So many people to knit for all the sudden. Two weeks. No idea re favorite colors. The result today was my spending way too much time dithering: this yarn? (Digging through bins.) No, this? Started to wind one–no, that won’t do, not soft enough. My friend Robin sympathized with the dilemma and I guess that’s all I really needed: some other knitter who knew well what it was like.

And with that I grabbed the odd skein of royal baby alpaca that I’d knit two congresswomen’s hats out of , declined to be bored with it, and started in on it, figuring red was good for a lot of people and supersoft was great for pretty much everybody.

No way will I be able to do all that I want to do in the time that I have, but I’m far happier doing what I can do.

And Michelle at last saw a raptor above the house today. My camera zoomed outside.

Kids called home.

We remembered that we were kids, too, and called our parents–and our daughter-in-law, to thank her for being such a good mom. We video-chatted baby noises and I love you’s at Parker.

A hummingbird hovered outside the kitchen in the afternoon, seeing the red and pink roses on the table and trying to figure out how to get through the glass, wanting its Mother’s Day feast–so close.  Too far.

I discovered, over at the Washington Post, the ospreys’ pictures: DC and the Park Service had begun to build a bridge for a nature trailway over the railroad tracks near the Anacostia River.

High? Isolated? Above the river? Perfect! And so the crane operators came to work one day to find a nest of those fish-eaters at the top (that’s an awfully straight stick, is that a piece of rebar in its talons incoming?) and there it will be till the young have fledged. That delights me no end, that they were trying to make nature more accessible and nature got in the way by making itself more accessible.

Meantime, Michelle greeted me with hot chocolate with extra chocolate melted in, first thing in the morning; later, she cooked the dinner. She called her father for help with the veggies and he came chop-chop. She made a blueberry and raspberry tart from scratch.

I’d told them not to buy me any presents, though, because I already had a really big one.

Two of my sisters said they were going to fly across the country to celebrate our dad’s 85th birthday in a few weeks–it would be a few days early, but you do what you can when you can, one arriving from Atlanta, the other from New York City.

Then our sister who lives near Seattle said she was coming, too, then.

Then our brother in New Jersey.

We’ve been close but far too far for far too long. And so now I’m coming too. I can’t wait!

Michelle’s home, Michelle’s home!

And she came home by way of visiting her brothers for a few days (they live about an hour apart), reporting from my aunt that her granddaughter Abby loves loves loves her purple cabled hat. (Abby told me too.)

It was Michelle’s first chance to meet Parker: she swoons over his adorableness and his fine manner of pronouncing “Goo” towards all things agreeable.

We were talking away in her room this evening, catching up, and in the conversation I mentioned hey, we should consult a dictionary. Got a paper one in here? (We looked at each other and laughed; we’re so old school, you know.)

Sure, Mom, to the right, top shelf up there.

Okay, I knew immediately what was coming but it didn’t occur to her: I grinned, went over there, stood on my tippy tippy toes, the ends of my fingers brushing but barely as I tried to grasp the bottom of the book’s spine. No can do.

She giggled as she realized she’d forgotten that small detail–Mom’s short.

Give Parker another ten or twelve years and he’ll tell me I am too. I can’t wait!

Meantime, he is demonstrating for the Pappa-razzi how to do this hat thing in the proper royal style.

A blessed and happy Easter to all who celebrate it, and a lovely, happy Sunday to all who celebrate.

In today’s patio news: you remember yesterday’s was curses, foiled again. And that Pam vegetable spray had apparently become tasty as well as entertaining.

I discovered that my parchment (porch-meant?) baking paper, which is silicon-coated, is quite wide, enough so that a single long sheet could wrap all the way around that pole up and down. Tape of course wouldn’t stick directly to it, but I could wrap it tight around corset-style, half a dozen places. Worked just fine. You could see the squirrels checking it out, grumbling under their breath.

In other news.

A line for Don’s list: I wondered if morning was ever going to come, and then it dawned on me.

I was trying to figure out the math on a pattern today after being awake from 4-6 am. Note to self: don’t spend an hour whining that you don’t want to get up–when the bag breaks, the cradletime will fall, get to it before it does skin damage. But you don’t think clearly at that hour.

