This after pushing myself to finish knitting that cabled hat whether my hands liked it or not (but I did it! No spoiler pictures for now.)

I asked him, Remember that conversation my mom said she had with her mom where Mom said she wished she had a live-in maid like Gram had had before the War, and Gram answered she’d have given her up in a second for a modern washing machine?

Someone young and strong to work that earlier contraption.

I told him, I want to upgrade to a ringer.

He chuckled. Then he asked about the hat: will it be warm enough?

It’s densely knit with overlapping cabled stitches knit on as small needles as as I could manage and it ate through a ton of yarn.

But Alaska. Will it be warm enough for him?

It would be if I lined it, and there’s room, I could, and that was the original intent, but even though I thought I bought extra I don’t have enough yarn left and the store in Anchorage is a bit too far to go back to. I don’t know if they ship. I do know I’m running out of time.

A contrasting color? he offered helpfully.

So what we had here was my husband working himself up to declaring that I must go to, most likely, Cottage Yarns in South San Francisco. (Whose site seems hacked at the moment so I’m not linking it.) They carry Juniper Moon Farms.

So maybe the other Christmas presents and the still-waiting afghan just got pushed further back and that hat isn’t quite so done after all.

Hopefully, having to hand wash and squeeze out every piece of clothing in the house soon will be.

I love that yarn stores across the country were reporting shortages of pink yarn, and that Malabrigo dyed extra due to the demand, sure that it could not arrive in time but people were asking for it anyway.

I laughed at reading that the chunkier yarns went first. Well, yes, you can knit those faster.

The original pattern, for which the New York Times said Malabrigo Rios was the recommended yarn, was as simple as it gets: knit a length with ribbing at the ends, fold it in half and sew the sides and let the ends of the square stick out for the ears once you fit it over a round head. The beginneriest beginner can do it.

I loved the photo someone posted of a planeful of women on the way to the march in DC, some with their hats on for the camera. I grew up in the DC area. I remember the marches and the hitchhikers along the roads afterwards, the sense of being part of history even as an onlooker. I fervently wish I could be there, heck, I wish I could be at the local one but I just cannot risk the sun time with my lupus.

Not to mention that my friend Diana’s memorial service, saved for after the holidays so that people would be able to come, is tomorrow. Diana herself would have changed the date in a heartbeat had she known about the march but it is what it is and I will be cheering her on her way and her loved ones in their grief. And that is how we create the changes for the better around us: one person at a time in each moment as it comes and to the best of our abilities.

I love that Kate at Dragonfly Fibers, in my husband’s hometown of Kensington, MD, posted a picture of 1,500 donated handknit hats, many of them with a note from the knitter to the wearer. She had volunteered to be a distribution point. These had filled her van and she had that many more to put in.

Every single one has been spoken for now.

I love that the project has sparked an interest in knitting nationwide. I love that some entrepreneur designed one fast and got it out there with more realistic ears, mass produced, even if it was $35 and they’d forgotten in their rush to even say what the fiber content was. (So, probably acrylic.) The more hats made, the greater the chance that everybody could have one.

I just couldn’t quite love the idea of putting the Donald’s worst denigration of women on my own personal head. But after the marches tomorrow, I imagine every one of those handknit hats (and maybe even those manufactured ones) is going to be a treasured family heirloom and a proud story for the great grandkids to come. I imagine the knitters of the donated ones and the wearers finding and befriending each other, having already together promoted the ideals our country stands for.

I just so much love that everybody’s doing what they’re doing.

I got requests, and then more requests, and then I would have had to make three for those guys and then for these other guys too and and and there just seemed to be no way to do it right–my heart was with them but if I stopped knitting the afghan I might never return to it. It was a little overwhelming, knitting-wise. I bailed.

I finally wish I’d at least made one, too.

Don’t have any chunky pink but I can double the strands…

Green Planet Yarn had a meet-and-greet today: TNNA, the Stitches-type get-together for wholesalers and yarn store owners, was going to be here this weekend and thus the owners of several yarn dyeing companies had agreed to come to Beth’s shop with samples of new lines and just to get to meet some of the people who actually use what they create.

My going would mean being at least an hour and a half late picking Richard up from work. He encouraged me not to worry about it and just go. (A co-worker offered him a ride home in the end.)

It wasn’t just that I wanted to see the yarns: I specifically wanted to thank the folks at Blue Sky Fibers. I’m sure I’ve told the story here before, but not recently I don’t think, so here goes.

I was in the early stages of working on my lace shawls book. Meantime, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee was coming to Berkeley for her first-ever book signing in California–Stash, I think was the name of the place–and Jocelyn and Cris and I carpooled together to go. After knowing Stephanie via the Knitlist since our kids had been little, I finally got to meet her for the first time.

