I was at Purlescence tonight and spread Hayes’s afghan on the floor in front of Rachel to show her what her yarn gift had grown up to be–and while I was halfway through the last color band, to ask her advice.

Stop here and go straight to ribbing or do the full 24-row repeat?

Make it longer, she said. I’d keep going.

So I am. So, so close. It will seem so odd not to be working on it anymore.

(Oh, and I almost forgot: lessons on how to be a better predator to the baby seal or whatever the heck that thing in the water was, as given to a National Geographic photographer with a far higher tolerance for risk than I have by a curious, huge leopard seal. The doofus kept letting the proffered penguins get away from him.)

Nobody was around and nobody would know, right? So the kid got in his jacked-up truck and floored it in reverse and blindly on past the corner–and it is a fairly blind corner–and I can only guess which way he was going to throw the steering wheel from there at the T-intersection but it didn’t matter because he slammed on the brake after I left a bit of skid marks on the road doing the same.

The car behind me managed not to hit me either.

It was his mom, coming home early.

As he turned his face quickly away to avoid my eyes, I nodded to him: Proceed.

And he was off, at a prim pace just so.

The mom pulled into her driveway, I into mine, we got out, and she, a tad mortified, me, laughing it off, walked towards each other. This was one of those times when the UV sun exposure didn’t matter, we needed to come together in that moment and no later. Now. For her sake.

The first words out of her mouth were, “He’ll be in college next year.”

I so didn’t expect that–I laughed. It’s okay. Far better that he learn in a narrow miss with witnesses and caught than in something worse later.

The annual block party in the early evening: old friends, good neighbors, great times.

I apologized to the neighbor on one side that I hadn’t planted the peach trees where they would grow over her side after all, like she’d fervently hoped I would.  Sun and soil issues. (Although, I could train the one at the end maybe eventually…)

Later I was chatting with the neighbor behind us on the other side. She had bought her house in the early 1950’s. I told her that there are now peach trees for June, July, and August growing on my side of the fence from her, and, (as I watched her face fall) a goodly distance away from it but that I would trim any limbs back should they ever grow too close to it.  (Knowing she doesn’t want anything to damage that fence–10 years old, but from her perspective and to some degree to mine too, brand new.)

There was a distinct lack of enthusiasm in her face. A suddenly-deeply-dour expression of, tell me you didn’t.

I tried again. I promised I would keep the trees trimmed short so I could reach the fruit and that they weren’t supposed to get very big in the first place.

Yellow or white?

One yellow, two white, I answered, not sure what she was hoping for there–but then it was clear that that wasn’t it. The whites, clearly, no. I didn’t protest except in my head that the Babcock and Tropic Snow white ones are supposed to have a more complex and intense flavor than just plain sweetness, that they are nothing like anything from any grocery store, they’re top taste testers, really, she would love them. Honest!

I remembered that not everybody’s childhood memory is of a ripe, sun-warmed, perfect fruit that you yourself climbed into the tree to get, its juices running down your arms and dripping down your front till your t-shirt is soaked in essence of peach perfume.

There’s a reason they don’t sell peaches like that in the grocery stores.

It didn’t occur to me till later that perhaps she’s a diabetic and sweet fruit is nothing but a terrible temptation. Or maybe she sneezes in the spring. I don’t know. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and say I think they need to stay on our side.

…in the towering redwoods. Yes I did. Sunscreened, sunjacketed, big hat. Parked right near the mile-out stop on my way in but just missed the bus that had once been a San Francisco trolley car and given the wait and the late (3:40 and the place would shut down at 5:00) I simply hoofed it through the hills. Later got out of there after quitting time, when the trolleybusing was officially over, and got another stiff workout.

It was Kings Mountain Art Fair weekend. I’d been looking forward impatiently all year to seeing my potter friends Mel and Kris.

And so it was that the baby blankie got put aside for a day while I worked like mad to finish the edging on a shawl. I had been debating on it for some time whether to just cast it off or add more?

I looked at it last night and practicality begone, the answer was, more. I added seven long rows, finishing it at noon today. I emailed a few friends to ask for advice re the blocking that just wasn’t happening in that kind of time frame and then did the suddenly-obvious and thank you Chan and Bev: I held the steamer on the iron over that edging and around the shawl a bit. It was Malabrigo Silky Merino, a thick (for me), drapey yarn, and it was enough for now.

