Project #5 may be a reject. Let me think about it awhile.

Project #7 I think the end is going to get frogged and redone. It reminds me just a bit too much of back when I used to sew rather than knit for a few years out of my life and I wore out a seam ripper. (Didn’t know you could do that.)  I want this one just right after all that work.

Project #9 is blocking.

Project #10 is 2/3 finished.

Project #11 is being avoided at all costs and I’m thinking of skipping straight to 12. Stop me if you catch me doing that.

I have one cowl that I actually knitted for me, and as I put it on this morning I remembered her.

I had knitted it nice and dense and warm and soft to wear against the unaccustomed cold of snow and high elevations as we buried my mother-in-law in the Rocky Mountains ten months ago, a heathered dark charcoal for the occasion.

When I go off to church wearing one of my handknits, I like to prepare myself to be willing to give away whatever it might be in the service of anyone who might be in need of it, right then, on the spot.  You never know. Sometimes you get a chance to come back later with something knit just for that person you found or found something new about; sometimes you only get the one chance, and when the reason to give is that strong, I have never regretted it. It’s always been the right thing to do. I’m a knitter, I can make more, but I can’t make more moments. They come singly.

Wait–I like that last word with it. It fits both ways.

So it was with a little bit of hesitation that I reached for that cowl this morning. Nobody who would be there would remember my mother-in-law by it, but the reach of my knowledge is so failingly human. I put it in the hands of the Father.

But it was okay to just go ahead and wear it. And so I did, all through church and back home again.

And I thought of my mother-in-law again as I safely tucked it back away after we walked in the door.

Just before we left I saw a big swoop of striped tail and I scooted down on the floor so I could see high up into the olive tree. I get to see him! On Thanksgiving! thought I. How cool is that! I made sure to blink big blinks so I wouldn’t look like I was challenging him nor a predator, y’know, basic social graces from a raptor’s point of view.

The hawk was totally cool with that. Coopernicus relaxed, preened, wagged his tail a bit as he settled in comfortably, raised a foot to rest a moment, and basically said hello. Blessings of the day to you.

A few minutes later he was on his way and then so were we, to where towering redwood trunks surround all.

The little up and down and up again dip in the road where the Loma Prieta quake broke it all those years ago. Incoming, it seems like we always reminisce a moment about back then before we continue beyond.

Aunt and uncle, our niece and nephew, us, four grown cousins who grew up in that house with three spouses now and five little kids–seven when the last showed up after spending dinner with their other set of grandparents: helping, laughing, stirring, cooking, laughing, wiping, scrubbing, laughing, serving, eating, laughing, washing, playing, the little fireball of a toddler in pigtails happily demanding “Chase me!” and her ten-days-older much more reserved cousin who looked at me with big eyes when I said his name: how did *I* know what it was? They were both a month younger than our Parker, and I hugged the bright red stuffed toy we knew well and then gave it back to the chasee, not quite three, who was delighted that her beloved Elmo got attention too.

The eight-year-old, big sister to the reserved little boy, was herself a fairly quiet one, but she smiled and looked in my eyes and quietly took in the measure of me and found me good when she found there was a chocolate cake made in her name and safely within the range of her allergies: the shared blessing of perfectly normal treats. Her aunt made dairy- and egg-free rolls, too, and the blessing of not being singled out, just, pass the rolls please? Would you like some homemade nutella on that? (Nobody did, I don’t think–not spread on anything, just simple spoonfuls sampled serenely, that they definitely did.)

And a good time was had by all.

We know how lucky we are.

And we are very grateful.

We do the chocolate.

Homemade nutella recipe here, the best one I’ve found so far: http://www.browneyedbaker.com/2013/02/21/homemade-nutella-recipe/print/

Chocolate torte recipe, my own, as always, here: https://spindyeknit.com/2010/03/may-the-fourth-be-with-you/

Cranberry sauce recipe: one cup sugar one cup water one 12 oz cranberries (or a whole pound if your bag is that size–hey, who’s counting), bring all to a boil and then simmer for a minute. The more skins that pop, the smoother the sauce it’ll make. Thickens as it cools.

Annnd… I checked with Aunt Mary Lynn while the tortes were in the oven, just to, y’know, verify she wanted one this year like every year.

She has an eight-year-old granddaughter coming who’s allergic to dairy and eggs. Did I have a no-eggs version?

Can she eat coconut? I asked; I can look, and I could make a ganache with coconut cream for hers.

Yes! That sounds wonderful!

