Kaye at Purlescence messaged me: my spinning wheel was done! My Ashford Traditional, the one that has been broken so many times, so many ways, the one that was the better wheel I always used, even after it fell out of the back of my minivan and broke the flyer and maiden (always seatbelt them in), even after a kid tripped over it and broke the replacement flyer (and I had to buy the whole maiden assembly again for $120 from somewhere else, just before Purlescence came to be.)

It never did work well after that last time: it wobbled so hard that at times the thing simply fell apart, the maiden twisting with the vibrations and the bobbin simply falling to the floor.  I had to clean dirty sewing machine oil out of silk. Kinda put a damper on the spinning thing.

This is the third wheel she and Sandi have repaired for me. One, bought at an auction, had never worked at all; they got it going and I sent it happily off to a great home, gratified that after fifteen years it had finally been made to work and it had gone to exactly where it needed to be. That’s why I’d still had it: so they could get it. So worth it now.

The second wheel, an Ashford Traveller, the Purl Girls did a great job on, too.

And once I had that one back I pulled out some merino/silk in a beautiful blue that I’d bought half a dozen years ago from a place that was closing down. Finally I had a wheel that would do it justice again.

Only…

The bag was mismarked. Clearly. It was Romney wool or its equivalent: good for making a rug or perhaps felting into a birdhouse, maybe knit straight from the roving, quick and bulky and for baby birds to poop in, but by no means was it worth hours upon hours upon hours.

Did I never put my hand in the ziploc bag before and actually touch the stuff? Boggles the mind.

And it kinda took the wind out of my sails on spinning for the moment.

But then today there was that message. My favorite wheel was repaired, the flyer replaced, the wrong metal part finally gone so that the spindle can lift up, not out, and other than the cup of Welch’s grape juice a then-teenager of mine once tried to balance on the sidebar, graffiti-ing it permanently (hey, Kaye, no need to apologize for not being able to get it out, it’s a bit of family history anyway), the thing is as good as new. At last.

My folks gave me some super-super-fine 90s merino for Christmas one year. Lots of it. After two afghans, there’s still a little more if it around somewhere–and I have my Trad back. Let’s finally put the spin back into that spindyeknit. Been too long.

A little looking around… It IS the same Greg Prince! I thought so! He and his wife threw a big bash for my dad at their home in Maryland when Dad turned 75, and all of us kids came into town for it. Lovely people, just the best.

It wasn’t long after Richard and I had done some remodeling, and I remember his wife in their kitchen telling me why trash compactors are a bad idea: you cannot access them while the pusher is down, for obvious safety reasons, but that means you can never really clean them. She’d given up and had had hers removed and replaced with a simple pull-down drawer. She was right.

Dr. Prince invented a vaccine for a form of newborn pneumonia that is now given to a quarter million infants around the world, saving many lives.

And he is a Mormon. Who knows Romney and has mutual good friends with him.

So he found himself interviewed by Lawrence O’Donnell after writing a cri de couer for the Huffington Post after the 47% video surfaced: he had donated the maximum allowable amount to Romney’s first presidential campaign, he said, but that was Romney 1.0.  Romney 2.0 has utterly turned his back on the unfortunate. “That’s Republicanism, not Mormonism!” He was horrified at our church being equated with some of the things Romney has said and done in this campaign. “Mitt Romney is *not* the face of Mormonism.” Looking out for one another is what it’s all about.

Preach it, brother. And thank you.

In his latest ads, Romney’s been trying to prey on the fears of auto workers, telling them that their jobs are about to be shipped to China and to vote for him to save them.  And yet he opposed Obama’s bailout that did save them at the time that private sources of credit had vanished in the bust, and Bain itself is right now shipping 100% of its American Sensata employees’ jobs to, where else, China. Despite being profitable here.

The heads of GM and Chrysler felt compelled to step up and publicly pronounce Romney’s ads about their products and companies wrong. They are doing quite well right here at home, thankyouverymuch.

