After the scouring to get the mill oils out. I get to tell the new parents that it’s already been washed in water too hot to touch.

The answer to the lace pattern pulling the edge pieces upwards after the cast-on: run in the ends only through there, and then again from the other direction. Weigh them down, add the bulk, it’ll straighten them out and make them stay straight–and they did.

And while I was doing that I worked on the back of the join areas to tug down anything sticking out and it worked. Nice and straight now all around.

I didn’t get a good picture of any of that but I did manage to capture the damp afghan in direct afternoon sunlight.

On a political note, should you be interested, my cousin Jim, formerly a Republican and definitely far to the right of me, had a few things to say. 

Turns out, all it needed was for a Great Big Corporation to put me on hold long enough on speakerphone.

It’s not exactly how I’d do it next time but it’s pretty darn snuggly and good. Note to self: I needed to add a pair of plain rows before going into the lace pattern for the separate edging pieces. That’s obvious now and I should have seen it.

Now to go scour the mill oils out in hot water. I will not, however, run it through the dryer and totally fuzz it out–that’s for the parents-to-be to mess with (or not as they choose), I want to present it at its best.

Note to self: two strands dk Cashwool from Colourmart, size 5.5mm US 9 needles, 183 stitches, 51.5″ wide by 62.5″ long after rinsing but before scouring in hot soapy water, and it took 1125 grams (not quite two and a half pounds) to make. My swatch promises it will not shrink appreciably even in the dryer.

(Note: If you click the Show Items: All button in the upper left on the Colourmart page, you can see the sold-out Lavander (their spelling) color that I used to check against the Violet that’s in stock. Mine’s lighter.)

The cousins have been swapping stories, and will do so in person tomorrow night, informally, and I would be there in a heartbeat. But the $600+ for a next-day flight for one person just defeated me.

One memory was from two brothers who are very tall like John, who always wanted to get a t-shirt like he had.

It said: No I don’t. Do you play miniature golf?

John sent me this selfie, looking up, and it took me awhile to figure out what seemed so odd about it: it’s that I always saw my 6’7″ cousin from well below. The perspective was so different.

His father had Parkinson’s with dementia and his mother was becoming frail; he took them into his own home, and when it became clear that that was a full time job now he quit his to take care of them.

He never married, but his father is why my parents met: our dads served Mormon missions together across French-speaking Europe right after the war. Dad later went to Utah to go visit his close friend David, and David’s little sister heard an unfamiliar voice across the house and ran a few steps back to her room to dress in something nicer and then Mom came back out and met Dad.

Uncle David and Aunt Bonnie met playing in the symphony together, so music was an important part of their and their childrens’ lives. John played piano and French horn.

Uncle David died a few years ago; one year ago, I flew into town for Aunt Bonnie’s funeral.

Everybody wanted to thank John for all that he’d done for them and everybody wanted to rally around him in his loss–what do you do when everything is different now.

He wasn’t one to say much. But if you talked to him you knew he loved you. Period. Everybody. I just got off the phone with my older son who said, Yes, I saw him at Grampa’s funeral in October and we talked for several minutes and he was just the nicest guy.

John mentioned to me about twenty years ago that he was allergic to wool, although, other fibers seemed fine.

There was a cousins-only get-together after the service, a reunion for our generation. I asked John when it seemed a good moment for it if we could step into the other room where the noise level wasn’t quite so bad for my hearing.

He, a bit quizzically, followed me over there.

He nearly cried when I pulled out a keyboard for his head. Baby alpaca, silk, cashmere: no wool. I’d remembered. He was intensely grateful at being thought of, at being seen. He exclaimed in the rawness of his loss, “She was my best friend!” We held each other and I wished I could make it better.

I had no idea from where I lived that that fog of grief never lifted for him and that the depression was spiraling him so far downward. I would have done anything, we all would have. I was stunned when my brother called with the news today. It is unfathomable that my beloved cousin John, the one whose kindness and empathy were why I named my son after him in hopes of raising a man as good as he was, is gone from us.

He had lost how to love himself as much as he loved each of us.

I am gutted.

She’s four and a half months, but gestationally only three and a half. So their showing us surprised me. How is she rolling over that early?

But she is. She’s going to move mountains, that little one.

Someone else got me remembering back when…

I was a new mom, doing the grocery shopping with my first baby sitting in the cart; she was just a bit over a year old.

A woman I’d never seen before and never would again came up to us exclaiming over how cute she was and reached out and felt up her blonde curls and asked me if I’d permed it?

I was too staggered to think of the perfect comeback till much, much later:

So did that mean she thought my baby was a bottle blonde?

Ten tall clumps of green that, a hundred years later, would become a fairy ring of redwoods towering above. She grew up in the redwoods, she knows every stage well. A single tree to each side towering alongside the height of the inner section of blooming bougainvillea, then a matching row of those clumps again.

It all sounded good in my head.

I botched I don’t even remember what on the first clumps and so since I was going to have to rip it out anyway, I took it off the needles and spread it out to see if the width matched my gauge swatch while I was at it.

