Wasn’t it nice of him to invite a critter buffet
Thursday August 31st 2017, 9:47 pm
Filed under: Garden,Knitting a Gift,Life,Wildlife

1. Found an obvious mistake made right at the beginning and that could not be fixed, frogged the whole thing, and started over with a different yarn. Same old same old pattern because it’s mistake-proof and right then I just needed that.

2. Bird netting, bird spikes, and covering bags didn’t do it this time–they got my one ripe fig last night that I was going to pick in the morning when it would be sweetest. Darn.

3. The story from a few years back is there was a young male mountain lion who followed the creek beds from the mountains to the valley across downtown and into a suburban neighborhood, where a UPS driver saw him near dawn near an elementary school and reported it immediately.

And then it vanished.

A quite-elderly golden retriever saved the day that afternoon about the time school was letting out when he announced his opinion of a cat trespassing in his territory. A little one he might ignore but this one just had no business being there.

A reporter was standing under a tree filing a story update that no, the lion still hadn’t been spotted yet. (Dude. Straight. Up…)

So this morning, again around dawn, a man across town who has fruit trees and a garden that had been being raided by raccoons in the night (and has my greatest sympathies) and who is on the board of the state’s Nature Conservancy heard noise outside and went out to try to do something about it.

There were wildly swinging branches in the redwood just over the fence, and redwoods are not flimsy things–

–and a deep growl.

Holy. Cow.

And then the lion’s cub, echoing Mommy and trying to sound fierce, too.

…Well, I guess we don’t have to worry about raccoons tonight, honey…

They’re still looking for them. Our city’s hero golden retriever has gone on to that great dog park in the sky. We’ve had lions before, but never one with young. Fish and Game is on it and the cops again guarded the children going to and from school.



Houston
Wednesday August 30th 2017, 10:47 pm
Filed under: Family,History,Life

My older son was a Mormon missionary in southern Florida, Haitian Creole-speaking, the year that area got hit with hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and the Church told the missionaries, the Red Cross needs you more than we do–go volunteer. They did. Alright then, boys, 1500 Salisbury steaks for the grill, have a spatula.

Copied and pasted from my sister-in-law on Facebook, please share with anyone you know affected by Hurricane Harvey so that we can expand the reach of this:

Houston Friends,
Here are hotline numbers to submit work orders for help from Mormon Helping Hands. FREE assistance regardless of religious affiliation.
FRIENDS, please pass this to anyone in Houston area or any that was affected. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints along with numerous others, currently have a hotline available to submit work orders for specific need requests related to the damages and for cleanup efforts. There is no charge for these services. They are mobilizing thousands to come and help muck out homes, cleaning etc. This has been done in many cities throughout the world. Last year 5000 were mobilized to Louisiana. It may take a week or two, but bishops in the area have already submitted an estimation of homes damaged and preparation is underway.
By calling the hotline number, a volunteer will take down the information you need and create a work order and then attempt to send a volunteer crew out to help. This includes removing carpet, cutting down tree limbs, etc.
Obviously there’s still difficulty getting crews into the neighborhoods but this will allow us to start the rebuilding process, and they will come as they are able. The volunteer groups will come from LDS Mormon Helping Hands, Catholic Charities, Etc.
Hotline numbers:
800-451-1954
844-965-1386



Baby giggles
Tuesday August 29th 2017, 10:52 pm
Filed under: Family,Knitting a Gift

Even better than Cooper’s hawk sightings for cheering up: pictures of Mathias.

I don’t usually cast on one project six times on various needles to get it just exactly right, but when I do it’s the exquisitely soft, shimmery, long-hoarded-Stitches-purchase Handmaiden Camelspin. After a solid hour of silliness I am on row two. (Make that three.) But I know who it’s for, at long last, I can’t wait, and I’m knitting again.



And just like that, the Patronus shows up
Monday August 28th 2017, 11:15 pm
Filed under: Family,Life,Wildlife

Took it easy today and the arm was much better off for it, thank you, everybody. And to Richard for insisting I ice it for 15 minutes when it happened, and pulled out a timer and a book to stay up that much later with me so I would do it.

So no knitting today. As I was reading I happened to look up in time to see a Cooper’s hawk swoop around the patio–but leisurely, not fast, and I noted that if this was a new one, it had learned to chase into the alcove, where its prey would be contained, rather than away from it to an easier escape like last time. Progress. Except that I didn’t see it actually chasing anything.

