And on the wildlife front.

Young squirrels don’t have object constancy before maturity. I have thrown a nut into a large flower pot as they’ve watched and they were unable to figure out it was in there. Come Spring and a year old, though, they will.

A clearly new-around-here young gray spent a fair amount of time today trying to figure out how to reach a treat I’d made quite inaccessible; then, having spotted what he thought was a good idea, he explored how to get to the top of the barbecue grill. Which was not close.

It seemed to throw him that it didn’t feel like a tree. He wrapped a paw around the leg. Didn’t like it. Finally, after many tentative steps and much scouting around that took quite some time (can you climb up inside a closed plastic pipe? No you cannot), he managed that little bit of rocket science leap by leap to the shelf and then, standing at last on the cold metal at the top, king of the mountain, he turned his head this way and that, taking a good look around.

That huge sugarpine cone full of suet and seeds was still dangling above the porch. Getting higher up, though it might fulfill an inner squirrel imperative, hadn’t gotten him one inch closer after all. Dang. But… But…! He’d worked so hard for it!

But then…wait…how do you get out of here? He seemed to have forgotten how he got up in the first place. Down was not an option from that height. He studied how far away the olive tree was, the fiberglass ladder (he’d clearly already figured out you don’t want to leap onto that.)  It was leaning against a lopped-off trunk we’d left for the woodpeckers. And there, over there there was nothing but grass.

He was stumped.

And then I happened to open the sliding door. He panicked and took a massive leap to the tree trunk near that ladder–eight, quite possibly ten feet away. I was stunned. He was at the downward part of the arc by the time he landed and scrambled up, but he made it. Olympic Gold! The crowd goes wild!

The Washington Post declared it squirrel week, asking for photos; included in there is a black one with the outer rings of its ears and the bottom half of its face bright white, so odd that I had to look closer to make sure it was actually a squirrel. There are many reminders there of why these little animals are so funny to watch.

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.

Phyllis (of that story too) did the driving.

I was sure I was going to be the odd person out in the audience, though, out of a group like that; between my kids and then the limitations of illness, I never did step into the full-time other career I once thought I’d be well into by this point. I tucked a copy of my book (ie, a reach for a visible sign of success) in my knitting bag along with–hold on, I needed a mindless project to work on, what to grab, what to grab, okay, that one. Hand-dyed silk.

We arrived, Phyl and I took our seats, I cast on.

Nina spoke awhile and then went around the room, asking each person to talk a little about themselves, what they were doing, what they were hoping towards, coaching them on how to get there.

I knitted away.

I hoped the others didn’t mind the distraction. I thought again how I once thought I would never stay home with my children–till I had children. I once thought I’d be well into the next role of the working wife by now, certainly, till lupus etc got in the way. As the old joke goes, the way to make God laugh is to tell Him your plans.

In my case, He handed me yarn for the punch line.

I was not expecting to hear my younger self: a few younger women talked about how hard it was to put their old work world aside to stay home with their kids now while their little ones needed them so much. I knew that my choices and experiences of years ago offered validation for their current ones. This is not to argue working/nonworking, rather simply to affirm yet again that we are all in this life thing together.

Now it was my turn. Nina bragged on me. Bragged on my book, told them how it had come to do so well, what I had done right, and how cool it felt that her shawl was in it. She held me up as an example of doing what you love and the good will follow.

That praise in that place coming from someone who has lived the successful Silicon Valley executive life, who did the working-mom thing, who went back for a new degree mid-career like I never stayed well long enough to do–someone whose path has been so different from mine, but who is also my friend–that meant more to me than I expected.

Thank you, Nina.

I said that every mother of small children needs something that Stays Done. Another middle-aged woman in the room thought a moment and then laughed that yes, that’s true!

And at the end everybody wanted to see the book, one woman was going oh cool at learning that lace could be knitted as well as crocheted and another pointed out that the pattern (and to a lesser degree the colors) I’d been working on that whole time…

…matched the shawl on the cover of the book.

I did a doubletake.

I had not noticed at all.

1. But before I get there, I knitted a little Camelspin on the side today in a sudden hurry to get that done yesterday.

2. Nope, no phone call today from the doctor, or at least not while I was home, and no messages were left while I was out foraging for chocolate.

3. My daughter had a co-worker who, last Friday, was having a horrible, rotten, no-good-I-think-I’ll-move-to-Australia kind of day. (That’s the refrain on most of the pages of a certain children’s book–just to make that clear since one person who’s going to be reading this has a loved one who *did* move to Australia and who clearly has turned out very nicely for it.)

