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.

Phyl and Lee wanted us to see their photos from their recent diving trip to Bali. We love Lee’s  underwater photography; we’d been looking forward to it.

And so they had us over tonight. (Again, yes.)

Walking in from the parking lot, there was something odd in that tree… I walked over the grass to it and looked up.

Some young child had thrown his yellow Tonka truck up in there.

It wasn’t that tall a tree. Canes can be handy sometimes, and I ducked out of the way as it came down and left it waiting at the trunk for its owner to find it in the morning (I hope!)

As we later thanked them for the evening, I reminded them that the last time we’d seen their fish pictures after one of their diving trips, I was in the hospital shortly after, totally tripping out on morphine with bright Indonesian fishyfish swimming through my hallucinations all night, keeping me entertained.

We laughed. And, let’s not.

(Note on the kestrel: I have been told by a birder friend that my sweeping out where a mouse had set up shop on the patio is probably what attracted the kestrel; they tend to eat rodents more than small birds.)

———

She has that classic first-grader look with that missing front tooth.

Her mommy was in the freshman dorms with my daughter Sam.

Her daddy went to the med school that just happened to be where Sam’s lab was while she was doing her PhD–so Sam got to see her old dorm friend again while they were there. Cool.

And then they moved here. Small world.

Our friends Phyl and Lee invited a whole whack of people over this afternoon and evening to celebrate the end of summer at their condo’s pool and pool house. Pot luck, barbecue, swim if you want, come!

The sun was low, the fog was rolling in, the breeze was getting chilly, things were winding down, and–let’s call her Jane for now–Jane’s folks were laughing at themselves for what seemed cold to them now after two years here after having lived in Vermont for awhile.

Next thing, her daddy was walking with her to their car as we were coming up behind.

There was a big wide puddle on the concrete next to the pool where splashing and shivery dripping had happened. They were steering around it. Total waste of a good set of flipflops.

“California kids don’t get that you have to splash in puddles, puddles are for splashing in!” Drought year–when had any of those kids tonight last seen water on the ground? I totally jumped in, feet and cane and all, soaking the hem of my skirt; they laughed happily.

But she didn’t quite drag her daddy’s hand back over there to go do that too.

That gleam in her eye said, next time, though. There will be more puddles. Next time.

I’m going to say one last thing on the topic of a woman’s right to make her own decision. There’s more to this. Our local Jackie Speier stood up in the House last year, angry, and described what she personally had had to go through: she had lost a baby and had had to go through “that procedure,” a D&C.

I know that she and her husband had long struggled with fertility issues, that that baby was dearly wanted. She did have I think two kids afterwards–and then her husband was killed in a car accident while they were little.

What I did not know until that speech hit the paper was that the men trying to push all the personhood and anti-Planned Parenthood bills were also trying to make it so that new doctors would not be taught how to do D&Cs because those are used in abortions, and were even wanting to criminalize the procedure itself.

I want to scream every time I think about that, Do you know what that means?!

When I miscarried my first pregnancy at almost four months and the fetus was dead, the doctor who did the D&C told me that I had to have that done in order to protect me from scarring, from having leftover tissue that could cause infections, that if it were not done I might never be able to have children. I had that D&C; I went on to have two daughters and two sons.

Do we outlaw all guns everywhere because some are used to kill living people? Did a bullet ever help a body heal?

———

Okay, enough of that. So. I took my baby dress project to Purlescence tonight, the one I’m working on to match little Eden Alison’s hat. Except, I was stumped. All these years of knitting and I just haven’t done baby clothes–the first sweater I made Parker when he was a few months old fit his three-year-old cousin.

So I asked Pamela, who knits for her little grandchildren all the time, and Danette, who has a toddler. The bottom hem seemed to be coming out too big. We talked fit and the whys and hows of it. (I know I linked to that chart the other day but I needed knitters around me to tell me in person.)

That did it. I sat down and got going, and I am really pleased now with how it’s coming out. Like I so wanted to be all along.

