The cowl was just the right color for her. Cashmere and 14-micron merino: soft, soft stuff.

It came out the wrong gauge. The last time I used that yarn I was trying to make a hat that was Alaska windproof and I guess my inner yarnmemory wanted to keep it that way. I thought, well, at least it will stretch out a lot when it hits the water.

It only did a little. Assessing it honestly, it was pretty but it was pretty small: it needed a petite person for it to be flattering on, which she is not. And it was very warm, again begging for someone who needs it that way.

So it’s been sitting around for a few weeks, a little lost. Last night I felt like, I need that done and I need it done now. I found it and ran the ends in and put it in my purse, along with a project in progress to make up for it that was partly that same blue.

Which my intended recipient totally fell in love with. Malabrigo in the Whales Road colorway for the win! Deep-water blue, a little purple, a little teal, perfectly blended, in a much lighter yarn. The gauge and size are coming out perfect and she is very happy about it.

Meantime, very much to my surprise, John E showed up from New England to visit his mother, introducing his wife to all his old friends who were still around.

When we moved here in the late ’80’s, I was asked to teach the twelve-year-olds. Of which there was, for the first six months, one. Him. I asked if there was a manual for the class? I think so, the person in charge answered, but never got back to me despite being pestered a few more times. Well alright then I’ll just have to make do.

So every Sunday I had about 35 minutes one on one with this kid, trying to teach him what it means to try to live by the light of the love that seeks to guide our steps toward blessing others. That we make mistakes. We own it and apologize. We learn. We improve. We go on.

It was hard, since the planning and delivering were ad-libbing, but it was easy; he was a great kid.

I remember one time when he came home from college, watching him interacting with others at the ward Christmas party I think it was, and with my own kids being young I said to his mom standing next to me and with quite a bit of pride of my own directed his way, How does it feel to know you’ve succeeded?

He heard that and turned to face us from several feet away in the crowd, overwhelmed. It was a moment for all of us to live up to forevermore.

His hair is starting to turn gray.

His wife is quite petite, and a lovely woman who made you instantly feel like you were in the presence of a friend. Clearly John found the right one.

She was busy talking to someone else, so I motioned towards his jacket and asked if she liked that color?

Yes, she does! His eyes suddenly wanted to know where this was going, hoping/not daring to hope…

The next thing you know, she was swooning over the most perfect soft blue cowl and he was telling her happily, You know that really big warm scarf I have? She made it!

She threw her arms around me. I was claimed.

Awhile later, as people cleared out and they were off to his mom’s, someone who grew up here took me aside and asked, Who was that guy everybody was swarming around?

Then, That was JOHN?!!! Man, she told me, after not seeing him for 30 years I just didn’t recognize him.

Well, but that’s the difference between 12 and 18. He was just a little kid to you back then.

Out of all the times I’ve cleaned out my inbox, somehow that one from eleven years ago survived and popped up in my search. It was a fairly stunning moment.

I lost my contacts list when Microsoft bought out the maker of the Sidekick phones and shut them down to get rid of the competition to their new phone (which very quickly tanked.) I was never able to get it all back. I lost my email contacts again when my data was supposedly being switched over from my old Dell desktop to my new Mac.

I had it!

The phone number in it was still valid. Assuming it still went to the same person.

I called it from the landline; it went to voice mail. Well, sure, I’m (most likely) a strange number. I texted it and identified myself again, thinking that surely these days everybody’s phone texts (if the number goes to a cell.)

I got answers both ways.

And now a daughter on the other side of the country is breathing a little easier, updated on what’s up with her elderly mom who lives alone and knowing she’s got someone now who can and is willing to help her and how to reach me. The mom needed a contractor but was reluctant to let anyone in the house? Call this guy, I said: he’s good, he’s kind, he’s honest, and when he could have sold me an entire water heater he replaced a simple part and did right by us.

And I’m happy to come over there and be there with her while he works. (She really needs that done.)

She filled me in on a few details, I filled her in on some observations she needed to know, including the event two days ago that had me trying to find her.

I think the last time I talked to her, she was a newly launched adult who had come home to take care of her mom when she’d just been diagnosed with two types of cancer–at the same time that I was with systemic lupus. That makes it 29 years ago. We’re all still here pulling together.

And man, does she have the voice now that her mom did then.

Such big eyes and not a shy bone in his body. He reached for me across the bench. His daddy let him come to me, carefully. He’s about seven months old.

He sat down. I was claimed.

Some babies instantly want daddy back, or mommy, who was the speaker and just a little farther away than he might have preferred; he craned his neck upwards to again see the face of the person whose lap didn’t quite feel like the familiar parental ones.

