Ruth and her friend Margaret drove two hours each way from beyond Sacramento to come here for a visit, something we had long hoped and planned for. Ruth is the friend who gave me her treadmill. (Here–read way down in the comments for the huge surprise she gave me at the end of the post, and then here. I’ve used it very nearly every day since.)

The moment I laid eyes on Margaret I exclaimed, Oh of course! I’d met her many times at Stitches West over the years with Ruth. Ruth brought me dark chocolate, Margaret gifted me with some Avon goodies, lovely of both of them and the start of a wonderful day.

After chatting, knitting (well, they did, my projects were both ones that command attention), and lunch with Richard joining in, we went off to Purlescence.

There was a table set up for people to offer up stash yarn they didn’t want and for others to take it. I’d had no idea.

Ruth found two skeins of a lovely heathered gray and asked me, wondering, Aren’t these handspun?

Sure looked like it to me. I told her I thought it looked like it had some silk in there, too.

She hadn’t known and she hadn’t brought anything and she left them there. But they were soft and quite pretty and she kept wishing and going back to them.

There were plenty of people in the store but nobody took them, so at last, when it was time for us to go, she picked them up again.

I asked Sandi if she knew who had spun those. Her face lit up and she said that she had, about ten years ago, that they were merino and silk and had just sat there in her stash unused. She wanted them to go to someone who would actually create something with them.

Oh, I’ll knit it! Ruth assured her, clearly thrilled.

So now it wasn’t just nice yarn, it was a gift from the heart from Sandi, and as I mentioned to Ruth later, those two skeins had sat there all day and nobody else had claimed them. (And I knew several people in there who would have loved the colorway.) This was for you all along.

We got back to my house, I opened my freezer, and they headed towards home with a chocolate torte and a blue-ice pack in Ruth’s insulated bag that she just happened to have in her car. I’d been telling her for two years that if she ever came to my house I was going to give her a torte.

And I sent her home with a box of Kara coconut cream, which for me is available locally, so that she could experiment with it for her friend, who, like our younger daughter, is allergic to dairy. A box of that and dark chocolate gets you a good ganache; the larger box, you’ve got enought to make my chocolate torte recipe, which makes two. The coconut cream substitutes straight across for extra-heavy cream and it can sit on a shelf.

Unless someone really enthusiastic about it gets their hands on it and uses it all up.

Karen Bentley Pollick and the Albany Consort played in the Bing Series at Stanford Hospital today.  She lives on the East Coast now and it was rare and good to see her again. And the music!

I could have laughed out loud for joy at the first piece: they had no way to know that WMAL, I think it was, would play that piece to announce that it was time for the 5:00 news; my mom and I would be on our way home from my piano lessons. I had them twice a week. Those violins to me mean me learning music–and spending time with my mom with no competition from siblings. When I got old enough to drive myself, I missed that one-on-one (after Kathy moved away).

The one thing that had had me holding my breath over going today, though, was that the walk from the parking lot at noon is not lupus-friendly. I said a prayer of, I know there are a lot of people worse off than me around here… but if…

And so it was that one of the few handicapped spots next to the door was open. I motioned to an elderly driver to take it but he instead pulled ahead and parked illegally right at the door and ran in.

Nobody in view coming up behind, which is very rare there. Huh. I guess I can’t feel guilty. And so, very gratefully, I got to go enjoy with only having to take a few steps in the sunlight. That helped more than I can say.

Ran home, grabbed a really fast bite, back out the door and to the endocrinologist. (Underground parking.) That Reclast infusion I had a few months ago? “I’ve never seen this, I’ve never even *heard* of this!” The followup tests showed it had done absolutely nothing. My bones are still melting:  hips, 29% in four years. I asked if it were a new autoimmune manifestation? He just shook his head; too soon to know why on earth.

Came home, grabbed a small bite again, answered my email. Saw a small raptor buzz through the porch so fast that I had no idea what it was, then I was back out the door yet again.

My friend Johnna was having a birthday: her first as a single mom, her marriage having recently been yanked out from under her with her house about to be too.

An email circulated a few days ago and the plan was made. A bunch of us took her out to dinner together tonight, good food, good friends, good times made.

She loved my hat. I asked her re colors. She told me. I think I may still have some Malabrigo in that, and now I know something I can do.

Karen, meantime, got a piano hat; I haven’t figured out yet how to do violin hats.