Stash did a brisk business in books and yarn that night, and I came across some Blue Sky baby alpaca/silk that was both new and like nothing else out there. Wow. SO soft. Luminous, too, just gorgeous (and it is still one of the nicest yarns I know, all these years later.) I snapped up two skeins but definitely needed more to make a shawl.

Please, they told me: we know we have more of it in the back. We’re swamped. Can we just mail it to you in the morning?

Sure!

I got a very embarrassed phone call the next day: no, actually, they did not have any more, and there was about zero chance of getting an exact match on the next order. They were so sorry.

And that set off the great yarn hunt. I needed more and it needed to be that dyelot. There weren’t as many yarn stores online then nor that carried that particular yarn, but I called a few and emailed more and did what I could.

I’d seen ads in Interweave magazines for a particular shop back East that seemed to have a good inventory, and they said they would check and they asked for my phone number.

It did not occur to me to mention to them that I was three time zones away.

And thus the infamous story within the family of their starting the day by making sure I knew before I should head out for work that I had to keep looking.

Richard groaned awake in the dark, one of many times when being able to take my ears off at night has been nice for me but for him, not so much, and he reached over my head for the old Princess phone placed there on the small chance I might hear it ring if I really really had to.

“It’s your New York City boiler-room yarn pushers,” he growled as he shoved the handset my way at 5 a.m. “They want you to know they don’t have your dye lot.”

At that, I gave up and appealed to Blue Sky directly: did they have it? I was quite sure they didn’t do retail, but could I buy it from them anyway?

They actually had an exact match. I asked for two, they sent me three, and they refused to let me pay them a dime. Even when I protested.

I thanked them but it didn’t seem enough. Today was my chance.

Linda, the owner, was not there, but three of her staff were. As I found them one by one in the crowd, I showed them the shawl that had come of their generosity and gave them each an autographed copy of Wrapped in Comfort. Each one, independent of the others, asked to see what page it was on. They let me tell them what a difference they’d made to me and were delighted to take a fourth copy home for Linda.

Ran into old friends–including Jocelyn and Cris. Caught up a bit, had fun…

And noticed that one guy had been standing off by himself for awhile now and nobody was talking to him. Well that wouldn’t do, these things are supposed to be fun. Turns out he wasn’t a knitter. Turns out he was Michael, a businessman who was the husband of the Mrs. Crosby of Lorna’s Laces fame.

And as we talked, old friend and Green Planet employee Laura came by with a bag and offered me my pick. She worked the room and then came back towards me with another bag.

“It’s not my turn!”

She laughed. “Goodies for all! Take one!”

The first was a skein of Woolfolk from Blue Sky. The second was a bluegreen one-off dyeing of Shepherd’s Worsted from Lorna’s Laces, and I exclaimed to Michael over his wife’s beautiful work.

One brown hat and one bluegreen cowl as the next carry-around projects. (I had my oversized afghan project shoved halfway down into my tote, where it did not want to stay. It was a little ridiculous. But it did prove that I do like blues and greens together.)

And then the event was officially done and it was time to beat it home quick before the next downpour.

This didn’t get finished in time.

In part because I ran out of yarn. I had made a baby hat, weighed it, measured it, and thought yeah I have plenty to make a matching sweater. Well but no I didn’t: there was no third skein different-dyelot emergency backup like I thought, either. Oops.

I searched my stash. There was more Malabrigo Rios but there wasn’t any Bobby Blue nor one that would do as a contrast color.

I do love that I got to use the musk ox needle (bought as a souvenir there last summer) as both stitch holder and working needle on this particular project. It needed to be part of it.

I’d started at the back, added and subtracted for the sleeves and then come down the front. I had not planned on a cardigan but somehow in the adding and subtracting stitches I discovered the knit 2 purl 2 was going to turn into a knit 4 at dead center–man. Someone goofed. (Note that I was totally winging the whole thing–there is no pattern.)

Typing that out it hits me that I could have added two more stitches and turned it into a cable going down from the V. If I’d thought of it in time. I would probably have just made it but with zero left to finish that neck a little more neatly.

Adding a button band and around the neck meant more ribbing and more yarn and I just plain didn’t have it. I would need to see the colors in person and had no way to get to a shop. Post-concussion, I’m not driving yet.

So it didn’t go into Michelle’s luggage to be proudly hand-delivered to her big sister and brother-in-law in Alaska tonight.

I did show off to Richard that all those funny angles I’d been knitting actually looked like a baby sweater now.

We all piled into the car and he asked, Which airport?

SFO.

Oh, okay, not San Jose, good thing I asked.

We were almost there when he asked me, Do you want to go to your yarn store in South San Francisco on the way home?

Me, surprised: Yes! Sure! Thank you! It hadn’t even occurred to me or I’d have brought it with! (Thinking, this not-driving thing gets SO old and here he’ll be taking me to the very place that dyelot came from!) I opened my phone and checked their hours. We were good.