Still me up here, smiling back. Well alright then, I would do, and we played a little bit while everyone around us hoped to catch a moment’s shared grin with him, too. Which he gave them.

Then he crawled a few steps back towards his daddy, with both of us keeping an arm to the side of the bench when his curiosity and lack of fear of heights seemed a bad combination for a moment there.

A bottle! He snuggled into his daddy’s arms.

He looked over with one last big grin for me when it was done. We were friends now.

I need to remember to ask Kat her baby’s name.

So I was talking to Ron and Theresa of the Buffalo Wool Co Saturday morning at Stitches and after asking if they liked it dark and getting an emphatic YES! offered them a bite of homemade chocolate; I’d brought a bar from the second-to-last batch that had been made from some particularly good nibs from Chocolate Alchemy.

I picked up some of their buffalo/silk yarn, telling them that that in teal was my happy place: ten years ago when I was so sick, waiting for a hospital room to open up at Stanford, the good people at Purlescence had filled a large basket with cards and get-wells. There were hand knit gloves and a hat, oranges from Jasmin’s tree, all kinds of good stuff.

Including two skeins of their buffalo yarn from the owners of that shop. The most expensive yarn they sold in a color I love.

I had to get better. I couldn’t let everybody down. I had to do their generosity justice.

For two years afterwards I wondered what could possibly be a good enough use of that yarn, while feeling I was letting them down by letting it just sit there.

Till the day one of the owners had her own medical scare and her survival was no sure thing. She pulled through, just like I did, but there was no question: those two skeins turned into a shawl and came right back to her and that was absolutely what they were meant to be.

Ten years later, Purlescence is closed and I bought more from Ron and Theresa directly.

I told one of their customers who was looking at their gloves that I had rummaged through my cavernous purse in the dark in Alaska and come up with one of their gloves (these) and one fingerless glove to scrape a deep layer of ice off the windshield with. One hand was just dying, the other–amazingly fine. It could do this for as long as I needed to, no rush. And I have Raynaud’s.

I came by their booth again later, when the crowds had thinned, and told them that now that my husband has worn their socks nothing else lives up to them; I couldn’t buy me their yarn and not him more socks, so… And while I was at it I handed Ron more of that chocolate for the both of them, saying, “We don’t have the tempering perfect yet but we’re learning with each new project. It’s a little like knitting that way.”

Ron’s appreciative response, “It’s got a good snap to it.”

And then he told me to my great surprise that he used to work as a chocolatier.

No wonder I hadn’t had to explain to him what a melanger was!

I gave him the rest of that chocolate for the both of them. Stitches was almost over for me and there was no point in not sharing it with people I knew would enjoy it. (Margo Lynn’s allergic.)

He refused to ring up the socks and stuffed them in my basket.

!!!… I protested, partly at myself, because I should have known better to wait till after…!

He basically said just try to stop me.

!!!

Goodbye with love to my Uncle Wally, who passed away quietly with his local children by his side Saturday at 95.

Welcome to this beautiful brand-new world with love to Annabeth Joan, born to my niece Maddy and her husband Devin this morning.

I mentioned my friend Afton getting the melanger.

Margo Lynn, whom she and I have known for twenty years plus, is the moderator of the online knitting group who made it all happen: she quietly suspended Afton for half a day without telling her, told everybody what our plan was and invited them to chip in a dollar or two if they so desired–and then deleted her note from the archives to make sure Afton wouldn’t see it and added her back in. Sneaky.

Margo Lynn collected the funds; I ordered the machine, nibs, book, and molds.

She lives in Connecticut. I live in California.

Today was the first day of Stitches West, and I was talking to some old friends near the entrance after lunch. Another woman walked in to my left and stopped.

And stayed stopped, so I wondered if we were in her way or if I was supposed to be recognizing her; she looked somewhat familiar, but after probably twenty-five years of going, everybody pretty much does, right?

She was grinning, and that grin was getting bigger. Then she held out her name badge because I wasn’t catching on.

And that is the first time I ever screamed at Stitches. MARGO LYNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We threw our arms around each other.

The convention center people told us we were blocking the doorway (which we weren’t really) and asked us to move along. I think that scream did them in.

I finally finally finally got to meet Margo Lynn in person! She is the BEST!

I got the chair down to Bischoff’s Medical and they got right to it. I was good to go for Stitches and the guy was as happy about that as I was. Good folks. I recommended to my friend Pamela that she rent a scooter from them so as not to miss out–she broke both bones in her lower leg a few days ago and one of her first reactions was, But Stitches!