4. So I offered to bake a chocolate torte for them. (Here’s the recipe.)

5. Tomorrow is that person’s birthday, it turns out.

6. Well then!

and, 7, since I always make two of them, and since today’s our anniversary, and since Michelle can’t eat dairy, I substituted hazelnut oil for the butter, coming about two tbl short out of two cups needed for two cakes–close enough. We’ll call it the low fat version. I can’t begin to tell you how heavenly it smells.

8. Richard and I are home now from going out to dinner so we might go cut into that second cake if I stop typing a moment.

9. We went to the restaurant where Sue works, hoping to see her; for those of you who’ve read “Wrapped in Comfort,” (still available at Purlescence) it’s the first story, and yes, that Sue. Nope, they said, wrong night, not here, sorry.

10. On our way out I explained to our waitress why I’d so hoped to see her: how, when we moved here we came here a lot while on a per diem the first month, and how 20 years later she still remembered what my then-small kids had liked to eat. She loved my kids and we all adored her.

11. At that point, a different waitress exclaimed, “She’s here now!” Sue and her husband had decided to beat the heat and go out for dinner too, coming to this really great place they happened to know really well.

12. Hugs, love, intro to her husband, and then Sue told him that our kids were the best ever. “Some kids in restaurants, you know, but yours were always perfectly behaved.”

13. They were just shy of 1, 3, and 5 at the time; I don’t remember them being perfectly behaved. But I do remember them as being perfectly loved around her. Every parent of a small child needs some other adult who feels their kids are adorable: it helps the children and it helps the parents, too, to all rise to the occasion.

Sue was there. Our occasion got even happier. She laughed to her husband about my four year old who liked lobster. (It was a moving-expense per diem, the corporation didn’t care in the least what she ordered as long as it was below $25. Come to think of it, four-year-olds ordering lobster several times a week because they miss New Hampshire would be memorable.)

14. Happy anniversary, Richard! With no skunks this time.

(If that one of the three budding amaryllises turns out to be white, I’ll know it was the one Sue dropped off at Purlescence for me back when I was sick. Thank you, Sue!)

Love you, Richard!

Her little boy David used to religiously leave a toy or some small object of his at our house to make sure he’d be able to come back.  It took us awhile to catch on to him; it was such a funny little thing to do. And he did it just about every day he came over.

My husband’s aunt lives in the hills nearby and her youngest is two years older than our oldest, so we got frequent and very welcome hand-me-downs from her.

I would come across some stray whatever and wonder, where did *this* come from?! Must be an Aunt Mary Lynn that I just don’t remember. I would check with Lisa on the phone later, or David would reclaim it quietly the next time–and stash something else behind a dresser, under a bed, or whatever hiding place appealed to him that day.

The so-called Aunt Mary Lynn objects became a regular joke between us, and when Lisa and her family found they were moving to Michigan she lamented, But who there is going to know what an Aunt Mary Lynn is?

I drove over to meet Robin at her brother’s house today and we sat and knitted awhile together. Then after a phone call or two and some time meeting two small nieces waking up from their naps as their mommy arrived, it was a good time to go pick up Kunmi.

Going to the door, Robin had her hands full; I offered to grab her knitting for her, tucked in a plastic bag and just a few steps from me.

Sure, thanks!

I had my cane in one hand, my purse and big knitting bag in the other and then hers and decided the easiest way to deal with this was simply to stick her knitting in with mine.

We went off to Green Planet Yarns in Campbell (hi Carol there!) and had a great time. Robin found just the yarn for hats for those nieces: soft baby alpaca with sparkles. In pink. It doesn’t get better than that.

I came home quite tired. “Mom? What are those red spots on your face?” Lupus rash. A little too much sun. Time to take it easy for a day or two.

Robin and Kunmi’s flight home to Maryland leaves early tomorrow morning.

And I sat down on the couch, pulled out my knitting–

–you saw this coming–

–and out tumbled Robin’s Alchemy sock yarn and half-done project in its bag.

Aunt Mary Lynn yarn. This is a first.

(Richard told me I was too tired to drive it back over there and to just mail it to her; I called her, and she reassured me she was quite happy to knit those hats with that new yarn and not to worry about it.  Robin is a dear.)

So now you know she has to come back. It’s the rule.

During our short conversation, she decided instead to go home, grab her knitting–yup, got her addicted too now–and so we sat and chatted for about an hour, wondering why we didn’t do this more often.

I showed her Lorraine’s qiviut scarf and the little lace scarf I’d made out of one skein of the Arctic Blend. Ten bucks for a qiviut blend. It is lovely stuff.

Nina had the same reaction to Lorraine’s handiwork that I did: she immediately put it on and declared that wow, she felt like a million bucks. It looked smashing on her, too, she was absolutely right. Just her colors. I so wish I’d thought to take her picture in it.

I showed her the matching big skein of yarn, not yet knit, as all the Warm Hats stuff and baby blanket got ahead of it in the lineup.