It wheeled back out and onto the roof of the shed, visible to all, to announce just who owned this.

I tried to memorize every feather so I would know next time if it were the same one. There was an unusual solid white spot on the left side of its chest near the wing with a little bit of a connecting zigzag to two orange stripes suddenly ending there.

I remembered to blink so as not to be a predator staring it down. It had been months since I’d been able to study one like this. My phone/camera was not in reach.

And so we quietly observed each other for a few minutes, one of us intensely grateful for that and wondering if the other could somehow feel it…

As if in response it tucked a foot up away into its feathers: completely relaxed. Wasn’t it a fine day today! And then, briefly, it preened. I could only marvel at its sense of balance.

About five minutes in, a young squirrel–pre-puberty, they do not have object permanence–forgot that it was supposed to be being scared and popped out from under the picnic table. It nosed around under the bird feeder and then hopped across the yard right below that hawk. (Hello? Look up?) It made a small leap for the fence and headed across the top of it. Exit–stage left.

Seriously?

It jumped to the top of the shed.

Seriously?!

It considered. It’s fun to make mourning doves do what you tell them to but this one seemed a bit bigger. Eh–it’s just a bird. It’s fun to scare them away. And so it hopped closer.

I kind of held my breath. Seriously?

And one last leap closer. But at that point its bravado thinned and it stood there trying to decide what it should really think about this and the fact that there was now no easy escape. It glanced over the side. The wispy baby pomegranate tree could in no way hold it and to leap past it would make it a good ten foot fall.

The hawk of course was by this point studying the squirrel in return. You don’t want to be facing the teeth and the claws: you want to be coming at it from behind. (I once watched a Cooper’s do a U-turn right above one on the ground so as to be lined up just so.)

The squirrel flinched and turned away and at that the hawk came right at it in a low swoop. All it had to do was reach and grab and lunch was served.

Except that it wasn’t actually hunting nor hungry, and one does not kill prey except for the eating.

The squirrel had the instinct to hunch down hard as the Cooper’s shadow passed so close over it.

I do believe it learned some manners.



Grounded
Monday August 28th 2017, 12:42 pm
Filed under: Life

We were up late driving due to our daughter’s travel plans and came home tired.

I’m not good at tired.

The doctor says that, funky shape aside, I probably didn’t break my arm when I fell but to come back and get x-rays if it feels worse. The brain sloshing was the more serious problem. He recommended a ski helmet as being more of a protection than a bike one. (Now, if we could somehow get more padding *inside* that brain, given that my head didn’t actually hit anything…)

All I wanted to know, and I didn’t ask him because it wasn’t something he could answer, was, how soon can I get back into knitting as much as I want when I want so that I can at least still feel useful. I’ll just have to work that out for myself.

Hopefully this will all pass quickly just like the last time.

I’m about to go pick up some good-sized needles and worsted-weight yarn, the easy stuff to work with, and see if I can. At least for a little while. Maybe even an entire cast-on.



Cat’s paw
Saturday August 26th 2017, 9:37 pm
Filed under: Family,Knitting a Gift,Life

The picture is upside down re the direction of the knitting of the one. Just mentioning.

About ten years ago, we were visiting our oldest and her cat was not allowed in a particular room. Which is where we were staying.

And one time I happened to forget, and walked the length of the hallway admiring as always the gorgeously shined and waxed wooden floor there…

…When that cat, seeing her chance, flew past me in a streak of fur, determined to at last claim that room as her own. Just try to stop her!

I instantly knew my mistake and dashed after her but she was faster than me. I got there just in time to see her realizing she was going to smack into the bed that was on the other side of that door, and it was not raised on your typical frame but at her level, not to mention it was an airbed and in no way claw-resistant–and her paws skittered wildly for purchase against that polished floor but the best she could do was to spin out.

She seemed to be okay. Phew. I wasn’t sure there for a moment.

She looked up then and saw me. Avoiding further eye contact, she carefully, deliberately, slowly, raised a paw to her face. She licked it just so. A solemn cat’s honor that yes: she had meant to do that. She’d meant every motion of that. She dared me to say it wasn’t so. She dared me to even say that had just happened. Not only that: she owned this room now.

When I guffawed (partly in relief) she stomped out with a slight twitch to the end of her tail.

Meantime, the cowls… Both cashmere (from their yarn set n page.) I started the red one first. It was on a circular that was small both in length and tip size, and started the purple on larger needles when the first hurt my hands. I then put the purple one down for a day, too, and gave my hands a break. Finished and blocked the purple yesterday,  picked up the red today and as I finished it off, the last shall be first and the first shall be last and all that, wondered why I’d been so boring as to do two in the same pattern at the same time.