Their Stonechat colorway? The pale gray flecks interspersed with the burgundy reds look like the light filtered through the redwoods.

Kris was just thinking it was getting chilly but hadn’t said anything out loud yet when I opened my purse. She admired the shawl and was about to hand it back when I headed her off at the pass with, “But does it fit?”

Her eyes went huge. Stunned. Thrilled. Petting it, swooning over the softness, loving the colors, just dumbfounded. She loved it! I told her about the not-really-blocked, that the lacework would stretch out more once it’s rinsed and to lay it out in a circle to dry. Or just wear it as is; given the heft and hang of the fiber, it worked.

I told her and Mel that my brother had come to visit us with his three daughters and that I’d found I didn’t have enough of their medium sized mugs for everybody. I only had six. I had so been looking forward to picking out more.

And so I did, two, and a napkin holder and a berry bowl that is designed to let the rinsed berries continue draining into the plate below. Kris picked it up, and smiling at the memory, said, “Mel made this one.”

She picked up one of the mugs I’d chosen and pointed out the way the yellow and red played with and speckled through each other in an effect that she said only one firing had succeeded in doing since they’d moved their operations to their new home in Oregon–she really loved those.

Three of the four pieces I’d latched onto had that in them. I love it too. I’d had no idea it was a rare thing, and now I have all the more reason to treasure them.

“Hey wait,” I told Kris at some sudden point later in the conversation–“you forgot to write me up!”

She got an impish grin. “No I didn’t.”

Kathryn had the exact color in the exact shade I was hoping for. And I got to see her! (And I took the other way home–the Bay Bridge closure, forgot, right, right, do NOT take 101 between San Francisco and the San Mateo Bridge right now. But it wasn’t too bad my direction at that hour.)

And our nephew Ryan, the one who lived with us last summer, is in town briefly so we took him out to dinner. And we got to see him!

And Michelle went to check in for her flight tomorrow and found out that, oh–it’s not at 9:50, it leaves at 6:50. AM.

And we get to see her off.

Think I’ll turn in now.

Took it easy today, knit just a few rows, and the hands are much better off.

But I did get to show Rachel at knit night the colors of her yarn coming together in that baby blankie, all but the last one in there. She loved how it was coming out. Made my day.

Meantime, if you didn’t see the story, I highly recommend scrolling down near the bottom of this page to see the longer version of the interview with Antoinette Tuff.

A mentally ill young man with an AK-47 and 500 rounds of ammo in his pockets got through the locked doors at an elementary school as a parent walked in and Ms. Tuff found herself face to face with him. His face showed his intent.

She felt the fate of hundreds of children and teachers on her, that one wrong word and they and she and the gunman and who knows how many cops would all be dead. She started talking to the guy while silently praying–not just for all the innocents but for him, too. “I put it all to God.”

She found an opening when he told her his name: that was her mother’s maiden name. “We could be family!” He was cool with that.

She told him some of the things she’d gone through to show that one could come out okay even after really bad experiences, that she wanted him to go forward and experience the parts of life that were to come for him, that the good to come would prove it was worth it, and she eventually talked him into emptying his pockets onto her desk, all the ammo, the gun, everything, and into lying down on the floor with his hands behind him while she sat at the desk so that the cops could know she was okay. So he would be too.

And thus it ended peacefully. He’d shot some shots earlier, but nobody was hurt.

I have never wanted so badly for someone to be awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom. I want Antoinette Tuff to get to see the whole country cheering her for who she is and for what she did. I was the tenth signer of the petition; will you join me?

I was at Purlescence tonight, knit night, and admired what the person next to me was working on. It was a very soft variegated purple, I think she said a handdyed merino/kid mohair blend, a nice chevron pattern, densely knit and warm, very pretty.

I’d followed her pictures on Facebook on her trip to Europe she’d just gotten back from.

She’d had a great time, she told me.

“Did you buy any yarn over there?”

“No,” she answered, hesitating– “but I lost some. One skein. One irreplaceable skein.”  She paused, then said it again: “Irreplaceable,” shaking her head slightly, still grieving the loss in spite of herself.

It was for the project she was working on. She’d bought the yarn ten years ago, long since closed out now. She had started a scarf but now it was going to have to be a cowl and oh well. “Cowls are nice,” we both agreed. She had tried Ravelry, she had tried asking every likely yarn store she could find anywhere but it was long gone.