Meantime, I learned something new about the melanger: even though you don’t want to run it more than a minute without something in it, always do turn it on right before you start pouring the cocoa nibs in, not the other way around: otherwise the bits mound up, caught beneath the arms and jam the thing. And that is a motor I want working for many years to come. I sent a note to Afton so that that wouldn’t happen to her too with her new machine and turns out it already had. Both of us had to stop, pour the loose stuff out and hack away at those mounds to free the thing–but when we did it worked peachy fine.

It has a lid but it’s off while you’re pouring the nibs in, so you do it slowly because, um, popcorn effects are entertaining. (Which is why I tried putting them in first this time and turning it on. Bad idea.) She reported that her kitten went after a flying bit of chocolate but after tasting it gave her this look of, What have you *done* to me!

(Second sign posted for my retired high school English-teaching mom. A rare spotting of double letter inversions in the wild.)

Surely there’s got to be some protocol or rule about a trash truck not blocking a fire truck and an ambulance on a call.

But the dang thing came anyway yesterday morning and had all kinds of fun getting back out of their way, and after all that didn’t pick anything up.

Clearly they came back later, though. So why didn’t they just choose to do the other street earlier in the first place?

The storm let up to a misty drizzle at the right time while I hoped, aching to know that my neighbor was still alive, glad that at least the stretcher didn’t have to come outside during the downpours we’ve been having.

After they left I emailed the spouse, having no idea what access to that message they might have at the hospital: I said that I assumed they’d gone together in the ambulance and that I was ready and waiting to be their ride home at any time, any hour and making sure they had my phone number with them (as best I could, not knowing if they would see my saying so.)

The paramedics had foreseen that problem–this wasn’t their first case–and so at their urging the one had followed the other with the car, separated for that brief time when surely what they most wanted was each other right there.

Hours later I did get a return email: a fall. 24 hours observation. Expected home Thursday. Terrible, wonderful news. They are not young.

Their car was gone again today but by late afternoon was back, and neither of them would have left the other alone in that hospital during visiting hours. And so I can only assume that there was recovery enough for the hoped-for discharge.

I’ve already said I would run any errand so they don’t have to. Especially in all that rain.

They know we know, and they know we care. And for now that is enough.

Went to my lupus group and offered a bar of my chocolate around the room, fresh from my melanger, I told them. Everybody but the person who can’t eat the stuff broke off a square politely.

We had our meeting, and at a comment at the end someone caught on: Wait. Did you MAKE this??! And suddenly that ziplock was in high demand as it went back around the room.

Photo taken afterwards, coming off the hospital grounds during a break between two waves of the storm.

I’m afraid that tree is just too tall to play jump rope with that rainbow.

The sky was dark and low but the rain was holding off till evening. The shoppers were not.

I told the young clerk Pegi’s line about this being a French Toast run before the storm: milk eggs bread. He and the bagger cracked up, with the clerk especially looking like I had just totally made his day.

Clearly someone has parents who taught him how to make it. I remember thinking in college that everybody did: you just whip the eggs with a little milk, dip in the bread, pre-toasted or as is, a pat of butter in the skillet and one side and then the other and there you go. Easiest dish ever. (A side effect of our having lived in New Hampshire is that only real maple syrup will do for us. It’s the rule.)

And I remember the friend who watched my every movement like a hawk, trying to memorize proportions, which don’t matter much, not wanting to admit at the beginning that at 21 she’d never learned how to do this. How many eggs?

Her dad had died young and her mother was someone who bought blue cheese dressing but threw it away a day or two later because it had gone moldy. All those little blue bits in it.

And as long as I’m on that subject, my sister-in-law had a college roommate who was trying hard to learn from her how to cook. When my sister-in-law asked her to wash the lettuce she, having no idea, compliantly did: she squirted dish soap on it.

I’m going to let my dear friend Jennifer, whom I met when she went to law school here, tell this one. And I quote:

“Last summer, a friend I was visiting held a house meeting to find ways we could take action against the administration’s inhumane immigration policies. From that meeting, @Detainee Allies emerged… and today, The New York Times featured our organization and the incredible stories we have been honored to hear, witness and hold.”

Pen pals. They simply wrote letters. To people who had sought asylum and found themselves imprisoned for it, who needed simple human compassion. It made all the difference in the world to those receiving them. Somebody out there knew they were there, and cared.

A week ago, while we were packing up their house, B&N on the phone told us all food was take or toss and they urged us to help keep it from being wasted.