(p.s. Purlescence has a new supply of copies of Wrapped in Comfort: Knitted Lace Shawls. Just sayin’.)

Paraphrasing there.

An intense day: a noon lupus meeting–and I couldn’t find a place to park without a lot of sun time.  Which I cannot risk. After driving all the way over there, I simply had to bag it.

Which was okay–I was going to have to leave early anyway, because I got an email last night that a friend needed a ride to her eye doctor three towns away. Dilate and wait, rush hour traffic coming back.

Annnnd…

I had promised to bring dinner to someone else at six.

I drove her, I waited, I knitted, I dropped her off at home, I went straight to Costco. It was past 5:30 when I got out of there with a rotisserie chicken and enough extras to keep them happy, apologizing for the lack of creative input thereto. Done.

Sat down finally at home with some Costco pizza, my first meal in seven hours and all I could do at that point–sorry for not waiting, Richard–and collapsed into a chair at last.

And saw the bottom half of a hawk swooping past the very top of the window.

Nobody on the bird feeders, sorry; my pepperoni’s too salty and really not what you’d like. I walked out of the room. Back a few minutes later, in time to see what I at first thought were falling olive leaves and then realized were feathers. Somewhere the Cooper’s had found its favorite, a dove.

But wait. Trees. Angle. Distance. Wind? How were they falling exactly there?

I wasn’t the only one who was fascinated. A young black squirrel on the patio didn’t run for cover, didn’t duck under the picnic table at the last second and hide on the chair legs like I saw one do last year–it loped over to the center of the grass and then stood on its hind legs, stretching upwards, sniffing as far as its nose could reach, staring, clearly, at the hawk. (My view up there was hampered by the awning.)

I remembered the one last year that liked to taunt the Cooper’s and how predictably that eventually turned out.

Then this one took off up the tree to get an even closer look.

Dude!

Didn’t your momma ever teach you not to get in a tree with strangers?

The doorbell rang yesterday afternoon.

It was a man holding out a blooming Easter lily in a beautiful basket with a white ribbon tied just so, with a card: “Happy Easter, Grandma and Grandpa, love, Parker!”

And its perfume is exquisite, too. Our great thanks.

We got a second surprise today at church: Shane and Stacy were in town with their kids. They moved away 13 years ago and the then-teenage son came with his wife to show her off. He did very well–and so did she. I am very happy for them.

Shane and Stacy are the ones who, before they moved, told me I had to read this book I’d never heard of, and when the next week or so I had not sought it out yet, they told me no, you really do, you *have* to read this: “Kitchen Table Wisdom,” by Rachel Remen.

I did; it made me think. It comforted me. As a doctor and patient both, she gets to the heart of what it means to be human, and when a nurse saw me with it in Stanford Hospital three years ago, she smiled, nodding, “Oh yes. THAT one. I love her books!”

I read Dr. Remen’s second, “My Grandfather’s Blessings,” as soon as it came out. Bought my dad a copy. He read it and immediately bought six more to give away.

And I met her once at a booksigning.

As we spoke, I referred to one of her stories and told her briefly of a friend and why this story was exactly what this friend needed to comfort her in a profound and unexpected grief. To know that someone else out there somewhere knew what what she was going through was like, when I could only offer my unknowing best–I had prayed and felt strongly that this was the right thing to do, only now I needed to pray to know…

And Dr. Remen, eyes to my eyes, said in unison with me, “When.”

Months later that time came.  It was just right, as I knew it would be. It was a profound blessing to us both and has been ever since.

And none of that would ever have happened had these good friends not told me of Dr. Remen’s writing, and I will forever be grateful they did. And that they lovingly nudged me some more till I knew why.

I reread them every year or two to remind me what kind of person I want to be when I grow up.

And to take the time to pause and enjoy the lilies while they bloom. And then care for them so they will again, year after year to come.

An older friend who doesn’t drive anymore needed a lift. As we drove the main road coming home, I was keeping an eye out: I’d seen one around there several times before, and then–Ooooh, look! as I grabbed my eyes back to the road, hoping she would see what I meant before we passed it. It was sitting on the telephone wire, being anything but their usual stealthy.

“That’s *beautiful*!” she exclaimed, her head turning to follow it as the car continued on.

“That’s a Cooper’s hawk,” and I wondered if it was one that might have fledged from our nest two miles away. I was so delighted that she was as thrilled as I was; thank you, Gail.