I told her my story, which wasn’t anywhere near hers, of trying to match a dye lot, leaving messages–and not thinking to mention that I was on Pacific time. One helpful shop owner, working through emails before she opened the doors for the day, called me rather than emailing back, the more personal touch. Very nice of her, actually.

And so my husband woke up to the sound of the phone in the dark of the winter night, California time, handed it to me, and growled, “It’s your boiler-room New York City yarn pushers. They want you to know: they don’t have your dye lot!”

Oops.

During those last couple of sentences, the friend’s phone started buzzing and she apologized a bit and picked it up (oh it did? sorry I didn’t hear it) when I finished.

It was a message from someone on Ravelry who’d made a project out of that yarn. Ten years ago. She had three skeins left. “They’re yours.”

Overwhelmed to the point of tears, the shop cheering, hugs and huzzahs all around. Wow, what were the odds! And what timing! We all got to celebrate with her! For both of them! I tell you, that place was full of really happy people all the sudden.

What that generous knitter whoever they are could never know was that our friend had toured a World War II concentration camp in Germany, and I can only imagine the emotions and the losses it represented. I have seen and felt Gettysburg, a place beyond words, and that–

But…this….

Her yarn. Somewhere on that trip. It was gone.

Someone stepped forward tonight for a complete stranger simply because she knew what it was like not to be able to finish the project as she’d dreamed it and she could well imagine what it would mean to her to now be able to. Because she empathized with her fellow human being. What a gift, what a deeply meaningful gift, and may it come back to this good person again and again in her life.

“Knitters are the BEST!” our friend exclaimed.

Parker and his beloved blankie. (And I hope by linking, the very kind Antonio at Malabrigo gets to see how treasured his Rios is. He told me at Stitches how rare it is to be granted a glimpse: all that yarn they send out into the world, what becomes of it?) One very happy little boy.

And every year at Stitches, there’s a vendor who does custom fitting and then creates and mails you a pair of shoes made in America, your choice color, style, leather and that are guaranteed to fit your feet at a Birkenstock-range price.

As a 6.5 EE, choice and fit are a rare and wonderful thing, and a few years ago I ordered navy sandals from them. I didn’t buy into the reflexology idea behind the funky knobby bottoms on the things (scroll down just a bit), but they were designed for you to be able to be comfortably on your feet all day.

There’s only one problem.

Ever since a speeder totaled my car, my sense of balance has been purely visual and tactile, and it’s a good thing I like Birkenstocks because they steady me with a lot of feedback as to just where and how far away the floor is and whether I’m tilting overly.

But those, not so much. I wore them  once and decided I risked breaking bones–they’re great shoes, just not for me.

Birkenstock had an outlet shop years ago in Gilroy till the company closed all their American outlets. But in the meantime, while my friends Mel and Kris were doing a show in the area, we found out later she and I bought the exact same clog in the exact same size and same color at about the same time. 37R. Twins. Cool!

Hey–I know someone who has to be on her feet all day at art shows who would fit those not-Birks…

And so, with her permission, I sent the navy pair off to where they would actually be worn.

And today she got me back for it. She found out I’d broken my favorite hot cocoa mug and asked for a picture.

I know the Kunihiros generally don’t mail their pottery; I was expecting to buy more at the show coming up at the end of the month and looking forward to seeing them.

She and her family made four castings of mugs, the letter in the box said, set them in a row, and together they picked out the one that best matched the photo.

The mental image of that just makes me very happy. The family gathered together, the row of mugs, the winner, and most of all the love.

My hot cocoa and I are going to do some serious celebrating with that mug in the morning! And I can’t wait to thank them in person!

I held off on calling because I felt Emily had enough to deal with; an email would give her whatever space and time she might need.

She did email back today, telling me she is taking life twelve hours at a time. At the end of the day she sent a note to all, overwhelmed at all the “soot covered, mask wearing bodies who flocked to my rescue” Monday and then came back Tuesday to help some more. She and her family were going off to family for a few weeks, away from the ash and the loss to catch their breath. She vowed to plant new tomato plants when they got back (and I wondered, flame? Firefighters? Foam? She did not say.)

And her favorite jacket washed out clean.

And her skirt awaits.

