Thank you everybody for the input on the cowls. Good ideas, all.

The neighbors have been doing some repair work on a fence, which means there’s been about a six foot opening between us the last week or more. They’ve been doing a much more thorough job than the professionals we hired for the other side of the yard did ten years ago–this one’s built to last.

I didn’t go out there the last three evenings, so I was surprised when I went to go water things to find that the gap was nearly gone. They’d been working hard. And they’ve got a good 15 years on us at least. I am in awe.

The wife heard or saw me going by and popped her head through; I was delighted, and we chatted awhile. Then her husband waved through the opening and we all took turns dancing sideways through the small gap, me the most easily, with some teasing going on.

We considered the thing.

“Maybe we should put a gate here to finish it off,” she said, not wanting our impromptu through-the-fence meetings to come to an end. So we wouldn’t have to go so far around the streets to greet each other. The song “Taking the long way home” started playing in my head.

“My grandsons would get through to pick your tomatoes.”

She laughed.  And then we got talking about homegrown tomatoes, looking at their still-green-but-no-red plants.

It was time for me to go pick Richard up and I had to let them go at last. In the time I was home again before I went off to Purlescence for knit night, I heard…a hammer….

And was grateful there’s still one last section they want to replace later. First we have to take out the weed tree growing through it. All in good time.

I’m actually quite wishing for that gate.

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 have good friends who are about to move–a half hour north, not Far Far Away, but where we would no longer see them at church every week. It was their 25th anniversary.

And so today there was a grand bash: a renewal of their vows in the building they’d gotten married in, music, and  speeches by their kids including her older two the dad had taken in as his own.

The college-age-and-above children showed a video of their oldest sister as a young kid reenacting her mommy’s then-recent wedding, complete with the dress and veil that their mother was again wearing today. Here Comes The Bride played. I don’t know who the little boy she’d roped into joining her was, but in the footage they stood before the child playing officiator and then the taller bride grabbed the littler groom and swept him off his feet, their backs now to the camera as she play-reenacted, as best as one could tell from that angle, The Kiss photograph where the kissee is swept nearly horizontal mid-air by the sailor celebrating the War being over.

Then she pretended to belt him forward across the room like Popeye on a good dose of spinach, the both of them wildly hamming it up, and dusted off her hands in triumph. The audience was laughing to tears across the chapel.

We all adjourned from there to their soon-to-be-sold house. A chocolate torte may have been among the desserts. (Adding the link to make it easier for some people who were there to find the recipe.) My daughter’s surgeon from high school, who turned out to be their neighbor, made a point of finding me and telling me how good it was.

But the best part by far, of course, was the joy of the bride and groom and their family.

Good times.

And, on a totally side note, as we were out the door to go, the mail had just come and there was my much-anticipated package. I was dying to know what would be inside.

Here’s what The Buffalo Wool Company‘s email ad said on October 30:

“Seeing as you are a BWC VIP, you are getting a heads up and a early peek at what has been our most unusual promotion of the year.    I don’t know if you should be grateful or annoyed 🙂  You might be better off spending your hard earned $$ on candy and tequila.

Yes this is our annual Trick or Treat offering, and once more, I highly recommend you skip this and go find some good skein of sheep stuff, or goat hair. There is a slim chance you will actually get anything useful here, most likely you will get a tangled mess that someone found under the packing table.

You might get a skein or two of Heaven, Sexy, or even Strange Twist, but most likely you will get a random odd lot, bad dye job, or knotted slub of mess.   All year long we toss anything we don’t feel right selling for top dollar into a bucket, and around now we pull out those buckets, toss a few skeins of top quality yarn in to appease our consciences, and offer a shred of hope.

This is how we clean out the office and pay for the company Christmas party.  🙂

There are 400 skeins of Buffalo Wool Co. yarn, 260 of which are truly our seconds and mistakes, we have added a bunch of “Half-Tracks”, “Tracks”, “Sexy”, “Heaven”, “Strange Twist”, and two Skeins of “Buffalo Gold”  So, you have almost 60/40 odds of getting crap.

