Two hundred. A cool two hundred hats so far for Warm Hats Not Hot Heads. It looks like, from what I understand from Ellen, that eight more hats, especially men’s hats, would get us to having the US Senate covered at 100%.

One hundred percent!

I’ve knitted several other hats of late, too, but they were a tad small to run to Congress…

Yesterday morning, dark o’clock:

Me: “So am I going on this trip by myself or are you coming with me?” (Sometimes my husband is difficult to wake up in the mornings. Sometimes, I am.)

Him: (leaping out of bed, suddenly awake at last.)

So we hit the road later than planned. Got to security, had the boarding passes, went to pull out my wallet and ID.

No wallet.

Me, wondering: so is he going to go on this trip by himself, or am I coming with him?

He spared me the sun exposure to run back to the car himself to see if it had fallen out of my purse there. That, and, I don’t run too fast and there truly was no time to spare. I plunked down, just out of the way of the people coming up the stairs there at San Jose’s new terminal as I searched again for the wallet I already knew wasn’t in there because I’d already taken nearly everything out of my purse and my knitting bag.

A clearly pregnant young woman was very sympathetic when I, feeling rather in the way, half-apologized: I was supposed to be going to see my first grandchild for the first time but…

Did she pray for me? I don’t know. I do know that my husband is not the go-to guy when you want a missing thing found.

He found it! (I wish I could somehow tell her to thank her for her kindness, whoever she was.)

The security guy saw him coming back and waved us to the front and got us immediately through his part. Thank you San Jose Airport security.

Remember how I say I don’t read knitting charts well with my head injury, that the x’s  just bounce around? Yeah, and so I headed us to the gate one shy of the one we were supposed to go to. Richard, stressed, read the leaving time there and the relative lack of people and pronounced, “It’s 8:40. We’ve missed our flight.”

I stared at him disbelieving and in my fatigue could only exclaim, in the protest of a small child, “Is not!”

Is not indeed. Next gate. We got there after the boarding line had formed but just before the fliers filed on. Too close, way too close. We are not morning people and it showed.

And from there on out it was all wonderful. I finished Kim’s soft Malabrigo hat in the air and she later pronounced the colorway perfect.  Our son picked us up in his in-laws’ car: his wife had needed a break from the snow and cold and some time to decompress at home, showing off the baby to her friends and family, and so they were blessing the baby in her parents’ ward.

To say we fell utterly in love at first sight, even more than we ever did before via pictures and Skype, would be a vast understatement that anyone who’s ever seen their own child or grandchild for the first time would understand instantly. Parker is perfect. And when he looked in our eyes, his new ones a little wobbly from each other, our hearts were claimed forever and we knew each other as if he had already been in our family always.

Soft words and gentle rocking when he was screaming tired, and he settled down in my arms and drifted, quieting, to sleep. Bliss.

His other grandmother fed us and the other relatives who came and the brunch was beautiful, delicious, and carefully done within the realm of my ability–I can see why our daughter-in-law is such a nice person–and then we were off to church for the baby blessing. Kim waited till Parker was about to be taken up to the stand before wrapping him up in that lace christening blanket I’d brought with me, just to make sure it was pristine in the moment it came for.

Babies being only human.

In some ways.

Kim and her whole family were very generous in letting us have cuddle time, and I remember as a new mom how hard it was not to snatch my baby back to hold mine to myself. She got to see how tenderly her father-in-law cradled and snuggled him, and I loved her observing and learning more about where her own husband had gotten his tender touch from.

After the blessing, with the rest of the service continuing on, my Richard held Parker for awhile and then offered me a turn. Kim’s mother’s close friend, sitting on the other side of me, clearly so ached to hold him too that I knew that as the visiting grandmother the highest gift I could offer her was some of my limited time with him–and that she knew it too, though the only words spoken were a, “Would you like to hold him?” and an “Oh of course!” whispered back with such intense wishing and gratitude.

And then I got to see how much this dear woman loved my grandson, very much as if he were her own.

What more could I ask for him to have in his life? My son married into a good family with good friends and we are fortunate to be gathered into their circle. Kim is just the best.

Her mom fed us dinner, too, we visited, we rocked Parker some more, and then we were back to the airport and on our way. I started a new hat…

I took no pictures. Our son has a better camera than mine and he took many and I am happy to wait to see them. But we will both carry forever the pictures in our minds of that beautiful, beautiful baby boy, surrounded on all sides, as were we, by love.

