It is a recipe I will wish for forever and can never have.

Our daughter flew home from Europe via a stopover in Istanbul today. Or her yesterday but our today–“Is it Sunday here yet?”

No, still Saturday.

She was tired.

An older woman got on her flight at that airport who spoke maybe five words of English. She needed help. It took about five minutes of pantomiming between them and trying before it became clear: she needed to borrow a cable to recharge her phone.

Oh! Sure!

Turns out she needed help figuring out how to actually use it, too. No problem. Turns out her phone needed a new battery to take that charge better and faster, but at least they got it halfway there. You need it to work when you’re landing in a strange country trying to reach your family over at park and call.

And in profuse thanks the woman tried to shower her with good food.

She didn’t want to be rude but there was no way they could find enough words in common for her to be able to make sure that she wasn’t allergic to every bit of it–and so she accepted the tiny wrapped bites of good chocolate and the clearly freshly homemade biscotti inside that white napkin and brought it home to us for it to be properly appreciated.

Definitely butter in that, yes.

A nibble, one for him one for me, was the plan: the rest would go towards breakfast in the morning. But no, once we’d tried that perfect taste and texture we devoured it all. And I’m not usually someone who cares for biscotti–why break a tooth over something so dry and tasteless?

But THIS. Wow!

I’ve been trying to deconstruct it ever since. Probably superfine almond flour for most of the flour; the nuts were chopped fairly small and roasted to perfect crispness and flavor as if they’d just cooled from the oven. You had to have a hand under the result to catch what crumbled when you bit because you didn’t want to miss out on any of this. It might even have been made this morning–whatever day however many hours ago this morning started out as over there.

But then, you would expect a woman presumably from Turkey would know how to make this right. And boy did she. And I can’t even thank her.

I hope she gets her phone taken care of while she’s here.

Happy Birthday, Mom! And Parker!

And to Hazel B. in Pittsburgh and Lisa B. from knitting and Sterling A. and cousin Frances named after my mom after being born on her birthday and Carole K. And hey, Mom, Wendy B-B. who with her sisters grew up on Green Twig had her daughter on your birthday, so Jessey B’s on the 12/20 list, too. Happy Birthday!

Tom Perriello is a good man. The mother could see that in his face in her moment of desperation, he could see how loved that child was when she approached him–ie, no, this wasn’t child trafficking, and wow what a story.

The Washington Post doesn’t say why the mother couldn’t fly home too right then. But in that moment that US citizen had to get her five-year-old daughter out of Sierra Leone. Fifteen years later, due to yet another chance meet-up, the woman found the man who had saved her daughter.

My old high school friend Katherine is in Sierra Leone now, working hard at providing schooling and medical care to girls there. I worry for her safety as she worries for theirs. She found that some were leaving classes because they could not afford food–so she’s got a fundraiser to pay for their lunches, here, if you’re interested. She takes zero overhead.

If you do or don’t I’ll never know and the amount doesn’t matter: every stitch in the sweater keeps it together. And a dollar goes a lot farther there.

How often do we get a chance to directly help girls in Africa who could not otherwise stay in school?

So the moss green Diamante found its owner yesterday, that Piuma did, too.

And I had one more with me.

It had been my last two skeins probably forever of the discontinued 70/30 baby alpaca/bamboo Chalet in a gray just slightly on the earthy side. It had worked up quickly while I’d waited for the next green hat yarn to arrive, it was soft and warm–and it had not yet found its home.

During the last meeting there were four of us sitting on our row on the side and as I looked across I knew that it would look so great on her. I debated: if I got up and went around to her at the end, it would be when the meeting would be over (since it was just about to start), everybody would be rising and talking and I wouldn’t hear a thing. If I just passed it down the row right now quick before the meeting, my ears were stuffed and she was far enough away that I wouldn’t hear a thing.

Not that it’s about me anyway. Okay so that settled it.

The woman next to me had just gotten one of my cowls in October and the woman next down had long since gotten hers and knew what I was up to, so no feelings were going to be hurt: I got it out and asked the other two to pass it on down.

The woman at the end was new and had not the slightest idea what was up as it was handed to her with grins on the others’ faces.

“It’s my favorite color!” she exclaimed once she got that no, this really was for her. Her next thought was, “Oh, my daughter’s going to steal this!”

I do have another good yarn that is gray…

Last night had me waking up in the morning going, I didn’t cough! (Once or twice right at the beginning is all.) I can go to church! But we wore face masks, which was a good thing because if nothing else there was plenty in there that didn’t need a germ to make me cough when my lungs are primed to, and I did, and yeah, I wasn’t as healthy as I wanted to think I was.