Wow. No.

Well, then, okay, eight clumps.

But then the flowers were going to be too close together. At that point I’d frogged three times and the baby’s due date was looming and it was getting late that night and I didn’t want to think about it, I just wanted the clumps to stay done this time and to ditch the frustration and get the thing finally past that point. So I did. With seven repeats across.

Which is why as soon as I’m done with the fifteenth repeat (might make it sixteen) I am going back to that beginning and snipping a few rows below the line of purl stitches and working the strand carefully out across to drop the bad part off while leaving enough yarn to go back and cast off from.

And then–this is the hope right now, anyway–after a minor blocking to make sure I can get the sideways to match the lengthwise, I’m going to knit two pieces that look like the sides and sew them on to frame the thing all in the same pattern. Fallen redwoods provide a great deal of life in the forest.

Or I could keep it simple and rib the live stitches upwards at the top and downwards from the bottom or just skip all that altogether and leave it plain. Eh. We’ll see how patient I feel at that point and whether the baby comes early.

But that mismatched bottom–it has to go. It kinda hurts to look at, it’s so bad.

With a built-in game of peek-a-boo and a sister to play it with.

They’ve had their (allergy-friendly fake) tree up since just before Thanksgiving because Mathias was declaring every pine they passed “Christmas tree!” when they moved to their new state. Whether he remembered that phrase and concept from a favorite book or somehow from last year I don’t know, but in Washington, that’s what the pines all are. He said so.

I’m not quite sure what he’ll make of it when theirs comes back down till next year.

We were on FaceTime and their box had just come. With assurances that everything was wrapped (other than the figs stuffed with peaches stuffed with honey from Andy’s I’d wangled in there at the post office on my way back from his farm), Sam opened it up.

Ooh! Bright! Shiny! Colors!

Mathias took each red or gold one out in delight and had to be reminded not to tear them open yet–so he didn’t. But he put them under the tree, he put them in another box, he toddled off with this or that towards his room, he crinkled and wrinkled and made fun sounds and giggled.

And then he decided it was clean up time. So he put them each back in the box.

Then he took them out and played with them some more and stuffed some in a different box again.

Then he put them away back in our box, only now they were overflowing and there was at least one extra whose wrapping paper sure hadn’t come from our house. But you put away your toys, so he was doing that every time he decided it was time to.

The baby needed attention at last and so we signed off.

A little later a picture popped up on our phones: chocolate, butter, sugar. Mathias was helping his mom make cookie batter and that’s as far as she got before she had to confiscate his shirt before what had missed his face got worse.

I so love two year olds!

Here’s Sunset’s recipe and pretty pictures.

And here’s what my daughter came over and made with me this evening: using TCHO’s 81% for all of the melted chocolate and with peanut butter in the filling. We used Earth Balance because of her dairy allergy, and (quietly) if they came out this good one could only imagine what butter would be like in them.

Like bite size pieces of chocolate torte, is how she described the cookies. Portion-wise, you could almost not feel guilty.

The older grandsons were doing batting practice on an otherwise quiet day at that facility. Note the baseball that is a blur to my camera in the moment of being hit.

The 14-month-old wanted to be a Big Boy just like them and Grampa decided he needed attention and distracting. As they paced and chatted in a cage no one else was using I went to go snap their picture.

We were at a facility near the border.

I suddenly realized this image was going to stick with me for a long time. At least Spencer had his Grampa to hold and comfort him.

There, last week, next to the sugar plums I came for for my mom because she told me last year that they reminded her of her childhood and she loved them, those and his slab extra-ripe dried apricots she raves over made it easy to decide what to get her, and they warranted a trip to Andy’s Orchard. Not to mention his persimmons were ripe.

There were samples of this other fruity confection, too: no fancy packaging for them, just a plain plastic tub and they’re not listed online.

I thought I was going to put the two tubs in our Christmas stockings, since there’ll be nobody home but us this year. Hah.

So. My husband’s on vacation and we were munching on figs stuffed with dried ripe peaches that Andy’s had mixed into a thick paste with honey and orange peel into the most perfect texture and flavors and then topped with chopped almonds. Healthy, guilt-free, and oh man they are just achingly good.

I said with regret, When these are gone it’ll be a year before we can buy them again. (I didn’t think till later, if we even can. Harvests and products and employees and recipes change.)

A few minutes later it was, I think I’ll go to Andy’s… and he was cheering me on.

It was 1:30, about the latest I like to head that far down that freeway on a workday, so I took the one last box of Christmas presents that needed to be mailed so as to stop by the post office on my way back rather than doing it first. It was all ready to go.

I got to say hi to Andy, I got to see the lady there who’s been so helpful this whole year and she was wearing purple this time and it perfectly matched the purple cowl waiting hopefully in my purse and she was so knit-worthy and so thrilled.

Then I got to do something, as I was heading out, that I have never done in my life.

