That was the question I wanted to ask.

So.

That third of a ball: in the sunlight, it just wasn’t enough of a match.

(Tap tap tap.) Yarn store number one in that color: zero inventory.

Yarn store number two: three skeins. It was a long way to go to check dye lots for that little of a chance.

Yarn store number three, and the one I’d most want to go to anyway even though it’s a trek. I knew I would have to call to find out, but Kathryn has a lovely deep voice that is easier to hear than most on the phone.

Rios in Ravelry Red? Wait just a minute while I go check. …Lots!

So I gathered up my project, my last skein attached, and headed to Cottage Yarns. Where they don’t have space for classes or gatherings because there’s just too much yarn to squeeze them in. Wasn’t it Mae West who said, “Too much of a good thing is wonderful”?

They had a full bag all ready for me when I got there. I explained that mine was a couple years old and I knew Malabrigo tends to shift the shades slightly from year to year so it was a bit of a long shot.

They were a bit too pink. Mine was more on the orange side.

How about this bag?

Oh, much closer, and I almost bought two of those but then Kathryn’s husband found three skeins that had found their way into a bag with another color altogether (so that they would stand out and could be found while staying mothproofed) and once again stepping out into the sunlight and back under the store lights for comparison, that was what I wanted.

Meantime, while I was focusing on that, the shop’s phone rang.

He went off to wind the two balls for me while she was answering the call, which didn’t take long.

They wanted to know, she told me, trying really hard not to laugh because everybody’s a beginner at the beginning and sometimes non-knitters buy presents. Did we have any red yarn?

Just, red yarn.

High-frequency hearing loss, ie from age or in my case from being allergic to aspirin, wipes out the consonants of speech but not the vowels. So unless you get hearing aids you can hear someone talking but the words themselves are not clear.

I finally opened a box that came Saturday. One expected thing, one unexpected thing.

I pulled the latter out and looked at it, puzzled. I had no idea what this thing was supposed to be and its packaging didn’t say as far as I could tell.

I handed it to him, asking.

It’s a ah eh i uh.

Me, using my best lipreading skills: It’s a camel biter?

Him: A candle lighter. (Electric, he added afterwards.)

Me, wondering how on earth this thing is supposed to match that description: A candle lighter? Do we need this?

Him, grinning and knowing the answer was going to sound silly: Yes.

The camels will be relieved to hear that.

(Photo from two years ago. I had no idea this one was going to be so huge when I ordered my first gerdan, I had no frame of reference yet.)

I wore all-black to church today. I’d asked after one of my friends in Ukraine and had gotten an anguished message back wondering where would they go, whether they would even live, how would they get through this.

I knew in my bones that only the color of mourning would do. And my very large, bright yellow sunflower gerdan: there have been Ukrainian refugees living next door to that church and I wanted them to feel seen. I wanted to bear witness to the importance of supporting the innocents whom American voters just sold down the river. It was my I Protest outfit. But anyway.

There are two people in that congregation who–well, one once showed me her official socks with that name on them.

The monthly senior potluck was this evening and I looked around and thought, hey, look–we’re not the youngest ones anymore!

People were chatting, the hostess was trying to get people to get started; Richard motioned me over to where he had a seat at a table ready for me.

Ms. Socks was to the other side.

Note that she and I do not discuss politics because it would do no good–but I have noted that as her guy’s behavior got worse and worse over these past few years she avoided me more and more, which is a shame, because other than that one (very big) thing I consider us old friends. More and more though with a sense of wistfulness and loss.

Why should I let him of all people call the shots in our personal lives. So I turned to her and asked her about her house and how the remodeling was going.

She seemed surprised that I would want to talk to her, which struck me as terribly sad, but answered my question and we went on to have a normal conversation like it should always be and she enjoyed a bit of my blueberry cobbler, too.

I think Bill of Penzey’s Spices has a point: Cook. Feed people. Love them.

It helped.

Why I usually do short repeats when my amount of yarn is limited, but I didn’t this time–I like that tree motif, I wasn’t ready to quit doing it. Besides, it’s a pun: red woods.

So I thought I’d run the math by him.

Me: See, I’ve used 33 g of the current 100 g and done 15 rows for it so that means I get 45 rows per skein. Maybe 46. It’s 38 rows per motif repeat. I have a full skein after this plus 33 g, left over from Ryan’s baby’s blanket, I started those 15 rows at four rows into leaf set #5, and I want seven sets of leaves. And I bought the yarn–how old is Margo now? Two and a half?–so matching that shade of Ravelry Red would be hard. Do I have enough to do that full last motif?

The resident computer scientist: Your what hurts? No seriously, you’re breaking my brain here. What?

Well, hey, I thought that was all pretty straightforward, but then knitting requires being good at math.

Heh.