Face masks R Us.

I’d wanted to knit her a cowl for a long time. But time after time for like a year now, a frustrating time, it had just felt like, no, that’s the wrong color, or no, that’s the wrong yarn, or it just didn’t feel right for whatever reason. Even though I made several towards being for her, they all ended up going to other people. Too small, too wool…

Was it something wrong with me? Was it something wrong with my timing? If that, then, y’know, I *can* make her two, it’s not like it’s against the rules…

A couple of weeks ago I really wanted to get past whatever was stopping me and I said a prayer for her, asking for help getting it right whatever that might be because I sure wasn’t succeeding at it on my own. I mean, you almost cannot go wrong with…but I wanted to know.

And then I knit what felt right after that. I knit it. And this was right, I knew it was hers. At last.

My usual offer of a knitting project doesn’t usually start with the exclamation, “Finally!…” in relief and apology but today it did and it turned out that’s how it felt for her, too, and it was so needed and she so loved it and no I didn’t have to overdye the winter white to anything else, she liked this the way it was.

She’s a quiet observer. She’d seen other people with handknit cowls.

Nothing else would do for my needles on this one but Piuma cashmere: softest of the softest, knit generously in stitch count and length so as to be flattering on her size–there would be no second cowl from that 150 g cone, it’s a remnant now.

She cried. She was trying not to. They were not all happy tears but they were trying to be and there was so much I didn’t know and wasn’t about to ask and it was enough and we gave each other a hug (at a bit of a distance, I was really trying not to breathe on her even with the mask on).

And now she had a cashmere hug.

I know she’s been through a lot of late. She’s got three sons, newly grown, really good kids who are everything you could ask for them to be because they’ve got the best Mom but they’ve got relatives that have made life tough. They’ve had to move recently because of that.

Cashmere doesn’t fix everything but it says she’s not so quiet that she’s not noticed. She matters.

I got word back about the undyed cashmere/cotton blanket that I knit awhile back, going beyond baby blanket size because I had the yarn and I could and that I told the parents they could use it for their new daughter or as an afghan on the couch–it was whatever they wanted it to be for.

Turns out it has gone through the laundry any number of times (shed a bunch of fluff in the process I have no doubt) and has done fine.

And, though they don’t let her toddle around the house dragging it behind her, their little girl goes to bed cuddling with it every night. It is the lovie that every knitter aspires for their baby blanket to become.

My friend Lisa Souza of lisaknit.com ditched dinner tonight after she looked out the window: instead, she and her husband were grabbing important papers and pets and throwing everything in the car at the speed of life.

She lives in a town some of the Camp Fire people had evacuated to.

A car on the road beyond had hit a power pole and gone down the embankment as the sky lit up in fire. Hours later she posted a picture she’d stopped a moment to snap that also showed headlights well below, pointed upwards, like, what just happened??

She reported that somehow the guy inside was okay and that the firefighters had tamped down the ferocious brilliance and were only checking for hotspots now. Those guys are good at what they do and I for one could never ever imagine doing it. Wow.

Our AQI is down to 144, rain is forecast for Wednesday and it looks like everybody will finally get a break.

What I really wanted to write about was all the cool stuff I knitted today, but I just didn’t. As the lungs slowly find clarity I intend to have more oomph. Tomorrow would be good.

I ran some errands yesterday and the post office was high on that to-do list but I utterly forgot. Got some great Malabrigo at Cottage Yarns, though!

Which is a bit of a trek. Got back home, put my feet up a moment and had a bite, looked at the clock and suddenly realized what I’d forgotten, sighed at the rush hour traffic I could nearly have dodged but wouldn’t now, and headed back out to do that one last errand.

They say that in the last twelve years we’ve had the equivalent of ten cities the size of ours superimposed over the Bay Area.

But going back out again when I did means I happened to be right there when my neighbor was and she was clearly in a bad way. I stopped the car and asked how she was doing. (Another neighbor had seen her fallen in her yard a week ago and had helped her to her feet.)

“Not well,” she told me.

Turns out what she most needed right then was a ride to the car dealership to replace the key for her car. It was right on my way. She hadn’t been about to ask, but I definitely offered and not having to make that long walk right now was clearly a huge relief to her. Neither one of us thought she would have been able to, although neither one of us quite said that.

I’d never seen her using a walker before.

“I can’t take any painkillers,” she happened to mention.

