Quinoa raspberry chocolate chunks. Justifiable chocolate with fruit and a side of protein on the go, right? What could it hurt? I thought a few days ago, looking at the Trader Joe’s bag trying to look healthy.

Buy it once out of curiosity. Take it to the Linger Longer church potluck, where other people can try it once too but not be committed to eating an entire half pound of the dried-seeds-in-your-teeth stuff in order to do so. Try not to let anyone see who dropped the package on the table but do keep it in the package so that when they see it in the store they’ll know exactly what that is.

Nobody came for that last little piece. As people tend to do at potlucks, saving some for whoever comes after them, y’know, being polite.

Even the little kids didn’t raid it.

I looked in there at the end and figured, hey. Good enough.

Yesterday’s yarn purchases. I don’t usually buy chunky, but when you have a granddaughter whose favorite outfit is, to quote her mother, “rainbow leopard sparkle” and you find some Urth yarn like the one on the left, well there you go.

Just got back from celebrating the anniversary of old friends of ours. Their kids flew into town, we got to catch up with them all–I went to college with one of them–and I took the youngest aside and told him,

You changed everything.

I what?

I told him, I argued with that feeling that I should knit for you, going, I can’t knit for everybody who ever compliments my stuff, there’s only one of me and there would be no end of it, I mean, c’mon!

The feeling was so insistent (and he knew the end of that story. It was a vest. A Kaffe Fassett vest, with him at 15 picking out all the colors for it in disbelief as I egged him on to choose more because I knew he wanted to) and his reaction had been so intensely grateful that I’d wanted to be a part of that again. I wanted to knit for other people again. You did that, I said. I’d kept a running list for awhile of the people I had knit for after that and at 182 went, That’s not what it’s about–ditch this. And that had been about 20 years ago.

I thanked him again for changing my life.

His foster/adoptive parents were celebrating their 70th anniversary. Good folks.

She turned into a parking lot driveway while I was going, No, the road is right there! (Up ahead.)

Her: Did you see the turkeys?

Me: What turkeys?

She pulled the car around to where I could see, for the first time I can ever remember, wild turkeys. Right up close. One took a step towards my camera and turned his head: Did you get my good side?

I’m heading out with Nina in the morning to play first day of the Bay Area Yarn Crawl. (Had I ever been to this LYS in Morgan Hill? No. This other one in San Carlos? Never heard of it somehow. Well then we will discover them.)

But first I wound the skein of green Manos Silk Blend that she brought me back from Uruguay last month as, y’know, kind of a yarn vaccine–and because I owe it to her to have it ready to cast on. Pretty stuff.

But I promise you we will succumb to the wool fumes just the same.

I took photos of two dye lot numbers to see if I can match them–you know how doubtful that is, but it has happened before and hey, you never know.

As I sit here remembering back in the days of random phone calls from investor types dialing into our area code and not having the least clue that it was in a time zone three hours off from theirs. …The email I’d sent off to a LYS, including my number. To make it easier for them? To make the inquiry feel more legitimate a reason for them to spend their time looking at all those little yarn tags? I can only guess now.

And my husband waking groggily up at dark o’clock, shoving the phone across that I had not in my sleep heard ringing, and going, “It’s your boiler-room yarn pushers in New York City. They want you to know they don’t have your dye lot.”

It’s been a running joke here ever since.

They were calling before opening the store in order to catch me before I might head off to work. It was very kind of them. They could simply have ignored me, but they were trying to be as helpful as they could as fast as they could and get that info to me so I would know to keep trying.

So let me see what I can do tomorrow.

If I don’t find it, maybe they have more of that Rios in New York City.

This is Before on that leg. (Wait, maybe I did miss a stitch.)

After hasn’t happened yet, I guess because I generally avoid doing fixes while the project is still on the needles. Could use a diagonal add-on(s?) above the eye, too. And that’s really one row too many at the bottom of the shell, but now I’m just being picky, and part of that is a bit of camera distortion from the angle.

The basic turtle, back markings aside, was the most variegated yarn in any of the critters. I’d probably go with more strands and more control over the individual colors next time, but I think I lucked out in how it came out and I like it.

That background is Malabrigo’s Whales Road colorway. The turtle is set against Matisse Blue.

The Bay Area Yarn Crawl starts this Friday. If we can’t have Stitches West anymore, we can make our own, said whoever pulled this idea together and got it started last year. Can’t wait.

Meantime, I took this picture this afternoon, with the needles curling over and hiding the third jellyfish and the first half of a turtle.

Then I kept at it till I’d finished the rest of its eighteen rows (head, shell top, back legs, upper front leg) because I wanted to see it!

Oh. It looks like I missed a stitch yesterday connecting the lower front leg to the body; I didn’t, but it looks like I did. I think I’ll embroider maybe just half a stitch there, maybe a whole, let me think about it overnight, we’ll see.

But the next row is definitely going to start a new fish to the left of that orange trio.