We walked back again down that long terminal. Exit: stage left. Back to our car in the night, and my door had been caught all day on something in Richard’s haste to get back to me. I wondered if the battery was dead or if the Prius was sufficiently protected from losing power that way. Were we going on this last leg of the trip with our car, or not?

It carried us on our way just fine.

Thing the first:

Last night just around bedtime. Me: I smell something funny.

Him: I don’t smell anything.

Me: Something smells funny; I think it’s more here (standing under the air register in the hall while the heat is blowing.) Do you think the furnace is okay? (Given that we’ve had three die in 24 years here, this is easily worried over.)

Him: (getting out of bed to check) I’m sure it’s fine.

I walk away down the turn in the hall for a moment and suddenly hear behind me, Open the front door!

Me: What? (wondering, why on earth…)

Him: Open the front door, quick!

I run and do so and there he is right behind me, this thing in his hands, running to put it outside on the stone-and-concrete entryway and out in the rain.

Remember that battery pack that didn’t work? He’d tried again to see if he could recharge it after all. I’ve never seen a battery (and we are talking a big battery) bulging all over like a can with a severe case of botulism, ready to blow.

He hadn’t smelled a thing–but he was willing to get up and go check it out.

Thing the second:

As he got in the car tonight after disassembling the scooter in the rain and putting it in the trunk, he remarked, pleased, that I looked far more energetic than last night.

Well, yeah!

I thought, I didn’t have to spend the day anticipating going back across a very busy street and bouncing across the lightrail tracks in the dark and the rain, being low down and out of sight and trying not to be hit by cars while going to my own far across the parking lot, being so cold and soaked–you get a lot wetter sitting than standing–that I could barely feel my fingers, and the basket bouncing right off the wheelchair on an unseen pothole that splashed me and scared me that I might short the thing out while the countdown on the light cycle was getting ever closer, and how do I get to my basket! … And thank you to whoever it was that grabbed it and helped me out, and then I had to try not to be hit by cars in the lot backing out that couldn’t see me at all…

I’d scootered across that lot once after circling in the car for a half hour trying to avoid it, and I knew I had to go back out there. I waited to leave till there would be a crowd going at closing time so at least I wouldn’t be alone.

When I got home and described what it had been like, he went, Nuts to that, he was going  to take me and pick me up right at the door. And he did, and I knew I had no worries. He is *My Hero* (trademarked) and with good reason. I know how lucky I am.

I forgot yesterday to mention another new-to-me vendor that I found absolutely delightful and wanted to praise out loud: Ellen’s Wooly Wonders, with patterns for felted dinosaurs, motorcycles, butterflies, turtles, airplanes, crabs, etc, a new grandmother’s delight and a little kid’s too.  Dreams of orange dragons, in whatever color, came home with me.

My thanks to all the people who stopped me to say hello and for a hug the last two days while I had my head down trying not to cream anybody’s toes but missing the faces above me. Thank you for all the hugs, all the kind words, all the great times hanging out around fellow knitters and crocheters. Stitches West is one of the high points of my year because you all make it so. I hope I returned enough in kind. Lisa Souza, the folks at Abstract Fibers, Melinda and Tess at Tess Designer Yarns–more on that later–Sheila at Ernst Glass, Blue Moon, Malabrigo, Warren of the much-missed Marin Fiber Arts… So many people and I love every one of you. I tell you. This knitting thing: it’s a great life.

And Warm Hats Not Hot Heads is up to 171 tonight. Woohoo!

I don’t use it very often, which isn’t good for the batteries.

Richard had them recharging last night.

I can’t do Stitches West on my feet. I’ve tried. The old head injury effects go into overload in the massive visual presence of the place and my balance disappears even worse and there’s just no way around the fact that Disneyland for knitters equals chairtime for me. That’s okay; there have been many many people looking wistfully at my ride by the end of the day every year.

Richard set it up and went out the door for work; I tried it out.

Dead dead dead. Ain’t goin’ nowhere. Darn.

Jasmin‘s brother Sam, who pushed me last year, was in LA.

My daughter Sam, who pushed me the year before, was across the country.

