I have a growing collection of small things knitted during Zoom meetings.

It was about 70 degrees yesterday evening but the sun was nearly gone and the cold comes on fast around here as the night fog rolls in, so when we headed out the door I had on a a vest and a cowl that were maybe just a bit much. But it seemed the right thing to do.

There was a teenage girl there. Her family has moved a lot and it’s got to be hard.

She complimented my cowl and said the color was so pretty. I took it off and handed it to her and she exclaimed over how soft it was. And over the color again.

Did you knit this?

I did! I told her I’d been trying to figure out the right color for her and that if she liked that one it was hers.

NO! she exclaimed in disbelief while clearly hoping I meant it.

And that’s why I had needed to double up on that extra bit of warmth. The vest did me just fine for the rest of the evening.

Her cousin was visiting her and her favorite color is blue.

Every teen needs someone outside of their family who thinks the world of them just because they are.

I can do something about that.

Friends dropped by this afternoon and surprised us with roses to wish us a happy Easter. Made me wish all the more that I’d remembered in my quick note last night to wish one for all of you who celebrate, and I hope all who do–and who don’t–had a wonderful day today.

There was a walk around the church tonight with each of us holding a mini light. There were readings at intervals along our Road to Emmaus and a gathering together on chairs set out on the lawn for the final triumphant reading of our risen Lord.

There were more people than chairs, though, and I saw a couple I didn’t recognize standing a little behind us so I motioned them to come sit by us where there was room.

Turns out they’re in the middle of moving here and are house hunting.

When she said where they were moving from, I asked if they knew Grant and Colleen?

Absolutely! Love them!

He’s my cousin.

She couldn’t wait to tell him she’d met us. And then she told us her husband was the brother of…

Camille?! I love her!

So now I get to hope they find something right around here where they have instant friends.

The ones who dropped the roses by?

The husband said tonight, I didn’t know you lived there! We almost bought the house next door to you when we moved out here.

I said to Richard on the way home, and he thoroughly agreed, That would have been so cool. But then we would never have met the family that did.

A quick question, prompted by a conversation where two of us mentioned using a spatula to lift assembled puzzle pieces over the established edge and into the center once you know where they go and a third person marveling that she’d never heard nor thought of doing that and she could not fathom how she had not.

So.

Do you ever spatula your pieces?

I recounted the bit to Richard, who thinks my puzzle techniques are sacrilege, and he said with a suppressed guffaw betraying his mock indignation, *I* do it right!

How often, when you ask a man what his wife’s favorite color is, can he tell you right away without squirming because he feels like he should be able to tell you but he suddenly realizes he has no idea.

But he did know, with certainty. Cool. I went stash diving and–oh, yes, that one exactly.

So. Doctor’s waiting room for a routine check. I pulled out the just-begun carry-around project and marveled at how finely spun baby alpaca yarn can be as jumpy on the needles as a happy toddler in an ice cream shop, especially old stash from when some mills were new at working with the stuff. But it makes such a soft fabric. (Why did I put needles that big in the bag? Stuck with them now.)

A woman was checking in and as she walked past me, she stopped and introduced herself as a fellow knitter.

Cool! Loved her scarf! I asked her about how she’d gotten started.

Her mom and grandmother were knitters; How about you?

I told her my family had traveled coast to coast and back when I was a kid and my mom had taught me how to knit to keep me from killing my little sister in the back seat. She laughed and asked if it had worked and I said yes, while thinking in my mom’s direction, I think so–I don’t remember any arguments after that. Mom, if you want to chime in?

I told her, Six kids and a camping trailer and she winced a little and yeah I don’t know how my folks did it either but they did it. Mom was knitting my sister an Aran sweater I seriously coveted so I wanted to learn to make my own.

We didn’t have a lot of time to delve in deep but we both would have loved to and I told her the name of my blog. So to her, if you’re reading this, welcome! And hi!

Love for love.

The next door neighbor showed up offering oranges from her tree.

She found herself going home with a baby blanket.

Meantime, the mystery at Grand Central Station is solved. NYC now knows where the five foot heart balloon on the ceiling came from: the elderly couple and their daughter were heading to a Valentine’s party and lots of random people wanted to play with it. Cute video.

A ground squirrel tunnel popped up right under the edge of my sour cherry tree. And another one at the base of my columnar apple.

One is cute. Two is a thousand, fast.

“Did you know it smells like cinnamon out there?”

Uh, that would be a yes. I poured it down the edges of those two holes to make the place inhospitable (and then did a better job of covering the cherry’s roots with an old oven rack, since cherry roots and young trunks are supposed to be a particular favorite.) Pepper and mint they can get used to; cinnamon is both sharp tasting and it gets on their paws and their fur and their noses and they’ll keep avoiding it.

