Yesterday was a high-energy day that started two hours early and I’m still a bit wiped, so, just another quick airport story for today.

Waiting for the flight home, there was a tired young family next to us: a mom, a dad, a small infant, and an older brother, I would guess five. Or maybe he just got finished with being five?

The wait was long and the parents tired and that little boy needed a distraction.

I did a quiet dig through the fingerpuppet stash… Let’s see, pink flamingo, I don’t think so, a bright green lizard with white scales, yeah, that one. That’s just right. I leaned over to the mom and asked if it would be okay to give this to her son?

The three of them lit up (the baby, who was nearly asleep, was unimpressed) and as she handed it to him the little boy was as if he had waited his whole life to own this very lizard. Maybe he’ll grow up to study these? He was so taken with it that I wondered what his future self might become. Everybody has to start somewhere.

“Happy Birthday,” I told him, to make sure his folks understood that this was not a loan.

The mom blinked. Turns out it WAS his birthday, and they’d flown to Legoland for the day to celebrate it.  (And I imagine to make a big deal over him to try to make up for the sudden shift in the family dynamics with the arrival of his baby sister.)

“Oh cool! Really Happy Birthday!”

He examined it, he held it up, he wore it on his finger, he made it into a character. His playing was respectful of everybody’s space, from the baby’s to everyone in the crowded airport; he was a delightful little boy, and with just a little prompting from his mom he remembered to tell me, “Thank you!” And he watched my eyes to make sure that it really was his. It was. OH good!

And then I told his parents why our flight was delayed an hour, why the whole day’s worth surely had been after our first pilot had erupted the oxygen masks by accident. They did a startled ohmygoodness! and then the guffaw that that whole thing so deserved, one borne of the same thought I’d had that, hey, we’ve all done something bone-headed in public like that, glad to know we’re not the only one. And maybe a little glad that ours wasn’t quite to that scale.

And then they sat up a little straighter, chatted a little, and best of all didn’t seem so tired after that.

I wish I could tell that pilot that. And that it was okay.

It looked like a Cristo art installation, as we first few passengers came around the corner onto the plane: bunches of giant plastic buttercup flowers, suspended from black coils, set after set after symmetrical set all the way down both sides of the plane as far as the eye could see. It was actually rather pretty, as if the interior had been decorated for the holidays. What holiday, I couldn’t tell you.

It was a brand new plane and the pilot had hit the wrong button.

The crew herded us back out of there, their faces a combination of embarrassment and suppressed laughter. Almost too late one remembered, Don’t touch those! That makes it take a lot longer!

I don’t know how you scrounge up a spare plane in an hour, but Southwest did it. We asked the crew just before the replacement arrived, How long does it take to put all of those back?

Four hours, and then they have to recertify the plane.

Ouch… And you know that, given that that was at the start of the day, that would be a hit throughout their system or at least on the West Coast.

In other words, we took a very early–okay, not too early but we got up for very early–flight to go see the grandkids this morning. It will surprise no one that the last flight home tonight was likewise an hour late.

Two hundred thirty-odd yards on size 5s in one day while running multiple errands. This was so not going to happen.

Then I got another email that gave me yet another reason (though the sender didn’t know it) exactly why it had to be finished *now*. So I started winding the ball into another ball, weighing it till I got it at exactly half, and after not having wanted to ply that yarn as a six-strand because that was too bulky, I ended up knitting it at eight: one strand from each half ball. Sixty-six stitches on size 9s was doable in the time I had, barely, but doable.

It was pretty chunky looking as I worked–but ohmygoodness that yarn was SO soft. More of that up against the neck, nobody would mind.

I kept going till there wasn’t enough yarn for another repeat.

It’s blocking. Hey tomorrow: ready when you are.

Didn’t knit a stitch, but at least I got one of the butter hanks wound.

And then suddenly I have an unexpected reason to knit it up by tomorrow night–or the next afternoon, if I want to block it with a hair dryer going.

That’ll teach me.

I didn’t quite fill three bobbins before the white ran out.

Four-ply was surprisingly thick, so, two by two it was: 234 and 224 yards’ worth, with a bit left over on one bobbin that I then plied it with an end-of-bobbin of brown cashmere, making 78 yards. (Hmm. Baby hat?)

The yarns I was working from were very close in thickness and yet I used up 98 g of the merino/silk and only 67 g of the butter merino.

Now to go scour the mill oils out. The strands should bloom, fluffing out a bit with the wools felting together slightly. A little preshrinking is a good thing.

Meantime, yet another Cooper’s hawk sighting today–there have been several of late. Again it was one with its juvenile markings, which are starting to fade now; its chest kind of looked like that last hank. I think I’ve seen both a male and a female juvie in the past week.

Or rather the second two=one is bigger than the first two=one.

Ten years that white cobweb merino/silk had been waiting for me to wind it up. It had arrived in a hank (never again, not that fine, not that many yards) and I always knew it would take a lot of time to wind it up by hand. It did, snagging on itself much of the way. But it looked better with Diana’s soft-butter-yellow than anything else I put next to it and that got me to finally go do it.