This is the one thing every year that our “satisfaction guarantee” doesn’t apply too, you get what you get, we have warned you.  There are no returns, and we pretty much guarantee you won’t like what you get.  Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Ron Miskin
The Buffalo Wool Co.”

I guffawed reading that and then had to explain to Richard what was so funny. He, quizzical: “You’re going to DO that?” Heck yeah!

I got a color I would never have ordered but that I’m very glad to have on hand to knit for someone else or maybe even me. Some little kid–or maybe it was a who let the cat in, but they’d clearly played with the winder because the yarn meandered this way and back thataway in little helter-skelter of apparently criss-crossed loops at the top of the hank at random. It took me awhile to untangle it into a nice tidy ball.

But for ten bucks? For buffalo yarn? For this nice stuff? Hey.

Shame that invitation said No Gifts. But then, my knitting beat them to it by a few years.

I shocked Steve. I let them have it.

I went up to him afterwards to apologize for being so emotional, saying that I’d surprised myself– “But then, I realized, I WAS angry!”

He looked at me with this grateful smile on his face getting bigger and bigger and finally, looking in my eyes, said, “Wow. Of *all* the people… I would NEVER have taken you for such a tiger!” and he thanked me. “That was straight from the heart. You were great!”

Nearly five hours into the two hour meeting I had had to put down the knitting and just listen to them drone on and on and sent Richard a note and my Iphone autocorrected that phrase to “inane,” capturing it perfectly, and it was oh please, please let me have my needles back.

Backstory: as I’ve mentioned, we only have one car now because we spent near the equivalent of a small car on my new hearing aids. Which are fabulous. And so, when the Mountain View City Council scheduled their meeting that was essentially the redeveloper vs Milk Pail at 5:00-7:00, Stage II, Richard and I were stuck: it could go to any hour and I couldn’t strand him at work and he didn’t want to strand me from going and supporting Steve, the owner of Milk Pail, on behalf of both of us.

I almost rented a car.

He decided I really did need to go no matter what and made arrangements at work and simply called me at 3:45 to my surprise and said, I’m coming home now. You can go.

Last time I was in those council chambers, I sat there unable to decipher any of the proceedings in that room, even with what was then state-of-the-art aids, simply a mute presence in Steve’s support, so when he shook my hand before it started tonight and thanked me for coming and asked if I would speak, I said, no, no, I don’t think so.

I heard every word coming out of the councilmembers’ microphones. Who knew! Thank you Oticon! Everything, and so when they asked for public comment I leaped to my feet–yeah I had something to say, definitely. With the 1.15 million square feet the developer wants to build along SA Road, I said it was laughable that they claimed it would have zero impact on traffic on SA Road in the adjoining cities just a few blocks away (and near us).

I told of the community that Milk Pail creates, where rich and poor alike come to shop, where the poor can afford fresh veggies because Steve’s prices are so low. Because his costs are so low. He’s been there a long time. (I didn’t say the obvious, that it’s stupid to tell him to move his business–given Proposition 13 and the fact that he’s owned his land for 38 years, he would lose his low property tax edge entirely and the fact that he owns the place outright and would have to raise his prices. Come ON people. But yes, Council asked innocently why he didn’t just move. Duh.)

And then I got down to what I knew they knew: one small halal shop had refused to sell. So the developer had cut off their parking and starved them out and now owns what was their property. They’re trying to do the same thing to Steve. (And the Council itself had abrogated the existing longterm parking agreement that Steve had paid for and then they’d individually denied having voted for any such thing, till Steve showed them chapter and verse at an earlier meeting where they had. I did not bring that up.)