Yet Romney is still pushing down on those same ads that are trash and he won’t come clean. And he’s certainly not improving as the pressure of election day gets closer.

Shall I mention that Romney’s family and friends invested in the last few years in Hart Intercivic, which sells voting machines? And that three of its five board of director members donated at least $50,000 each to Romney’s campaign? As reported by Forbes. Voting machines. With the owners of the company voting for one candidate with their money.

I’m with Dr. Prince. If a good Mormon ever runs for that office, more power to him, but Romney isn’t one.  We do have a good President, though–and you don’t have to constantly guess which side of every issue he stands on. Please vote, and please vote for Obama. And a better Congress, too. Thank you.

Wait, I said as she turned to me as I walked into church, you look familiar…

She told me afterwards that in that moment, she was trying to remember, was Alison the name of the mom or the oldest daughter? But she remembered my name, whichever one of us it applied to, because it was her twin’s name and her own daughter’s.

She and her husband are friends from church who moved away 15 years ago, back for a visit. They wanted to show their kids the California sights, since they hadn’t really been old enough to remember (or weren’t born yet.) And they wanted to see old friends.

Meantime, there was a speaker from a neighboring ward, and he’d only recently moved into the area. He mentioned they’d come from New York. I went up to him after the meeting and said, okay, this is a long shot but by any chance do you know Boyd and Carolyn R…

His face totally lit up. YES! I worked with him on…

Carolyn’s my sister.

He loved it.

And California became, in that moment, just a bit more familiar and comfortable of a place.

(p.s. I once saw one of the weinermobiles driving the main drag three blocks away, but never anything like this in our neighborhood.)

I decided I wasn’t eggsplatly going to do any more baking today.

I was, though, doing my treadmill time.

Why is it that at about the eleven or twelve minute mark during every session of late my brain sneaks up on me and all the sudden I realize it’s playing The Lion Sleeps Tonight in my head? The version that was popular in the ’70’s. While I’m a captive audience to the earworm. A weemuhway. Oh joy.

And there it was again tonight, starting right on cue. I glanced at the time and could only laugh: 11:03, the little stinker. Okay, so what to replace it with: catchy, or, something, what’ve you got in there? (Walk..walk..walk….) Okay, James Taylor, and I hit the on button in my brain. A recording made when he was younger of You’ve Got a Friend.

It was the perfect pitch I was hoping for. It even got me to walk longer while it played.

p.s. With a shout out to Ellen, who does beautiful work. Thank you!

Left the house at 2:00 to take a friend to the airport: his grandmother had just died of Alzheimer’s and he was taking one day off from the intense world of medical training to fly out for the funeral.

When someone needs a ride for that, you take them.

But I asked him beforehand if we could leave just a few minutes earlier? Maybe ten? I had a doctor’s appointment to go to.

Sure, no problem!

As we went down the road, he talked about the strangeness of grief mixed with relief and the loss that had happened years before–and loss again, but with a…but…. Now at last she’s with his Grandpa again.

And then. I only got a brief glance because I was the one at the wheel–but at the place where I have seen one before, a peregrine falcon suddenly burst past the trees next to the road and zoomed across in front of us, both of us going, WOW!, low enough down that for a split second I worried maybe a semi might… But it was safe. In the blink, I would have guessed it a female for the shape of the body and likely an adult or near-adult. So close! Wow!

And I wondered silently, Ty, you have no idea, but a raptor always shows up when I need one, especially peregrines and my Cooper’s hawk. Maybe you needed one too.

There was some slowdown going on in San Jose but I got out of the backup and away to the gate about the time expected–but coming back around onto the freeway, traffic where I had just been was one solid mass of cars clear back to the next city. Had we left five minutes later, I would have been utterly hosed.

I was exactly on time for my doctor. We had a fair bit to discuss, and she’s a good one: she takes the time.