Or at least in my experience so far.

So we’ll see.

I wonder how many neighbors were thinking cinnamon roll thoughts today.

Atelier Yarn Marin, a week ago, my last Yarn Crawl purchase: I found a pair of 40″ Lantern Moon ebony circs in US 5 and told them happily, This is exactly the size and brand I’ve been looking for.

Nina mentioned afterwards that she did not prefer the metal cord they’ve changed to; she liked the old nylon one better. I didn’t have much of an opinion other than that I liked the look of the nylon better. And true, I do not want my needles to flash light and distract from the working yarn.

So where I’m going with this is: I found that I did in fact have an old pair of size 5 (3.75mm) 40″ ones–in that brand and with the nylon cord, no less. So I started the new project on those.

You know that twitchy scritch scritch sensation with each stitch on wooden needles that haven’t aged well? You won’t get that with the pressure-treated Holz and Steins of long ago but they’ve been out of the American market for twenty+ years. On the third row of this I couldn’t wait to get to the end so I could switch to the new pair. Thank goodness for that new pair.

Even the ever so slightly rounder tip shaping was better for the splittable yarn at hand.

I have completely cured myself of wondering why I spent the equivalent of a skein of good yarn on a pair I didn’t need. Now it’s, Man am I glad I bought those!

The Big Badminton Birdie! It’s back!

Let’s see if this local link works or if the paywall gets in the way. Wikipedia with more history, here.

There’s an immense hangar down the freeway–I mean, how many buildings have their own weather, naturally?–that was military, then NASA, then a decrepit environmental disaster leaking asbestos and more towards the Bay. Years and years of arguments: why do we need to preserve a massive WWII wind tunnel? Who are we hiding planes from these days? Who wants to pay for the Superfund cleanup?

There was the Golden Eagle nest at the top of the building that got left alone, until it didn’t. The shell of the building got removed and then the skeleton was left to rust in the elements. For years.

Meanwhile, Google’s founders had an idea to get around the distance and restrictions on nighttime flights at San Jose airport: they wouldn’t own the hangar, which was next to their headquarters, they would just fix it and lease it and after 60 years the Feds could take it back. Deal?

Yeah no, said lots of people.

Heck yeah, said lots of other people for whom this was an iconic landmark.

Why? wondered some of us.

My dad’s old high school buddy was one of if not the (I think the) first woman to be a boss at NASA Ames. Loved her and her husband, they had us over several times when my folks were in town and it was a hoot to listen to her and Dad catching up. Her funeral in a lovely old Catholic church is where I learned that Morning Is Broken was not, in fact, strictly a Cat Stevens song. I did quite the double take at the time.

Where my husband started a PhD, the head of the department quit when offered head of, yup, NASA Ames across the country, and I’ve wondered from time to time if the guy still lives around here or if he went back to his home state when it closed. I don’t know how he was as a boss there–but I can tell you that when he left his university and they announced the new head, half the faculty in his department quit, too, as fast as they could find other jobs, a fact that changed the entire trajectory of our lives and landed us in New Hampshire and then, eventually–here.

So yeah I guess we have a bit of history with the newly restored place, too. Who would have guessed.

To answer KC’s question: yes, there are prizes for filling out the bingo card, including a large basket of yarn and I think more, but I never paid attention to the details. You get one entry for a single line filled out, three tries if all 25 are, and the Crawl continues this week.

One well-thought-out part is that you can choose the bingo card that matches the route you want to take; it does not force you to drive 150 zigzag miles each way to fill out a single line.

We’re talking north of San Francisco to south of San Jose and from the coast to over two mountain ranges to the eastern side of the Bay. That’s serious road tripping and carpooling. It’s taken us all three years that they’ve done this for us to make it to–I think we finally made it to?–every single shop.

For that kind of driving it’s about spending time with the friends you’re carpooling with, with the bonus of running into people again and again doing the same sequence. If we can’t have Stitches anymore, with how all its faces became familiar over the years, we can make our mini version.

The prizes are lovely (but just make sure you wrote your name on that card, the first year whoever would have been the winner wasn’t because they hadn’t and nobody knew who to give it to.)

But Nina and I agreed we rather hoped we won’t be picked: we have a goodly amount and the means to buy more, but for so many people it would mean so much more to their ability to access really nice stuff that would motivate and keep those needles going. I remember those days. We want them to have it.

Those two days happened and we made the time to catch up like the old friends we are because someone out there knew that not only would knitters want to buy yarn, we would want a reason to find the time to spend the time with each other in pursuit of what we love to do anyway and hey, they could certainly make a buck in the process. Cool.

Sometimes you just need a thing scheduled.