Just found this chart with baby sweater measurements in detail. Thought I’d pass it on.

I called Trader Joe’s tonight, and their new batch of hazelnuts had finally, after weeks and weeks of waiting, gotten past FDA quarantine: yes, they were in.

Alright! And so my kitchen smells of toasted hazelnuts about to turn into homemade much-better-than-nutella, Michelle’s specialty.*

Meantime, going into the store ahead of me was a young mom with her curly-haired blonde daughter, about ten months old, absolutely adorable. She reminded me of Sam at that age–who, on being handed a helium balloon at a grocery store, spent the next week dropping things and pointing and staring at the fallen objects. DOWN! *That* one conformed to everything she’d learned so far in her life. Fall DOWN not up!

Walking in just behind them was a mid-20ish couple. They were very happy. They were clearly in love, clearly seeing their whole future together ahead–because they saw that baby in that cart at the same time and I saw both their faces light up instantly and then they turned to each other, sharing what to my eyes several steps away looked like happy anticipation.  There was so much joy in that moment.

Between the bananas and the fresh-cut flowers I suddenly found myself next to that cart and I smiled and waved hi at the little one from just enough distance. She smiled back. Her mom turned just then, saw, and prompted her little girl, Wave hi!

She waved hi with an even bigger grin. She knew she was in for a treat: seeing someone becoming even happier because of something she did.

My heart melted. Such a cute little girl. I bet she’s a future knitter, too.

And I went home, and, having finished the hat, cast on for a baby dress to match. Hopefully. I was glad I found that chart.

(Note that Ryan is allergic to corn and most powdered sugars have cornstarch, hence the side note below.)

*

Hey Mom:

I omit the oil, and reduce the sugar (remember we should have tapioca
starched powder sugar). depending on level of chocoate-y-ness, up the cocoa
to taste; not to exceed the amount of omitted sugar. I often omit the
vanilla as well.

http://www.latimes.com/features/la-fo-nutellarec11a-2009feb11,0,1158986.story

-Shelle

Sunday was the hat. “Now we can have the baby!”

And Monday, but only just barely, right on cue, Andrew came at last.  He’ll be in the hospital on antibiotics till Friday but things are looking good.

Carolyn is expecting.

Carolyn was due.

Carolyn is overdue, and any woman who’s ever been there is probably putting a hand on her own back in sympathy about now.

I have been trying to get myself to sit down and knit a hat for her son for about a month now. There was that wedding in the way, but after that I had no excuses. I saw her at church last week and thought, well, blew that chance of getting it to her before the delivery.

But I knew that there would be a happy announcement made–and there had been none yet.

I got a note from her: her mother was in town to help and she was a knitter and wanted to know where the best yarn shops around might be?

Deadlines cure procrastinations. This morning I pulled another Malabrigo Rios out of my stash: superwash merino for a tired mom about to have a toddler and a newborn. Forty stitches, a few rows, a checking of size on the Bev’s Country Cottage site, a total rip, a start over, 50 stitches, size US 5 needles of 1×1 ribbing, and looking at how long that was taking me, I ditched the idea of ribbing all the way up. I switched to US 8s because rib stitches come out bigger than stockinette ones (and stockinette knits up at twice the speed) and zoomed through a plain swath that showed off the colorway. Five spirals of decreases and a little pigtail of crocheted chain stitch at the end.

Got it done in time. Just barely. And it was so cute–what had taken me so long to discover what that yarn could be?

Went off to church, where I connected with Carolyn, met her sister and her mom, and apologized: This was all my fault. The baby had been waiting for me to finish his hat. Now at last he can come.

They cracked up. They loved it. Her mom exclaimed over the knitting and tweaked the little pigtail–bouncy bounce! Carolyn waved it at her husband, going, Now we can finally have the baby!

Her mom mentioned in an aside to me that she wasn’t going any distances right now, yarnstorewise. I told her I had stash I’d be happy to share. There’s no way a new grandma who knits is going without yarn to shower the little ones with, not around me she’s not.

