A few years ago I started a second fish-based afghan. It got put aside as baby blankets were knitted for nieces and nephews and then big ones for siblings with more definite deadlines, etc.

I picked it up one time in there but put it back away without adding a stitch.

I picked it up again today just to study the thing a bit and decide what to do. I untangled all those strands, trying to get started.

I had lost my sketches long since and told Richard, I don’t even know what this red blob was supposed to be turning into and I have no idea what to do with it.

(I had had a photo of a coral reef and I was trying a little too hard to replicate it rather than use it as a jumping-off point.)

But, I told him, it does have a big seed stitch border and I love how it looks and hate knitting it and am glad that that much of it is already done!

He went straight to the point: Rip it out. Rip it right down to that bottom border and start over with something you know you like.

I was a little bit stunned. All that work.

He was right.

But…he was also partly wrong. I like this side. I just don’t like the third of it on the right. And that’s the real reason why it’s just sat there.

I told him, Let me think about it for a day.

Sounded reasonable to him.

And then, while doing laundry, it suddenly hit me what the red blob was and where it had been going and how to take it from there. Finally, I could picture it! But if I do? I was trying to squeeze too much detail visually into too few stitches and it will never please me.

I know that if Gracie Larsen were still here she would be telling me how to carefully cut out the intarsia section I don’t want and to knit back up again from there, connecting back in at the sides as I go, even keeping the side seed stitch panels. I could do that.

But do I want to bother with all that. With all those strands on the left, plus whatever I add on the right, when I don’t even know yet what I would replace it with.

Let me think about it for the night.

(Edited to add, after counting: it’s only 26 rows of stockinette so far. He’s probably right.)

Here you go.

It’s not yet blocked; the lace will relax and the trees open up the moment the water touches it and it will extend lengthwise somewhat. Right now I’m getting 59″ W x 64″ L.

The whole thing was a doodle of our childhoods for my brother. The pick-your-own farms we went to as kids. (I seriously considered how to knit strawberries into those furrowed rows but knew I didn’t have enough of that years-old lighter green to constantly be carrying it behind the berries, so I decided they weren’t ripe yet. Because I’m the knitter and I said so.)

There’s also a nod to Moose Mountain Provincial Park in Canada, where we were stuck for two weeks as we waited for a part for our camping trailer to be shipped in so it could be repaired so we could continue on our cross-countries trip the summer I was ten. I will never forget the sound our volleyball made when it landed in the grill. Hissssssss as it pancaked flat…. But what a glorious place to be marooned.

And the radio that was running a contest: winner would get a week’s vacation in Regina, Saskatchewan. Second place would get two weeks’ vacation in Regina, and my folks howled: just what were they trying to tell us about Regina?

That was the trip where my mom taught me how to knit to keep me too busy to fight with my little sister in the far back of the car. It didn’t entirely take immediately but I think we came out okay on that one.

Last week on my knitting group Zoom I asked opinions on chain-stitching a line of duplicate stitch to fill in the missing barn wall sides. Up or down?

A couple of heads turned aside just a moment to inwardly picture how they do theirs.

Down, said Kathy.

Up, said Kim definitively.

So after tonight’s Zoom I decided I wanted to be able to say the best thank you, which would mean to have actually done it and I hadn’t yet.

So.

Down was a definite no-go for me.

Up did it nicely.

Barn wall sides, done.

I kept going. Duplicate-stitch leaves on the middle flower that hadn’t quite come out right, ripped out and redone.

Yarn ends woven in, done.

“Created with pride by” tag added, done.

Wait. There was just one other thing. It hit me: that’s what it had been missing all along. I had to go find that color yarn again, all put away because I was supposedly done with it.

My husband would like you to know that since it came from the coat of a sheep my moose is now officially giving you the hairy eyeball.

(IT’S DONE!!! Pictures when I have decent daytime lighting for them.)