Dropped her off, came home to my own quiet house, had a hard time getting myself to relax and sit down and accomplish some knitting. There’s a lot going on. Cancer surgery for the wife of someone we know, Richard covering some of their job at work just like they did for him when I was sick, and cancer treatment outcome tests this week for a relative of ours.

Our daughter Sam is doing better and for that, and for all those who have reached out to help her in any way, we are infinitely grateful.

I sat down at the computer.

It’s nesting season. He always seems to be more sociable during nesting season, and so, with a feeling of someone’s eyes, I looked up to see my male Cooper’s standing on the box just the other side of the window, looking in at me. People watching. Beautiful, beautiful, big bird, and I birdwatched back at him. He opened his beak and spoke in hawk talk that I wished I could understand, and then, having said hello, flew.

Maybe an hour and a half later, there he was again. Right there. Getting my attention and posing for the camera I wished I had in my hands. Looking at the look of wonder in my face.

And he came back again! But that time I didn’t see him behind me till I laughed at a Frazz comic, I think the one where one of the elementary kids asks why the Thanksgiving people dressed like color blind leprechauns?

And with that, a swoop of the wings and there he was, on his way by. His work here was done for today.

I can cope with anything now. And I went off to Purlescence, where, surrounded by good friends, I knitted towards making someone happy.

This one‘s for DebbieR especially.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been pregnant, which means it’s been a long time since I had to monitor sugar intake for diabetes. I’m out of practice. I spent today cleaning, shopping, baking, pricing slicing dicing hoping.

I think I did okay by the folks who enjoyed my dinner.

And in the middle of all that prepping I sat down a moment and looked up in time to see the incoming hawk: a quick turnaround at the feeder, back to the telephone wires to get a good look in all directions as it shifted its feet to turn here, then here, then back across the yard towards me again, across my roof and away.

All in definitely under ten seconds. Blink. Wow.

Did you see the video Sherry linked to in the last post? This one, and thank you, Sherry. I have a birding friend who has seen robins fledging and she’s sure that’s what that was: a baby robin at first flight, playing air guitar. (I love how the little bird cranes her head up at the singer as he sings to her.)

Its momma expected it to land in the lawn but it wanted bluegrass, for sure.

A friend spoke at church today: at the last minute, he’d decided to fly to a family get-together.

When he had been a child, his parents had had to take business trips and a friend of theirs (let’s call her Betty) would take care of the kids. Betty became practically a member of the family.

He, now a father of four young children himself, decided at the last minute to fly to an extended family get-together to see a relative giving his farewell talk at church before leaving on a two-year Mormon mission.

And it turns out that his aunt and uncle had decided to invite Betty to drive the hundreds of miles with them to come be a part of the family again.

Betty and and my friend, who had no idea she would be there, saw each other coming in at separate doors at the same time: she threw her arms high and called out his name and the former child and his former almost-a-second-mom ran to each other.  She hugged me like Betty always did, he said.

They sat next to each other during the meeting. She asked him, Do you have any children? and he happily pulled out his phone and showed off pictures. Wonderful! She beamed.

A few minutes later, she leaned over to him again with the biggest smile, and asked, Are you married? Do you have any children?

He pulled out his phone and showed her, wondering…

A few minutes later, again. And it made her happy all over again to exclaim over those beautiful children and his lovely wife.

Relating the story later, he admitted he didn’t get much out of the meeting, but…! And afterward, she remembered all these tales of him as a child and delighted in regaling him with them.

It was just the new memories that weren’t sinking in. But he had come, and she–

–someone struggling now with old age and a failing memory and all the worry that comes with those circumstances–

–had found connection and love from the past coming back to confirm her and she knew that she mattered forever.

And to think he almost hadn’t gone. He was so glad he did.

Richard glanced out the window and remarked on how loud those birds were being.

Singing? Or just chirpy?

He considered that a moment, still looking at the feeder. Chirpy.

Went to two farewell parties today, brought a blueberry cake to each and coconut cream truffles as well to the second: the first was for someone who will be coming back next year, but the second was for a young family where the husband’s new job is near Denver.

If chocolate and blueberry cake can’t make that family stay, it can at least make them want to come back to visit. Even if I gave them the recipes.

I blocked the Findley shawl this morning and that fine yarn was dry in hours. It’s different. I like it.

I have two blueberry cakes in the oven and a timer on my Iphone loud enough to wake the deaf. Perfect.

There’s a Frazz comic written totally for me, even if the author didn’t know it. Cool!