And that is how once again we ended up at Cottage Yarns together at rush hour to Kathryn’s surprise. Remember those skeins of Bobby Blue I bought to go into stripes in that afghan? I asked her. They weren’t bright enough. She nodded. I did a hat and sweater instead–I need contrasting, or something, for the button band.

She knew right where the Bobby Blue was and opened the bag with the same dyelot mine had come from.

And we were good to go. And did. And drove home in the mildest rush hour week of the year.

Since for the last nearly three weeks the idea of carting a full dyepot around was out of the question, that of course was what I most wanted to do.

So today I just decided I was going to. And then since there was still dye left in that pot, I did it again. And (add the last of that purple in that bottle, I need to remember to order more–I miss Purlescence!) again. I figured that weight-wise, the trick was to spoon the thing over into a second, empty dyepot and carry it and then later the full dyepot separately across the house to break the load down into smaller tasks, and I let the water go pretty low by the end. (One does *not* pour any amount of dye down the kitchen sink. One scrubs the purple porcelain.)

Watching a faded-gray-blue $5 closeout silk T and a mousy earthy-mauve (not my color) $6 eBay v-neck cashmere sweater turn out matching shades of purple to wear together was a lot more magic than I expected to get. Oooh, that’s what I’d always wanted that sweater to be! It was really cool.

But one of the things I’m in the habit of doing when I’m overdyeing sweaters is to tuck the wooden dye spoon under the object and lift it mostly out of the pot right at the beginning and let it hang a moment midair to try to make sure there are no wrinkle lines in how the dye latches on. Stir, lift again.

This did not go so well using, out of habit, my right hand. Which did not hold up its end of the bargains.

Somehow, as I raced for the bathroom for a towel and the mirror, sheerly by the grace of God is the only way I can describe it, only one big droplet of purple landed on my head and it hit exactly in the part line on my scalp.

Not (other than that) in my hair.

This was protein-fibers dye and it was at a low boil, the temp at which it affixes to the material at hand. Or head. Which, however, was not boiling, so maybe a few shampoos should do the job. I got some on my hands too and it’s all gone now.

As far as I can tell it’s off and that is that.

I think, though, that I’d probably better mention it to the dermatologist when she does my annual post-skin-cancer check next week. Just in case she sees that I’m in a purple state.

There was a photo and a note on Facebook: Did anybody want… Free to a good home…

Someone else asked for the big red crockpot. I asked if the smaller one had been spoken for. (Much more our size anyway.)

It had not. I headed over. The doors at Purlescence are locked now but lots of work was going on on the other side as the place was slowly being emptied of its ten years.

Kaye carried the thing to my car for me and, almost there, threw in the thought of, You wouldn’t be interested in a toaster oven?

YES! I exclaimed a little harder than quite entirely reasonable, surprising myself. I had long wanted to be able to warm up just a bit of the kitchen for some small baked thing, but not enough to justify replacing my elderly cracked-plastic simple two-slicer. We don’t have a lot of countertop space. I had not wanted to want one and it all kind of came out in that one-word blurt.

She apologized that it needed cleaning, but I found when I got home that it needed very little. It’s cute. It’s a two-bagel-slice top with a pull-down door in front and not much more of a footprint than my old toaster, a total win.

But the biggest thing about the both of them is the bit of history she offered with them: all those Thursday nights, all those knit nights, they’d had these tucked away upstairs for a quick bite to eat.

So that’s how they’d made it through all those long days over all those years.

These appliances had sustained my friends so that they could sustain our knitting community and now I get to have them here with me. And someone else got to take home part of that history too, and I like that. I like it a lot.

And I love that I now have a toaster oven that kind of looks like an old jukebox.

I need to go toast me some toast. Anyone got a favorite slow cooker recipe? Chicken tikka masala, maybe?

Every now and then, even the online mapmaker folks goof. Don’t know if you’ve encountered it but I have a couple of times. Like the time I was trying to meet up with an old college roommate and finally pulled over and called her.

The map said this road connected up with that. Turns out that the one stopped a block shy–you had to go around this other way.

So. I used to on rare occasion go to Green Planet Yarns when they were in downtown Campbell, but parking there was always horrible, and Purlescence was closer and easier all around, so, eh. I did like the owner, though, even if I didn’t know her very well, and she stocked some nice stuff.

And then Green Planet moved to San Jose.

The map…

I tried. A year ago I spent an hour wandering around on (turns out) the wrong side of the freeway, pulling over several times to check my phone to see what it was saying now, since I couldn’t hear it. Finally I gave up in frustration and headed home.