“I can’t take any NSAIDs, my deafness is from an aspirin allergy,” I nodded. I knew what it was like to have to go without. As I put her walker in my back seat I mentioned that mine was in the trunk (even if I haven’t had to use it for quite awhile now.)

“You’ve been through everything.” She said it like it meant I was someone she could say stuff to who could hear it and not flinch. She wasn’t liking this instant little old lady stuff but she was trying to be at her best. She said it again. She was trying to keep her pain from turning her inward, as pain always wants to do.

I dropped her off, did my post office run, swung back on by and picked her up again and brought her home and made sure she was good as best I could. “Alright, my dear,” she smiled, waving me on.

Then into my own driveway.

And was so very very glad that earlier in the day I’d forgotten to run the one errand I’d had to do most. Or that I’d thought was the most important.

Glued to the election returns, glad there will be some checking and balancing–always a good thing.

Meantime, the heat is working in the mango tree’s enclosure but, um, not so much in ours. Brrr. Hoping I can reach our HVAC guy in the morning.

So I thought I’d chill out by posting a bunch of tropical-tree pictures so Dani could see how what he instigated into being four years ago is doing. (Don’t worry about that dusting of cinnamon, that’s just anti-ant.)

I need to ask: are you supposed to let them ripen on the tree? (Why the traditional store-it-in-camel-dung method? All my camel comes in yarn form only.) I know pears have to be picked unripe or they’ll go mushy first, and every reference to Alphonso mangoes I’ve found (that would probably be two) said to let them ripen in warm temps, picked. How do you know it’s time to?

I love that I finally get to need to ask.

After the baking binge.

They came, they saw, and to my surprise they lifted before I even finished writing an Alice’s Restaurant-style note on the door for any stragglers.

Walk right in, come around to the back, just a half a mile from the railroad track…

It was getting dark but they did it.

And then I sent Peter, James, Krys+Sterling, Eric, and Nathaniel off with a chocolate torte each plus one for Bo who really meant to come but was still busy helping a very elderly and quite handicapped woman move out of her home to go to an assisted living facility near her son down south.

Bo had definitely earned his torte.

Just for this afternoon, I needed a project I didn’t have to pay attention to for the doctor’s office and I was fresh out. (Routine appointment, no worries.) Grabbed some violet merino/cashmere/silk Diamante I’d had Colourmart six-ply for me and cast on an hour beforehand and got enough done that you could tell what the pattern was going to be (and so it would be long enough that the curling bottom wouldn’t bug me–blocking will fix that later.)

I found myself sitting next to a fellow grandmother and knitter, a woman from India who loved watching my hands work as we delighted in each other. She was a treasure.

The doctor was the ENT whose love for taking care of his fruit trees had triggered my planting mine, and look where it got me now. Enthusiasm is contagious that way.

So I brought him a gift in a small Penzey’s box: one perfectly ripe, slightly funky-shaped rather small apple that had grown to fit the produce clamshell that had been squirrel-proofing it. I told him it was my final Fuji of the season.

He laughed in wonder, saying he’d picked his last Fuji in August!

Microclimates R Us, I guess.

It smelled perfect. I hope it was. There had been two, and we can tell you that the other had made it clear how good they were now.

A friend threw a potluck tonight to go over the ballot issues via a lively 15-way discussion.

And…voices stayed understated, everyone was a grownup, but it definitely felt lively there for a few minutes after one person quietly texted her friend the candidate, who showed up and was promptly peppered with questions. (The hostess was, um, a tad surprised, but invited her in and took it in stride very graciously.)

Turns out another woman there was dead set against her (I was a bit stunned at finding out why)–and after hearing the three of them each speak their piece, that candidate very much has my vote. She’s the equivalent of Christine Blasey Ford’s mom’s friend, who in our local case spoke up for the raped 14-year-old for 18 months, hounding school board members and the superintendent, telling that other woman’s kid on the school newspaper that using the defendant’s lawyer as your source for saying it was consensual and not interviewing anyone who said otherwise is so not cool and you must publish a retraction. This is a criminal case and you are contributing to the continuing victimization of the victim.

There was a second assault.

She kept on pushing until she got justice and the school instituted some changes. And now she’s running to be on that board.

The principal who kept trying to brush her off, who put consequences on the victim alone and none on the perpetrator, no support whatsoever for the girl, ended up fired.

Yeah. You bet I’m voting for this woman. She’s got nerves of steel and she will do the right thing no matter who or what power stands in her way.

I’d been debating doing early voting but had wanted to hold off till that dinner was over, and I can’t tell you how glad I am that I did.