Richard drove my tired self to Purlescence tonight. He’s a peach. (And while there I finally got something useful and working right out of my day with that pattern working out the way I’d envisioned; it felt good.)

Penny was there, hoping I would show up. When I did, late, she stood up, wrapped her new shawl around her shoulders wanting me to see how absolutely perfect it was, and then wrapped her arms around me in the most heartfelt embrace. She told me that when her Richard had brought it home last week, “I was just…stunned!” And she hugged me again. And again, a few more times. She looked radiant.

I know I shouldn’t need that kind of gift in return for knitting something nice for someone. But I have to tell you–it sure helps me cope with the dumb stuff better. And it sure motivates me to go knit for another someone else.

I do have a fair amount of yarn squirreled away to work with.

A house cleaned, baking done, presents bought, a birthday celebrated: angel food cake! Phone calls coming in. One, unexpected–looks like things’ll be okay.

A Skype chat waving at our son and grandson, four months old today.

Clara the mother peregrine nesting on City Hall has deemed her eyases old enough and warm enough now not to need her cuddling them in under her wings anymore and has taken to standing sentry through the dark hours on the ledge above them–but tonight she is tucked down in the nestbox for the night close in with her babies. It’s a comforting image.

And while we ate spinach lasagna and Ataulfo mangoes with strawberry puree and yogurt and then that angel food cake–oh and potato chips: it was a birthday, after all–

–with us out of sight, the squirrels pushed the Pam-sprayed foil they must have just ripped off the post right up to the back door. Thanks for the slip-n-slide, we’re all done with this.

Hey!

I hadn’t seen June’s daughter Mariel in awhile, and she had her hair done up somewhat like her mom’s used to be; I did a doubletake when we saw each other. It was as if I were walking in and seeing (almost) the June I met 24 years ago. I saw someone else a few minutes later looking like they were having the same reaction.

She marveled afterwards as memories were shared at how she’d laughed… But of course she had, we all had. It was our June they were talking about. There was Hank, who’d had eight kids while June had only had one; “You have too many grandkids and I don’t have enough. I’m taking yours!”

And so June would have one over for a day with toys and attention one-on-one. The kids loved it. June loved it. They loved each other.

And I’d had no idea I had competition for my chocolate decadence cake. I’ve been making mine from its original iteration and beyond since 1990. And she never told me?

Hats were worn. Two of the women who’d helped June feel special with her new scarf that I blogged about? Theirs were twins, classic pillboxes with black netting and a great big black bow.

And to my delight, the woman sitting behind me during the service was my kids’ old middle-school art teacher. She asked after them all and I showed off pictures of my daughter-in-law and my son Richard holding Parker. She knew Kim’s parents and grandparents and was thrilled at the small-worldism that Kim had met and married her old student.

Her late mom, Virginia, an accomplished organist, used to tease him: if he goofed playing in church, she would tell him, “Great improvisation, Richard!”

So maybe that keyboard hat I doodled and improvised and came up with was just the right one to run into Virginia’s daughter with. It’s all good.

I’m putting in a picture of Parker; June loved babies and she was a friend to his great grandparents and all four of us grandparents.

There was an earthquake today, the 105th anniversary of the great San Francisco quake that ripped the entire San Andreas fault and was felt from Oregon to Los Angeles to Nevada, but this was only a 3.7 and I completely missed it. A baby quake. I had to laugh when I heard about it; that’s supposed to happen tomorrow, not today–tomorrow’s June’s memorial service and we had one during Al’s funeral. Can’t let Al beat her at this waving goodbye with the chandeliers stuff.

It took me the longest time to find this post–I couldn’t remember what pseudonym I’d used for her.  Jo.  I stole her photo with her new hairstyle from her memorial page.  For all the time I knew her before that, she wore it in a high bouffant which, in her later years, showed off her leopard-print hearing aids better.

An email went out today: June had always loved to wear a nice hat, and wouldn’t it be cool if we women all showed up wearing hats in her honor. Oh honey you bet.