I raced home (it was 5:00 by now) and started peeling apples. Richard called; I dropped everything and went to get him since I had his car. Coming out of the neighborhood, a large red-tailed hawk soared right above. I have never seen one here before!

More backup. They’ve been digging up the road where pipeline 132, the infamous San Bruno Fire pipeline, goes down the neighborhood. Came home. Chopped apples. An old quick New Hampshire autumn dinner is that you cook sausage crumbles with diced preferably Granny Smith apples (getting out absolutely as much grease as you can) and then when it’s all done, pour just a little maple syrup on it in the serving dish, grade B for the more intense flavor if you can find it. Trader Joe’s here has it.

Thirty-seven minutes after we walked in the door together, the table was cleared and set, three different dishes were cooked from scratch, and our dinner guests arrived. We did it.

I could never have pulled half of that off in the bad old days. Wow life. Look at me now!

A timber company once copied those Ashford guys down the road, briefly; their foray into spinning wheels apparently didn’t last. (This got me to Google–who knew. They do still exist. Curtain rods and finials, okay.)

There was an auction nearby about 15 years ago of the estate of a woman who’d owned a shop that had sold spinning wheels–y’know, back before people knew what that Ebay startup was all about.

There was a wry comment from my friend Karen after I bought one of those at that auction, while I was hoping the box had all the disassembled pieces (it did): “I wouldn’t give a plugged nickel for that brand.”

There was my father-in-law, maybe ten years ago, who, while visiting, decided to put the thing together for me.  Thanks, Dad! The directions said there was a second bobbin in there, an extra, because, y’know, you might want to spin a second color or something. (Plying, folks.) One of the sidebars was slightly shorter than the other, it turned out–well, that didn’t work.

Dad said, Hey, I got an idea.

So we went to the grocery store, bought Dove ice cream bars, ate the ice cream bars, and he used the stick of his to finish off that shorter sidebar.

The thing still never did really spin, though. If you pumped really hard you might get it to turn once. Maybe. Even if it was kind of fun to have instructions in aboriginal (near as we could tell) as well as English.

A few weeks ago I finally got that wheel in to Purlescence and the verdict was that it was such a close copy of what is the number one brand in the world, last I checked, that they could swap out the handmaiden (the top part) with an Ashford’s to get the thing going.

A friend at the shop tonight who didn’t know about all of that back-and-forth-ing two weeks ago about can you make this thing work mentioned that her partner (who is recovering well from a major health issue, and I’m big on having a good creative outlet when you’re dealing with a major health issue) has really wanted to learn to spin. If only they had a wheel.

Let me finish working on that, says Kaye, adding that she just happens to have a spare handmaiden to use on it. Now that she and I know who she’s fixing it for.

I’ve got two Ashford wheels, I don’t need the Woodcroft with the tulips engraved on it. Done. That was easy. With Sandi and Kaye’s help, it’s all finally coming together.

When Richard was working on his Master’s degree at BYU in Provo, Utah, his advisor and his wife invited us over for dinner once.

They had eleven kids, some grown, the youngest a bouncy little boy, not to mention that Dr. Ivie’s brother’s family was nearby and it was pretty brownian motion around there. I loved it. Dr. Ivie had made their dining table so as to accommodate the crowd: round, and from about a foot in from the edge it was all one giant lazy susan. It would start spinning at the beginning of the meal and when it stopped all the food was gone and the meal was over.

And if you were new there like I was someone had to fend for you, my new husband Richard laughed as he did so, helping me to a dish of I-don’t-remember-what as the center spun. (He’d been there before.)

We saw the reports today. Richard thinks Nicholas was the youngest, I think he was their grandson. But that Border Patrolman‘s face in that picture is one of theirs.

Went with Nina to my other knit night for the first time all year. It was wonderful to see old friends. Rush hour traffic at that distance is such that I just don’t go if I can’t do the carpool lanes–and it doesn’t help that it’s the same night as Purlescence.