Blocking the red, I got out the now-dry purple and put them side by side to see if they were as close in length as I thought they were. Five repeats of the smaller stitches, three and a half of the larger.

And then, and only then, did it finally hit me.

Cat’s paws. Call the purple one the cat’s paws. I totally meant to do that. Right?

(I’m just not quite sure what I do with it now, is all.)



Oh right
Friday August 25th 2017, 10:41 pm
Filed under: Family,Friends,Knitting a Gift

One of those days of being constantly busy but wondering if I was actually getting anything done. I was, but. It’s just the antsiness before a house guest arrives.

Michelle will get to deliver that baby blanket to her friends in person. (I finished knitting it three weeks ago.)

Maybe I should run that one last yarn end in now…



Boxing match
Thursday August 24th 2017, 10:45 pm
Filed under: Friends,Knitting a Gift,Life,Lupus

It was a dumb, weird thing of no worth and no consequence.

Until it wasn’t.

I just couldn’t seem to get rid of it. That box was labeled Heavy, and it was; you could really twist an ankle trying to stomp it down for the recycling truck, and having once fallen off my roof sweeping away the leaves so the rain would stop leaking in, I am a little particular about that part of me. Shove the sides in? Don’t make it laugh. It would trampoline you right back. I put it by the side door to go out with the recycling bins anyway, knowing they only take the pre-broken-downs, hoping it would somehow cave in to my will if not my feet nor his, but it just never made it out there and it stayed stubbornly clean, dry, intact–and inside. And the next week, too, and the one after that. I would look at it, determined this time, and it would go nope, nope, you’re not doing that.

I gave in and put it where it wouldn’t bug me. Still inside. Still looking brand new. That thing was designed to last.

There was an email on the ward chat list last night, a young couple that were suddenly having to leave; they were flying to Arizona this weekend to find a new apartment and did anyone happen to have any moving boxes? Help?

We’ve seen this before: someone finds themselves between jobs with a renewal on their year-to-year coming right up, or a sudden job offer somewhere else, and if they can’t talk their landlord into a month-to-month during the transition they’re out of here. Rents are far too high in this town to risk it.

I only had the one, but it was bigger than the usual moving box; not worth their coming to get it but worth my dropping it off, I told them before heading over. I figured they had enough to have to do right now. I fervently wished I had the energy to offer to help them pack.

Let’s see, that was 380 #2, not 320 #8. Right? Right. I was sure of it.

But there were no numbers on the doors, and there were a lot of doors opening up over the courtyard cum driveway. If I walked over to the… But it was a time of day when the sun was still an issue and I could spend a lot of minutes wandering around those open-air walkways looking. No can risk.

Just then the UPS guy, who’d parked out on the street because there’s no way his truck could turn around in there, walked by. Well, everybody orders everything online so if anybody would know–so I asked him.

“Sure,” he smiled, “it’s that one right there,” pointing to the door nearest us just steps away. I looked again for a number, wondering how he knew, while he chuckled; yeah, it is like that, isn’t it.

380, it has to be…

The door opened and there the guy was. Phew!

I reached back into the car and pulled out the box that was filling up the back seat.

“Oh that is *perfect*!” he exclaimed, lifting it from my hands, very very pleased.

And I thought, you could put every book you own in there and it would be as solid as a bookcase in the transit. But then how would you pick it up to load it in there, but never mind.

And I am left marveling at how that all worked out for him and his wife in spite of all that I’d thought I’d wanted to do for lo these weeks.

I need to find out her favorite color. Got to take some of California with you wherever you go from here, right?

The kicker? I have no idea what was originally packed in that box. Something was sent to my daughter’s friend in San Jose and somehow its empty box got brought back here, where it could be ready for the day when a young couple really needed the help in their moment of change and chaos and stress.

 



What William Mahone did
Wednesday August 23rd 2017, 10:58 pm
Filed under: History

Courtesy of my cousin, here’s a link to a story I’d never heard of. A man whose name and face will not be found among all those Confederate statues all over the South, even though he had been a Major General fighting for the Confederacy and Lee had considered him one of the best.

Because after the Civil War was over, William Mahone set up a political party in Virginia that abolished a poll tax, empowered freed slaves, got them educations, gave them political power and treated them as equals for four years, as long as he could–until political and physical violence stole it from them again.

