Sometimes a friend asks the very question you’d been silently asking yourself and instantly there’s your answer, front and center.

I was describing the baby afghan and all the ocean features slowly going into it and my worry that I could never finish it in time.

She considered. “Do your other grandkids have an afghan like that?”

Mic drop.

No. No they don’t. Pretty, and patterned, but solid colored. The fact that the older boys in that family got sweaters with cars and trucks is irrelevant, isn’t it.

And that is why I called three yarn stores within driving distance yesterday till I found more Malabrigo Rios in the Cian colorway I wanted. The baby’s still going to get that bright oceanic blue I love so much–it’s new this year and the shops say it flies out the door.

Unless he comes way early this one will definitely be done in time.

The sea blanket can come along in its own good time and purpose after that.

Michelle flew home yesterday, Constance drove the four hours home this afternoon and the house is very very quiet. Gotta give those belly-laugh muscles some time to recuperate–they got a great workout.

Constance had brought me a quart of honey from her hives. Bee barf, one of my kids used to call it after a biology lesson in middle school. Yum.

The green Malabrigo hat that came home with me from the trip to Salt Lake because it just hadn’t found out who it was for?

That shade of green? It found out who it was for.

Michelle’s flown home–and my old friend Constance arrived.

You know the kind of friend who is kind, who is thoughtful, and who keeps you laughing nonstop? Everybody needs a Constance.

One of the first things she said, was, I want to see my grandtree! She’s the one who had grown up with a Babcock peach, who when I was trying to figure out what to plant told me it was the best peach ever. My family had picked Babcocks at a pick-your-own when I was a kid, and between the two of us I was sold on the idea.

It’s my smallest peach tree but it’s a pretty one.

The critters beat her to the last of its fruit by two days, though; we’ll just have to make this an annual trip.

They bought strawberries and I bought strawberries and the best way to shrink their footprint in the fridge is to puree them. Such a problem to have.

A lemon off the tree, and, strawberry sorbet for the last night of Michelle’s trip!

My site is back up! Yay for the resident computer scientist!

Yesterday, the chocolate, today, the peaches!

A quick trip home for both work and the holiday.

She had two requests: Timothy Adams for chocolate and Andy’s for peaches.

Yes. Yes I think we can definitely do those.

I’d been meaning to get the other half of this finished for some time. It was two strands of splitty stuff and not my favorite to work with, although I always love how it comes out when it’s done.

Yarn: one lighter shade one darker, vintage stash 95/5 silk/lycra, which I bought quite a few colors of when Colourmart had it. Hudson got a thoroughly impractical but gorgeous blanket out of it in neon royal blue when he was born. (And a cuddly Rios one later, which he wadded up and kneaded into his mommy’s side as she held him and then plunged his head into it. Wool for the win.)

In my experience the silk/lycra shrinks a lot in hot water. You do need some heat when washing the mill oils out.

Photo 1: Straight off the needles.

Photo 2: Hours after being scoured and spun out in the washer, still damp. It definitely shrank (note the buttons), but the pattern looks a whole lot better and both upper and lower edges are lying nicely flat.

I promise not to spend the next month waiting to run the ends in. That’s the easy part.

Dad had a folder he wanted to show me while I was there. I’d never seen it before.

Carefully preserved, pristine inside the plastic, were sheets of lined paper with carefully near-perfect handwriting. Just ever so slightly faded from age.

Words had to come right to where they lined up at the right, which meant that there were hyphens announcing ‘to be continued’ plunked into the strangest places within those words. But the penmanship!

It was a five (or was it six?) page report on Thanksgiving by a third grader one hundred years ago that her parents had clearly been proud of and had kept.

The budding author was my grandmother.

And on the cover of that report was a drawing of a turkey.

I did a serious double take–I thought at first Dad had saved an old drawing of mine and why was he showing me that in the context of this and it totally threw me a moment. But no, it was his mother’s.

My grandmother the avid knitter, who ran the county chapter that knitted for the troops during The War in hopes that somehow that would bring her three sons home safely and sooner. (They all made it back, though one was deafened by the sounds of the warfare the ship he’d captained in the Pacific had gone through.)