But wow, on a totally side note, you should see the Handmaiden yarns at Green Planet.

When the shop was closed and we were heading home, Nina and I weren’t done catching up. She’s an old friend of the whole family, so she and Richard and Michelle and I ended up chatting till midnight.

Been too long.

It’s hard to be a teenager and have your dad decide to take a new job and uproot the family and did you ask to move away from all your friends? Did you?

Not that any of them said any such thing to me, just, I’ve been a teenager and I’ve had friends move in/move out even if my own folks were kind enough to stay put for 47 years in the house built for them when I was three. One of the quirks of growing up in the Maryland suburbs was having friends afraid their dad–it was always the dad, back then–might lose the election and then they would have to leave. Back in those days, Congressmen moved their families to DC–and if their political fortunes didn’t hold, then, often, back out.

So. A new family recently moved into the area and showed up at church, the kids ranging from teenage boys to a babe in arms.

The mom is always smiling. Always cheerful. I like her already.

We got sent a picture–and I want to show it, but I don’t know how to access it from this computer–of my son and his little Parker, toddler totally copying daddy, very cute. Richard printed it out at work on Friday and I folded one of the copies and put it in my purse.

So there was the mom today by the door when the meetings were over, waiting for her husband to find her, holding the baby, her two teenage boys standing in front of her. They really don’t know me from Adam yet, so I explained I had one grandson: and then I pulled out that picture.

The mom went, oooh, so cute. The teens leaned in for a closer look and had the same reaction. They had a baby brother. They totally got this babies-are-adorable thing.

And then they looked up from the picture and into my eyes, still smiling.

I think they made friends on the spot with me as much as I did with them.

I was knitting away at Purlescence tonight, chatting with friends, and about a half hour into it Ava was standing behind me and got my attention.

AVA!

She lives in Colorado. I’d totally forgotten she was going to be teaching a class here tomorrow; she’s shop-owner Sandi’s former mother-in-law and still Mom and friend forever. And she was to be teaching the class with–I mentioned as she and I talked that I would *so* love to meet–

–She’s in the back, Ava told me.

I exclaimed loudly, jumping: DONNA DRUCHUNAS was my TECH EDITOR for my BOOK!!! as I leaped to my feet to go back there along with one very happy Ava.

They’d been neighbors and knitting friends together where they live. (Donna just moved away last month, though.)

Donna greeted me with the hug I had so much for so long wanted to give her. We had long promised someday we would meet. We worked so much together via email on Wrapped; I told Ava, as we all chuckled, that at one point on the write-up of the how-to-knit-lace section at the front of the book, she’d emailed, puzzled, Do you really *do* that?

Me: Wait. Do you really do it that way?

Yes, we did. And her way and mine both work just fine. We had quite a laugh over that, six years ago and then tonight, all three of us.

Donna did a ton of work on that section. Those visuals? Hers. The charts that I cannot write nor work from due to a brain injury? She wrote them. There was a listserv for designers pre-Ravelry and she went on that list and proclaimed to the world of professionals in the knitting industry that she had never before tech-edited a book with zero errors in the instructions. Mine was the first. And then she told everybody they had to have that book.

I cannot begin to tell you how much I owe her. And I finally got to meet her. I am in awe of her, and I finally got to tell her thank you in person!

And to see Ava Coleman again, after her health struggles and mine since the last time we saw each other in person. She’s a generous, gentle woman I aspire to be more like.

Wow. What an incredible day. And it’s my mother-in-law’s birthday: celebrations all around!

Went with a friend to see a friend this evening to say hi.

To a new widow.

To an old friend. Twenty-five years ago, we were newly moved in and were struggling with the changes that had come with a California mortgage (I don’t even want to think what that would be like now). Where did we have any room to cut back?

We had three kids under five. She and her husband had raised their kids here with one still in school. She showed up completely unexpected one day, knocking on my door from halfway across town to share some fruit from her tree, a few veggies from her garden. She’d been thinking of me; would I like these? She was almost apologetic for the intrusion.