Actually, I think that means I’d come up 5 g short plus the cast-off. Alright, let’s see how it blocks out to after the sixth set. Which I’m about to start. (And yes, the eye prefers odd numbers visually. Maybe shorter trees on top for the seventh?)

—

Edit: I just finished the fifth repeat plus a purl row and weighed the yarn: 175 g total left. If 100g=45 rows, then 175g=78.75 rows, two motifs are 38×2=76 rows, plus the castoff. And preferably a purl row beforehand. So: maybe?

May I borrow four and a half minutes of your time to contemplate Beethoven’s Fifth–if Beethoven had grown up in New Orleans. Jon Batiste released this a week ago.

In every note I hear his joy at the success of his wife’s bone marrow transplant two years ago. To life!

I know you’re going through the same grief I am, and if you don’t want to read below, I understand, and may I distract you a moment with a video courtesy of Meg Swansen of SchoolHouse Press.

————-

The price of eggs. The price of gas. (There was a bird flu that killed the chickens and there was a pandemic where nobody was going anywhere so the latter went down for awhile because nobody was buying much of it, and then it went back up when they did. Econ 101.)

A million people died in 45’s gross mishandling of the pandemic. Children were put in cages on hard floors and lost to their parents–even the Nazis did paperwork to document who went where, but not these guys.

The stealing of national security secrets.

The promise to use the military against Americans who protest against him.

The agony Ukraine is feeling.

The malignant narcissist with dementia.

The selling off of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Pebble Mine that will destroy the salmon fisheries forever for a short-term payoff, both of which the Biden administration was able to put the brakes on.

The promised mass deportation. The “enemy within.” The destruction of the rule of law, and it won’t just happen to people who don’t look like those voters.

The demonstrators in Texas today holding up signs claiming they now owned women. And slaves. (Those photos will stalk their lives forever. As well they should.)

The price of a box of eggs.

I have had an intense visual image of the eleven remaining disciples of Jesus staring in disbelief as those thirty pieces of silver were counted out one by one into the grasping hand of the betrayer.

Saturday: my brother and his two younger daughters came for dinner at my mom’s. My husband and son picked up takeout from Himalayan Kitchen. (If you ever go to Salt Lake City, I highly recommend. Turns out it’s a good half hour’s drive for my brother but that’s still one of their favorite places, too.)

As we were all sitting and talking afterwards, I pulled out the zipped tote bag and told him, Merry Christmas a little early.

He opened the tote. He saw the extra-large ziplock inside stuffed to explode like a gender reveal party, and cautiously opened it up. The blanket came and came and came and came out of there.

He exclaimed over it; his daughters were deep in conversation with their cousin. They looked up–and went oh wow just like their father had.

Mom said something about me being the only person she knows who wants landscape pictures to knit.

And a great time was had by all.

Making myself knit so many baby afghan rows before each time I go re-check the election returns, watching these early ones in horror. Do people even remember what a President is? How could anyone, anyone vote for a felon convicted of dozens of counts of financial fraud, a man found by the court to be a rapist? The guy who crowed over overturning Roe and then casually mentioned in the past week that he tried to get his second wife to abort? The resulting daughter was out campaigning for him.

The lies, the cruelty. The violent insurrection, fer cryin’ out loud??

Why, why, why?

Airports and wheelchairs, it’s the thing, especially at Salt Lake airport, which has more art every time we go. The three-dimensional fabric rolling cloud formations waving out of the upper walls near the ticket counters? (Surely dust hell!) Those now go along most of the mile-long underground walk between the gates and the exits. And the ceiling now. While the floors have sparkle embedded in the bright light blue, a unicorn’s dream.

My brain does not love the visual intensity. Sit. Stay.

Wheelchair story the first: an older woman and I were being pushed side by side while the pushers, clearly friends, were enjoying each other’s company.

About fifty feet before the end of the tunnel I saw and they nodded to each other towards a toy on the floor so as not to run over it. It was a rubbery pink whale, about 10″ long. With sparkles. Some very small child was clearly going to miss that but what could you do.

We got to the elevators, where a young mom was struggling alone with a large stroller trying to get it to go over the gap. I figured the chances were surely zero but asked her, Did you have a pink sparkly whale toy that’s on the ground back there?

She gasped, looked at her toddler, saw it gone, the doors about to close, and did this flustered mix of knowing she needed to run/being sure it was hopeless/trying to teach her daughter not to throw her toy away while knowing a stage is a stage, they just don’t know that young/what do I do! while holding the door open.

My red-headed attendant (who looked to be about 18) took all that in in a heartbeat and went running. Retrieved the toy and brought it triumphantly back. Yes that was theirs yes that was the one thank you thank you thank you.

I reinforced her toy distraction quota with finger puppets for her two kids.

Wheelchair story the second.