They had a big box of a dairy-free shortbread. We had a few more of the organic oranges from the neighbors. (Since you zest them, they really needed to be–it’s the difference between bitter and not bitter in my experience.)

Those two being essential to a childhood memory of my daughter’s (the recipe’s in that link) from before her dairy allergy surfaced, the thought kept percolating for her all week, not knowing that it was in mine, too. But she was the first one to bring it up yesterday, and a box of dairy-free phyllo dough soon followed her home from the grocery store.

There’s a point at which you quit resisting a good idea.

At the last minute it seemed I was out of Earth Balance, the one reliably dairy-free butter substitute I could think of but she found a box in the freezer of a coconut oil/cashew substitute for cultured butter for layering the sheets. I was a little unsure but it’s what we had.

The taste was perfect. The phyllo did come out just a bit tough rather than tender, but hey. I marveled at the end that the strudel was a lot easier to make than I remembered, and she laughed and said, You don’t have four little kids running around to try to keep track of at the same time.

Point.

In honor of my late father-in-law’s birthday. He watched me very carefully a few years ago as I showed him how easy it was to make your own caramel sauce–he wanted to be able to do that, too. Sugar, water, boil, cream? That’s all there was to it? Cool!

He had quite the sweet tooth.

Happy Birthday, DadH.

Yay for tracking numbers. Yay for the post office. That sweet little girl got her baby blanket back Wednesday, cold weather or no.

The doorbell?

Flowers?!

It was from B & N. 

Church. Then Dani and his beloved and our mutual friend Lee, whose birthday party it was where the conversation happened that led to my tree arriving.

I offered the not very large mango to Dani and he inhaled its essence, remembering the Alphonsos of his childhood back yard. I had my good Mel and Kris stoneware set out and we went to it. Mango pieces, homemade chocolate, juice I’d squeezed the night before after the neighbors gave us a boxful from their orange tree.

The mango might have been even better with one more day to ripen, but still: I could honestly say, and did, that he’d been right: that that was the best mango I had ever eaten in my life. Such a depth of flavor. The perfume! So much to that tiny bit of fruit the five of us each had. I did not know they could be like that. Wow.

Dani asked for the seed and the skin: the scent of home, and to prove to a fellow ex-pat friend of his that yes you can grow them here–you just have to want to badly enough.

His SO teased him that she was sure he was going to grow his own tree from it. They’ve told me their condo doesn’t have enough sun, but hey, if he wanted to badly enough. Right?

They headed out after a bit and I got a message from my daughter: could I bring…

She’d been spending all her free time of late helping some friends pack up their house. Their moving van arrives tomorrow bright and early, and they were glad they had that one last weekend to finish everything up.

Except that yesterday morning the guy’s father, a farmer, dropped dead, utterly unexpected, and they dropped everything and ran for the airport knowing how much his mom would need immediate help. There were still two baby bottles in the sink. Michelle was trying to finish what they no longer could and needed something to package some of their papers that they hadn’t intended for the movers to touch.

Sure, I can do that, and I headed off to San Jose with the requested bin.

I took one look around when I got there and knew that this was where I needed to be for the next little while.

I washed all the dishes, by hand so they would be seen on the drying rack and not forgotten in the dishwasher, I folded the clothes that had been washed, I sorted all the socks of all the sizes. I did not find the key to the firesafe that the toddler had run off with, but we were all in each other’s good company on that one. I remembered the days of one child of mine in particular who was always finding what squeezed into what and the hairpins we shook out of a ride-on toy years ago.

We’d been working for some time when…

The baby blanket! This is the couple I’d knitted a cashmere/cotton 50/50 afghan for, and it was their now-toddler’s favorite blankie. It was there. Michelle called them: I was offering to mail it to them tomorrow if they wanted. (Their stuff was going straight to storage given the new circumstances and it might be months.) Or I could keep it at my house till they were ready, free of moths or loss.

Her friend burst into tears: yes please send it?!

First thing, honey, first thing. That, at least, is something I can do.

(And hey, now I know: after 18 months of it going through their high-end washer and dryer, it’s still so very soft, the excess fluff is gone, and it has shrunk only a little. I pre-shrank that yarn hard before knitting it up and it basically held, while the essence of the cashmere endures. And it is THE beloved blankie. I’m quite pleased.)

Hey, DANI! This is all your fault! Thank you!

Wondering if it was ripe yet, I just barely touched it and to my great surprise it fell right off in my hand.

My first. Alphonso. Mango. Ever! Already, six hours of being inside the warm house and the fragrance has started to bloom.