She had no idea that far beyond the fruit itself, the gesture, the thoughtfulness, the love for someone she didn’t even know well yet at the moment I felt so overwhelmed but had told nobody–I’ll remember it forever with great gratitude. It would all be okay now–the fear in the way and the tension it had caused was gone.

It’s been about a year since he passed; long enough that I’d been wondering if maybe she was feeling like everybody else had gone back to normal, everybody but her. When Catherine emailed and said, let’s go stop by, I was honored that she thought to take me too and glad of the excuse. Why did I need an excuse? Just go!

And so we did.

When our friend welcomed us in, I admired an old photo of her husband by the front door and marveled that their son (in his Facebook photos from across the country) looks now so much like his dad did back then. He was so young then. So was she.

We got to listen. We shared old stories together, some that were new to Catherine. We made our friendships all brand new all over again.

What had I been waiting for?! But maybe it was just the right time after all.

There will be more.

I missed it the last two weeks with that flare going on. I got my blood test results back yesterday–1.9 on the neutrophils is what it was like when I was on chemo for six and a half years, what’s up with that? Going and being in a crowd was just not the wisest thing to do; things are settling down and the bleeding seems to have stopped and the cardiac cough that was bugging me is almost gone too, so, why would I want to risk revving up my autoimmunity by being exposed to anything?

Because it was knit night. And I missed my friends. And Pamela’s moving away soon.

Coming onto the main drag on my way out, there it was. A Cooper’s hawk, quite possibly my male Cooper’s hawk. On the phone wires running just this side of the train tracks, looking down on the road I was on.

And at that moment I felt like everything would somehow be okay.

It was a very good evening to be at Purlescence. (Hey, and if you want a really good lace shawls book *cough* they’ve got it.) I was so caught up in the drama of go/not go that I’d utterly forgotten that Pamela and Sandi had been working on repairing my spinning wheels. Pamela had wanted to learn how for the sake of when she will be far from the expertise of the shop.

One turned out to be ready for me to take home.

Years ago I found a friend-of-a-four-times-removed friend who had bought an Ashford Traveler spinning wheel. Cute little thing. As far as I could piece together, she put the drive band on too tight and couldn’t get the darn thing to spin worth beans. (She also had her roving separated not in lengthwise strips but short fat wads.) Maybe someone told her she couldn’t get a high enough ratio on so small a wheel to make those linen curtains she was dreaming of spinning and weaving?

So. She bought a second wheel, an Ashford Traditional. Uses the same bobbins. Got a distaff for the flax.

They sat in her garage for years till the day we found each other. She sold me everything: her wheels, a goodly stack of books, all her fiber, getitouttahere, $150.

Eighteen years later, my Trad has had a hard life. One kid tried to balance her Welch’s grape juice on it and  stained it a permanent purple puddle; another kid tripped over it and his teenage foot smashed the flyer. That was after the wheel had fallen out of the car and smashed the original flyer and maiden. I bought new parts, again, but after the second blow it was wobbly and a pain to to use–the uprights had a tendency to wiggle apart as I spun and the flyer would simply fall out.

The Trav fared a little better but it was always stiff and arthritic, whatever the drive band. If you pumped the treadle just as hard as you could and then let go, it would turn maybe seven cycles before stopping. I read an article in Spinoff years ago that said it should be closer to 100. As if!

And now the Trav is glorious. It’s scrubbed, repaired, lovely, it works and looks fabulous. They’re not quite done with the Trad, but give them a few days. (Don’t worry about that purple, guys, it’s part of its charm now.)

I can spin again. Do you hear me, life? I can spin my own yarn on my own working wheel again! Thank you Pamela and Sandi!

Got to Kings Mountain this morning, talked to Mel and mostly Kris this time, her turn. Brought them chocolate hazelnut torte–and you should have seen the look on her face when I affirmed that it was flour-free and celiac-friendly. YES! (I got it right this time.)