June Darby, the first woman to get an MBA at Stanford, passed away two weeks ago, just shy of her 90th birthday. She is missed. And I am printing out that old post to give to her daughter, thinking of that bouffant white hair and that old, classic, muscle-car Mustang of hers and how she laughed and laughed at the doubletakes of the young men pulling up alongside her at the light who suddenly didn’t want to drag race after all.

(Parker saying Gooo! Qiviut! to the baby in the mirror.)

1. Today there was a newly-fledged Oregon junco, the little bird’s colors pale and its landing bouncy and uncertain. What seemed to be a parent, a tad larger and rounder, flew down a small space behind it. (Mother! I can’t be seen in public with you!) Not coming to eat too, but just keeping a careful eye out as the little one hopped around a bit on the box, found the food, and scooped it up rather open-beaked.

Good job, well done, honey, and they turned in tandem and the little one followed his mom back up into the air a split second behind.

2. In case others don’t know why the federal Tax Day isn’t till the 18th this year.

On April 16th, 1862, with the Emancipation Proclamation still eight months away, Abraham Lincoln declared slavery over in Washington, DC, paying $300 for the freedom of each one.  Your big government at work. It became a holiday in the Capital, and, to quote the Washington Post, “By law, local holidays in the nation’s capital affect tax deadlines the same way federal holidays would.” Most states changed their date to match.

April 16 being a Saturday this year, DC’s holiday is being celebrated the 15th.

3. I spent a lot of time winding yarn today, and found myself thinking, if I’m going to wind merino to have all ready to go then I just have to wind that qiviut too. I can’t let unwound hanks ever stop me from diving in at the right moment.

And so I got out the bag of 50/50 qiviut/merino from cottagecraftangora.com. As each delicate strand passed through my fingers, I realized that soft as these felt in skein form, actually handling the yarn was a revelation. Wow, this really is what I’d hoped for.

But I completely did not expect that it would also tell me in those minutes playing with my eyes and my sense of touch what pattern it wanted to be among all the lace swatches I’ve toyed with and what story it needed to tell, a story I love of people I love. It came to me, it took me by surprise, and it was and is going to be perfect.

Now I know. All I had to do was let the yarn come closer to hear it speaking its own language.

Parker could tell me all about that one.

I know, it’s a sheep shot. But that sheep–always raising a racket, always chasing after those little birdies. I tell you. He was a baaah’dmutton.

The knitting: I started to cast off, stopped, switched to a different size needle and tried to undo those first few kid-mohairy stitches. I could just hear Natalie and Nat King Cole’s famous duet: “Unfroggetable…”

And then there’s LynnM’s description of my backyard as San Franserengeti. Love it.

So. The ends are run in. It is blocking, and like lace always does, it went from looking like not all that much to absolutely glorious.  It’s finished!

And on a wildlife note: I’ve been taking the main birdfeeder in the last few nights, putting it back up first thing when I get up. Trying to discourage the squirrels. They can’t get much but they can shake some out if they go at it sideways and they get a real pinata party going in the early mornings.

So last night I pulled a chair out from under the picnic table and set it to the far side of the thing so I could step up to reach.

When our kids were little, my husband set up a hidden timer on the TV (the few years we owned one so that I could have Sesame Street on while cooking dinner.) The idea was, they could only watch under supervision.

We got up one Saturday morning to find a certain small child had pulled his pillow off his bed, pulled out the knob on the TV, and had gone back to sleep, baby blanket up to his chin, waiting for the show, any show, to come on.  He was snoozing away when we came in the family room and saw the test patterns on the screen. This may have been a factor later in the non-replacing of the decades-old TV.  (Ahem. Test patterns around here are made by me now.)

This morning there were rows of finches on the branches tied by the pole, facing left towards the empty spot, waiting. And facing to the right, with empty air between them where the food should have been–a small black squirrel. Perched on the top of the back of that chair. Staring, just staring at that spot, refusing to let even my coming around the corner deter it, fervently willing what it couldn’t have anyway to reappear.  Pulling its tail around it for a blanket in the brisk morning air, needing a pillow to complete the scene.

I made sure to spill just a few seeds for it when I wasn’t looking. Just a few.

(Ed. to add.) Speaking of scenes: if you want to see some really cool bird photos, you’ve got to see Glenn Nevill’s site.