And so, chocolate Depression Cake, and I remember the name and history from my 1952 Betty Crocker cookbook, created when butter and eggs were hard to come by when my parents were kids. Vinegar and soda to make it rise. Recipe here: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe-Tools/Print/Recipe.aspx?recipeID=18061&origin=detail&servings=8&metric=false  I skipped the chocolate chips for fear of milk contamination but I’ll make up for it with that glorious topping.

The tortes are cool, the cake close to it, the nutella’s in the fridge and the cranberry sauce on the stove just got turned off. Ganache batches next.

I think I’ll sit down a moment.

But I can just picture a little girl, old enough to really enjoy chocolate and to have already been excluded from participating in a whole lot of food-related events, with a glorious chocolate cake made just for her and just as good as anybody else’s. I’m really looking forward to that.

Wishing everybody a very happy Thanksgiving.

…And we have heat. For the first time all Fall, real heat. The fan kicked gently on, warmth wafting down, lovely, lovely.

And then the smoke alarm screamed bloody murder. DANGER! DANGER!

Okay, that’s pretty funny, actually. I hit the timer on the thing to quiet it while one of the helpers apologized that new furnaces often do set them off like that just right at first.

The alarm kept going, adamant. Huh. Oh–it only turns off for the kitchen sensor, not the others, Richard reminded me later. Oh okay.

I told the guy, reaching up to my ears, “Well, *I* can turn it off but I don’t know that that helps you any.” (Actually, I’m not sure he had any idea I wear hearing aids.) I opened the windows  and it went quickly silent. They had it on high to test it and between the competing air flows that furnace showed it was definitely up to anything going on outside.

One skein Finito superfine merino in Cereza paired with a few grams of black sparkly cashmere. One soft little cowl for Joe’s wife, worked on while he worked. If ever someone had earned a bit of warmth…

I’m remembering a reason to be glad the furnace is on the roof: when we were building our first house, I don’t know if it got encouragement from the crew that was perturbed that I’d pushed on them on their overdue project? “Will the house be done by Thanksgiving?”

They slowly turned in unison and stared me down.

Finally, “WHICH Thanksgiving, lady?”

I never smelled it before then, but somehow it got in there before we closed on the house the Tuesday before the Day of the Turkey.

For our first year, every time the blower kicked on, five or ten seconds later and there came our natural asthma treatment: skunked.

——

(Conversation just now: Me–Did you turn up the heat?

Him–Yes.

Me, disbelieving–Weren’t you warm enough?

Him–Yes, but I wanted to experience the heat.)

(Second picture does the color better. Richard went, Oh, that’s soft.)

Richard at 8:40 this morning: “They’re here.”

And so we rushed outside to capture video of the green crane for Parker; he would have been in heaven if he’d been able to watch it in person.

But it was brisk. The temperature dipped today, and inside, four layers and wooly knee socks and the space heater just weren’t quite enough; I debated pulling the other one into the room. I wrapped a warm scarf around, felt like a kid in a poofy snowsuit in New Hampshire, and tried not to let it get in the way of what I was knitting. Brrr.

Joe and crew kept going till close to sunset and I listened to them hammering away up there, hoping to finish the work tomorrow before it starts to rain. Now *that* would be cold. Our rain always comes packaged in northern ocean.

Just before they left, the mailman brought a completely unexpected padded envelope. I looked at it, puzzled, and it seemed to be something soft in there. Huh. I hadn’t ordered anything…

I looked at the return address and exclaimed softly, very pleased, Oh, Heather! Having no idea why it was there or what it was, but I did definitely have some idea of who she is. Yarn?

Heather is someone whom I’d emailed with for years before the day she, having finally made the trip north to Stitches, stood in front of me grinning and waiting for me to read the big name tag hanging at about her belly button. You know that moment when how you picture someone without even realizing you were doing so collides with the real-and-here and it’s really cool that they’re really here and you have to blink a moment to readjust the brain?

You’re HEATHER!

…Prefab yarn, hon. I cried in delight and took it out and wrapped it around my shoulders, marveling. At the gift. At the immediate difference it made. At the timing. Look at that! (Totally echoing our friend from Fiji yesterday.) I’m finally WARM!

It’s beautiful, beautiful, thank you, Heather B! I will try to live up to this wondrousness!

It suddenly dawned on me: the stove. The fan for it is retractable, lowering down behind it, and for 20 years I’ve been closing it up on winter nights.  It staggers noisily downward and then the little flap flips over at the end to cover it to be one extra layer attempting insulation: crashing and bashing and then this graceful little, Blip! One of its charms.