Oh and, just because. The eagle doing the breast stroke at about the 1:20 mark. I have never seen a bird swim like this.

My mother once gave me some 100s Bradford-count wool for Christmas for spinning (after she asked and I pointed to a catalog entry). I expected a pound; she gave me five, which I gleefully dove into.

I have never seen that fine a merino roving available anywhere ever again, including that supplier.  (Although I would say that Malabrigo’s new Finito probably matches it.) To quote from Clara Parkes in the Twist Collective: “The average fiber diameter of an 80s wool, for example, is 17.70–19.14 microns, while that of a 56s wool corresponds to an average fiber diameter of 26.40–27.84 microns.”

So 100s would be… Soft. VERY soft. And I do love a good handspun yarn. It’s like nothing else.

My friend Mary has a spare spinning wheel that she loans out to whoever needs it just then.

I once read that a wheel in good condition can continue 100 cycles after you stop treadling if you do it just as hard as you can and then let go.

Mine does 12 if you’re lucky. It’s been dropped out of a car, it’s been tripped over by a big teenage foot and the flier and handmaiden have both had to be replaced. It wobbles since that last time and has been hard to work with.

Mary surprised me with the offer to lend her spare to me; it’s been wonderful to have.

But I decided recently that I really needed to get going again on my own, though, because I do have it and there are surely others out there who need hers more; I know when I was first starting spinning how much I would have loved to have had that loan. So I told Mary thank you and that I’d be bringing her wheel back. The good women of Purlescence told me I could bring it there for her to take home.

And every week for the last month I would get there and kick myself that I had forgotten it yet again.

Last Thursday I put it where it was in my way so I wouldn’t forget–but it was raining that night. Nope.

Tonight was the night.

And then I got a note from Kaye at the shop, and yes, tonight was definitely the night!

Richard helped me lift it into the car.

Sandi and Kaye told me quietly tonight why someone needed that wheel now. That story isn’t mine to tell, but I said to them, You know, I’ve been kicking myself all those times I forgot it. But if I had… It would have been loaned out to someone else, whereas… And that would have been good too! But I think this is the more important place for it to go. Clearly.

Maybe my forgetting wasn’t just me being such an idiot after all.

There was a birthday celebration tonight of the Mormon Church’s Relief Society, the oldest women’s group in the world. Dinner was served.

And not only that. As it happened, we had Steve Rasmussen, the owner of Milk Pail, bringing cheeses for everybody to sample and rave over. (And believe me, we did.)

Steve carved open a huge wheel and set a gadget to it that I had never seen the like of: it was about the width and height of the wheel, and, as he explained to me in an aside, it was a descendant of an antique iron heated at the fireplace. It warmed that cheese right inside its rind and then Steve scooped the melting goodness out and handed it out on small slices of french bread. Bliss.

I told him I had gotten a call from my daughter in Michigan this very afternoon–she had run out of Milk Pail’s vanilla and nobody else’s came close. Help!

Remember when I was making all those tortes? I had enough cream left for one last pair, but six was kind of enough. So. By that point I had crushed together some bittersweet and a fairly dark bittersweet chocolate, and improvising a bit on the ratio with the amount of cream left over, I melted them into it and hoped. I mean, you can’t go too wrong there, even if it ends up as just chocolate sauce.

It was a bit thicker than the usual ganache. Good. Into the fridge. Then I rolled balls of it in Bergenfield cocoa and froze the truffles: manufacturing cream, dark chocolate, the best cocoa on the outside. That was it.

I took some with me tonight and offered some to Steve to thank him for making that cream available and just to say how much I loved what he’s done with his life with that business. He absolutely swooned over the first truffle and asked for a second. Did my heart good. Thank you, Steve!

And I will never wonder again what to do with any extra of that cream. Wow. That really really really worked.

Another Parker picture.

Went to the main meeting at church, then bugged out and drove to Santa Cruz an hour away where Richard’s cousin was baptizing his son.

In the Mormon Church this is done at age eight. That is when children are beginning to really get the concepts of right and wrong for themselves and to understand cause and effect in their behavior, to be able to actively choose how they’ll react. Beginning to. We spend our whole lives from there on out working on that.

And so we call it the “age of accountability,” with baptism opening the way for repentance and a return to joy when we mess up, surrounded by people who know that we all make mistakes and that it’s okay to be human; just keep trying to be a better person. The habit begins of turning to Christ again and again to see us through by His patience, that we may learn to live His example of unshakable love.