Well, I *could* try to walk it. (Yeah, let’s see if we can induce a seizure finally after eleven years?)

Um.

I did not call him. I did not text. I didn’t say boo. What could he do? I simply didn’t get myself out the door. I was about to, I kept telling myself, looking at the clock, noting that I’d paid for a two-day ticket, while arguing back at myself, okay, so then, when? How? Use the manual as a walker so you’ve got both hands holding on, at least?

Suddenly there was the front door opening again, and *My Hero* (trademarked) walks in: he wanted to make sure I didn’t get stuck and had it worked no okay he’d wondered if it might not have right he’ll go get that other battery pack and try that one oh yes he’d had it charging too.

You’re home? You did? We do? You can?

He was in a rush to get to work (some days I really really love that short commute) as he unscrewed the battery pack and replaced it. Here try that love you bye gotta run.

YES!!!

And that is how I got to go zipping around Stitches West and have the time of my life among my fellow knitters and friends that I only get to see once a year.  And to meet some new ones. (Michelle, did you see? I was wearing your socks you made me while I was in the hospital.)

I came home to the news that we had gone past 30% of Congress today. GO KNITTERS! Then I read Jocelyn’s post and followed the link in it. Folks, we need gentility, top down, and we need civility in Congress now. If you haven’t yet, will you join Ellen and me and 162 hats’ worth of other knitters in spending a few hours to help get the word out? How often do our few stitches get a chance to create changes for the good for millions of people? Good wool, good work, good plan.

Stitches still has plenty of good yarn left for it. I promise.

(Dad, sitting with the afghan made by my South Bay Knitters group for me.)

Thank you, everybody; so far the news has been I think as good as it could be. Abby’s dad says their family has been buoyed up by all the prayers and good thoughts coming from all sides.

And another thank you, too, to all the knitters who’ve bumped us up to 140 hats. Go knitters go!

And one another thing: the rep asked me to say thank you to my mom.

Who looked last week at how terribly constricted my diet had become after all the blockages and insisted I needed to buy a Vita Mix machine. She raved about the things she did with hers and how fast and how well you could make soup and smoothies and on and on and how much better of a job it did and how perfect it would be for someone with a damaged GI tract…

…It all sounded good till I asked her how much they cost.

Okay, that’s the end of that thought. Right there. NO.  Sorry. Ain’t happening.

We put the folks on the plane Saturday and this evening Richard and I were making a quick Costco run.

Guess what they just happened to have? Just temporarily? (No pressure.)  “Costco Road Show.” We stopped to at least find out about the things; we owed that, at least, to my mom.

The Vita Mix rep said that when he left, come Sunday, the boxes (motioning behind him) would leave too, as he put fruit and veggie combinations in his machine that should never have gone together–I thought–until he poured out samples.

For a woman who can’t tolerate fiber, for whom a dozen cooked peas nearly sent me back to the surgeon, this was incredible. Just being able to look at your everyday fresh fruits and veggies and know I could eat them again was worth it all right there, and for Richard, wanting to take good care of me, even more so. Could I get that same effect out of my blender? No, nor would I spend twenty minutes standing over the old thing every meal to make sure it didn’t walk off the counter while it tried to, fruitlessly. (Ask me how I know.)

So yeah, we bought the thing, and I’m relieved to find that we actually did get a price break to take some of the sting out of it.

I’ll still have to be very careful about fiber content even broken down even so, but still, Mom (shown holding her late mother’s crocheted wool afghan) was right.  So, on behalf of the rep: Thank you, Mom!

The first thing.  Benjamin Levisay and Molly Vagle of XRX came into Purlescence this afternoon; good conversation was shared with a little chocolate torte on the side and a good time was had by all. (Thank you Laura for sitting next to me, laughing off my deafness when I needed that and repeating a few misses for me.)

The second thing. National Public Radio in Massachusetts did a segment today on knitting.

India called in. India and Ellen have been the main reasons the Warm Hats Not Hot Heads campaign actually got off the ground, and it was good to hear her voice as she did a great job of saying what it’s all about and why and encouraging others to join us.

As I type, we’re at 130 hats. That’s a whole lot of people who put down whatever project they were working on to go knit towards a cause that they too felt was important. I think one more and we’ll be at 25% of Congress.  Go knitters go!

