I did not expect that.

Okay, that was obvious, given what happened, or I’d have been more careful: I got a few hours into a project last night in silk (allergies, recipient-wise, exactly why I buy the stuff) and on our way out the door this morning I stuffed it in a plastic bag and stuffed that in my purse.

Without zipping the ziploc. Opening went straight up.

When we got to church, I realized that I had somehow caught the length of yarn between the project and the cone outward and I’d run the purse zipper right over it. In two places.

That stopped me right there a moment while I took in the enormity of what I had just done.

I carefully tried every trick I knew to disengage them, but the silk was not tightly plied and as the threads bunched into a tangly lot on themselves that I was all too familiar with and the zipper utterly jammed I knew the thing was doomed. Or at least that part of it. The purse itself was old and not in such great shape itself and the last one had died a zippery death. Great.

It was a big group today with two wards mashed together because our building had been taken over by the annual creche exhibit, a museum for a week. Which is why the timing of the drive to church was a tad uncertain and why I’d brought the knitting.

At Sunday School, an hour and a half later, I found myself sitting next to two friends to one side and showed them… It didn’t really need an explanation, just one look at the thing and we all know when Christmas is, and I put it back down, grateful for a moment’s camaraderie over the thing, at least. I would have to take it home, cut it, carefully work back so many stitches, and then make an unwanted knot with dozens of tiny little silky ends sprouting out of the thing over time–it’s hardly the grippiest fiber. Hardly the end of the world, either, but utterly self-inflicted.

At the end of Sunday School I found myself picking up my purse again, thinking I could just try one more time–and that zipper sailed smoothly right out of the way, freeing the yarn completely out of its prison. Wait what?! Purse in lap, I picked up  either end of where the yarn had been caught, disbelieving, and gave it the most gentle tug just to be sure–

–and it was perfect. The tangle had stretched out and right back into perfect order like a model’s hairstyle coming out of a dressing room on the set. It could not be, and yet, and I wanted to jump up and down and yell LOOK AT THAT!!! to the whole room. But what I did do was turn to my friends, the farther of whom had no idea in the noise and distraction of the room just then, and I exclaimed to the nearer one, “Someone just said a prayer because that wasn’t going to happen!”

She burst out laughing. Busted. Yes, yes she had, she allowed, as delighted as I was for me, for the outcome, for a tiny but major-to-me-and-she-knew-it Christmas miracle. One I had been too frustrated to think to ask for myself so she’d done it for me.

And there you go. And it stayed perfect as  I later knitted it up.

Wow.

I saw a post that you always see about this time of year about putting the Merry Christmas back in Christmas and requiring it of others (think shopkeepers), not an insipid Happy Holidays, and, it was implied, not apologizing for one’s faith but standing up for it. Political correctness was a phrase presented and condemned.

I understand and agree with the need not to apologize for what you believe in. And if someone wants to say Merry Christmas in their store, I for one enjoy it.

And yet there is a greater context in how we address one another in the public sphere than any one person’s beliefs, and I can’t imagine telling someone they had to say such a thing to sustain their business.

My mother once offered a small gift to a neighbor  in December. Our two families each had four daughters in corresponding ages and we kids were always in and out of each other’s houses. (Hey Mom! What’s for dinner? Oh–can I eat at the…?)

They would occasionally invite one of us to share their evening spin-the-dreidel games. This was very much their family time at a special time of year. To be included was a great honor.

Mom knocked on the door some day around then, that gift in her hand, offering her best wishes for a happy Hanukkah–and was surprised at how surprised and grateful the neighbor mom was: Mom was honoring her in her own tradition’s ways of choosing to seek God in our lives, not trying to impose her own. Words are small things but like every act of kindness, they are huge: she exclaimed to Mom, Happy Hanukkah? Everybody always said Merry Christmas to them!

Mom, stunned, But don’t they know you’re Jewish?! (Everybody in the neighborhood knew everybody in those days.)

Yes, they do.

Well then, but why??

I guess people would just assume they would get the cultural context of, simply, I’m wishing you all the best.

And yet, to actually convey that intent well would have been so easy to do. This family had lost members twenty years earlier to the Holocaust, extinguished from this life for the prejudices of others against their religion and people.