1. The little silk chemo cap I made arrived where it was going and I received a note from my beautiful relative along with a picture of her wearing it. She made my day.

2. I wrote a little while back about Sue Nelson and XRX’s fundraiser to help pay her medical expenses: they were raffling off their Great American Afghan, a part of their company’s history, in hopes of her being able to continue her experimental treatment for her cancer.

The winner of that raffle was announced tonight. And Angela Tennant, the winner, had one request.

That the afghan be given to Sue as a comfort and a get-well wish, helping her feel warmed in body and spirit.

I don’t know Angela Tennant, but this I can say: tonight she declared herself a friend to us all.

And today there were four healthy eyases eating up a storm. Clara the mother peregrine seemed to be methodically feeding mostly one, then mostly the second and on through till all were falling over sleepy. Then she scraped up the gravel to create a berm for extra warmth on one side, the weather having turned cold, scooted them carefully underneath her wings, and took a rest, too.

I had a conversation tonight with a friend whom I’ve known since junior high, who now lives in the town where we lived during our first job after grad school. She said something about taking her dog to go swim in the local lake.

Lake?

A road I’d driven a thousand times was named after that lake, but I couldn’t remember an actual lake.

She thought I was pulling a junior high stunt on her. So I described my old route to pretty much anywhere from our house in New Hampshire.

Then I went to go do my treadmill time for the evening, and it hit me. I HAD turned left rather than right and driven the other direction on that road–once. I didn’t get very far.  I don’t think the whole thing was paved going that way, and what pavement there was was something you could only find in New England-type weather: there was a yellow sign early on warning “Frost heaves.”

This is back when we were just starting our family. I puzzled over how frost could have morning sickness.

And then I saw the huge boulder in the road. Not on the road–in the road, coming up out of the pavement right smack dab there in my way, bursting out from underneath, taller than the undercarriage of my car. It was at a blind spot where there was barely room for two cars to pass even if that thing hadn’t been there, and highly dangerous.

And so I always drove the long way around to get to the other end of town. I never saw the lake from that road.

Wait again–it came back to me. My friend Dottie Peyser had had that lake in her backyard, near the end of that long route around; her place was such a gorgeous spot of the earth. She ran a smocking guild once a week out of her home, and in those baby days I smocked then like I knit now; she was older than my folks and we were great friends. And what a view she and her husband Bill had out back!

I saw Dottie knitting once at our meeting and teased her about it and she said something to the effect of, well but she was a knitter too, and once you’re a knitter you never get over yarn. You always come back to it.

She was right, of course.

I wrote to them after we moved here, checking to see how they were doing. The post office returned it for insufficient address. I wrote on the envelope, by now already fairly marked up: Dear California postmaster. This is going to an old part of a small town, where *there are no street numbers* assigned. The mailman there knows everybody and their house by name and by sight. Please deliver.

They did.

Dottie passed away; Bill had a  heart attack and called me to tell me he’d survived it, and that she was gone. He wanted to know how his semi-adopted grandchildren (ours) were doing.

That was 24 years ago. And somewhere, I still have a picture of my oldest, at three, grinning hugely with their teacup poodle in her lap and her arms around it.

A chance mention by someone from junior high about her dog. It brought so many good memories back after I took a moment to reflect on the treadmill.

And it also got me thinking. I never knew that road went along the other side of the water.  How many things do I miss seeing? Even if I can’t do sun, even if it has to be close to sundown, I need to get out in nature all I can. Walk in the redwoods. Splash in the cold edge of the ocean. Make it so I never, ever forget a lake again.

Happy Birthday, Michelle! The sky threw confetti flakes on the day of your birth in celebration!

Yesterday and today were General Conference, wherein members of the Mormon Church can listen to their leaders speaking. One of them, Jeffrey Holland, said that they do not assign topics nor coordinate talks between themselves, rather, they each pray for guidance and for their listeners as well as themselves and take it forward from there.

It’s interesting, but it is a bit of a knitting marathon while we watch four two-hour sessions together over the ‘Net over the two days. Yesterday’s got that Malabrigo hat finished.