(Edited later to add) because how could I not: my niece Emily just had her baby. And this is what she just told me on FB:

So, aunt Alison, I don’t know if Eric posted this or not, but we named our baby Eden Alison, the Alison after you. I have always admired the positive outlook you have on life, and hope to emulate that.

Gobsmacked does not begin to tell it. I read that and exclaimed Oh WOW!!! so out loud that I had to immediately explain to Richard, sitting next to me, why. Wow. Hope y’all don’t mind my bragging here. Welcome to the world, Eden Alison!

I’ve got me more knitting to catch up on!

Three people, two cars, multiple errands that had no room for delay, and Michelle’s first day of work.

I dropped Richard off at his office. An accident, the freeway a parking lot, later a guy in a hot red sportscar trying to defy physics as he impulsively zoomed a left in front of me, the car in my other lane having turned out of the way exactly in time to save us all as I braked and veered. So close.

Remember that car alarm that is designed so my mechanic cannot disable it permanently that randomly goes off every now and then? The one that nearly got a man killed? I learned long ago from the manual that you have to put the key in the driver’s side and turn it quickly three times to the left to get it to stop. HONKHONKHONKHONKHONK

I was in downtown and next to an apartment complex, rush hour starting up, lots of people to bother, and this time it really meant it. Nothing stopped it, not the key, not the fob, not this, not that, nothing. I went through the manual again, noting wryly that I had written loudly on it where to find the page quickly. HONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONK

Finally a mailman pulled onto the crowded street, found (an illegal) parking space a way down, hiked back to me and asked, Did you try this? (Which was not in the manual.)

Silence never sounded so good.

I went home absolutely beat.

And got a note from Suzanne: wasn’t it nice that I had the good health to be able to go do all that today?

She was right. I’d so needed that. Her gratitude changed everything.

And Michelle came home radiant. It was a little scary, the things they expected her to come up to snuff on so fast, but they were putting great faith in her and oh by the way you’re doing the big presentation in two weeks on…

A boss who believes in her already. She’s determined to live up to that. Perfect.

Years ago, a new Stanford grad asked Richard how on earth to decide between two job offers. One was more prestigious and paid more; the other, though, really spoke to him.

Richard told him: Imagine you’re driving home from work. Now, look in the rearview mirror: is the man looking back at you smiling?

The guy thanked him, took the lower-paying job, and years later he sent us a note letting us know where all that had come to–it had been the right road, most definitely. We will never forget that he took the time to let us know.

Michelle had thought she’d wanted a different job more, and when it didn’t happen, I told her she was going to be glad later that she hadn’t taken the wrong one.

She came home with the whole world her mirror. She’s smiling too.

Note: my email program updated Friday night and crashed. Seems to be working now; my apologies to all who didn’t hear back from me. And thank you to all who are supporting Sam’s walk.

Tonight, our friend Phyllis had us celebrating her birthday at an Indonesian restaurant.  She and her husband like to go scuba diving in Bali, this place was new, and they had great hopes for it. They wanted to share a little more of a country they love.

The food was quite good–I could definitely do salmon in a banana leaf again.

After one of their trips about four years ago, they came over to our place and Lee showed us the absolutely fabulous underwater photography he’d just done there. I had a particular interest, not just for the fish (though there was definitely that) but also for the fact that when I was growing up in DC, our next-door neighbors had just been in Indonesia with the State Department and the dad was later made ambassador there. I was told stories by the kid my age about what it was like to live there then.

So. Go fish. When I ended up in the hospital a few months after that photo show, between the meds the doctors had me on and the condition I was in I was hallucinating Lee’s fish varieties in vivid color. It kept me much amused, reminded that there was life out there at a time I needed the diversion. No Indo-amnesia there. I loved it.

Meantime. Thomas Edison did a silent movie of Mark Twain. Hey, Lee? Obvious statement number one: photography has come a long way.