I joked with Kathryn’s husband at Cottage Yarns a few days ago when I went to show her the Mecha afghan that I’d be back in two weeks (again) with the next one in Rios, but after all that color intensity, when I actually sat down to knit my eyes said no. I actually finally wanted to knit up some vanilla dk weight cashmere/silk I’d bought from Colourmart a few months ago: I wanted plain ordinary white and I wanted to knit that warm, soft yarn, even if it would need small needles and even if superwash merino might be far, far more practical. I’d bought this because I wanted to make this, so, so there.

Grab the impulse while you’ve got it and go.

Hmm. Size 4 was making a great fabric but I learned in one little swatch that my hands needed a little more give, a little bigger loop for that needle tip–and that it still looked fine on 5s. (3.75mm)

My circular 5s were 24″ long. Wait–how, after all these years, could I not have…! Surely I do in some forgotten bag somewhere, but oh well. My 231 stitches were packed in so densely that it was a constant fight to push them along or out of the way. My hands never got to relax nor could my eyes see the pattern coming to be.

There was only one thing for it. I knew who would have the brand needle I wanted.

Yay for repaired maps: this time I found them.

There was not a soul I knew in sight. That felt strange.

But the clerk was friendly, and I bought a skein of supersoft thick wool in the most perfect purple, a semi-instant cowl-to-be. The color won.

She offered to wind it up for me. And not only did they have my needle–they were closing it out. They had one last rosewood 40″ size US 5, and it was on sale and it was perfect and I got exactly what I’d come for. And a 40″ US 4, too, because.

Re the yarn: Sure, thanks!

Which means I had a moment to just stand around, or….

There were two knitters at the table. They invited me to join them and then included me in on the conversation as if I were just as much old friends with them as they were. They told me when they’d be hanging out and that they’d love to see me around again.

I think my transition to Purlescencelessness just eased a bit.

In progress, and done.

A close-up including of one of the dark spots at the center.

I think the variegated-purples skein at the end was a bit too much purple, although it was a good transition from the red (and I needed the extra length and I knew Kathryn didn’t have a second bag of Anniversario in that weight.) The mostly-red skein was definitely a sharp transition from the green-purple–maybe I should have alternated pairs of rows of those two for awhile.

But then not a single skein matched another one anyway so why change how I’m doing it now, I kept figuring.

I like the purl side better because of the way the purl bump colors play with their mates, definitely a different effect from the front (see the in-progress photo at the top).

All along my eyes have proclaimed this my Northern Lights project because what else could this be?

And if I were really good I’d knit the fern lace motif again for one more purple skein, unravel the afghan’s cast on, and kitchener the two pieces together to have the ends matching.

Ain’t happening.

Some notes on the yarn: I was trying to arrange the skeins in a symmetrical pattern going across as much as possible. I found the early skeins just slightly muted compared to the others, but for what I was trying to represent that’s fine.

Definitely a fun afghan to curl up with. And warm. Not sure I’d do it again exactly like this one but I’m glad I did it.

“Goodbye, and Thanks For All The Fish.”

I read that email, scrolling past the dolphin photo, inwardly pleading, NO. Oh please no!

It was true.

I put my carry-around cowl project in my purse and headed over to Purlescence. Sandi and Kaye were both there and we exchanged grief and thanks and hugs and memories of the good that had been.

But it came down to this: over the last ten years they had taught many how to knit, to crochet, to spin and to weave, and they knew some of those would continue to teach others. But they themselves had had very little time to make anything–they both described crafting at 4 am because the imperative to create felt so strong and had been kept in check for so long.

And so they decided to retire, and Purlescence will close for good August 28th.

But…but…but…but… !!!

I’m happy for them. I’m very sorry for all the rest of us. I’m glad we got to have that community gathering place as long as we did–and the wait for Stitches next February just got much much longer.

I had a serious dearth of superwash merino around here.

In the store the purple looked like it would make a good foil to the multi-color, and so I got them home and dove in.

In swatching, the two-yarn lattice pattern I was going to do went out the window: Mecha seemed too thick to pull that off well. How about framed in purple on four outer edges.

I’ve knitted nearly the entire first skein already.

Now that the lower border is done and it’s time to switch to the brighter yarn, I’m not as confident about the mashup. I stopped midrow, grabbed the second yarn, and simply stockinetted till I’d gone through several quick color repeats.

In the right light it’s good, even if that bright fuchsia does scream Look at me!

I’m still not sure. I think Kathryn hadn’t been entirely either, although she wasn’t going to talk me out of it if I wanted it.

My husband says that me not being sure of a color combination is not a good sign for that color combination.

And of course colors influence each other, and in the original plan they would have been all over each other, interacting constantly, but now they’re going to be off in their separate corners.

Like two-year-olds in parallel play?

Hmm.

Okay, these are (the most flattering, frankly, of the) nighttime photos but then the finished thing will be used day and night. So there’s that.

The real answer is to just go buy more purple and not fuss any more about it.

The real question is, do they have more. At the rate this Pythagorean pattern is eating yardage I’d need (yow) the whole rest of the bag.