There is, according to the article, a single monument to him, raised, as so many others were, by the Daughters of the Confederacy: with descriptions of a battle he’d won.

Not a word was to be spoken about the far larger one he later fought and, for a time and for the sake of every one of us then and now, won.



And another one
Tuesday August 22nd 2017, 10:16 pm
Filed under: Knitting a Gift

The merino/silk from last Friday’s dyepot, drying again. Lace pattern: Little Arrows.



Hey! Shoe! Shoe!
Monday August 21st 2017, 10:00 pm
Filed under: Life,Wildlife

I put away the fake crow in the dead of the night (well, 8:30 pm) so that the twice-a-month gardener doesn’t unwittingly make himself a target of the real ones’ fury tomorrow for forever to come if he were to pick it up or move it while wondering, what the heck?! I remembered. It’s gone.

Apropos of absolutely nothing at all except maybe that, we here at this fine spindyeknit blog now bring you: how to make your own felted pigeon shoes. (Scroll down the page and there’s another story about knitted and crocheted Converse shoes cum slippers, as long as we’re talking footwear.)

Not sure I have the artistic ability to transmogrify rock doves into Cooper’s hawks. I don’t wear heels, either, but surely one could make do.

Y’know, I do have some old Birkenstocks…



Cowlabundance
Sunday August 20th 2017, 10:36 pm
Filed under: Friends,History,Knitting a Gift,Life

1. Felt much better than yesterday.

2. Cowls: the navy merino/silk, the Malabrigo Mechita in Whales Road and in Pegoso, one of the two red/purple merino/cashmere with sparkles. (Hey, Sherry, your cashmere was well loved all over again.) Someone fairly new, whose story I don’t know but whom I don’t think I’d ever seen really smiling, broke out into all kinds of happiness at the latter–and that, I tell you, is what keeps those needles going.

The friend who’d hoped for aqua exclaimed over her Pegoso and when I said the yarn was handpainted, held it out a moment in wonder and asked, How?

I explained that they (or at least some dyers, I shouldn’t speak for all of them) lay the racetrack-shaped hank out and paint sideways.

She was fascinated by the repeats and the way adjacent stitches in different rows held the same color and just wanted to hold still and absorb it a moment.

3. Re the eclipse tomorrow, from an optometrist: https://stellasplace1.com/2017/08/13/caution-the-solar-eclipse/ There won’t be enough sun to hurt your eyes and force you to turn away to warn you that you’re still looking long enough to do permanent damage. She recommends you watch it on TV.

Me, what I find most interesting is watching the effects of an eclipse: how the light changes, how the shadows turn all sharp-angled, how the wildlife reacts. And, come to think of it, how much I’ll need a sweater on.

Also, hopefully, how empty the freeway will be (hey, everyone’s in Oregon, right?) while I go make a peach run to Andy’s.

Although–maybe after 11:37 when it’s over.



Playing musical chicken: BACH, a Bach a Bach a Bach a Bach
Saturday August 19th 2017, 10:43 pm
Filed under: Knit,Knitting a Gift,Life

I woke up with just enough of a cold to have the oomph to quietly sit and knit most of the day. Richard (thank you!) did the grocery shopping; I turned on the music to get my fingers moving. (Richard pitched in on that too at one point, and we compared Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock vs CSNY’s.)

I never play yarn chicken.

Except I did. I was making this navy cowl from leftover dk-weight yarn and there was another small ball of it and I got to where I really kind of wanted to be done with this but I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied if I didn’t get to that seventh repeat–so I was kind of resigned to having to splice balls as it is. Hopefully not three stitches before the end.

It ain’t over till the fat chicken sings.

So I kept going. Got to the end of that seventh repeat that I’d thought the thing couldn’t possibly have in it, eyeballed the squiggles where the bottom of the ball had exploded, and proceeded with the cast off, tighter than usual.

Four and a third inches. That end with the bit of white still tied to it from when I wound the hank? Yeah. But wow. One for the ages. I will have to work the sewing needle through the stitches I want to pull the end through before I even try to thread it, but it will exactly do.

After dinner I picked up another cowl I’d started a few days ago in the exact shade of traffic-cone vivid-orange-red that most makes my balance go nuts. (Head injuries are so weird.) I’d gotten that yarn at an earlier Colourmart clearance, had overdyed most of it as planned, but had left some of it as is because I knew some people love it and I knew it was not something I would ever, ever pick up at a yarn store. Might as well let a bit of it be.