I used up at least half that new skein getting the seed stitch edge done: it took a lot of yarn and a whole lot of time.

But at long long last a few minutes ago (while I was telling myself I knew better and to plan better next time so I don’t end up having to cast off an afghan while purling. Again.) I was down to the last, I counted a moment later, 62 stitches.

After exclaiming out loud, It’s a five?!!?

The writing way down the side of the circular needle that had been so jammed with stitches for so long was finally showing: 3.75 mm. That’s a US 5, not the US 6/4mm I’d thought I’d been using all this time.

And I can tell you exactly where it happened: when I split the row into two needles just above the moose so I could lay the whole thing out flat to see. I switched then from the ebony I’d started with to the long-treasured old Holz and Stein rosewood, because its longer cable could handle those 268 stitches more easily. All this time I’d thought the two had been the same size.

I’d actually tried to check a few times to see if any writing was still extant but you just couldn’t see it for the smushing. I thought from its age. In retrospect, my subconscious knew those tips seemed narrow.

So the moose hangs loose and the beginning edge is more relaxed than the finished one. At a quarter millimeter difference, not by so much that you’d see if it you weren’t told.

Well, I *had* wanted it as dense and cat-proofed as possible.

I am sitting here still gobsmacked.

Okay, so: now that I finally finally don’t have to worry about dropping a ton of compressed stitches off the edges I can finish fixing that barn door (doing it right this time.)

Tomorrow. I’ve run out of today.

I thought last month that I’d bought enough, even though something nagged at me that it wouldn’t be.

It wasn’t quite.

But I didn’t want to infect them, either.

Today was so much better. I washed my hands and put on a mask to be on the safe side for them and went back to Uncommon Threads. Thirteen rows of seed stitch for the upper edge: I’d run out at four.

They were in the middle of a well-attended class with the owner and I got someone else to help me find my yarn; the previous time, Rios in Solis had been tucked away in a storage bin behind where one of the attendees was sitting and I would never have felt I had permission to just go open it/oh ‘scuse me/shove/just, no.

The employee went right to where it was hanging on the wall this time. Oh okay.

While it was being wound up I waited for what seemed a good moment and then asked the owner if I could show off?

Everybody loves a good project.

One woman asked if it was to be a wall hanging or an afghan?

I said, That depends on my brother and his cat.

Ohhh. Cats, she nodded. Yes.

I came away thinking, you know, I’d been wondering for awhile if I should ask him if I should add a doubled-over loop across the upper edge for him to slip a narrow rod through.

I’d also wondered how much the weight of all that wool might stretch the piece out if it were left hanging like that.

But what actually had stopped me was, as the children of an art dealer who’d helped keep the 600-year-old Aubusson tapestry weaving guild alive, we grew up with hand-dyed hand-spun hand-woven tapestries on the walls and my sweet little bit of knitting, I mean, come on….

But somehow that moment clarified it for me: sure I expect he wants his afghan to be an afghan, but why don’t I just ask him what he actually thinks? (Duh….)

I think I have enough yarn…. Actually, probably not. I think I’d have to loop back there.

Why we need to support local, locally-owned journalism: how many people these days get to have a newspaper that does a graph like this?

Across: the names of the candidates.

Down: the questions being asked them.

Their answers: No in red, Yes in green, with a little chat emoji to link to ‘see more of my answer on this’ if the candidate so desires.

Which also means that at a glance you can see which ones didn’t think it worth their time to explain their point of view nor to try to persuade.

It’s certainly not all you need to know about any of them but it is definitely a great starting point.

So much better of a day! And then it got better yet.

In the afternoon I noticed the sign was gone.

In the evening a car went past the window–and we’re almost at the end of the street.

So I did what anyone would do, right? I finished up my conversation with my husband and went outside to pull the recycling and trash bins back in from the curb for the day.

That didn’t do it.

I wasn’t going to knock on the door and interrupt them on their very first day, but I thought creating possibilities not a bad thing.