I loved to draw as a kid and I can still pick out something I drew any time I see it all these years later. The inside covers of the books that belonged to me all had to be so adorned, with enthusiasm that sometimes spilled onto other pages, too.

To be charitable, you could at least figure out what the thing was supposed to be, and judged against some of my peers I really wasn’t too bad a doodler. But there was no great talent there.

My little sister on the other hand is a gifted artist–truly, go see for yourself. Yeah. Me? Only with yarn. I have forever been in awe of what Anne can do.

But I am absolutely gobsmacked that as a kid I drew exactly like another third grader whom I knew as the sweet elderly grandmother I only got to see a few times in my life before she was gone. The proportions, the angles, picking up the pencil here and moving it there, that careful control that thickened the line while trying to make a perfect half circle at the top of the head. Even the wattle was my turkey wattle.

Twins. In childhood and, with a nod yarnward, adulthood. Sixty-one years apart.

I know I forgot something, I always do…

Everybody needs an Aunt Bonnie. A wise and kind and gentle soul who never said a single negative thing about anybody and who was always the first to volunteer to do whatever you needed for whatever reason.

Who met my uncle when they played in the symphony together.

Who taught me by her patience that I could laugh off–or at least not get mad at my big brother for egging on his cousins to tease me with him.

The cook who taught me, as a child visiting from across the country on that trip that yes, I actually not only do like salmon, I love it and would never forget how the sunshine lit it up as we ate and how it made her cooking so pretty.

The woman who laughed when she remembered my first anniversary–and I didn’t, till she reminded me. (Speaking of which, next week…) It’s been an in-joke between us for 38 years.

The aunt who did this.

There will be music. There will be memories. There will be cousins. There will be love and laughter and more love and I can’t wait to see them and celebrate her life with them. We all have so many stories to share.

I suppose we could have Richard guest-write my blog while I’m away. (He worked from 8:15 am yesterday to 11 pm, dinner aside. Work is crazy right now.) Or not. It’s just an overnighter. See you all soon.

Grateful on this Father’s Day to be blessed with such good ones in our family. Love you guys. You rock.

The weekly veggie box came.

He saw the bag and asked, Chips? (Why would they sell…? You’re not a corn chip fan, why did you…) He was about to reach for some. I headed him off, shaking my head.

Crickets.

??!

Only later did I see the word Chirps at the top, but yeah, those are chips made from a high protein source that happens to be, um, bird-friendly, other ingredients aside. One bug per chip.

The Imperfect Produce people were trying to close them out because they were getting close to their sell-by date and during the brief weekly glance at the offerings I’d thought, well that sounds curious.

And then spent the week wondering whether that was really such a good idea. It’s easy to be adventuresome when the adventure’s far away. Now that they’re here I…I…

I find that I just do not seem to want to open that bag.

It is safe to say I don’t think he’s in a rush to, either.

We’re going to a potluck dinner next week where I’m sure they could be the talk of the night. Better bring a chocolate torte–no, two! And peaches from Andy’s!–to make sure they forgive us.

“You know what bugs me about you guys?”

*crickets*

The puns, they await. We may never live this down….

A delayed flight, a late night, but let me just say I had one last skein of deep teal green Malabrigo Mecha that has been trying to jump the queue for a week, telling me I needed to make a green hat. For whom? I have not a clue. And yet it kept nagging at me every single day.

This evening I finally realized that if I’d just given in and started the silly thing this morning it could have been done by now, so now it’s 6″ along. Not done but close.

Then we collected the kid and I’m calling it a night.

Ah, they’re so cute at this stage…

And Happy Birthday to my Dad! 

So USGS’s geologists were open to questions.

Leading to the BBC’s best-ever headline: Don’t Toast Marshmallows on Hawaii volcano, says US government.

On the other hand, if you want to go to London with 499 of your closest friends (at the minimum), then you can have basaltic rock melted into your own personal steak-charring lava. With, afterwards, (honeymoon story alert) marshmallows.