So I wound those two strands together on my wheel. That sets in twist going one way and I need to make more to put them together, the wheel spinning the other way so as to restore balance so the fabric to come from it doesn’t torque. Like twisting your swing on the swingset and then letting go and watching it twirl till it comes out straight again. Only in this case you’re making the thing thicker with each stage.

Now the question becomes, do I three-ply the two-plies I’m making or settle for just two bobbins per for a four-ply?

I’m drastically revising my earlier assessment of her cone’s being a month’s worth of work: there’s nothing that says I have to use up every bit of it right this minute, just that I make something good and pretty and that honors her while she can still get to see that happen.

All I had to do was start working with that yarn and it started telling me how I was going to do that. Now I’m just working out the details.

I watched the debate. I watched the Republican candidate doing everything he could to physically stalk and literally belittle his opponent, noting which camera was on and moving in so as to be seen towering right behind her almost any time she was speaking. The camera moved? So did he. Its attention could only be on him.

Any woman who has ever had to deal with a seriously creepy guy (and that’s probably all of us, isn’t it?) would instantly recognize what he was doing. He violated her space; he tried to intimidate her; he leaned over and held her chair, which was shorter than his. Dominating, glowering, threatening.

But that was the least of it.

I’m going to let Ezra Klein of Vox take it from here.

Bins and bins: Diana was giving away her yarn to all of us.

She had one big cone specifically squirreled away for me, though, since I’m a spinner, and she went in the back room (with me taking the measure of every step as she went, having a good idea of what it took out of her to do that and wishing I could rush over and get it for her) and she brought it back out: 602 grams of a cobweb weight that she knew was natural fibers, and it clearly was, but she wasn’t sure if it had a little silk mixed in or not. The label had fallen off the inside of the cone and she said it had always been quite faded. She still had it–she’d tried various electronic tricks to try to copy it to come out darker but no go.

It was, at the least, a very fine merino wool if not cashmere. Very soft, and certainly not a synthetic. Not baby alpaca. I would guess probably yes on the bit of silk mixed in but I’ll be able to tell a little better once it’s actually running between my fingers; lots of experience there.

I told her I had cones of cobweb cashmere in a natural light brown that I could ply it with and that the two would compliment each other very nicely. But I’ve also thought since then that it would go well with white, too, of course, so I have to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up–and get to it, and quickly.

I’d like her to be able to see something made out of it. That much yardage could easily become a month’s worth of work, I know, and it’s nearing Christmastime knitting-wise. It’s nice stuff, though, and she would so love that.

“I wonder what color it’s going to be when you’re done,” said Richard.

Well yeah, I could dye the coming hanks, yes…

If I do that, he said it first.

Edited to add, I told her I’d gone to Andy Mariani’s farm to buy the figs and she just beamed: “Don’t you just *love* that little store?” She was so delighted that they’d come from there. I was a little blown away that she knew, and loved that she loved the place, too.

A friend who is in hospice care is having a potluck tomorrow for people she dearly wants to see, and bacon-wrapped cheese-stuffed roasted ripe figs sounded divine to her.

I wanted them done right–and so I drove down to Andy’s Orchard for the figs. Besides, I’d been looking forward to going since just before our trip East. Oh wait–I sewed the “Created with pride by…” tag on the outside. Classic. Okay, let’s fix that, alright, now we really are ready. Go.

I got my figs, and I almost/sort of pulled off the equivalent of a doorbell-ditching of a handknit hat.

I forgot to put care instructions with it, so, to Andy: it’s extra fine merino wool, spun a bit tightly so as not to pill. It was a mill-end cone, which meant I pretreated the yarn in hot soapy water to get the mill oils out. Still, it could shrink more, so the thing to do is to hand wash it gently in tepid water as needed. Just a bit of suds in the sink, put it in, let it sit a bit, take it out, put it back in in tepid rinse water and then lay it out to dry, shaping it back in place a bit if needed.

Thank you for feeding my family and loved ones so well with such great fruit!

Cashmere and silk: 196 yards. Not a lot but enough to have fun with.

Now, this yarn I did remember to take in my carry-on and finished it on the plane East. White cashmere, spun into a braided tube, and it was a splurge a few years ago that I had been saving for some future bride. The reason for spinning it that way is to give some strength and structure to it without having to add the friction of any extra twists you don’t have to: you want to keep it as soft as it deserves to be.

Did I mention another niece is about to get married?

While we were back home.

Karen and Richard and I went to go see our old friend Scott, whom she and I grew up with. He’s an avid birder, and I often think of him while enjoying my Bewick’s wrens, favorites of mine and a life bird of his, wishing I could share my little flock and somehow help reestablish them on the East Coast: they’re extinct there but plentiful in this area. And only in this area. All those songs those tiny birds sing!

It is safe to say his health issues are more than a match for mine.