I type this having given away many a knitted finger puppet at any random time of the year with the phrase Merry Christmas (and a book a few days ago, for that matter) as a way of saying this is a gift from me–not a temporary offer; I’m not expecting it back. Remembering Mom’s story she told me a few years ago, I’ve been trying to have the phrase that automatically pops out of my mouth now be Happy Birthday instead. Same message conveyed: love is what is really being offered. Sometimes I get it right.

It stung Mom that others had not offered what she saw as basic, simple politeness to such good people so dear to her and her very willingness to be vulnerable to their unspoken pain created a tender, vulnerable, memorable moment she never forgot.

May there be peacemaking on earth, goodwill among all men; we are all His children and all who seek to do good are all His own.

A whole lot of living packed into one day. You see that picture? It did not rain today.

Diana was my excuse to make split pea soup, thick in veggies and ham and warm goodness for lunch on a bitterly cold day. She came by with her square and to get the scarf, since the two squares that were to come to her place didn’t arrive in the mail till after she got home so we couldn’t put all three on together after all. It’s okay, she’s got them now and is sending the scarf right out to the next group of knitters in the morning.

We had a great time. We hadn’t seen each other in far too long. We vowed not to let that kind of time lapse happen again. She raved over the soup, over walking into the house with the smell of it cooking, over sharing a good meal with us (Richard’s on vacation.) For me it was a rare treat too because I can only eat small quantities of it at a time; it’s not a low-fiber food, and to have her enjoy it so much and to get to enjoy her so much added so much to my day.

Then she had an appointment at 2:00 and I had one to go visit Don.

Don gives his thanks for all the well wishes sent his way. He loves to tell a good story as much as the next blogger and was a little discouraged that it made him breathless for a moment to talk very long. Been there… I understand…but he did manage to tell me more about his beloved late Amalie. I hope I didn’t stay too long, but we were both very glad I’d come. And I gotta tell you, he looked a whole lot more chipper than his roommate. He’s trying to get it set up so that he can read his email where he’s staying. He’s a trooper.

Coming home, cleaning up a bit, I went outside a moment to toss something in the recycling bin–and did a doubletake. Wait–when did it rain? I know water pools on the flat part of the roof, but. Richard? Did a pipe burst? (It was 29, five degrees warmer than Anchorage, Alaska and on its way down when we went to bed last night. And yet we forgot to leave the kitchen tap dripping. You always, always…)

He groaned. He got up and went out there (brrr) and looked–and came back in and said, Call a plumber. Try Joe and see if he does that kind of work, but, call a plumber.

And of course it was 5:04, ie officially after hours now but oh well. We had a full-blown waterfall at the downspout.

Joe didn’t pick up right away, the next guy was swamped, the next guy was, too–but he threw me for a millisecond by saying something about our solar re those pipes.

I was delighted, and then so was he. This was a guy who came out for a job for me maybe as long as two years ago, where his equipment wasn’t quite long enough to help me so he refused to charge me for coming out. Even though he’d given me valuable, helpful information along the way. So I knitted a hat and mailed it off to the address I found for his business. He chuckled when I exclaimed that he remembered us just from seeing our phone number show up!? Cool.

And finally we got someone we’d never hired before but who–give him a minute to call right back–yes, he could come right out. (I could just picture him explaining to his kids that it would be bonus Christmas money if they didn’t mind his being late for dinner, and people needed his help.)

Yes please.

Very nice guy, very thorough as he checked for possible second leaks in the dark and the wet and the cold with his headlamp and flashlight. He mentioned that the people who had installed the water lines (this would be the same ones as did the heating work Joe just replaced) had not done a good job of it.

Were we surprised? Still, though, we’re the ones who forgot to let the tap drip during the freeze, so, hey.

And then I went off to Purlescence. Where I got to meet Carrie of Alpenglow Yarn, owner of a small mill. I loved that her Big Fat ball bands tell you the names of the individual alpacas, and Paul Cezanne and Mozart? My dad’s influence and my mom’s. Perfect.

And. Always another and. I finally remembered to run in the ends and drop off the long-awaiting hat at the Halos of Hope box for chemo caps for those in underserved areas. The yarn had come from a swap at the shop: freely given, freely given back.