I did not plan on placing them all in diagonal lines; they just swam to where they wanted to go and waited over a month for me to notice.

The San Jose City Hall peregrines had their first egg today. During this bird flu, that is more than the usual cause for celebration.

Two years ago, the male was a second-year floater filling in for the original male just before laying started. Whether he contributed any genes to that one egg or not, we don’t know. He certainly tried. But there was no second egg. (The next year he was fully an adult and there were four, a more normal number.)

Juvenile markings and all, he was so excited at the sight of that thing. He’d never done this before but he was all in and he immediately went and hunted small prey for it so the pieces would be small enough to swallow easily–and, here’s the video, then tried to feed the egg.

Now it’s enthusiasm plus experience. As soon as his mate got up he was right there to get a good look. By the end of the week we should have a full nest and the brooding should begin.

Every step of the way is a victory.

(Former cam crew volunteer here.)

I knit a little extra yesterday, figuring I might not be up to much today. Good thing.

So life took up some of the slack: to my surprise, an apricot kernel I’d given up on pushed out its cotyledon towards the light.

That one had grown a root so I’d tucked its plug into a much larger pot and then it had just sat there for days. I wondered if it was starting to rot?

The move into the sunlight cleared away any sign of that.

It wasn’t a whole spray of true leaves opening all at once along with the first two like the earlier seedlings; it’s just barely started. But they are big and thick and promising. It was in the upper 30s out there the last two nights so I can hardly blame them for moving a little slowly at first–hey, today, me, too.

But that new one is growing now and hopefully will be for decades to come while creating good food, oxygen, wildlife habitat, and maybe someday kids climbing it to pick its fruit when I’m just a story in their grandparents’ memories, and the very sight of it delights me no end.

Reading up on raised planter boxes, red cedar vs all kinds of other options. Metal painted to look like wood? Um… The idea of not having to bend over sounds really tempting, but the idea of making it so the bunny can’t jump in is the real reason I went looking. (The dog next door barked. The bunny popped up in my yard right on cue while I was browsing.)

Thirty inches? Bunnies can jump that high, says he.

Straight up? Not that high, says me, wishing it to be so.

Oh yes they can.

So I thought I’d throw it out there: has anyone bought/built/used garden planters, and do you recommend what you got? Did it keep any critters away? Or would an on-the-ground be a might-as-well.

Plant a tree, bake a pie. (Some time may need to elapse in between.) English Morello tart cherry.

Happy Birthday to my youngest!

They haven’t had one in a long time that I can think of but there was a craft night at church tonight: bring whatever and get together.

I asked the organizer to text me the night of because I wanted to go but I knew I would forget. Which I did. And she did. I thanked her. I wore a mask: I knew she’d just had her last cancer treatment.

A few card tables were pulled out for watercoloring on. Two people were crocheting large afghans. I had my fish. One woman was sewing some appliqué, the project mostly folded up so you couldn’t really see anything but the flower at hand.

I asked to see it.

The whole thing laid out was revelatory–it was a stunning work of art.

She’d had no idea I knit. I know, right?

One friend asked me to spread my afghan out so she could see the whole thing. She knew me enough to say, And you just knit it, right, no pattern? Art is like that: it tells you where it wants to go.

It’s the boss of us, I affirmed. She grinned.

The things we take for granted about ourselves that others have no way to know. Seeing each other’s creativity was what the evening was all about, and a good time was had by all.

Even if I forgot to bring my turtle chart and had to put that off for several more rows.

Although, she would have heard mine, come to think of it.

So.

Dental follow-up appointment. They called yesterday to reschedule me. Got there early because parking’s a bear. Brought just a hat project in a ziploc, since it looked like it would start raining again any second.

I sat there and sat there and sat there. I could hear the folks at work in the adjoining rooms but no one was manning the check-in and nobody had any clue I was there.

After half an hour, another patient came in.

She was elderly. She looked smashing. Her hair had been done, her dress perfect, her makeup demanded you notice her eyes.

Those warm and smiling eyes. And an accent I couldn’t quite place other than to think she’d been here a long time now.

She exclaimed over my very simple turquoise stockinette stitch beanie that had the bottom folded up and the decreasing happening at the top of my needles and told me how pretty it was.

(I thought, Honey, I can brag on a better one than that), and pulled out my phone and showed the latest.

Her mouth hung open in surprise at that afghan. She embiggened the details for a better look, chasing the screen around with her finger.

Then she started to tell me she could knit, even if not a lot and that she doesn’t anymore. “We all could; we were invaded,” as if that should tell me everything.

I was suddenly glad I was wearing a gerdan, but she didn’t mention it so who knows. Either way, Eastern Europe was my guess.

But just then someone appeared who worked there but whom I’d never seen before nor she me. Her own accent was thick and clearly of Slavic origin. She wanted to know who I was and why I was there? Caught herself and backtracked a bit and asked if I had an appointment? But I wasn’t on the books…

She took my name to doublecheck that. Nope–I was off by a week.