Today’s, a new chemo cap for an in-law. I’d forgotten that in my stash was some Rowan Pure Silk DK tucked away, bought on closeout at Purlescence, the only way really I could afford it.

I got it about a year ago, well before her diagnosis, on the grounds that I had no pure silk yarn in my stash, there are a lot of allergic people in the world, and at some point it could well be exactly what I needed even if I had no particular reason for it just then. The color was nice but it was going to be for someone else. There were three skeins on the table, and I hesitated; two seemed the right number for no reason I knew. Three would make a shawlette but that just didn’t feel like quite…somehow…

Two it was.

I can usually talk myself out of that sort of unplanned purchase, but this seemed important.

And then I simply forgot about it.

I found them recently, totally surprised at what was inside the bag–where did I?  Oh! I remember! And I had an allergic in-law whose hair and recent chemo round had not played friends.

And yet Thursday I again did not remember that silk; I grabbed the Malabrigo on impulse while wondering what I was forgetting, and ran out the door.

Had I thought of it then, the Malabrigo hat would never have come to be, and I’m very very grateful it did.

So now tomorrow, just as soon as it would have been anyway, one new silk hat will be in the mail to that good woman to cheer her up amid all that’s going on right now. We talked to her between Conference sessions; light lavender? She loves light lavender!

And meantime, in the entirely silly news department, the new and obnoxious leader-of-the-pack squirrel I mentioned that taunted the hawk taunted me today: all the others know, you do not touch Feederfiller’s feeder and you do not climb the wooden pole next to it. I have them trained.

But this big newcomer not only leaps at the feeder, shaking out just enough to encourage it, but today it hung onto the pole at the jumpoff spot, marking and announcing its territory for all to see that it and it alone claimed this prize.  Mine! Sunbathing vertically right there.

It kept its eyes on the other side of the pole away from the house. That way I couldn’t see it. It was so proud and so sure this was so that it utterly ignored me as I opened the door and raised the supersoaker.

Can you just hear the screaming tantrum of THAT’S NOT FAIR!!! as it tore down that pole and across the yard and didn’t come back the rest of the evening? While another happily took its place and, with perfect black-glove manners, gleaned falling seeds from the birds above for as long as it wanted?

A comment from a friend about patience prompts this.

My brother, years ago and well before he had his own family, told our mom he couldn’t see himself having six kids like she’d had; he just didn’t have the patience.

Mom stared at him and exclaimed, “Where do you think I GOT it!?”

I am here to tell you, he did just fine. (No, not six, but it was the whole future parent thing he was wondering about being good enough for. He’s a great dad.)

When you’re new at something, becoming really good at it can seem unreachable.  Pick up a violin, figure out which hand holds the bow, go play in the orchestra? But even Elizabeth Zimmerman had to knit her first-ever stitch.

Come to think of it, I know a lot of musicians–people who know what it’s like to spend years getting really good at their craft–who are natural-born knitters.  Reading musical notations is a brain exercise of translating from squiggles on a page to finger and hand movements.

Knitting patterns are simply a second language to the hands. Fluency comes with practice.

He answered the phone. “You want me to hand it to her?” And then he continued listening, and then talking, and then finally held out the phone, telling me my doctor wanted to talk to me.  Acknowledging afterwards she’d wanted to talk to him first.

Because apparently I would give too cheerful a spin on things.

Busted.

But no! Really! I woke up with a temp of 99 and able to stand upright this morning for the first time since this started. (Just don’t push it too long.) I guess all we had to do was buy that blood pressure meter to make my bp stay up enough. (Gotta love that $1.62/ounce breakdown on that price. Doesn’t everybody buy electronics by the pound? So, how cheap would that make an Ipad2…?)

Note in the reviews that there were some complaints that the thing read too high. Note that some of those reviews are answered by others gently saying, you need to read the instructions. Palm up…

And the best? Who knew 5.5 mm rosewoods were so heavy, but, I got about 400 stitches knitted tonight. It felt like I was reclaiming a part of myself.

As the phone call was ending, Richard was going, Ups and downs, ups and downs.

“Did he say ups and downs?”

Yes he did. But I’m ready to stay at the ups.