This fall for whatever reason it wouldn’t budge. Broken or just unplugged? I kept thinking I ought to check it and fix it if it was something really simple like that and yet every time I went to do that–to cut out that source of cold fresh air so that that end of the house wouldn’t be quite so chilly in the morning–it just didn’t feel… some part of me, I recognize only now, was adamantly pushing back No No No don’t do that, loudly enough that I never did get around to checking that plug behind the pots and pans underneath.

Who knew.

Midnight last night. We were just settling in.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Thirty-three hours after we disconnect the furnace?! After we air the house out all day?! (Oh wait–I opened the windows in all the *other* rooms–talk about CO-stupid.) NOW it tells us.

“Maybe the unit’s telling us it’s going bad–that one *is* old,” opines the hubby. Adding that he’d tested them to know their sounds and the real alarm is a straight-on siren.

So I unplug the little monster, I open the windows in there, turn the space heater to full blast, get the CO monitor from the kitchen, and and plug it in instead.

It stays blissfully silent. (Um, and the bad one was quiet in the kitchen. Details.)

Meantime, Joe saw Richard coming out the door to leave for work this morning and stopped him where he was, standing gently guarding a moment. They shook hands–it was the first time they’d seen each other during this job–and Joe pointed out the tiny bird at his feet lying on its side.

It had hit the window, “But we saw it move, still,” and he didn’t want any further harm to come to it if possible. He was just making sure it got noticed and not stepped on. It had been fleeing crows, and as a matter of fact, they’d seen a big hawk with a meal and the flock of crows harassing it trying to steal it, and this little one had scrambled to get out of their sight. (Joe got to see my hawk!)

Richard explained that if you just left it alone a half hour or so, and if the crows didn’t notice it, then it might well recover and fly off. Sometimes they would be blinded by the impact, though; we all hoped not.

I had joined them as the conversation was going on. Went back inside a few minutes later, got the phone and got its picture, pleased to see it sitting up now. Tiny, tiny little thing. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a California gnatcatcher before, or certainly not up close. They come an inch and a quarter longer than a hummingbird–with gnats on the main menu, yeah.

About a half hour later I wondered if I could get a better photo–but it saw me coming and it flew over and into the tree, dodging quickly away from me. Safe! While I thought, it saw me! It’s not blind!

One of the last things Joe said on his way out the door at the end of the day, in a tone and shaking of the head of, but of course you didn’t, was, Did you see what happened to the little bird?

I told him, and in great relief he exhaled, OH good!

(Edited to add, if you didn’t see this story, don’t miss it. A Make A Wish wish went viral and 11,000 volunteers turned out to cheer on Batkid as he saved Gotham (San Francisco) from evildoers. The Batmobile. The damsel in distress tied to the cable car tracks. The kidnapped mascot, saved at the ballpark!  Even Lois Lane came out of retirement to write the story, Clark Kent leading. So cool.)

I saw Joe walking past the door and I apologized to my parents on the phone, who said no, no, go talk to Joe, and as I hung up I opened it.

Joe. You saved our lives. And I told him about my headaches and their rarity (and Richard had them too), about the spike in the red blood cells that had made no sense to the doctor till I told her, how she’d confirmed that absolutely, yes, we had carbon monoxide poisoning.

I said, You came right away to give us that quote and you wanted to start right the next day. Even if I couldn’t afford to pay you all of it that soon. You insisted we needed to get right to it, and you did. You saved our lives.

He looked like he might suddenly burst into tears and turned with a quiet, Let me go check on that unit.

And he checked on that unit. He opened it up and got a really good look all throughout it. Burn burn burn in there, there, and there. Rust rust rust. Metal parts that should be solid moving easily (he took a video). Now we knew what the black stuff appearing out of the vent in the living room too high for me to reach was: the thing was burning mad and it blew a gasket. Totally gone. He showed how the carbon monoxide had come to be specifically directed towards and pushed down the vents instead of dissipating outside.

There’s no way to make that thing safe, is there, I asked. But it was not a question. Those pictures were the mechanical equivalent of my colonoscopy five years ago.

He thought out loud things he could maybe do, not wanting to pile on our costs, knowing how tight things were…

But your conscience wouldn’t let you do that.

It was not a question: it was me verbalizing his face.

No. No, he nodded, agreeing fully. It just… It isn’t…

We were both thinking out loud, word by slow word.

Then, let me talk to Richard to confirm, but I know what he’ll say (and he did). We replace it. It’s the right thing to do. We knew we would probably have to. Don’t worry, it’s okay, Joe, and thank you for worrying about us. But we need to do it, so, we need to do it. We’ll make it work somehow on the money end. (I wrote a chapter in a manuscript as the footsteps tromped around above my head earlier. It’s something, at least.)