I wondered what her experiences had been, too.

I explained that I’m pretty deaf and that I’d handed the phone to my husband when they’d called to make the appointment and I was sorry we’d gotten it wrong. She said that was her on the phone,  now realizing who I was, and she apologized–to which I said No, no, I got to meet you (turning to the woman I’d been talking to) because of this–thank you!

I went home chuckling over the effort life had gone to to get me to finally start to finish that silly hat (typing that knowing it still needs nine more ever-smaller rows. If you’re going to be so close you might as well be so much closer.)

Richard told me a few minutes later, They said today!

Meant to be, then, I told him.

My only regret is that I never got to ask that woman about the country she’d come from and how she’d managed to make it here. All those stories she’d lived through and how she’d come out of it a warm, loving person: I wanted to hear them!

Me, walking almost in the door from Trader Joe’s: I found it!!

Him, meeting me at the door to open it for me (but that’s not where I was heading yet.) You found it!

Last Monday I did some grocery shopping. Wednesday something in the car seemed…off. I remembered a news story some years back of someone who bought a new car, had some raw chicken roll under a seat, didn’t use the car for two weeks and when they found it their insurance company paid for all kinds of remedies before giving up and totaling out the car. Brand new. Replaced. For a chicken.

Thursday I opened the hood and cleared out all kinds of stray leaves, trying to find just where this stupid dead mouse or whatever it was was. Friday I searched the inside of the car yet again. Saturday I gave my friend who’s blind in one eye–oh wait, I thought I wrote about that here, guess I didn’t–a ride home but first apologized that the car had this, uh, problem, and we’d been trying, and I was so sorry.

Well if you don’t find it come back to me and I’ll find it for you guys! he promised.

Sunday parking the car at church we hoped nobody could smell it from outside the car.

Monday we didn’t go anywhere probably because we really didn’t want to. We promised ourselves we would finally find it once the sun got low enough for me to help in the search again. We forgot. And then you don’t go looking for decaying squishy things in the dark, I mean…

He never was sure it smelled mousy, though. I wasn’t either but it was definitely dead.

The next thing I said to him this evening at that doorway was, Remember that bag of greens in cream and garlic sauce that fell out of the freezer in the garage and didn’t get found for two days?

Yeah?

I bought another to replace it so we could finally try that stuff once, at least. I only discovered where it landed because I had a bag break just now and the trajectories led me to this–where I know I looked again and again and again. But there it was. I found it!

Clearly we are not meant to touch that dish, he said as I held it at arm’s length heading towards the garbage bin past the gate, exit, stage right.

He didn’t have to add, So please don’t ever buy it again.

…I went to go title this “At least it didn’t explode” and suddenly…

I told Richard, “As far as I know”…

And put on a jacket, was glad to see it’s not raining yet, and opened the car just to be sure.

It is much, much, much, much better.

Well hello! Are you still a baby? Must be that time of year again.

Cute little thing. Finally managed to find the one yard that didn’t have a dog to bark at it–I’d been wondering what critter their voices had been chasing around the last week or so.

On a different note, bird flu has decimated the peregrine population: they’re talking about DDT-era levels in some parts. The Berkeley Campanile Tower birds are gone, seven Bay Area nests out of ten being monitored by one biologist no longer have a pair defending their territory, and not only that, the usual floaters, ie single ones looking for a mate and a place to claim who would normally happily settle right into such an opening–they’re not there either.

And yet there’s our pair on San Jose City Hall. They’re doing all they can to get the egg laying started soon.

This is about the point where the previous male succumbed last year (or was it 2023?) and a yearling floater took over. Hoping for their resistance to the virus and into the next generations.

I wrote about wearing the huge sunflower gerdan in protest and solidarity the Sunday after the election.

What I didn’t mention was ABT coming up to me, wanting to know if that meant what she thought it did.

Support for Ukraine and made in Ukraine, yes, and I’d promised the woman who’d made it that I would wear it in celebration the day her country wins the war.

That meant a lot to ABT.

Two weeks ago I motioned her over at church. I asked her, Do you remember? and she went Oh, yeah!

I told her, I ordered something and this artist gifted me with the extra of a small gerdan–one that I already have one quite like. Is blue a good color, and would you like it? I pulled it out of its bag, its beads sparkling. (Not all do, but that one does.)

I knew, but didn’t say, how insane rents are in this area and how they can leave a young couple without a dime to spare. One of the perks of being older is getting to share. She got a little emotional at the sight as she took it in her hands.

I didn’t run into her last week so she made a point of finding me today. It matched her blue dress perfectly. It matched her and what she so hoped for for the sake of good people fighting for their freedom, and in the face of what our terrible leaders did to Zelensky this past week, wearing her support out loud felt imperative. And now she could.

And there I was, doing the same: that large loud sunflower was back on me.