The third thing (and why I’m glad I’ve already finished my representatives’ hats). My cousin Jim’s 14-year-old daughter Abby fell while skiing yesterday. Hit a tree. I’ve never heard the highly-unwelcome term “burst fracture” before, but it was two of her vertebrae. (To Amy: T12  L1.) The doctors were, to quote her father, very pessimistic last night.

This morning she felt tingling in her toes and said she needed to go.

And I, both powerless and…not quite entirely, while marveling at the almost too good to hope for that that is so far, knowing that so many others have wished for such moments and never had them and knowing there’s a long way to go, wonder what her favorite colors are. (Just got the answer: purple!)

That, and continuing prayer, I can do.

Kind of a reverse gift of the magi moment:

I offered Richard some chocolate torte. After all, it’s Valentine’s Day (besides, he had just given me red roses).

He passed, not because he didn’t want some but to save me the effort of making a second batch, to make sure I had enough to bring to Purlescence tomorrow.  Maybe there will be leftovers? There are definitely leftover ingredients to work with.

XRX meets Purlescence. 12:30 Tuesday. There will be chocolate. (And, looking in the cabinets, a desperate last-minute run here for paper plates and forks.)

Meantime, Warm Heads Not Hot Heads hat count for Congress: 119. Go knitters go!

My folks arrived home safely and it is very very quiet without them.

The campaign hit 108 hats.

And India started this by wondering if Ellen or I knew the old song that goes, Inch by inch, row by row, Gonna make this garden grow.

Oh yes–I used to play it and sing it to my kids when they were little, all the time, and I used to sing it occasionally with my knitting, only with, Stitch by stitch row by row and riffing from there.

They started playing with the lyrics and emailed me and Ellen happened to start hers off with that same line. I like that.

So here’s what I’ve thought of for WHNHH so far, and I’d love to hear what anyone else might come up with:

Stitch by stitch, row by row,
Gonna let our Congress know:
Got to make your peace, although
There are differing points of view…

Stitch by stitch, row by row,
We constituents are telling you, so…
Work out ways to help US grow
Now you can wear your thinking cap too.

Stitch by stitch, row by row,
Take a stand against the status quo
Speak for me with civility
Take the day, and make it brand new.

Oh, and by the way, you might want to look here (with thanks to Norma for the link). Jon Stewart’s producer. They can’t tell: is this satire or is it serious?

Are knitters serious?

What do you think?

(Oh oops. I was adding the hats not committed yet to individual recipients with the number next to it, which was the overall total, not the committed total. (This reading charts thing…) So we’re up by nine to 103 today, and my apologies for the mistake.)

Phyllis and her husband Lee came by this evening, the last night that they could visit with my folks before they go home, and we celebrated with sponge cake, homemade chocolate sauce (zap dark chocolate bars with heavy cream, making sure to first dunk all the chocolate completely so all of it has touched the liquid before the heat is added so none of it seizes into unmeltable lumps) and homemade strawberry mousse (run random amounts of frozen strawberries, sugar, and cream through the Cuisinart for about ten minutes. Turn your ears off first.)

The puns were flying around in their natural echo-system. For instance. My hubby had been one of the computer scientists working on the then-new UNIX system at DEC. (Anybody remember DEC? You know, the then-second-biggest computer company? The one whose CEO proclaimed there would never be any use for a computer in the home?)

Lee asked something about was it genderified?

Me: Genderally speaking.

And a good tine was had by all.

105 hats. 17.42% of Congress. Go knitters go!

My dad has an old high school friend who lives in the area and they were looking forward to getting to see each other before the folks leave.

She called yesterday; she knew my health situation, she’s lived through her own and gets it (she would anyway, but, just saying) and she had woken up with a cold. She was very disappointed but wasn’t about to expose me.

Well crum.

After making sure today that she herself was up to it, we decided I would drop the folks off at her house and come back later and get them. I’d love to see her too, anytime–she’s a dear woman. But sometimes you deal with how things are rather than how you want them.

I came back at the appointed hour and pulled out a book in the car, picture windows above me where they would be sitting, hoping to be conspicuously preoccupied so they could keep talking if they wanted to. It was a good try.

She came down the front steps with my parents, the very picture of graciousness; I stepped out of the car and got to see her a little bit after all. And then we gave each other goofy air hugs from a distance. She sent us home with leftover mango mousse. Good stuff.