So since we can’t take down three trees and part of the fence before Monday to make way for Joe’s lift, and given the tilt of the driveway, there will soon be a crane in front of our house. Parker would be in absolute heaven if only he could watch it in person. We’ll have to take a video.

So this was nothing like that.

Except in the ways that it was.

After two winters of paying obscene heating bills, knowing that to replace the damaged ductwork on the roof would cost us a minimum of $6k (hah! I wish!), as I was paying a utility bill I told Richard what the next one would be. And the next.

The next day, he bought the first of our two space heaters after resisting them for so long for fear of fire hazard. We set it up near the thermostat to blow across our bedroom at night and turned the furnace, which had been set to 66, to where it simply wouldn’t come on at all with that thing near it. But we didn’t quite turn it off.

And the headaches I’d been waking up with every single morning went pretty much away. I’m not someone who gets headaches but very rarely. It was such a strange thing. I’ve had no energy, but I ascribed that to having recently had the flu.

Joe and his crew came today. Eight thousand dollars (so far) and there will be no new flooring before the grandchildren come, I’m afraid, but two space heaters alone does not cut it with a toddler and a by-then crawling baby around; when it came down to it, we had to have honestly working central heat again. Ours seemed to just blow cool air, never warm–better than what was outside, but.

They had about half the ductwork ripped off the roof when the city’s recycling truck came by–hey, that works! Metal is metal, you guys want this? And so they loaded it on, there you go, everybody wins.

The first contractor had left nice shiny metal ductwork up there, years ago, and the birds (we heard the woodpeckers going at it) saw either a mate or a competitor, don’t know which, but they left many many holes in it. We hired someone to fix that; he wrapped it up, ignoring the holes, oblivious to the fact that it was full of rainwater inside and that the HVAC unit now had to heat that water to get anything to us. Thus the thousand-dollar heating bills that were just killing us.

But when the crew got all that stuff down from there, Joe inspected the now-disconnected furnace.

He came down from the roof, sobered, and knocked on the door. He showed me the pictures on his phone. This is what’s there. This is the rust. This is what it means.

I stared at him, speechless; it took me a moment to explain to him, in a voice that surprised me at how small it sounded, why that hit so close to home.

It had been blowing carbon monoxide through our vents.

My doctor said this evening that yes this explained the abnormally high red blood count two weeks ago, absolutely. Richard’s still not sure; after all, the alarm in the kitchen was still plugged in. But we don’t know how much was venting or where.

And last time this happened my CO count was way higher than his. It just was. I always assumed because of the pregnancy, though I wonder now. (I have been grateful all her life for Michelle’s good health…) But then, come to think of it, at least re this time, I’m in the house all day and he’s not.

My head is directly below one of the registers as we sleep. We had only had the furnace on at night. For Richard, a headache is an ordinary thing but for me, not at all. We did have a CO alarm at the far end of the bedroom–and I went and checked it after Joe left: it had been knocked ajar from the outlet it was plugged into, no way to know when. We’d had no idea.

My sweet husband two weeks ago went from no, I’m never getting a space heater, to, sure, dear, it still worries me but I’ll get you one. And a few days later, the second for the other end of the house.

It is November, we’ve had night temps in the low 40’s and even below, and not once have we turned the furnace on all the way to see if it could actually make the house feel warm. We’d talked about it, how it might be a good way to test to see if this was when we really did finally have to call Joe, but somehow it just felt like…don’t…don’t even want it on…

Lo these many years ago we were all hospitalized with carbon monoxide poisoning from a coal-burning stove in New Hampshire, and these headaches had reminded me of that only not nearly so bad–but to the point that I had said something out loud to Richard about it reminding me of back then, and of asking a firefighter friend at Kathryn’s party Saturday about some of the calls he’d been on. It seemed pure hyperbole to my own ears to even make the connection; after all, that time I had fainted not from lack of oxygen (as far as I knew at the time) but simply from pain beyond what my body was willing to stay conscious through. I woke up when I hit the floor but couldn’t really get off it.

This one was just a nasty headache. It made it hard to sleep, too. (Just like… Oh wait…)

Suddenly the pain of paying for Joe’s work doesn’t seem so much of one.

Get an alarm if you don’t have one. Check it. Be safe.

(Edited to add, the doctor says it should take about three weeks to work its way out of our systems.)