And that is the color skirt a friend was wearing to church last week. Alright, then, she’s next. (I will try *not* to tell her not to wear it near me–and I will also give her others to choose from when I surprise her, just to make sure, y’know, that she likes what she gets. Yeah that’s it.)

I’d found the needle size that that red almost-laceweight needed pretty small for my hands, and after the first diamond yesterday I put it aside and made the navy one today instead. Bigger needles, more comfortable, and if it worked up fast well that was to make up for the guilt from lack of follow-through on the other.

I held it in my hands. I looked at the bigger needle the blue had been on and felt tempted. Well, maybe I could work on this just a little bit after all right now first, y’know, space it out to a little a day, go easy on the hands while still getting stuff done.

Wait. How did that happen.

 



Getting a little crow-ded
Friday August 18th 2017, 10:16 pm
Filed under: Knit,To dye for,Wildlife

The birdnetting somehow gets moved a bit day after day–no squirrel could have done that from there (I don’t think) –and the figs have still been disappearing. And I was getting screamed at by a crow whenever I went near that tree. Although, funny how when I gave “the look” in its general direction, wherever it was, it stopped.

Research has shown that they are highly attuned to human faces.

It could see me. I couldn’t see it. But even I can hear a crow.

Hey, nice of it to remind me. (Yup, I did go back and buy a fake dead one last year but I never used it.)

After repeats of this all week long, I finally remembered at night and not in the morning when it was too late that I needed to put that bird out there.

I carried it in the shopping bag it’s been in to hide it from any glimpse through the windows, hoping it would work for the Indian Free peach and fig both even though they’re not that close. I slid it out with me between it and the tree across the fence that is where I think I’d been yelled at from, trying to block any night-vision view (it wasn’t as dark as I would have liked) and then I sprinted the heck around the corner and out of there.

So yes, I put it there myself fer cryin’ out loud, and yet it still startled me this evening when I went to water the tomatoes. Whoa! Well, good, then, so I pretended to be startled again and shied away from it every time I looked in its direction. I can play the game.

Meantime. I bought a large cone of merino/silk 50/50, steeply discounted to get rid of the last of it, in a color blend I would call bleached-out camouflage. I’d worked with that yarn before in navy and knew how nice it was. (Hey, Morgan, that’s your doubled hat.) This was a heavier and darker version of the one I played with recently and there’s a whole lot more of it.

It came yesterday and today I wound off just enough yards to make a nice cowl, tied the hank and threw it in the dyepot to see what I could talk this stuff into being.

I don’t know if I can get the other 900 grams all into one dyepot and have it come out evenly. Quite unlikely. No afghan out of this, then, no matter how practical home decor-wise, I would go nuts having to look at the blah in my hands for a month.

Such a shame. I’ll just have to splash and play and make lots of happy colors out of it. We’re talking a dozen merino/silk hats or cowls, easily.

Maybe Sapphire, next.



I still have the beaded socks she made me eleven years ago
Thursday August 17th 2017, 10:42 pm
Filed under: Friends,Knit,Life


Finished that one (colors muted by the nighttime photo and the fact that it’s wet) and there will be lots of nice folds on it around the neck. Started another cowl tonight.

But in between I played with the dye pot.

Colorwise, the hanks to the left in both the following pictures are the ones most true to life.

I have a friend (don’t miss that post) whom life has put into a tight spot and it was time to do some stash diving in return for all the good turns she’s done me. She wanted to knit her young daughter a red sweater and it seemed to me I ought to be able to do something about that.

I found two big hand-dyed hanks I’d bought maybe eight years ago at Stitches: 9.17 oz/1300 yards each in super wash merino–not a thick yarn by any means. I’d had plans for them but they’d just never leaped onto the needles, and the plan for the dusty sandy peach one (brightened by the camera here, in real life, not so much) was clearly not going to happen. (It made sense at the time, honest.)

I always thought that weight-wise, if I weren’t making a shawl, they’d be great knitted together–if only the colors were more compatible.

Well now they are. I offered to overdye the multi, too, to obliterate the orange bits, but it was loved just as it is.

The ties around the peach-ish one had been drawn tight enough to mostly resist the original dye. I moved those ties and knew anything I did would come out lighter in those spots, and they were. I like it, though.

That dark red will lighten up a bit once it’s dry.

Somehow, what leaped onto my needles tonight was a small amount of red from another part of my stash. Funny how that happened.