I came inside, grabbed a pitcher, and walked back out to water the little columnar apple tree out front by hand, a gallon at a time. All those strange 100F+ days this past week, it could use a little extra.

I had just poured the fifth gallon when she came out of the house to get something out of her car.

And that is how I got to exclaim, Welcome to the neighborhood! while introducing myself to the new neighbor.

When we moved in we were young parents; our last child was born a year later, and the couple living in that house had kids in college and made our little ones their adopted grandchildren.

And now there will be a baby in that house, once they do a little work and move in for good next month. I can’t wait to pay it forward and get to see their little one grow up.

Somewhere out there, though, you know there’s a skunk (I once saw one on our welcome mat through the window thankfully just before we were about to open the front door) that heard their dog in garden territory it might well by now consider its own and it was probably thinking, Oh honey I can give you something to bark about.

So many future stories for that house to tell!

The *ECG machine was a total flatline.

The nurse was getting flustered with it, so the patient laughed and assured the nurse that the patient at least was not.

The doctor, a little earlier: Was it a slip first? Or a faint first?

Patient: Slip, then a fall headfirst onto the cold water valve on the shower, missing my eye, then very nearly throwing up once finally getting up with his help, then starting hard to pass out but managed to just make it to the bed to collapse.

Doctor: It doesn’t need stitches, but you do need an ECG and complete bloodwork and thyroid tests. We need to find out why you were fainting.

Thus the ECG machine. A second nurse came in. I made a joke about wearing the wrong shoes–can’t reboot with clogs. Okay. They tried rebooting the machine. Then finally they sent me to cardiology down the street–but first I was to go to CT and get a brain scan. And the lab.

Which is how my husband ended up leaving work early to spend hours with me at the clinic, because no way was I driving. He is my rock.

Thirteen previous concussions?! Knocked out five times? When was the last time you saw neurology? It has been too long, they told me.

Okay, so that’s on the list, too. But enough for today.

I figured all that was one way to get a carry-around project teal-green hat back into my list of ready-to-give-aways. But seriously, life? If you want a stinking green hat, you do know there are easier ways to say so.

*Update 10/9: I typed EKG yesterday when it was an ECG, and if that’s the worst mistake my brain did after that head banging then I’m okay with that. Update 10/11: Oh wait. I was thinking EEG when I corrected away from EKG. The brain is getting there!

(Detail near the top of the river from yesterday’s photo.)

I looked up the hotel confirmation email. I had one hour left to cancel or forfeit. It had to be done. Canceled.

I’ve been dragging my feet on the plane and the car rental. But when you’re waiting to see if the thermometer hits 102 to tell you to run for a strep test–although we’re not there yet–um.

You don’t get on a plane, expose a ton of people, and then bring that to your 93-year-old mom, you just don’t.

I did knit all but the last two stitches of a raptor at the tops of the trees and felt great about getting something useful done.

Okay, Morgan, don’t look, some knitting friends wanted to see it. (Not like my wanting to show off would have anything to do with it…) Picture taken at noon half a row of trees ago. Nature preserve on one side of the river with tall trees and the moose, pruned trees with the farm on the other.

And yes I have done the barn door sides in duplicate stitch twice now and ripped it out. AnneS had an excellent idea, but by that point it would have meant ripping it out past a color change and the ends running behind it and I had so far to go at that point that I just kept on going.

The thing was only 32″ long when I booked those plane tickets for three weeks out. I didn’t really think it was doable. I’m almost done.

(Photo mishap: there are three evenly spaced upper zig zags of plowed field, not the shadowed hodgepodge that the camera thinks.)

Twenty rows this time. Two more and the color work will be over with and it will just be a single yarn from there to the finish line.

This has been such an intense knitting spree that I’m going to feel a bit lost–thrilled, for sure, though–when it’s done. Till the next big project, whatever it’s going to be.