She and Dad can tell you that being nice to others when you’re a teenager (or at any other age) has lifelong effects and brings a joy that is far beyond what any kid could ever begin to be able to see coming.

My father being an art dealer, we spent some of my summers growing up going museum-hopping.

I remember, on one such trip at 16, admiring a gorgeous landscape in a room full of natural Western scenes from the 1800’s, and an artist friend of Dad’s, Nat Leeb, asking me, “What’s wrong with this painting?”

Nothing was wrong with it, it was beautiful!

Look again.

*confused look*

Then he pointed it out: the light is coming from this direction, lighting up this area and leaving that area in shadow–but over here, in this one corner, look: the shadow goes in the wrong direction.  The light also should not have caught that detail; it’s in the wrong place for it.

M. Leeb decided to teach me a lesson on how to draw as we waited for our meals at a restaurant. “You observe for ten minutes. Draw for one.” And then he grabbed the paper placemat and drew a horse by sketching a perfect series of quick connecting-Slinky ovals that surprised me: he was right! It was a horse! Here, he told me, you draw it like this and learn the shape of it before you draw it in a different form.

I knew I was getting a lesson from a master but struggled with my teenage desire to harrumph that I knew what shape a horse was. I had the sense to simply nod and say okay.

My little sister was probably absorbing the lesson too, though I don’t remember: it was where she totally outshone me.  I, being more musical, got the piano lessons from a master teacher; Anne got the art lessons at the Corcoran Gallery in DC.

(Side conversation with the folks just now: Anne rode her bicycle a good ten miles+ each way down the C&O Canal towpath during her summers in high school to get to those lessons. It’s funny what you don’t remember about your siblings that was so day-to-day to them way back when.)

So. Today Dad wanted to see the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford. After the Loma Prieta quake, the museum was closed for years and years, needing millions to rebuild and redo, and now he could finally see it again.

It was way better than the building that was destroyed. The marble walls and high, ornately done ceilings of the new, the rotunda at the center, all reminded me of Washington, DC: the Capitol building, the Senate offices, and on and on. I said that to Mom and she gave me a look of, Oh yes!

I’d seen last summer’s exhibit with my niece, but the place is surprisingly large and with her toddler in tow we hadn’t made it upstairs.

There’s no way Dad was going to miss upstairs. He had waited too long for this. There’s way more than all those Rodins and a few paintings to be seen.

Two Picassos up there! I’d had no idea.

But what intrigued me most was one small plaque: it said that with the completion of the transcontinental railroad–remember, Stanford was a railroad baron, and two of the ceremonial spikes from the joining of those rail lines was in a box downstairs on display–with that new transportation, the land that, as the plaque put it, had belonged only to dimestore novels and Twain and Brette Harte were suddenly open now to artists.  At a time that landscapes were considered the pinnacle of art in popular American culture.

And so they came.

We’d been on our feet a long time and I finally sat in front of my favorite there to wait for Mom and Dad to finish. It was a painting of the head of the American River in California. It was huge and the details were exquisitely done. You could almost feel the slipperiness of the moss on the twiggy brush near the river, the white of a rider’s shirt catching the sunlight exactly so as it filtered between the mountain peaks to burst on the area of greatest interest. There were men on horseback, a burst of cloud at the top of the falls, rushing, falling water that splashed on the canvas, twists and turns of desert plants. The thing was just gorgeous.

But dang if the light didn’t shadow one mountain back there the wrong way. I wonder if I just rediscovered my long-lost artist.

(The Warm Hats Not Hot Heads count: we are now at 75 committed hats for the campaign for civility in Congress. Go knitters!)

We drove across the Bay and up into the beautiful, wooded hills, the reason for the folks’ visit to California: Dad had someone he wanted to interview for a biography he is writing.

It turns out the man’s son was there too, and that the man is himself a writer–and the kind of warm, bright, engaged, energetic 92-year-old I can only aspire to be someday.

He gave us copies of several of his books, waving me away when I offered to buy some, and I, having discovered that his daughter-in-law crochets, wished fervently I had a copy of my own book to share with their family, too.

We had a lovely morning of it, time I for one would never have had with good folks I would never have had the good fortune to meet but for the passion both of the older men in the room were bringing to the project at hand.