I drove to Andy Mariani’s farm in December in part to buy small containers of his best specifically so that Nina could snack on her favorite dried apricots this weekend from a container that fit in her console.

Hey wait, did we get to that Redwood City place we missed last year? Maybe we’re not quite done….

Lunch with the delightful Peggy and Nina, Dharma Trading Company and Atelier Yarns and I now have some one-off hand-dyed skeins of thick warm soft wool to knit Zoom hats with: where the colorway does the showing off and I don’t have to look at my hands while I read the captions.

The lady at Atelier noted that I had a straight line on my Bingo card and did I want to turn it in or try to fill the whole thing (meaning, by visiting all 25 shops on that card for the Crawl.)

I kinda laughed. No, thanks, it was fun but we’re done.

We drove home with me going, After thirty years of ordering dyes from them I finally finally finally got to see what Dharma is like! And I loved the place!

Day one, Bay Area Yarn Crawl: three yarn stores, three skeins of yarn.

How did you DO that? Nina asked.

Well, I told her, Colourmart sent out an email saying they were doing inventory and finding old cones and clearing them out and once those yarns were gone they were gone. I found 970 grams of 80/20 cashmere/silk aran weight for $116 and knew I would never see that again and it is on the way. So I already had my big splurge.

This was after a discussion of having to hank and scour the mill oils out to get gauge and softness and yarn blooming and then wind it up again and how it’s extra time but it’s worth it and she said it sounded like it might well be. (Usually they’ll do some of that for you for a fee.)

So yeah, three and three. The prettiest stuff and I like supporting the locals.

And then I got home and realized that actually, I have four because we went to four.

(Photo from yesterday, didn’t take one today.)

Eight and a quarter repeats now after doing 21 166-stitch rows today. I haven’t worked this hard nonstop on an afghan since my grandkids’ cousin was born with a wrapped cord and not breathing on his own for his first fifteen minutes while the hospital scrambled to replace his blood and cool his body in a protocol Stanford had pioneered not long before.

I typed the above thinking a fervent oh, if only, wanting to hug my friend Jody whose granddaughter did not survive that complication.

That baby’s mom and dad needed a tangible symbol of all the hope and prayers sent by everybody.  I didn’t have the stash nor funds for more superwash merino to do it in one color, it was stripes the length of each skein and friends chipped in with more skeins of their own to be a part of the cause. Ten days start to finish.

I was told afterwards that that baby emphatically did NOT like to be cold. (Gee, I wonder why.) That made me all the more glad we had sent him our warmth.

He is turning 13 this year and doing fine.

Do you ever get yourself to keep at it by telling yourself that if you do this one row, you’ll never have to do it again? That that one row at least will forever be finished?

And then the next and the next and the next and the next.

This blog post brought to you with thanks to the makers of blue ice therapy gel packs.

Three weeks ago: hospital.

Two weeks ago: under strict orders not to be on his feet. Church for him by Zoom.

One week ago: still not up to going to church anyway, and that foot stayed propped up under continuing doctor’s orders. Church for him by Zoom.

Today.

Our friend Russ was holding the door open for us as we passed through at the end of the services.

I turned back to appreciate what I’d just seen: the joy in his face at Richard’s not only being there but looking so intensely normal. You wouldn’t have known at all that anything had happened to him. Russ had visited him in the hospital; he knew. Our eyes met.

His “He looks great!” was from the heart and the light in his eyes said it all.

Great times, great friends, good food, good night.

Still randomly laughing. He didn’t say, but I bet his wife had thoughts on the subject…

Last week I offered the surgeon his choice of a few hats. Another one was on my needles just then–he knew I’d made them.

He hesitated and his face looked as if I’d put him on the spot so I assured him, You don’t have to. It took him a moment but okay, he found a shades-of-brown Rios one and let me give it to him.

And I thought to myself, You’re thinking skiing and Tahoe and adequate warmth and I’m sure you do have some synthetic thing more windproof than these. No sweat. The irony is that the one he did take was the least warm of them–although, the easiest to tuck away.

Today was a post-op follow-up and I’m the one driving at the moment.

I almost laughed (don’t, don’t, I didn’t) when the guy near the end stopped and turned away from inspecting stitches to me and asked me about his new hat. With quite a bit of enthusiasm. He told me how much he loved it. How he keeps it in his pocket (which he patted.) It was so soft! Was it wool? ..Merino? (Said hesitatingly, apparently unsure that I would know what merino meant. Oh you sweet summer child.)

I told him yes, merino, that it was super wash treated so you could run it through the laundry but it would fuzz out so if you don’t want that then hand wash, and that it was hand dyed (let’s not get into the granularity of kettle dyeing descriptions.)

He very much appreciated it.

And I so wanted to tell his wife thank you. Still laughing. He’s a quick and willing study, for sure.