How hard is it to find a thing that works.

Plenty, turns out.

I spent several hours today researching and looking and trying to find a good heater for a small greenhouse. All I could find was cheap Chinese knock-offs that looked like the old tried and true but had dismal, awful reviews. Whatever happened to the ones built to last? To even work?

It finally hit me: Sears used to make good tools for the working man. You didn’t want to freeze in that garage with the door open to the world while you worked on that car.

And so I tried them, knowing full well their vulture capitalist CEO is trying to kill the company as fast as he can for what he can skim off the top and he’s certainly not putting any money into improving product lines.

Lo and behold. One color left: bright red. I can handle that. Stellar reviews. Hey. Happy reviews. One said, I tried all those others but this one actually works and actually keeps working.

So it will be my wistful wave good-bye to what once was, both Sears and decent appliance manufacturing standards, and it is on its way. Wish me luck.

All by way of saying, I’m going to have to let Eli gently down and tell him that (hopefully) I’m not going to be needing him to cover and uncover the mango tree when I’m out of town anymore: my husband told me he thought I should order that Sunbubble greenhouse and a good heater and not to have to worry about being here at the right time every single morning and night, flu or not.

Get the big one, he said. You know it’ll grow into it.

I finally let myself feel just how freeing that will be. The tree can just…quietly, on its own…do its own thing.

Christmas is coming early.

My husband’s the best.

I happened to come home from the grocery store exactly as she was coming out.

I have always waved to the neighbors and been the one to step across the wide street to say hi for a moment, letting them know they’re welcome anytime. Thus the memories of two moms and their small children following me to go see the dove’s nest on top of our ladder leaned against the back of the house, holding the little ones high so they could get a view of the baby dove peeking back at them from under its momma’s wing.

Today it was someone new stepping out of the house across the street who waved to me as I waved hi to her–and she’s the one who promptly crossed the street, holding her hand out to introduce herself.

I instantly liked her. No, she told me, the widower hadn’t sold the place–he was renting it to them, but with some work to be done first so they’ll be moving in the first of December and she was quite excited about it. The kids could walk to their school. She loved the neighborhood. She was clearly glad to meet a friendly face right off.

We chatted a moment. It there still a pool in the back yard? I wondered out loud.

Yes, there is!

I told her that the then-ten-year-old living there (the not-yet-a-widower’s son) had been in it when the Loma Prieta quake had hit and it had whooshed him right out of the water.

Omigosh! Her eyes got big and she laughed. Surf’s up!

That house has been quiet a few months now, with a worker’s truck in the driveway by day and emptiness by night.

I can’t wait till they move in.

One week ago, a name popped up in the comments on a Facebook post and I did a double take. We instantly friended each other, and I got to read about a few of her experiences with Catholic Relief Services in Africa. (Do you still go by Katie? I haven’t gone by Katie for 35 years! …I’m behind…)

Then yesterday she posted a picture inside San Francisco airport–because the airline had lost her bag and she was going to have to go fast to buy some clothes before the meeting tomorrow in…

And I went hey, that means you’ll be driving practically right past my house!

Which is how Katherine, my friend since junior high and whom I had not seen since high school graduation, carved two hours out of her very busy trip and spent them today with me and we caught up on forty-one years of life.

“You kind of disappeared,” she told me. I did. I married at 21 and then school and grad school and being broke and kids and distance and we simply didn’t get home for a long time and have never been there for long when we are. I have not seen my favorite mountain laurel in bloom but for three fading tiny blossoms on a single cluster since I was 18.

She married late and no children came, but he was the great love of her life. To describe his generosity, she described his knitting: she was one of six children and there were all these nieces and nephews on her side. One Christmas he knitted them all mittens.

Double knitting mittens. Twenty-four pairs!

Twenty. Four. Pairs. Of double knitting??

I was completely boggled.

He was completely adored.

Ten happy years. Then his cancer. Even in hospice, right to the end, she said, he was knitting for others.

And he loved my friend Katherine and that alone would have been good enough for me. I so wish I could have met him.

I told her, My memories of you from junior high is that you were always nice to everyone. Without fail. At a time in life when kids are so easily snarky and mean you were unfailingly kind.

She was someone I wanted to be a lot more like. Still do.

I sent her back out into the world with a copy of my book and some knitting (thank you for the gorgeous yarn, Lisa!) of my own.

Alaska Air reimbursed her on her clothing purchase.

It was their baggage handling that sparked us those two marvelous hours.