The best thing, by far, that I have ever read on the subject of Paula Deen is this essay, ending with an invitation to her to come cook and bake and break bread with the author. Powerful in his forgiving, his empathy, and in the opportunity he offers her. The point of my mentioning this is not Paula Deen: it is in the wisdom and the words of the wonderful human being that is Michael Twitty.

And more locally:

Last October I loaned a friend a skirt for part of her Halloween costume. It was a tall size Talbots, silk, bought off Ebay for a buck plus shipping charges that were no more than a gallon of gas–it seemed worth the risk at the time, though the color was a guess from the poor photo; I could always change that part anyway.

Vivid orangey red is the exact light frequency that sets off my head injury the most and tosses my flimsy balance away. Yow! But it was long, flattering. Elegant.

Emily absolutely loved it. She’s tall, she loved the color, it fit her perfectly, for her it was perfect, and so when she came to bring it back I offered her to keep it.

No no, it’s yours, and she refused, delighted by the gesture, though.

As I mentioned yesterday, I was cleaning up in preparation for our houseguests. They’ll be here after seeing Yosemite–I don’t think my brother’s been in California since the summer I was 10 and he turned 12–and somehow I came across that forgotten skirt. And so I found myself looking at it yesterday morning and thinking of Emily.

Well, I did already try to give it to her, time to finally go put it in that dyepot and darken the color.  A lot. No sense in having it go unworn. The lining is polyester and will likely stay what it is and resist the protein-fibers-specific Jacquard bath, but that’s okay. Seems a shame to risk it, though–it’s harder to dye finished clothes evenly than it is yarn.

But no sense in wasting it, either. I started to pick it up to start the pre-soak.

Something felt so strongly, no, that, no, and I put it back down. Huh. I looked at it again and thought of her and how much she’d loved it, and at last left it spread out on the ironing board ready to steam press or dunk but doing nothing yet.

I found myself thinking of her all day as I passed in and out of the laundry room with the neon-bright skirt front and center. The skirt was secondary; Emily seemed uppermost in my thoughts.

There was an email that came in last night.

Emily’s husband was out of town. She thought she smelled smoke. They think it was her water heater, but whatever it was it became a two-alarm fire that also damaged the apartment above her.  She and her baby got out and nobody was hurt but she was evacuated from her home.

Many, many friends responded to the mass email and helped her get her family’s belongings, what remained of them, into a storage container because I guess it all had to go. Now. Richard, who has done Red Cross volunteer work responding to house fires, says that typically it takes weeks for the fire officials to investigate causes of unknown origin–you don’t want the next apartment over doing the exact same thing shortly after, you want to find and verify and fix. And then there’s the wait for the repair work to be done before you can move back in. It can take months.

I was absolutely wiped after cleaning out the yarn room, and with that recent Crohn’s growling, I did not dare push my body further in one day.

But what I could do was to offer a beautiful, bright, cheery skirt that I knew would fit her body and soul, something new rising from the ashes.

Don’t know if her computer burned… Haven’t heard back yet.

Whether she lets me give it to her or not is almost beside the point. When she most needed support by her side, before her friends knew, the Love in the universe was right there for her trying to get through my thick head. Emily. Emily needs you.

I interpreted it in a way that made sense to me at the time, but at least at the end of her terrible day she could know there was someone who’d been thinking of her constantly from about the time the whole thing started.

And if in the fire she lost the scarf I knit her awhile ago then I will go find some fabulous, soft yarn and it will be in bright orangey red.

Kathleen stopped by again today for some one-on-one time before they head further south tomorrow. We shared memories, explored each other’s takes on things political and found ourselves nodding in agreement over and over (always a nice thing), laughed loud enough to be heard into the next block. We moved into the kitchen for lunch and kept going for hours more.

The birdfeeder was getting low before that point. It was quite empty and probably had been for awhile when we came out of there when Richard came home, and not to deprive her of any birdwatching time, I gave it a quick refill.

We went from nothing in sight to here comes the flock–we weren’t the only ones ready for dinner. I’d scattered some suet, too, and pointed out the Bewick’s wren.

But you know the one thing I’d really wished was to be able to show off my hawk. (“My hawk, *a* chickadee, but *my* hawk” she teased me.)

At the very moment I found the Cooper’s page in my Sibley book to show her, with the two of us standing there and Richard sitting next to us, suddenly there were two bangs at the window and Coopernicus himself did a swoop around the amaryllises in chase. I missed the first part of it, my nose in that book, and then the windows reflecting off each other from my angle got in my way a moment more, but they said he strolled under the picnic table, looking for his prey.