One of the customers stepping into their booth area–I exclaimed Oh HI! and she did a doubletake and then Ohmygoodness!

It was Michelle’s old sixth grade teacher. The one who had believed in her, pushed on her, and, Michelle told me when I got home, had changed everything. Changed her study habits, made her realize which direction she wanted to go in as her middle school friends were making choices good and bad, made it so she ended up where she did, graduate degree and all, it was Mrs. Garcia who had changed everything–and right then, it was clear Michelle wished she’d gone with me.

The Kunihiros had, for the first time, made yarn bowls. I didn’t buy one because Holly gifted me with a red one from another potter awhile ago, but I got to see a couple of women buying the ones today and got to ask them, Oh, are you a knitter?

That’s a sentence that will make you a friend on the spot. They loved it and we talked yarn a moment.

The Kunihiros have a few sheep now, and Kris and I talked breeds and wool and alpacas a bit.

As I was getting ready to leave, Kris suddenly had a thought: would I like some water?

I didn’t want to deprive them…

Mel, walking over to their cooler and lifting the lid to show me the bottles: We have 24!

Well then. And then I admitted that, with no colon, I am under orders to drink 8 oz every two waking hours forever or my kidneys will fail, and that I had taken my husband’s car, which is easier to maneuver and park up there, but had forgotten to put water in it. I always carry some with me–except…and so I  was very very grateful for the offer.

It had just suddenly seemed what she should do.

And a good time was definitely had by all.

Then this evening, there was our neighborhood’s annual block party. Helene was there, and I was telling a few of the parents of teenagers in one little group that she was the woman who had gotten my daughter’s phone number out of her while she was still lucid, lying in the street, and had called me: riding her bike to school at 13, my oldest had been racing to catch up to her brother, flipped her bike, landed head first, broke her helmet and then broke her shoulder as she rolled.

And that’s how we got to know Helene.  We thanked our kids for actually wearing their helmets after they were out of our sight. Last I heard, the elementary our kids went to still has hers on display: this is why we wear these. (Those parents tonight wanted to give their kids a story about helmets they would listen to.)

Helene was gratified at being the hero again, all these years later, and gave me a hug.

Once a year. Kings Mountain and right here at home. We see each other once a year and stop, and take the time, and be together, and talk.

We should do this more often.

It’s Kings Mountain Art Fair weekend and I’d been looking forward to seeing Mel and Kris.

Only his name was on their artist list. It’s always been both their names, and I noticed that.

I got there just after four: enough time to visit before the 5:00 close (and after the crowds would have gone way down), hopefully not too much sun. It is amazing how deep and how everywhere the shade is in a redwood forest.

Mel exclaimed in delight when he looked up and saw me. I did too in surprise when I realized that was one of their now-grown sons with him: “OHMYGOODNESS! You aren’t little anymore!”

They laughed. His son glowed, just absolutely glowed, when I told him how beautiful their work is. I know he helps with their production and I’m glad he got to see the appreciation in person. And he remembered me! He wasn’t very old last time I saw him.

Kris wasn’t there.

Cancer last year–and they’re sure it’s totally beaten now, she’s okay, she’ll be here Monday.

!?! I’d had no idea. I just knew that I absolutely had to go to see them, no matter the sun, no matter anything. Monday, Crohn’s flare willing (it’s minor so far), I’ll be there.

Showed up on a doorstep this afternoon. Someone’s flying off for college in the morning and I knew it’s cold where she’s going. It was just a little extra something.

They invited me in, we chatted a bit; I explained a little about Great Northern Yarns’ mink cashmere yarn (they’re sold out of the laceweight I used).

She asked me the name of the lace pattern as she petted her new cowl; she loved it. Then, since it was the last day her mom got to have with her till break, I got the heck out of their way.

But she was so sweet and so appreciative that it totally recharged my desire to get to work to do that for someone else. She’s a good one.