Noticed at the right time of day at the right time of year for the sun to be angled like that, caught at just the moment: our own personal flying saucer.  Beam me up!

Meantime, the next scarf photo went out amongst us at three squares long today.

I spent a wonderful time this afternoon in San Mateo with Beth, a semi-local knitter I hadn’t met before. We started at Nine Rubies and went on to coffee and hot chocolate at Starbucks, talking like old friends catching up.

Her square makes my unruly one behave–Afton’s is on the other side and mine is surrounded now, it had no choice but to settle down. What amazes me is that three people apart from each other can each make a small piece of knitting come out exactly the same size as the others’. Heck, I can’t even make my own knitting do that, but we did.

Tomorrow I see Diana and we’ll get her square sewn on and hopefully Sharon’s and Sally’s will have arrived at her place by then and go on, too. Diana and I have wanted to get together for some time now, and now we will. I can’t wait.

And I will go see Don. He said not to come today but do come Thursday. I will be there and be squared.

It’s not my fault. Afton started it.

An online longtime mutual knitting friend of ours has been fighting all kinds of things, starting with cancer, and so Afton thought up the idea that we could knit her a scarf: she was knitting the first square and mailing it to me, I could send it on to the next person, and suddenly we had seventeen people signed up from all over the country and I think beyond. And then I think a few more chimed in. Cheering on commenced.

Having been the recipient of so much such knitting when I was the one in the hospital five years ago, it is deeply gratifying to see the responses–and to get to be a part of it.

Afghans take a lot of time to come together and we wanted as immediate a gratification as we could pull off and something that wouldn’t seem overwhelming against anybody’s holiday knitting queue.

I was waiting for the package to arrive so I could make my piece match Afton’s, but the mail didn’t get delivered when it was promised her it would and I had the weekend to wish not to add to the delay. So I simply sat down and made mine and waited.  The headlights on the postal truck finally showed just before six this evening.

My first thought, opening up the envelope was, well, you can tell which one of us lives in a warm climate: mine is merino and silk in a yarn that was a surprise gift from another member of the same group so it seemed perfect when I picked it out, but I have to admit I’d simply forgotten about actually cold weather; a little thinner, a little lace, a little Californian. Hers is good and solid and warm. And soft.

It’ll be fascinating to see how the whole thing looks in the end. Everybody please take a picture as it goes out your door to show once this is all done and in the recipient’s hands.

(The photo: I went outside to check on things for the first time all week and lo and behold, there was a tomato (!) growing, and when I looked at the photo, no, actually, if you click on the picture you can see there are two. Now? Kinda slow on the bloom-where-you-are-planted thing, since that triples the year’s crop from that thing, but hey, delightful to find them.)

Today was Small Business Day with an AmEx promotion going on and somehow it felt like Cottage Yarns was where I needed to go, dear to my heart as Purlescence is.

It doesn’t hurt that Kathryn stocks a whole lot of Malabrigo and I now knew what I could do with a single skein of the lovely superfine Finito.  But whatever. It was just compelling to go.

The rest of that story would be hers to tell, but I’m glad I was there and I hope I did a good enough job of being a friend  in the moment.

And I came home grateful for the good health of my parents. Love your dear ones. And Don, you take good care of yourself, y’hear?

My friend Phyllis and I went off to the Harvest Festival arts and crafts fair today, as close to Black Friday-ing as I ever care to get. We got to see Mel and Kris! Our potter friends!

I figured I could justify buying a few food items (and a Mel-and-Kris mug. Hey.)

Yesterday, the turkey was carved in Aunt Mary Lynn’s kitchen and the bones went straight into the fridge, to be sent home with us. No way was I staying up till 2 am to cook them down, so, I did it when I got home from the fair.

I tried a little in a spoonful this evening, curious.

Then a fair bit more in a quarter cup.

And another.

And a few more times, and had to stop and put both in the fridge so there’d be some for anybody else.

For the record: fresh turkey broth mixed with grenadine syrup from the owners of the pomegranite trees? Watch out, cranberries, this totally beats you. skylakeranch.com and the shipping is free this weekend only. The syrup does not have and does not need added sugar.  Wow. Recommended. Go have fun.

(Edited to add: the label on mine says pomegranite juice, water, lemon juice. The description online says pomegranite juice, water, sugar, lemon juice. Curious. If it’s an issue for you, ask them.)