And there one was. And we got to see those wings wide going past the amaryllises again, only this time he had something to show for it. (The other finch that had hit eventually recovered itself and played the one that got away.)

We held still, watching him and his struggling-then-still finch, and after a moment she reached for her camera. He gathered it close and took off; as I explained, he’s fine with being watched unless he has a meal in his talons and then he gets antsy.

We might be trying to steal his prey, she affirmed.

While I thought, She got to see him!! She got to see my hawk!!

He’s a big bird, isn’t he? I asked.

He IS!

——

The other wonderful thing about today is that baby Hayes came home. The traces of chemical trauma were such that they said there was no indication nor expectation of longterm brain damage.

And he’s a beautiful, wide-eyed baby boy, looking at the insides of a car and carseat for the first time in the picture they sent us.

There’s a picture of her on the right, here, at my in-laws’ old house in Kensington, Maryland. Anyway: my childhood friend Kathleen and her husband and son are having the Great American Summer Adventure and have now driven clear to where the sun doesn’t rise at the ocean like suns normally do.

Which is why we discovered that a tree root had lifted the side of the inner gate such that it no longer latches (never noticed that–that tree’s gone now, though) and we wanted to give their dogs a chance to run around in the back yard awhile. Gee, did we have any, like, string in the house we could, y’know, tie that thing together with for the moment?

Housework in its mindlessness (I do after all have houseguests coming in a week) is a way to let ideas sift through for the creative side: okay, if we add to the seed stitch in blue here and change the cables here and here to go over, not under, it will look like water flowing around the pier near that park… And don’t forget to add stitches to make up for the tightness the cabling causes.

But how much of that will be offset by the seed stitch? Okay, so add fewer than the typical third more. Right?

I sat down to actually start making all this visualizing come to pass and found myself remembering how much my son Richard in particular, uncle to the baby getting this blankie, liked to fit things into things. A hole where a plastic screw was missing on his Smurf ride-on toy? Bobby pins fit into it nicely. So did straws, twisties, our missing pens, anything he could get in there. We took up the air vent covers all over the old house before we moved and retrieved some of our missing silverware. Don’t let that kid near the dashboard again–we don’t know where he found the coins but we eventually found out what he did with them while I was buckling his new sister in first. Gave new meaning to the term baby rattle.

And I thought of Bashie’s story and the penny in her dad’s back. Yeah, I think a little one would have fun figuring out how to get a coin wedged into the curves of the cables.

Discovering. It’s all good.

Kathy and Rachel are neighbors to each other and Purlescence buddies to me; Kathy had an errand to run this morning, and so she came by here with yarn, a quick gab-and-g0. Mostly Cascade 220 superwash, mostly from Rachel, some from her, pick and choose and use what suits and have fun.

The happiest kind of peer pressure. Not that I needed any to launch right into it.  To Hayes with love from the whole wide world, welcoming him to safe harbors.

I almost deleted most of yesterday’s post. I came thisclose. I didn’t want to make the yarn anybody else’s problem nor even to remotely seem like I might think it should be.

I have very generous friends. Thank you, Kathy, thank you, Rachel, and everybody else who got beaten to the punch. I offered Rachel to swap her some silk for her blue Cascade, sure that that basil green in my stash would be just the color on her, or maybe the brick red, and she half-waved me off telling me she knew I needed to give back but it certainly wasn’t necessary.

Yeah well.

So we’re still working out schedules to get together.

Meantime, Hayes’ MRI results came back: absolutely. Normal. (Standing on a chair and cheering  to the skies!)

See? Just the threat of being knitted for helped him get better! (I’m still waiting to hear when he’s off the cooling bed, but hey. We’ll take every good step along the way.)

Oh, and the photo? Someone brought this flower arrangement to church last week. One young man got up to give his talk and as he started, he couldn’t help but turn back to it and he marveled to his audience, wanting to share his close-up view, There are *fish* in that vase!

Okay, I’m slow–it wasn’t till I typed that just now, a week later, that I realized, oh, wait, it IS a Christian church, and as a visual poem that’s pretty cool.

The best part was the little children who came up after the meeting to see the fish swimming quietly under the flowers where you would never expect to see such a thing.