I’d driven my husband’s Prius, switching cars with him for the day since we were the ones who were going to be putting on the mileage.

And as we walked back to the car and opened the trunk to put away Dad’s equipment from the interview, there it was: a copy of “Wrapped in Comfort” that my husband had proudly put in there to be ready to show off my work and me at any time. I asked him later and he said, “Oh, I always have one in there!”

I hurried back down the walkway and rang the doorbell one last time.

I knew what I really wanted to give my folks for Christmas, but I just didn’t know how to pull it off. I so did not want them to get thrown in a drawer. I did say what my wish was; Dad’s reaction was, “What if I don’t wear them?”

“Fine,” I retorted, “then I’ll stop wearing mine!”

“No! You need them!”

“Welllllll…??”

And now while they’re here…

I drove them to my audiologist’s office today for them to fit Dad for my old Oticons, perfectly good hearing aids–for someone with better hearing than I have now.

Joan the technician summoned Dad back to make the earmolds and Mom went back with him; I, knowing the size of the room they were likely going to, stayed put with my knitting.

After they were out of earshot, though, I got up.  I went over to the receptionist and told her I wanted to pay for those molds.

She protested, “But they’re not even back yet!” They have to do an impression of your ear canals, send it out, get it back, check the fit, attach it to the behind-the-ears, and only then are you done. She would have told me all that, but I just smiled and said, “I know.” I gestured towards where they’d gone and–she got it. She told me she didn’t know yet how much to charge me for John-the-audiologist’s time for adjusting my old aids to match Dad’s audiogram, though.

Fine, not a problem, we’ll deal with that part later, just, quick before they come out.

She grinned. On it!

Joan told us, coming out to talk to me too when she was done, that the one thing is that the length of the tubing is a question. Yes, John likes to check the fit of everything and Mom and Dad won’t still be here, but tubing or fit, Dad can take it to an audiologist local to him for that last little bit. Or we might just totally luck out and have it come out right.

As I handed her my old aids, she smiled, “Oh, I like these. These are good ones.”

Not as good as my Sonic Innovations, but then, Dad doesn’t have a musician’s ear so he wouldn’t care about sounds being pitch-perfect. (Note that I have no idea what Oticon’s latest might be, this is simply what I had.)

And the thing is: I told Dad these were my back-ups in case my new ones ever had to go in for repair.  And then I told him how much the Oticons had cost.

“Well then I can’t take them.”

“In two and a half years I’ve never had to repair them. ” Then I told him how much my new ones  had cost.

Because by golly, I knew those hearing aids needed to come with the gentle pressure of John and Joan asking if they’d worked out well for him; I knew that if Dad knew I’d given up something valuable to me for him to have these, he would wear them out of sheer gratitude; he’s a good guy.

I told my mom she was going to need patience too with how things were going to change for him–having the world suddenly much louder is going to take him some getting used to, no question about that.

But I remember how, back when my older children were babies and I would start my mornings with a long racewalk before my husband left for work, there was the day after I got my first-ever set where I stepped out my front door in the quiet of the early day.

Only this time it wasn’t quiet.  I stopped dead right there on the doorstep, stunned.  What on earth were all those sounds.  Where on earth *were* they.

Birds. There were birds singing, greeting the new March morning. I hadn’t heard birds like that since age 12. I. Had. Forgotten.

Back home again, sitting down to lunch, Dad suddenly realized, aghast, “We never paid for those molds!”

I looked up. “Yes we did.”

“No we didn’t!”

“Yes. We did.”

Heh.

Fifty years ago and then again today: “I think you need a nap, dear. Go to bed.”

I’m not tired.

“I think you need a nap, dear.”

(I don’t wanna. I don’t often get to visit with my parents, even if I’m trying not to breathe on them.)

“You need a nap, dear.”

Alright… (I’ll lie down for ten minutes and make everybody happy.)

Zonk…. And it did help a lot.

Meantime, I think Parker’s got that Mona Lisa thing down just so.  And Warm Hats Not Hot Heads is at 60 hats! Go knitters!

My folks have nonrefundable tickets and are arriving Saturday, Dad’s got business here–and I’m still sick.  I took Parker’s suggestion and got a bit of a nap today and am hoping that does it.

But at least I got another hat finished!