We’re all in it together.

Okay, so that’s the background. What we did not know was that Jonathan’s brother and two sisters were coming, too, as well as Aunt Mary Lynn and Uncle Nate, and some of Jonathan’s in-laws with their little ones. People we love but seldom get to see.

We had a grand reunion. We got to meet babies we hadn’t seen, to exclaim like old people over how much the kids had grown. Alexander is ten? How did that happen!

They served an early dinner; there was at least one plane to catch. We were done there in time to get back up here and meet Marguerite’s future son-in-law. There was our second chocolate torte of the day, gee, how did that happen.

Her daughter’s fiance grew up in a ward in Boston where my cousin Grant was bishop, and so we had an instant connection there.

Friends showed up whom we hadn’t seen in ages and, again, hadn’t expected to.

I’m not sure how one day grabbed so much joy all in itself, but I’m selfishly asking for more like that.

(Oh, and the other part of that post in the link? I asked tonight, wanting it to be just right for her. Red, she answered, delighted. And so the next project shall happily be.)

My friend Andrea came over tonight: she’s the one whose hearing went from normal to far worse than mine in a very few short years and no one knows why. She got a cochlear implant a few months ago and has done so well with it that her other ear is about to be operated on, too.

She had an Icom receiver for her old hearing aids she would never use again, incompatible with her new set-up. It is designed to convey the sounds of my phone or the microphone at church via bluetooth straight to my hearing aids. With no ambient noise.

I did not even know there was such a thing.

Richard got it synced to my phone, but so far it doesn’t sync with my aids. I’m going to have to go to my audiologist and see if it can be done; I really hope so. It would work for Skyping, too, bypassing the crummy computer speakers: I would finally be able to make out clearly what everybody’s saying.

Whether it works out or not, it was very, very kind of Andrea and I am thrilled. (And hoping really really hard.)

And guess who was there tonight.

That same couple–and their baby, whom I hadn’t seen since she was an infant, 11 months old now and almost walking; she and I played for quite awhile. Peek a boo! *giggle giggle giggle*

And Penny and her husband, too.

She had been diagnosed with lymphoma shortly after I knitted her that shawl, and it was a comfort through all those months of treatment and solitude as her chemo-battered immune system could tolerate no risks for months and months.

That yarn had known exactly whose it was from the get-go.

I showed her the project I was working on–and admitted that although it had absolutely demanded to be made, and I’d thought I’d known who it was for, the further along I got into it the less sure I was that that was where it was meant to be.

And so I have already decided what I really will make for the person I’d been aiming towards, while this? I don’t know. I just know I have to knit it. Monday, when I rescued its UFOness from oblivion, I actually only had the first four rows on the needles; now it’s halfway done.

She reached to touch the Findley yarn and exclaimed, Ooooh! As she did so, I suddenly knew: this was exactly the pattern I had knit for her.

Everything came together in good will from both of us in that moment towards whomever it holds in its future.

Monday, it was going to be a different pattern in the body but my counting was off, and so…

I told Penny in mock indignation, My knitting bosses me around! She guffawed–she knew. Hers does too.

I’m curious to see what will come next with this. I do know that yarn time is in its own variable universe.

I wondered last night what was going to pop up next as I glazed the latest tortes.

And so, knowing none of that…

She sent me a note. She and her husband were throwing a party for their old friends to meet their daughter’s fiance, and I had just rsvp’d that we were looking forward to it.

My chocolate torte was such an institution in the ward, she pleaded, and her daughter and beloved both love chocolate; could she possibly persuade me to… She would cover the ingredients…

I wish I could have seen her face when she saw the reply: I already made it last night. It’s yours. Her how did you…!?? came across the electrons loud and clear.

When her husband dropped by for it, I apologized that I had glazed it on a paper plate rather than a more formal one; I hadn’t known. He just looked amazed.

And then, with so much success with that silk shawl yesterday, another abandoned one jumped into my hands tonight. White is beautiful, but it is boring to work with and this was laceweight (albeit on the heavy side) to boot, and so this one had been put aside for Christmas knitting deadlines and then forgotten.

I went to count stitches and to see where I’d left off. My hands exclaimed, Oh! THIS is why I bought this at Cottage Yarns!

I got several rows into it before it dawned on my slow brain that it was white and there was about to be a bride. Ding ding ding.

Let’s see if I can pull this one off.