Having mentioned I lived in the town just over one, I told them, “I have shopped at Milk Pail for twenty-six years.” I cited the halal owners and told them “That is why my family and I have boycotted every business built in Stage I. My husband and four grown kids have not and will not step foot in the new Safeway; we used to shop at the old one on California Avenue” (now closed). “IF YOU SHAFT STEVE”–I looked around at them– “you are telling us You. No. Longer. Want. Our. Dollars. Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Safeway, Costco.

We have our own.”

And I sat down. (Thinking, well, except for the Costco, we’d have to go to Redwood City or Sunnyvale if we skip yours. Close enough.)

I didn’t even use up my allotted two minutes. I didn’t have to.

It was great seeing the developer’s head honcho getting defensive and angry in response to some of Council’s questions later.

But they were too divided, and could only decide not to decide yet. Steve’s not out of the woods yet. But with 200 emails pouring in from the community and a record turnout tonight for such a meeting, demanding that Milk Pail be saved, things may be looking up.

Maybe.

We have to keep up the pressure on the City.

I spent four hours in the car today: it was almost like having kids in soccer and music lessons and track and basketball again.

And one of the things that I had to do was go to the post office. But after the first three hours–drop Richard off at a routine doctor appointment, sit in rush hour traffic, drop John off at the airport, sit in rush hour traffic, pick Richard up, drop him off at work–I just wanted to sit and put my feet up a minute before going out again.

Which I did. And then picked up my purse, ready to go… And found myself putting it back down again, wondering at myself.

I swatched some yarn I’d been thinking of playing with as a carry-around project.

I did some laundry. I puttered, the house feeling very quiet.

I looked at the clock again and wondered, what is my problem here? Come ON.

And yet it still took me another ten minutes to pick up that purse again and get back out that door.

And that is why I was leaving the post office just as Earl was coming in–one half minute earlier and I’d have missed him.

His daughter went to kindergarten on up with my Sam; we’ve known each other a long time. And about once every year or two we run into each other, usually at that post office.

I was not there the time he suddenly fell to the floor in front of those postal clerks and woke up–and was very, very lucky to wake up–in the cardiac unit at Stanford. Another dad we knew from back-in-the-school-day, likewise an African American man in his 60’s, was not so fortunate.

Earl looked older now than I wanted him to, and thin. He asked after each member of my family and after my health and I after his, rejoicing.

There was the unspoken, I’m so glad to see you’re still alive.

There was the unspoken, You’re still here and so I’m going to be, too. We have to do this again. And again and again and again.

And so we do.

An online knitter who befriended me and likewise in return as of some time ago posted a question on Facebook: what is your favorite memory of Halloween?

We moved to California with a baby who turned one while we were living in a hotel for a month, waiting to be able to close on our house, a toddler who would turn three a few months later, and the oldest, who turned five on moving day. John would arrive a year later.

We had a neighbor who’d moved in about a year earlier herself after a divorce that it was clear she hadn’t expected nor wanted. Her kids were newly grown and suddenly there was just her now.

We went out of our way to say hi when we saw her. She was shy and tended to keep to herself, and of course she had her own life with a busy work schedule, but if we saw her we claimed her for a happy moment of waving and calling out to her as we went by.

It was probably our third Halloween here that our kids got a stomach virus. There would be no trick-or-treating. No costumes. No playing dressup. No sorting through the loot afterwards that’s more than their parents would want them to have.

I don’t remember if it was later that night or the next day, but our doorbell rang.

It was that neighbor.

She had gotten the usual snickers-type stuff for what few kids there were in the neighborhood at the time, but for ours, she had made the trek all the way to See’s Candies, where she’d bought a perfect little paper haunted house filled with very nice candies for each of our kids. Quite the gift. She had waited and waited in happy anticipation of the surprise, keeping them out of sight of anybody else who might knock…

…And our kids had not come. Something had to be wrong. So finally she came over to us, hoping everything was okay?

She was at last claiming us in return, cementing a friendship that has stood firm for a quarter century now.  And this time of year every year I remember and am grateful–even, now that that part’s long over, for that bug. For what it made clear.