Got a few left still…

I got a note from an old friend Saturday. Her twins wanted to learn how to knit. They had an adopted-grandma of a favorite neighbor who had offered to teach them, but my friend’s husband had recently been laid off and they were not spending an extra dime just now (I could relate); might I have any unloved, unwanted yarn? Or even needles?

I just might. Actually, not a whole lot of worsted weight, but some, definitely, and I went looking for it. While remembering the two big boxes I had sent off to a girls’ camp a few summers ago where quite a few young women learned how to knit, loving the wool and the mohair they got to play with. (One way to happily clear out that ’80’s not-kid mohair. They couldn’t believe I sent the real stuff. Everybody won.)

I used to knit only with straight needles.

There was the time I accidentally dropped one of those on a plane as it was ascending: it immediately rolled far, far behind my seat, somehow dodging feet and floor luggage and was never seen again. Oops.

I have this old ceramic spaghetti canister, a Costco freebie from about 15 years ago, its lid broken* and so repurposed as a container for old mostly-aluminum straights that have long gone unused–except for that big aqua one. It’s good for slicing open the wrapping on the suet birdfood from a distance without touching the eyeball-burner chili oil waiting to pounce from within.

Circular needles are good for putting the weight of the work in your lap as you progress rather than having to hold up everything with your arm and hand muscles. Straights are good for learning on.

And so I found three pairs of 5 to 5.5mm (US 8 and 9) in the canister.

And all of them insisted on coming out. And all refused to go back in.

Well huh. Well, maybe one of the twins will like the plastic ones better than the feel of the aluminums.

It wasn’t till I went to deliver two big ziploc bags of yarn, mostly worsted wool, all natural fibers, that I saw the reaction of not just the twins but their older sister. The younger girls are turning eight very soon and the older is in her early teens, the age where you can’t show enthusiasm, especially if it’s something your mom or baby sisters are interested in.

But I knew in that moment, looking at those older eyes fixed on those goodies, that clearly what we had here were three wanna-be knitters in front of me. Even if one of them hadn’t thought she would be.

And there were three pairs of needles. I had not even thought of her in terms of the knitting lessons. Well there you go.

I’ll let them work it out from here.

——

*When it sailed through the air and then shattered into lots of little pieces, was it being the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

It was the Saturday before Thanksgiving at Costco, oh joy; we didn’t head out till late afternoon (and got what seemed to be the last gallon of orange juice.)

Wheeling the cart together halfway across the parking lot, lucky to have gotten that close in, I noted a car way ahead waiting for a spot and another, a few car lengths behind us, slowly inching forward, hoping the people loading up just past us were going to get done quickly. Getting late, still crowded.

I did a doubletake and called out the driver’s name. She startled and then exclaimed in delight from the other side of her window. Our kids had gone to school together back in the day.

I’d tried to connect with her this past May and found she was in the hospital, having major surgery not far from what mine had been like. I didn’t want to take her my germs and didn’t get to visit her and I’ve quite regretted that it was so; she, after all, had visited me when I was going through that, to my great surprise.

And here she was, in person, right here, braving that Costco parking lot, living the wonderfully ordinary again. SO good to see her!

In a red van. Like Don’s. Hey, Don, your turn next.

I talked to him on the phone a couple days ago for maybe three minutes, which was probably too long; he’d sounded so much like his old cheerful self when he’d answered, but he seemed to be fading fast. “Don, am I wearing you out?”

“Yes,” he answered honestly.

I understood–I’ve been there, where holding onto a phone in your hospital bed is just…too…it’s so heavy…

And so, if you have a moment, and if it’s something you feel like doing, his blog is at http://chippep.blogspot.com/ if you want to leave a message.

There was warmth everywhere (except outside, where it was raining buckets).  It was beautiful.

Joe called.

It is quite safe to say they liked the cowl.

He has our undying gratitude forever, and his wife, too, for his descriptions of how she brings out the best in him; I have no doubt she thus played a part in how it all turned out.

I had knitted it in a motif and colors of the flames of small candles. May their light always so shine.

…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!

I’m debating typing this. I don’t want to sound like I’m patting myself on the back. But then, actually, it started with what seemed for a long time like a mistake on my part, and more of one as I held doggedly on to it.