Being at the front of the plane, we did our usual of handing a finger puppet (hand knit. From Peru) to every small child. I sat in the middle seat, Richard on the aisle, from my bag to him to the parents to the children. (With a few to the flight attendants just because they were enjoying this so much.)

One dad had seen us boarding and was ready for it: he held up a tiny tiger we had given him on the flight out and laughed, joy in his face. He still let us give them a new one.

A family came on with kids Richard thought were too old for them–maybe six and nine–and he didn’t want the older child to feel insulted, nor left out if his brother got one. So he just quietly let them pass by. I wasn’t so sure about that, but then I was also worried I might run out so I let it be. There were more kids on that flight than we usually see.

So. We land, there’s the wheelchair, we go up the ramp and the guy parks me and runs back down to help someone else.

There was not a second pusher available just then. The fastest thing was to just push the both of us so the other guy, who was about 80, wouldn’t have to wait.

He did not look particularly happy.

I turned to him as we started out and joked, I’ll race you!

I had said that to the woman in the chair just before the pink whale saga and she’d gone from stressed out to uproarious laughter, with the pushers guffawing, too. From this guy, though, nothing–and I thought, eh, I know what it’s like to be deaf and people expecting you to respond to what they said when you have no idea, and I left him alone after that.

I interrupted apologetically and they had to wait for my restroom break. Sorry–but it had been hours.

When the immigrant who clearly had been working hard on learning English finally got our chairs to the security zone barrier, on the other side waiting were the parents and the two boys whom Richard had thought too old for our little toys, and I got to see their happy faces at seeing their grandparents. Jumping up and down and waving hi excitedly as kids do.

As if they hadn’t just been on the same flight. As if, rather than their having gone ahead from the gate, they’d long been separated. They loved their grandparents and they were happy and all was right in their world.

All this time, the grandpa had never once looked my way nor at the attendant. Not even at baggage claim when helped with their bags. Stern as stone. While throughout all this his wife’s face looked at me from time to time with an expression I couldn’t figure out. I would have said stricken? Maybe? Did I do something wrong? What was all that about?

Well, we had left them out, though I have no idea if they knew that. I wasn’t going to leave them on that note if I could do something about it and I found I still had three last puppets. We were at that point just arrived at the Uber pick-up. The attendant left.

I went to the grandma. I said, We were giving out finger puppets on the plane to the kids–but (quizzically) did your grandkids get one?

No, they didn’t.

Would they like some?

The older kid was edging closer at this point.

Yes!

I gave her two (an elephant two days before an election felt a little weird but what would a knitter in Peru know about that?) and she just melted on the spot. Like she’d been rescued. The kids said thank you, and meant it, the older one twice. They were wonderful.

It wasn’t till we got home that I said to Richard that I didn’t know if she’d seen other kids playing with them and had been wondering why her grands had been left out, and was that what the look on her face had been about.

Oh no, he said. She was embarrassed. Her husband from the get-go had been complaining that this was not the level of service he expected and he shouldn’t have to share a wheelchair attendant. And that was before I’d asked for the rest stop. He was so rude to the guy that Richard had almost spoken up to give him a reality dose that they could simply have left him there for half an hour waiting for the next pusher but didn’t even though he was being such a jerk. The parents with the kids had gone on ahead.

Those finger puppets changed the narrative of the night by giving them all something else to focus on, at least in that moment, and I can only hope for all the ride home.

And now I know why the attendant was so focusing on my smiling face the times I looked back trying to hear him, and he was totally okay with those times I couldn’t quite: he mattered to me and he knew it. The other guy mattered to him, too, which is why he’d gone to all that extra effort for him. Pushing two wheelchairs evenly through a large oblivious crowd dragging rollaboards just ahead, making you have to occasionally brake with all that weight to re-accelerate afterwards, is no small thing.

If only the old guy had been able to see it. Instead, he built his inner wall up high to keep the immigrant out, and not just he but his family, at least for that little while, were made to pay for it.

There was a short cloudburst that began as we were walking from my mom’s to the car and in seconds it went from rain to snow bouncing off the rental as we were getting in it to return it at the airport.

Snow! Not enough to worry about, just enough to enjoy.

We are home. Changing time zones and daylight savings is a strange combination and throw in the effects of high altitudes there and we are about to fall into bed. More tomorrow. But it was a great trip.

The scary hand lost its Halloweenish fabric glove years ago.

But with a new battery installed by my holiday helper this afternoon, it still comes down on whoever reaches into the bowl, and growls or ho-ho-hos or shouts hi. Loudly. Yup, the motion sensor still works after ~twenty-five years.

Our usual number of trick or treaters: apparently zero. Although, I did put the bowl on a folding chair just outside the door at one point when neither of us was going to be able to hear/move fast enough across the house to get to the doorbell for just a few minutes.

Either someone grabbed a couple–

–or a raccoon did.