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.

My friend Gracie Larsen, the founder of the Lacy Knitters Guild and to whom at least one of the Interweave lace books is dedicated, and a member of our local knitting group, talking to me about eight years ago: “Alison! How’s your book coming along?!”

“It isn’t.”

“Well, that’s no good!” and she asked me what the holdup was. Then she handed me the names, emails, and phone numbers of some of her dear friends to get the ball rolling again for me.

Including, among others: Meg Swansen.

Barbara Walker.

One of the things that had been stumping me was that I wanted to use some of Ms. Walker’s lace patterns within my shawls but I had not a clue how to reach her to ask, nor whether she was even still alive; my mother had bought her stitch treasuries around 1970, and I had no idea how old she’d been then. My father had spent ten years researching and writing a book when I was a kid that someone else later pirated a great deal of, so copyright issues have always been near and dear to my heart–I wasn’t going to just appropriate those stitches.

I had finished my shawls. They had sat there.

Meg was as gracious as anyone who’s ever interacted with her in any way would know she would be. Barbara was deeply gratified at having been asked; she told me she sees knits with patterns she knows she created pop up in various places with no credit given.

My son was living not far from Barbara at the time, as it turned out, and we swapped hurricane stories a bit. I tried not to take too much of her time but was and am very grateful for her generosity and her goodwill towards me personally and the whole of the knitting community.

My husband came home from work that day and I was still just too stunned, trying to take it all in, who I’d been talking to that morning–wow! Grace’s gesture had been the knitter’s equivalent of, here, go talk to my friend the President, here’s his private line! Like it was the most natural thing in the world. And once online or on the phone with them, they made it feel like it was indeed. (Terry Martin then at Martingale, too.) Good people.

Why I’m mentioning all this. Barbara Walker is having an auction, via Schoolhouse Press, Meg Swansen’s company, of things she has knitted. Things she photographed to go into those stitch treasuries. You just have to go have a look: if you’re a knitter, this is part of our history. Pretty cool stuff.

Six hours. The magical number was 203, and it took me six hours of ripping and redoing to stumble my way there, but when I got there and it looked good it was such a long-waited-for moment of I DID IT!

The silk/lycra and the baby alpaca held up perfectly through all that.

Meantime, I got out of the house: a package arrived for Michelle and she invited us to bring it on over and see her new place. I was quite looking forward to it. We got to meet her roommate Michelle, who came home while we were there, and it’s clearly a happy place to be; we’re very pleased.

But it was amazing to me how exhausting it still was simply sitting in a car and then climbing the stairs over there. Eh. Day by day.

Our Michelle had some homemade cookie dough in the fridge and offered us ginger cookies if we didn’t mind waiting for them to bake, and my sweet husband’s instant reaction was, Your mom didn’t bring her knitting.

I laughed. We waited. We talked. We savored.

Then this evening: the neighbors are doing some repair work on an old part of the fence and they have part of it open at the moment. I went to water the fruit trees and found myself trying not to breathe near them but still, they were out in their back yard working, there we were, and too rarely do we get a chance to talk to those good folks. And so we did. I told them about the long wait and the apples at last.

I don’t know that Adele had ever seen my back yard before. We talked peach trees (there, and there…) I will try to get the Tropic Snow to grow towards their yard, and they might well plant one themselves; I promised it would be well pollinated. Lorings don’t need pruning? Cool!

And then I went inside for the scissors, came back out, and quietly snipped the shipping tape on a box and picked them a large, ripe, juicy Fuji. I know how good it is; we ate the other one of that pair yesterday.

Thus there are now two boxes left and then we’re done for the season.

I called near the opening, wondering; were they still out there? She stepped into sight and about squealed with delight–she too has childhood memories of picking apples in the Fall in Virginia. It was a treasure to her, too, my box-misshaped offering, a memory made on the spot.