Well now.  I could totally knit that gorgeousness up for her, she thought out loud. (With a grin.)

I explained that, editors willing, it’s to go in the next book.

She laughed, “You can tell stories on me again. After all these years, you’ve got lots of stories to tell on me!”

Wait–was that a hint?

And while I was knitting–221 yards’ worth of fingering weight this evening, the math side of my brain needed to figure out repeats vs repeats done tonight vs weight etc–I was listening to whatever random CD came up on the player. If the music keeps playing the needles keep dancing.

The album cut by the old high school jazz band started up.

Okay, I think I’ve mentioned this before, but… When my son Richard was in middle school, his jazz band teacher also taught jazz in the high school and he aspired to join that group in a year or two.  They won a place in the high-school jazz competition at Monterey, so we drove down there that Saturday to cheer them on–and they were good enough to be invited back later to play as professionals in the main Monterey Jazz Festival, thus that album. *That’s* what a great teacher can get kids to accomplish.

We cheered on the kids on another team that had driven in a bus all the way from Maine for the competition. Now that’s heart!

We later went to the end-of-year school concert too, and again they played a piece that I’d liked so much: Bedtime for Bigfoot. I think it was the one that had been written by one of the kids as an AP Music assignment and it was hard not to get up and dance to it on the spot–you knew those kids were having a ball when they played it.

Richard-the-younger and I did a quick grocery store run afterwards, and as we got out of the car I asked him to sing the first note of that song.

He nailed it. Perfectly on pitch. The kid is good, and I about burst with pride.

When I was naming one of my shawl patterns, it seemed only fitting that making a giant version of my Rabbit Tracks lace should be called Bigfoot by comparison.  It wasn’t till later that I realized why I loved the word so much.

A teacher who believed in his kids.

Kids who learned what they could really do.

A rocking, happy song that celebrates that.

And I bet you my son could still sing it starting on exactly the right note. And his new son is trying to tell us he could too, just let him get the talking thing out of the way first.

So. I have this cane. It’s made from sassafras wood, it’s spotted and hand carved and very cool, and my childhood friend Karen found it at a shop in Williamsburg, Virginia. (Yes–that is her on the left in the original Water Turtles shawl; new book copies available at the cover price+shipping at Purlescence.) I’ve used it as my main cane for five years now; I have to admit, the upper curve in the handle is looking rather well used by now.

Shown in the picture above, I have another one from Karen, who finds just the coolest ones, this one from Africa with painted animals on it and an ankh symbol for a handle: zebras, the perfectly-colored and -spaced spots of a giraffe, it’s got it.

Some small child got entranced with it at church recently and a zebra lost an ear.  It’s not very noticeable, except to me, but, so that one got put away for special occasions for its own good. Hearing aids for wooden horses are in short supply.

I went looking today out of idle curiosity, my local shop seeming to have gone to ugly aluminum only last time I checked, and where’s the artistry in that? I say, if it’s a permanent part of your life it needs to earn it a little bit.

And so I found someone who took an old cane and had fun with it. He steampunked it!  There’s a gear here, another few there, leather added to the handle, and, of all things, a lace-up black leather corset going up the shaft. It’s really, really cool! (But I can’t buy it without seeing if it’s comfortable with my hand leaning on that metal there, and I need  35″ and have no idea how long his is.)

I tell you. With apologies to my fellow knitters, this way beats the candy-cane stocking cover that every year about this time I start to daydream about knitting it for the season. Or maybe it’s just that that idea has lost its novelty for me by now.

Hmmm… How would you decorate one?

I finally got it blocked and the ends run in.  (Not the project I’ve been working on all week, which has the cast-off left to do.) Maybe it should have been sent off sooner. Maybe it is the right time for her right now for reasons I cannot know; maybe it was simply easier for it to arrive after she finished moving (which is what I was aiming for) or maybe that’s all just rationalizing my lateness. I don’ t know.

But it’s finished and it’s finally into God’s hands from mine: a silk and merino shawl in her sister-in-law’s pattern, the yarn coming from my favorite shop, which is, of course, Purlescence.

Karen plotted with me and it will show up on Sally’s doorstep next week.

You know you live in Silicon Valley when, instead of knitting after Knit Night, you help solder some electronics to help the husband create himself a toy when a funky angle needs a third hand. It’s the equivalent of his holding the hank of yarn while you wind. (That’s his ham radio in the pocket: he’s a Red Cross volunteer.)

For those looking for a new copy of “Wrapped in Comfort: Knitted Lace Shawls,” Purlescence now has some at the cover price. I haven’t signed them yet, but I certainly could be talked into going back into my favorite yarn shop.

And that red or blue question? Blue.  Totally the blue.