I saw a jacket–on sale, a very good price, lined and good and warm. And it was a deep blue teal, just subdued enough, the short-shearling-type lining a slightly greener teal and lining the hood, too. Gorgeous. I seriously coveted it. It was too big for me, but my daughter needed a jacket and there you go, decorating a daughter is even better than decorating yourself and so I bought it.

She, however, was a teenager at the time and the kiss of death at that age is to have your mother go bonkers over an article of clothing she expects you to wear. (Hey, I did it to my mom, too, I get it.) She did humor me enough to try it on once and as far as I remember that was that.

Both girls are a lot taller than I am, and no matter how much I liked it, the sleeves especially were just ridiculous on me.

And yet over the years as various things have come and gone, that jacket has stayed right there in that closet, with me unwilling to let it go. I gave a coat to a shelter, knowing it was much needed. The jacket, though, for whatever unfathomable reason, stayed. Out of sheer stubbornness. Or something. Someone had to like it as much as I did, darnit.

For the last few weeks, I’ve thought, y’know, I really should take that to church (but kept simply forgetting it, good intentions or no good intentions)…

…Instead, finally, that part of church that I kept thinking about came here.

We got a phone call in the middle of all-the-everything that’s been the furnace stuff: making sure that we remembered that on the monthly calendar we had signed up to serve dinner to the Mormon sister missionaries tonight. We had utterly forgotten. Had it been just one more day, had we known when we signed up, we could have had the whole house nice and warm for them, but oh well.

One of them is from the States and one of them is from Fiji. I had some very good coconut-curry sauce (thank you Costco) unopened in the fridge and hey, cook some raw shrimp in that, a few minutes stirring on the stove, done. To make the beautiful young woman with the slightly English accent feel at home, and she was ecstatic. (That wasn’t the only dish, but it was the most successful one.)

Richard had pulled one of the space heaters into the dining area as we’d sat down to eat  and we’d explained about the no furnace. Between it and the cooking, though, we had it reasonably comfortable in there.

We visited awhile, and at the end, I asked her: I had this jacket. It’s been cold. She was from a warm climate. She was taller than I; would she be willing to try it on and see if she liked it?

Her face lit up in surprise and hope and I ran and got it.

It fit! She LOVED it. “It’s *warm*!” (And boy did I relate to that sense of endless cold right now with having had to open windows to air the carbon monoxide out and all that.) She loved everything about it as much as I had, and just kind of danced around a moment in it holding it tight to her for sheer joy, the other sister missionary as happy for her as anyone could ever have asked for.

Turns out my instincts had been right–our tropical friend had been shivering and I should have done this long since, way back at the start of the cold, but at least here we now finally were. She had been going to go take the hit on her funds at long last (and I can’t imagine what that would have been for her at American prices) and just go and buy a jacket tomorrow. Tomorrow.

And now she didn’t have to. This was everything she needed. It fit. And she loved it.

It had been waiting for her for a long time.

A good evening with friends, and at the end…Huh. I checked my purse.

I hadn’t put it in there.

We got home and I sent off a note to the owner of the restaurant, describing the handknit hat in detail, the cable around the brim with a seam at the back, the stitches going up from there with no seam. Saying that if someone found it and treasures it and that’s where it is to be now, I will be glad they have it–and yet. It is a twinge.

I don’t normally knit cotton because it hurts my hands to work with, but I had this time as a chemo cap for my late mother-in-law. It was such a plain yarn but it had come out so pretty–I had been surprised, and pleased for her sake. In the end, it had come back to me now, and I had kept it as a memento of her.

….And now I put it to God. There is something very freeing about that. He knows better than I where it could do the most good.

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.

The annual stroking of the ego. I confess it freely.

The Scouts were having a spaghetti dinner tonight with a dessert auction fundraiser. I made two chocolate tortes for it. Bergenfield cocoa, bourbon vanilla, manufacturing cream–only the best.

And people were just waiting for the moment (while bidding on other things and Dave ratatatating off encouragement and numbers. DOIHEAR30? 35! SOLD, for 35!

There were lots of desserts, lots of laughing, gradually a slowing down and more chatting but then suddenly attention and a whole lot of hands shooting up as he started off on the first torte. He told everybody, “Now, there are two,” but still–the first went for $62. $52 for the second.

And as I watched the winners across the room cut them up on the spot and gleefully hand pieces around their tables and to anyone who allowed themselves to look interested, it felt pretty darn good.