Next year, hopefully, now that I know what to do, there will be a lot more to share around.

I know, I know, it’s name dropping, but this is just too fun not to share–for me it brings back so many happy memories with that good family, and I knew if I put it here I could find it again. My parents weren’t big picture takers and I had no idea this existed.

My brother Bryan says our Mom sent him this photo some time ago and before everyone else had heard of the guy, of his best friend from across the street just before the best friend moved away to South Carolina.

Stephen Colbert was four.

Meantime, I finished the Malabrigo Silkpaca shawl and have gone back to the Epiphany project after a week’s break to figure out how to redesign the part I didn’t like. Ripped relentlessly, thinking of how Stephanie says she’s never regretted frogging something that’s not working.

And now that I’ve seen how it could look because of how it did look but that came up short, (see? It wasn’t wasted time) I finally knew what to do to make it come out perfect. It feels so much better now. Full speed ahead!

Brian Holloway, whose name will probably be familiar to people who follow football, had a locker just a ways down from mine in high school and was close friends with my friend Brad (the friend who posted notice of Steve’s passing.)  Between them and their little brothers a grade younger, they set the tone for the jocks in the school: be good to other people. Be proud of their accomplishments (missed the state football championship by one game) but not too full of themselves. The stupid drunk partying thing? Not cool around the captain of the team and his buddy.

Every high school should have jocks like that (said the emphatically-not-a-jock). I don’t remember a lot of details about Brian but I do remember that our class was fortunate he was in it; he was just a really nice guy who made the world better around him.

To whom this just happened.  (Updated link here.)

Over twenty thousand dollars in damage to his house, stupid teens tweeting their own little reality show while Brian read their posts from far away, incredulous. The rampaging mob, hundreds of them, stole, drugged, drank, peed, broke, shattered, vandalized, graffittied, all the while publicly glorying to each other in their destruction.

And his response?

To hope to rescue those kids from the tragedy of the trajectories they’d just sent themselves on.  To hold them accountable for the sakes of their own souls while telling them here was his website and here was their chance: own up. Come clean. Don’t stay in that horrible hole forever where it will only get worse if they let bad decisions compound bad decisions and flood out their futures. And don’t think you can duck out if you don’t do it–we know.  He offered them something priceless: take responsibility and by so doing begin to reclaim yourselves. Come help me get the place ready for a picnic for military personnel.

Other teens who had had nothing to do with that night showed up too after they heard: to help clean up the terrible mess in shame for what their peers had done and to offer solidarity to a family who had done nothing to deserve this.

And that is a gift they gave themselves as well as the Holloways, forever.

Holly got to see the Chihuly Garden! Sculptures of handblown glass. There’s a local Chihuly piece I have yet to go see, but I need to.

And then today she landed in San Francisco, took the train down, and spent the afternoon with me. Not often you get to see a friend who lives on a different continent.

Knowing she likes to knit hats and that she’d said something about not having a lot of yarn with her on her trip, not wanting to weigh down her luggage but wanting to offer something, I brought her a skein of Malabrigo Rios in Ravelry Red (thank you Kathryn at Cottage Yarns) and it exactly matched her shirt–and of course it had that legendary Malabrigo softness. She loved it.

Then she pulled out a red fabric bag. Ohmygoodness. The peach, the gold, the two of purple variegated–those are all silks! And six skeins of Zauberball sock wool from the factory outlet there in Germany.  Wow wow wow. Karbonz double points to knit socks with. Thank you doesn’t begin to say it.

We commandeered a table at the new restaurant Tava for over three hours, and they assured us we were fine. I was glad to see a good stream of customers coming in and out; nice people and good food and one of those rare days that you get to remember and treasure forever.

I wish Tava every success, and to that end, my family and I will be back.

Safe travels, Holly, and my best to you and your family.

Dark o’clock alarm for the earliest flight out. Dark again after the last flight back. Blessings on Michelle for driving us despite working till 2 am the last few nights. (So did Richard.)