I walked behind my car towards the two peacocks (oh they show up from time to time, I was told, but I’d never seen them there before) and gently waved my arms and said, C’mon, boys, I need to back up here. Move along.

First time I have ever talked to a peacock.

They circled back towards my car. Come on guys.

I guess they knew where the good stuff was hiding.

Got in, backed up very carefully, and forty-five minutes later on the easier reverse commute got to the post office–and had a moment of truth.

Why yes. Yes I do love my kid. And yes that particular kid and her husband would love those. No I don’t have to hog them.

I bought a new roll of tape then and there, the clerk sliced the old tape open, I wedged that plastic tub in where it needed to go in all its unwrapped glory and she re-taped the box and slapped the shipping label on and tossed it into the nearby bin. All I could do was hope the tub stays closed in there, but I think it will.

Mother of the Year. You can just hand that award over right now. Mine.

Somebody’s big brothers had batting practice and he wanted to play, too.

Coming out of there, there was a busy street with three of these old trees in a row planted in the center divider.

And they were loaded with persimmons. Hachiyas, as far as I could make out from the distance, ie, the kind you don’t want to eat until they’re as soft and sweet as loose bowls of jelly barely held in by the soft skins.

I love Hachiyas, and I know a lot of people around here who don’t because it’s too easy to have the side away from the sun have a bit of that unripe banana puckeriness right in the middle of the bite. You have to wait till they really are ripe. Which they are about now.

But can you imagine sitting in your car at a red light, along with the guy behind you and the guy behind him, while those orange softballs go plop on your paint job? And all the raccoons, possums, and skunks that would be drawn to the middle of the street in the night? I was surprised there wasn’t a flock of crows caahing away there; they certainly do around the tree in my neighborhood.

I’m picturing a guy with a shovel and three close-outs from the nursery at the end of bare-root season who maybe didn’t have a yard of his own so he just planted them where they would benefit everybody. Right?

Plop. Plop plop plop plop plop plop plop.

I just want to know: who pranked their neighbors’ future?

Wait. Maybe they’re all that’s left of a long-ago farm?

Photo from later that afternoon, after his big brother’s game.

Saturday late brunch at IHOP.

To our right: two grandmothers, possibly even great grandmothers–they were clearly too old to in any way be the mother of the six or seven year old girl with them, who had a nice dress on.

When there are two grownups talking and you’ve eaten your food and they’re not done, it gets boring fast for a kid. She was trying very hard to be good on her special outing, though.

We were hoping to get the littler ones fed and done in not too much time ourselves with a busy day ahead.

Peruvian handknit finger puppets for the grandkids, three more for those women and their child and you should have seen their faces light up. They so much gave me what I hope for when I offer those to strangers for their kids.

There had just been no way I was going to leave that little girl out when my own had theirs to play with. A pink bird to go with her dress, after getting their okay, I had just the right one for her.

But it wasn’t enough distraction for one little guy: Spencer had had a bad night and his morning wasn’t going much better.  He wanted–he didn’t know what he wanted or how to begin to say whatever the words were to describe it but he was determined to announce he didn’t have it. Crayons, paper, food, everything got that emphatic arm sweeping with fingers splayed that small toddlers do to send stuff to the floor.

Except that, at the big table past ours, there was a family reunion going on, about ten people all in their 50s and 60s, and they were swapping stories and do-you-remember-whens, laughing, laughing, laughing: so much love at that table that just echoed around our section of the restaurant.

He started to pay attention.

Finally, Kim headed out with the kids; since we didn’t all fit in one car, Richard and Richard and I took a moment more to finish up, and then it was time for us to go, too.

But standing up and taking the first few steps away, I hesitated.

I managed to catch the eye of one of the women, and then they all turned to me a moment, love and curiosity just radiant in their faces.

I told that beautiful African-American family, You guys are SO happy, and you made our tired, cranky baby happy. Thank you!

That just totally made their day.

Like they had made ours.

I was holding the string to the Happy Birthday helium balloon and 14-and-a-half-month-old Spencer wanted it. And so I gave it to him, pulling it downwards to his height and helping him grasp it better and playing boppity boppity bop a bit with him.

I had to grab it back again and again for him as, in his aunt’s immortal words at about six months older than he is now, “The balloon down fell up.”

Next thing you know, our shy little guy half threw himself out of his tall daddy’s arms towards mine, to our surprise but I caught him in time.

My kid grinned at me: He doesn’t do that for most people. He’s pretty shy.

Today, I played one-on-one with a ball with him and balls are his very most favorite thing. I played it at his level, and this is one little boy who dearly wants to be able to do so the way his older siblings do.

Then I want to give a bit of equal time to kid #2 who had challenged me to a game of chess. And let me tell you, for a six year old, Hudson is really good at it.

Suddenly there was Spencer with his first word as far as my experience is concerned: a firm, “UP.”

Up he instantly came because you don’t pass up on a chance like that.

We had to distract him from demolishing the game, as one does.

The two days went past far too quickly and a great time was had by all and now it’s like, where did everybody go?