The funky design? I could just picture a newly bald someone missing the familiar feel of the bounce of her ponytail at the back of her head, so I braided the last of the yarn in the ball, braided the braids, and ran the ends in by sewing the braids together for good measure.

Cezanne and Mozart will help me knit another soft warm hat.

I think, hopefully, tomorrow will be a day for simply putting my feet up, sitting still, eating a bit of leftover soup, catching my breath, needing no contractors however nice people they may be…and knitting. Got that big deadline coming up, y’know? *collapse*

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s not my fault. Afton started it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then a fair bit more in a quarter cup.

And another.

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

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

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

Got a few left still…

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

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

I used to knit only with straight needles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ll let them work it out from here.

——

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes,” he answered honestly.

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

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

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

Joe called.

It is quite safe to say they liked the cowl.

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

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

…And we have heat. For the first time all Fall, real heat. The fan kicked gently on, warmth wafting down, lovely, lovely.

And then the smoke alarm screamed bloody murder. DANGER! DANGER!

Okay, that’s pretty funny, actually. I hit the timer on the thing to quiet it while one of the helpers apologized that new furnaces often do set them off like that just right at first.

The alarm kept going, adamant. Huh. Oh–it only turns off for the kitchen sensor, not the others, Richard reminded me later. Oh okay.

I told the guy, reaching up to my ears, “Well, *I* can turn it off but I don’t know that that helps you any.” (Actually, I’m not sure he had any idea I wear hearing aids.) I opened the windows  and it went quickly silent. They had it on high to test it and between the competing air flows that furnace showed it was definitely up to anything going on outside.

One skein Finito superfine merino in Cereza paired with a few grams of black sparkly cashmere. One soft little cowl for Joe’s wife, worked on while he worked. If ever someone had earned a bit of warmth…

I’m remembering a reason to be glad the furnace is on the roof: when we were building our first house, I don’t know if it got encouragement from the crew that was perturbed that I’d pushed on them on their overdue project? “Will the house be done by Thanksgiving?”

They slowly turned in unison and stared me down.

Finally, “WHICH Thanksgiving, lady?”

I never smelled it before then, but somehow it got in there before we closed on the house the Tuesday before the Day of the Turkey.

For our first year, every time the blower kicked on, five or ten seconds later and there came our natural asthma treatment: skunked.

——

(Conversation just now: Me–Did you turn up the heat?

Him–Yes.

Me, disbelieving–Weren’t you warm enough?

Him–Yes, but I wanted to experience the heat.)

(Second picture does the color better. Richard went, Oh, that’s soft.)

Richard at 8:40 this morning: “They’re here.”

And so we rushed outside to capture video of the green crane for Parker; he would have been in heaven if he’d been able to watch it in person.

But it was brisk. The temperature dipped today, and inside, four layers and wooly knee socks and the space heater just weren’t quite enough; I debated pulling the other one into the room. I wrapped a warm scarf around, felt like a kid in a poofy snowsuit in New Hampshire, and tried not to let it get in the way of what I was knitting. Brrr.

Joe and crew kept going till close to sunset and I listened to them hammering away up there, hoping to finish the work tomorrow before it starts to rain. Now *that* would be cold. Our rain always comes packaged in northern ocean.

Just before they left, the mailman brought a completely unexpected padded envelope. I looked at it, puzzled, and it seemed to be something soft in there. Huh. I hadn’t ordered anything…

I looked at the return address and exclaimed softly, very pleased, Oh, Heather! Having no idea why it was there or what it was, but I did definitely have some idea of who she is. Yarn?

Heather is someone whom I’d emailed with for years before the day she, having finally made the trip north to Stitches, stood in front of me grinning and waiting for me to read the big name tag hanging at about her belly button. You know that moment when how you picture someone without even realizing you were doing so collides with the real-and-here and it’s really cool that they’re really here and you have to blink a moment to readjust the brain?

You’re HEATHER!

…Prefab yarn, hon. I cried in delight and took it out and wrapped it around my shoulders, marveling. At the gift. At the immediate difference it made. At the timing. Look at that! (Totally echoing our friend from Fiji yesterday.) I’m finally WARM!

It’s beautiful, beautiful, thank you, Heather B! I will try to live up to this wondrousness!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It had been waiting for her for a long time.

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

I hadn’t put it in there.

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

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

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