It was so good to see him and hard to leave when we had to later that afternoon, but Kathleen would be waiting and this was a time in her life when she particularly needed her friends present when she could see us.

We turned on Waze (which routed us around more than one accident in the rainy days we were in town), pulled the car away, turned a corner towards the left, another left–

–and there was a Cooper’s hawk. Fully in view, close to the street, an actual, perfectly-placed, of-all-the-things-it-could-have-been, a Cooper’s hawk on a large low stand-alone branch of a tree in someone’s yard.

It silently watched us as we continued on our way and away.

And everything was going to be alright.

The beautiful bride and groom and the reason for the trip East. My generous childhood friend Karen put us up and enjoyed our marveling at rain, real rain, real East Coast rain and oh that depth of green everywhere!

Meantime, our mutual close friend Kathleen’s brother, diagnosed with stage 4 brain cancer three months ago, rallied and somehow hung on yet a little longer.

We got to spend the time with her she’d needed, when she wasn’t caretaking, and his hanging on helped her feel permission to come unload on us; it’s hard and we knew it and we needed to comfort her as much as she needed that comfort.

It was a rare gift to be able to be there for her. My niece could never have known when she scheduled her wedding that her timing was exactly right for someone she’d never heard of.

And in possibly related news…

Friday, Richard and Karen and I picked up Mom from where she was staying and it having been ten years since the folks had moved away, we drove Mom around old haunts for the afternoon.

My old high school, where she had worked: it was gone and a completely new building was there now, still red brick (another familiar essence of I’m-home re the style–bricks crumble in quakes so there’s very little of it in California) but so very different.

The house I grew up in that Mom and Dad had had built for them: it looks like a single story at the front but opens into light and warmth at the back, built into the hillside dropping behind it with Californian floor-to-ceiling windows upstairs, and downstairs, windows nearly that big, taking in those beautiful woods.

It had been remodeled and looked very different–but I had seen it during that process and she hadn’t and I knew how much she would love what they’d done with it. Outside, those plants covering the side screens alongside the wheelchair ramp to the front door were new to my eyes.

I tried to talk Mom into knocking on the door with me. She just couldn’t quite.

It was to be a six-patient assisted-living facility, which the folks did not know when they sold the place. Turns out it never took off and now is simply rented to a man and his son.

Which we found out from Barbara when…

We pulled the rented navy Camry into a driveway on the side street up the hill. The lace curtains had not changed but Mrs. N. wasn’t home, so Richard backed back out and Mom directed him across the street and up just a bit.

Where Barbara was. She had seen us walking up to that first door and then pulling into her driveway and was wondering who and what on earth was going on.

And then I knocked on her door.

Her daughter Elaine opened it and staggered backward–and I think I did, too. “What are YOU doing here?!!!” she exclaimed in thrilled disbelief.

She lives in Tennessee and she knows I live in California and Mom in Salt Lake now. What I didn’t know was that this was the weekend of her high school reunion. With a December birthday I had just missed being in her class, but still we knew each other most of our growing up. We had reconnected on Facebook but hadn’t seen each other face-to-face in decades and I was absolutely the last person she expected to show up right there at her mom’s door. Or my mom either for that matter but there we were.

We had a great time. Richard and Karen got included in it, and Kathleen’s brother in the conversation; no, Elaine didn’t quite remember that name, but she wished him well in his current journey forward.

And Susan, I have to tell you: I have particularly enjoyed how perfectly placed each pointillist dot is on a cowl I made out of your yarn, Burnside Bridges colorway, evenly balanced everywhere. Elaine admired that cowl, too, and as the conversation and our time there was winding down she mentioned again how very pretty it was.

“I have another one, this is yours,” as I took it off my neck and offered it for hers.

A gasp, “NO!”

Again, “I have another one,” I grinned persistently.

She was grateful, she was disbelieving, she loved it, she was thrilled–and she made me want to go knit for everybody everywhere right now. I had needed that, which she couldn’t have known, and that was her gift back to me. And it was no small thing.

I do have another. In Koi Pond, not quite the same colorway but close. And, because I didn’t find where it had fallen out of the suitcase while I was packing till after the trip, it’s, uh, not quite actually finished yet. Close enough to claim it, though, right?

And I think that’s why Kathleen’s brother was, and as far as I know, is, still with us: it was his reunion, too. There was a chance to see his old friends one last time who might be coming into town, if they came to him. I so hope they did.

In the end, not even the badly coughing woman last Friday at the audiologist’s who came up to ask me about my knitting before I pled being immunocompromised and begged off could stop us: by Tuesday I was well and we hopped on that plane, with the encouragement of everyone at the other end.

Last night, on the second leg of our flight home, the pilot himself stood at the front of the cabin and announced, “Everybody’s on. Let’s leave early. Let’s get there early.” And so we were out of baggage claim and on the freeway before we were even supposed to land.

Meaning we fell into bed at 3 am our time.

A whole lot happened in between. I am so very, very glad we went.

More later.