Meantime, this is General Conference Weekend, a good reason to do row after row. It was interesting how many leaders of the Mormon Church felt a strong need to say today that contention and anger are not of G_d and have no place in our personal nor political discourse. Compassion and kindness and reaching out without judgment are how we follow the example of our loving Savior.

Amen.

Seventeen? But I started an hour earlier today. You can’t let yesterday beat today!

And so rows 18 and then 19 (hah! Take that, yesterday!) and the first of the three colors at the top of the barn got finished, at ~22 minutes per row. That should speed up a bit as the extra strands from the intarsia work get done with.

I’d even show you a picture, if my phone would hurry up and send it.

Knitted from ten a.m. to nine p.m. including three breaks for icing the hands and letting them warm back up again. It’s nuts–and if I can pull it off for the next six days straight I’ll have it done in time.

I did the first row of the upper window on the barn, so those strands are all carefully counted and aligned and set up, and then called it a night.

108F by our thermometer, 104 in our zip code per Wunderground today.

And I was sitting there with pounds of wool, super grateful for power and for air conditioning and not running anything I didn’t have to to avoid stressing the grid.

When we left on our trip, I had set up the barn with its first row and six strands on the needle. It was a sleep-deprived trip leaving early and coming home late, and when I picked the afghan back up the next row was a wrong side row and I was too fuzzy-brained to think, wait. Turn it around and take a good look first.

I didn’t need to; I knew what I was doing, right? It was ready, just go.

Which is how I went merrily on my way without knitting the vertical bars at the sides of that big barn door. It hit me today as I finished that part just why it vaguely reminded me of a Union Jack. Oops.

If you look at the top right you’ll see the lonely little remnant stitch from my trying to duplicate-stitch (ie embroidering it on after the fact) my way out of that problem. Clumsy looking. Out. I still have lengths of white yarn at the top to work with but that attempt wasn’t it.

Maybe I’ll try a crochet hook next.

Somehow working from the bottom up feels easier. But then the extra ends.

How would you do this?

The vice presidential debate tonight: Walz was earnest, Vance was slick and fast and a clearly well-practiced gaslighter and liar. Trump capped the price of insulin at $35!

I was waiting for the moderators to say no, Biden did. Democrats had been trying to set price caps on Big Pharma ever since Medicare added drug coverage and Biden finally got Congress to pass a phase-in over several years of the most prescribed meds. This was huge.

Vance complained to the moderators that they’d promised no fact checking. Which, the Washington Post pointed out, was a complete lie. And even if it had been true, wouldn’t you WANT the facts to be presented?

Etc.

It was good to see how civil the two men were to each other. It was surprising that they seemed to agree on things like childcare to help young people make it ahead. It was gratifying that Vance was horrified that one of Walz’s children had witnessed a shooting.

It was astonishing and deeply disconcerting to hear how easily and quickly Vance lied about just about everything. Millions cut out of housing because of illegal immigrants? Just how many people who can’t get a Social Security number did he think were signing closing papers on houses, or even just rentals? My husband as a Red Cross volunteer responded to a two bedroom apartment fire that left twenty-two immigrants homeless. They were so poor and so crowded they slept in shifts. The Red Cross didn’t ask about their papers; they cared about the people.  Whom did Vance think were building those houses while being unable to afford one themselves? The Post wondered if he’d added up every bed in every homeless shelter to come up with that random number?

But then he already said he makes up stories to illustrate his political point. I have no doubt he slandered the Haitians in Springville Ohio because they were the darkest-skinned immigrants he could think of and he knows his base.

Trump lies every time he opens his mouth, but at this point you don’t know how much of that is his dementia. Vance–his eyes gave him away a number of times–knew exactly what he was doing and he did it anyway. Get elected, Article 25 that Alzheimer’s idiot at the top and it’s all yours, buddy, he seemed to be saying to himself.

Walz finally asked him point blank: who won the 2020 election?

Vance’s gish galloped off in the opposite direction just as fast as it could run.