And yet–sometime you just can’t beat the old stuff. If you scroll down the videos you get the best thing since sliced bread. Have fun.

Wow you guys. From zero last night to $730 as I type for Sam’s walk for lupus research. I woke up this morning, clicked on the link, and nearly burst into tears. Thank you cannot begin to describe it. Wow. Such a rush of emotions. This is our last month having to pay Michelle’s big COBRA health insurance bill, I feel terrible that I cannot quite yet make the effort I want towards Sam’s walk, and yet you all… Wow. Thank you.

On a side note for all the gardeners out there, I learned something today: the San Jose Mercury News is running classic Gary Bogue columns online, unwilling to let their wildlife specialist go in his as-of-last-week retirement. A woman had written in once to say that she had finally cured her squirrels of attacking her tomatoes.

By hanging red glass Christmas ornaments on them. Ooh, shiny! And the darkest reds are the sweetest, right?

One bite and they never touched them again.

There was a second wedding this week: one of Michelle’s classmates from the University of Michigan got married in Berkeley yesterday.

And so Michelle’s recent roommate flew out for it and she stayed with us for two nights, taking off early this morning. A second classmate had a red-eye flight home late tonight: so he would have, it looked like, nothing to do all day in a strange city.

Hey.

And so Michelle went to church while he rode BART over to our side of the Bay; having him a lot closer made it a lot easier.  She picked him up from the train station and took him to the Rodin sculpture garden at Stanford, art dealer’s granddaughter that she is. They hiked The Dish (and saw no mountain lions). He came to dinner; he exclaimed over the ataulfo mangoes in the salad, he loved her lemon-from-the-tree meringue pie, we had a great time. By the end of it we were all rooting hard for him to take a job here–there is a transfer offer in his future with an office here, so it’s a possibility. We talked up the place, hoping.

It was hard for me to see both of those good young people go and I’ve only barely met them. The day had me remembering when my own friends all split up at the end of our college careers, when the costs of long-distance telephone calls could easily wipe out a student’s paycheck and it was that or mail without the word snail yet but that often didn’t happen.

It’s great to know your kids have friends who are just the best. I wish them every blessing in their journeys ahead.

We landed at Salt Lake and drove and drove. Past the Evanston (Wyoming) a hundred miles sign and to the house near where Richard’s mom’s family was from.

Old farm country was clearly rapidly turning into nice homes. I wondered how many were for vacations only. Winter is not gentle above Salt Lake.

I asked my sister-in-law in the kitchen of her new house if there were a lot of people in her neighborhood who lived there year-round vs the snowbirds.

She mentioned in particular that the neighbors straight up the hill were here all the time–and that they used to live in California.

Then she mentioned their names. I was stunned.

I’m sure the story’s on the blog somewhere, but. We had old friends back in New Hampshire who, when layoffs looked imminent there and we had already moved to California, Richard helped V, the dad, land a job with him, and so, they followed us out there.

A few years later, DEC disappeared and the jobs moved on. We had gotten together a few times but not in probably ten years when V and his wife called one day and invited us over–but gave us their new address. They had moved.

It sounded really really familiar.

We pulled in that driveway, knocked on the door, and when V opened it Richard asked, So does it still have the projection room to the left at the end of the hall?

Wait, *what*? He was stunned. How did YOU know?!

It had been the Z’s house. We knew them a little and their kids a lot, who used to entertain in their folks’ big place. The parents had moved to somewhere that sounded like the middle of nowhere in Utah in their retirement; why, we didn’t know. Why age where the weather is heavy and must be lifted and moved out of the way for months every year?

Their new house looked very much like their old one: had you asked me whose house it looked like I would immediately have told you the Z’s. It’s in a beautiful part of the world, very green with a river running nearby; I saw red-winged blackbirds, magpies, swifts, and someone had built a tall wooden pole with a platform next to the road on our way up into the neighborhood and it had clearly become a raptor’s nest. Someone there loves the birds.

As does my sister-in-law.

And now I know the Z’s have good neighbors again.