Hudson being a charmer despite teething.

More tomorrow after a little sleep. But I just have to say: if you ever, ever want to knit for someone who will swoon, who can’t believe you did that, who loves all the people who loved them and shared or wanted to share their yarn to contribute to the afghan for their little (is he really already two months old? Yeah, she said, I know!) baby–my daughter-in-law’s whole family is just the best.

And Hayes’s mom also said that after he was chilled that first week that yes, he likes very much now to be warm. The afghan was perfect.

On my way there I said a prayer for every member of our group, the ones who come, the ones who don’t, whoever might show up. I figured we could all use such good thoughts anyway, so, yeah.

She’s said it to me before in private. I was shocked speechless at both the words and the fact that she slammed her heavily damaged, arthritic hands to make her point as she said them: pain on pain.

But this is the first time that I know of that she said it to the whole group.

Lupus Support Group, Conference Room B. There were eight of us today. Six are mothers and one clearly, from things she’s said, would have liked to have been.

And then there’s M.

M fiercely believes that we could eradicate the scourge of lupus once and for all–not by research, not by medical advances, one of which we had just been discussing, no, what she said was, if lupus patients would just STOP. HAVING. CHILDREN.

And right there next to her as she fiercely derided most of us was me on one side, mother of four at the time of my diagnosis, and MK, likewise with her grown four and with her sweet three-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter in tow. Who’d been charming the socks off everyone, including M. I hope that little girl didn’t catch on that her grandmother was being condemned for her very existence.

The kicker is that lupus is not actually known to be genetic. The susceptibility to it seems to be inherited, but not the disease itself.

The others were taken quite aback but I’d heard it all before, so I smiled and responded gently, “Actually, I think lupus is what I needed to grow up.”

And I went on to describe how I had learned to be more the kind of person I wanted to be, kinder, more compassionate, more aware of others’ needs, because of the things I’d gone through via illness. (The stories I could tell! The people I would never have met but for…Like right here in this room, including, yes, her…)

I bragged on my kids by quoting Mrs. Russell, who had taught them all in elementary school; she’d taken me aside one day, well after my diagnosis, and told me that my kids were more empathetic to those around them, kinder….

The lupus, I said, had played a part in that.

“We all have something,” I added.

Another woman nodded, “The seeds of our deaths are in our births. It’s part of life.”

Another woman gave her own example of why it was okay to have had to go through all this.

I picked Richard up from work a few hours later and I was still struggling not to steam over the cluelessness of the woman’s unfathomable insult. I honestly don’t think she knew she was being insulting, though, and it was clear she was incredibly lonely, in too much pain to see beyond herself, and though she would never agree, it was very clear to me that in her old age she deeply regretted not having had children. That lashing out was her only way of dealing with it.

She needed a friend, not someone who took it personally and got angry back. (Rereading this draft before hitting publish, I feel that having written that out loud after these hours have passed, I am finally free of it.)

I hope what I said helped. I do know that I said it better in the moment it was needed than I of myself could have done, alone.

Got my hair cut yesterday by Gwyn and have been very very pleased with it. If you’re local, I highly recommend her.

Knitting: got the last pythagorean repeat finished on Hayes’ baby blankie and now I’m into the ribbing. But I knew it was going to be a letdown when I didn’t have it to work on anymore after an intense month of it.

And I knew that sometimes that makes me sit around and admire the thing–okay, call it what it is, dithering helplessly–rather than getting to it on the next big thing.

And I had the next emotionally-big thing to do.

So to head off any lagging, I got a good start on a scarf for a friend’s daughter who’s going off to college for the first time, to send her off with an extra helping of love from friends. One she knows, two she doesn’t: the yarn is the exquisite but discontinued Cascade Epiphany, royal baby alpaca/silk/cashmere, via a gift certificate to Purlescence from those two other knitters. Who were quite delighted for the new college student’s sake when I told them.