Twenty-five years ago, my sister had her fourth son, and maybe he would have been the youngest. But Nicholas did not live through his first day.

Garrett, her oldest, (he would have been I think seven?) remembered that they had always had a birthday cake to celebrate and welcome the new baby home into the family when his little brothers had come along, and asked if they could have one to celebrate Nicholas, too.

It was only right.  And so they did.

Anne had another baby boy after that, and then, still not quite done hoping for a girl, the surprise of twins: identical, you got it, boys.  “Well I know how to raise boys,” she told me happily–and she adored my girls as if they were her own, to my and their great gratitude. Every child needs a non-parent adult who thinks they’re just the best.

And I thought the world of her boys: they had great parents. They’re great kids.

It is 11/12/13 and so it will always be easy to remember and figure out how old they are: Garrett and his wife’s twins arrived today, Anne’s first grandchildren, early but apparently healthy. Layla Jaymes, 4 lbs 4 oz,  and her brother Nolan Nicholas, 3 lbs 5, absolutely beautiful, both of them. The boy seemed to be waving the paparazzi away, as one friend commented on a Facebook photo, and I thought, Anne finally gets her girl!

Nolan. Nicholas.

It was only right. And so they did.

You’re knitting sparkles? That just seems so, so. He searched for the right word.

Are you worried about the visual intensity of the sparkles? I asked him. (Thinking of this from the car accident in ’00 that the neurologist said severed the connections between the visual and balance centers of the brain, causing brainwave spiking.)

No, he offered, it’s…not you. I mean, it’s like–acrylic!

I laughed. No, it’s cashmere, it feels like cashmere, (my 76T is 80%) although the strand is thin enough that I’m pairing it with other things, playing with color matchups. I figure the first project cost me about $2 worth of yardage (link goes to the mill ends of their mill ends) to add it in.

I’d wondered how I would like working with this stuff–it’s not shy, that’s for sure–and I put off trying it out for a long time; he’s right, it’s not my usual. But, but, I’m really liking it, actually. It surprised me too.

Small world moment of the day: when we moved here, the neighbors’ kids were all in college or their 20’s and we were the young family starting the neighborhood over.  And so it is that we knew the parents of a woman who grew up in the house two doors down who is now one of Sam’s co-workers in Alaska.

Sam and all our kids used to play with their cat. We brushed his fur once and I spun about an 18″ length out of it, plied it with silk, and knitted a 1×2″ rectangle hanging from round toothpicks with pearl beads glued to the ends to look as if it were still being knitted (it was bound off and the end glued into a little ball). I put a pin backing on it. The neighbor loved it and kept it on her fridge as a memento after that beloved orange Persian passed on.

Yeah. That neighbor.

Meantime, I was invited to something a year ago in December that I thought was going to be indoors and it was not, and I learned just how much warmth the generous cowl on my wooly sweater added when I needed it (said the woman who left her jacket home by mistake.) I’ve had a soft spot for a good cowl ever since.

I think I’ll leave the current project at one loop because it seems enough as it is. I think.  (I mean, qiviut.) But I’m curious: how do you like your cowls? One loop or two? Twisted or not? How long?

We Skyped with the San Diego kids last night: Richard-the-younger was going dressed up as an NFL ref. Parker was going to be a football player, his mom cheerleading him on.

And Hudson, sweet child, was to be the stuffing in a then-limp fuzzy fleecy football they held up to the camera.

A side note: I had to go to the doctor today to get the wax out of my ears that had been stopping up my hearing aids. Lots of it.

The male nurse asked me what I was knitting as I put it away.

It took half a heartbeat to realize that no way was I going to take his time to explain what a cowl was. I simply said, A scarf, and hoped he didn’t notice it was pretty darn short for that and I was almost out of yarn.

(Two hours left of) Happy Halloween!

Edited to add tonight’s newly-arrived photo, and wondering if the football survived the diapers. Cousins! (Wow what a difference three months make. Hudson, left, here, Hayes on the right.)

John leaves tomorrow. Too soon. So I’m grateful for the distraction of a new Hudson and Parker photo, meantime.

And the visit is half over and going far too fast. We took John and Michelle out to dinner and then she had us over for pie and it is a wonderful thing to see one’s adult children enjoying each other’s company so much.

One of Michelle’s roommates, it turns out, who came home while we were there, is the sister of a friend of mine for whom I knit a baby hat in Malabrigo–late, and the baby was late, and after I got it to the mom-to-be she finally had him the next day. I think they were at the ten days point by then.

I told the roommate that I had apologized to her sister for holding up his arrival.

She laughed a good one.