It has the usual ribbing at the bottom but I tried it on like this and instantly loved it.

I’m debating whether to create a sunflower to tack onto the blue or whether just to go make another one and do it to that one.

(Yarn: Malabrigo Rios, left over from my ocean afghan.)

So, being curious after last night’s post, I googled Arlo Guthrie today.

Turns out the word “massacree” is actually a word, not just Arlo playing verbal Dr. Seuss.

From Vox: ‘A massacree is a series of absurd events, so the Alice’s Restaurant Movement is against absurdity and in favor of reason. It is against arresting someone for littering and in favor of ending wars.’

Meantime, I’d told my Zoom knitting group last week that I was working on a yellow and blue hat, and everybody thoroughly approved. Then I spent the week feeling like no matter how much I wanted to, I just couldn’t knit, between being glued to the news updates and the message from my sister-in-law that she was flying to California in three days to visit a childhood friend who was quite ill and could she come see us?

It wasn’t till the next Zoom meeting tonight that I got back to it. That’s right, I was up to the blue part already, oh good. Knitknitknitknitknit.

At the end, they asked if anyone wanted to show off their work.

It just needed the top decreases. I brought it out from below the camera’s view and onto my head needles and all.

The entire group gasped, it sounded like.

We have all felt like Ukrainians these past two weeks. We can make our support visible to those in our communities who are. I know there are a lot of them in this area.

I imagine there will be more hats like that made in the coming week.

I suddenly realized yesterday that I have a silicone cake pan that I’d wondered a year ago why I’d bought it (BakeDeco was the source.) I mean, it’s nice, but I hadn’t needed another pan, given how much I love my yarn-ball one from the same company.

Wait. It is.

It’s a mold in the shape of a sunflower.

Yesterday, Mathias, who will unfathomably somehow be five next month, found this song outrageous–that’s not how you do language! So his mommy and daddy sat down with him and his little sister to have fun playing them some Arlo Guthrie: I don’t want a pickle, I just want to ride on my motor sickle… And IIIIIIII don’t want to diiiiiiiie, I just want to ride on my motor cyyyyyyyy….. cle.

Which I’m sure is why I instantly thought of that song when social media shared the story today of a woman who decided that, you know what? She didn’t need a pickle so much either.

A Ukrainian woman. She saw a Russian drone, went out on her balcony, and beaned it out of the sky with a jar of cucumbers. Nailed it.

I’ve spent the last two days wishing I had some yellow yarn, but since I never wear yellow I don’t buy it either.

I was thinking about that again this evening as a purple beanie went slowly round and round in my hands during my Zoom knitting meeting as people were talking about the attack on Ukraine: where we could donate. Where we could hope to do the most good from so far away.

Wait.

Moments after it ended, I suddenly remembered back when I bought way more than I used and what a mistake and a waste I’d thought it was at the time (and I gave some of it away) but… I went running to look.

I did still. There you go. The octopus leftovers. That blue, a bit darker in a different dye lot, for the sky, a yellow with a slight peach to it for the sunflower national flower. Superwash merino. I can dive right in after all.

You know if I walk around with their flag on my head a lot of people are going to ask for one.

Let me just finish off the top of that other beanie to get it off my needles and out of the way.

This made a good metaphor for the moment–sometimes you *do* have to push the bear away that’s threatening your loved ones, even when it has claws and you don’t. (BBCnews link.)

Meantime, Pres. Biden’s Supreme Court pick for the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, is married to a man whose twin is married to the sister of former House Speaker Paul Ryan’s wife. Ryan praised her intellect, her character, and her integrity (his description) today.

We’re going to have a great Justice on the Court.

Such a strong, strange-feeling mixture in the headlines this week.

A rueful laugh/if only/and yet, and yet, maybe: I read someone’s comment that the way to stop the war is to offer UK, US, or European citizenship to every Russian soldier who defects.

As the world prays for the innocent on both sides.

They can’t say it out loud, but Fox and the like have got to be really really hoping the unvaxxed Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, thrown out by one court and reinstated by another, fails.

The trial was delayed by her Covid diagnosis. Of course.

With thanks to Lee Ann Dalton for the link, I can only wish that others who’ve been persuaded by such might read all the love in these words.

Today was a stake conference meeting, ie a semi-annual gathering of the six wards (congregations) in our stake. I’m guessing about fifty people sat carefully socially distanced, from what I could see, and hundreds of us tuned in from home.

There was a song announced that was going to be sung by four members who were from Tonga and a friend of theirs whom they assured us was big, BIG! there: “He’s our Stevie Wonder,” one said as the others chuckled in fond agreement.

He was blind. He played the piano. And man oh man did he have a voice. He wasn’t a Mormon but he wanted to add his voice to theirs along with our silent ones in this place where his people would be heard.

The song, they explained, was about an island in the dark as the light comes to it.

They sang it in Tongan, and watching by Zoom I had to chuckle at the auto-transcription trying to create English phrases out of the phonemes going past it. No, silly captions, they are emphatically not singing about millionaires.

But oh, they were good. And after having asked us all to pray for those in their homeland, they were singing their hearts out such that I found myself in tears.

I had no idea what the words were, and I can’t begin to know what the one man’s name was, but there was no mistaking that love being offered up to G_d and how deeply it was felt.

It was an honor to be invited to be part of that.

Here’s a video, via satellite, of the volcano that exploded near Tonga, and it’s actually pretty cool.

There’s a sign near where some of my family lives: “Tsunami Evacuation Route” with an arrow straight up a hill. (Here’s video taken from someone’s front door in Pacifica. Here’s Santa Cruz.)

We figured they’d be okay, and they were, but I kept an eye on the news.

Which ended up meaning praying hard all day for the people in Texas who were simply going to synagogue for a normal Sabbath’s services and ended up being taken hostage by a gunman with bombs. For the people trying to help them. For their families, their community, for them to know we are all their community as this was happening.

Those prayers were answered in the safe rescue of the hostages.

Are we willing to answer the prayers of those who ask that we help this to stop happening?

To start, can we make Red Flag laws universal?

A local small farm was supplying a restaurant, and you know how that goes these days. And so they got three other farms together and put a notice on Nextdoor.com, as one does when one has no advertising budget, about their new CSA.

I was surprised there were any farms left at all two towns over, but apparently there are, so you can’t get much more local than that. Straight up the road. I signed up. Plus I’m pretty sure one of the names is someone I know.

Yesterday was supposed to be the first delivery day. They said 7-9 pm was the goal but it might take a little longer as they found their way around on these new routes.

I figured they were being optimistic but I also didn’t want my veggies sitting outside attracting critters, so last night I was opening the front door every half hour or less to make sure my box hadn’t been put in that one spot you just can’t quite see from inside.

Ten-thirty. No go. Maybe they should just wait till the morning.

There was a mass email offering apologies for how long it was taking.

Eleven p.m., ready to crash, and there it was! They did it! I opened the door–

–and got the full impact of what delivering it that late had meant for the driver. I don’t know if they took the direct hit or not. I’m really hoping not, and given the intensity I’d say either the skunk was still recharging its batteries from the last time it told the neighbor’s dog to get lost or it was in the dog’s back yard again and took it up on that barking dare. But whatever, it was close enough to give a good dose to open those lungs right up, breathe deep now, best asthma treatment on the planet, there you go.

Right, right, I’m sure the driver was sooo happy for the treatment.

I sent the farm a note today hoping they were okay and that it wouldn’t dissuade them from keeping me on their list and that if helped any, skunks are wanderers. They only stay put when they’re raising young.

Which, of course, they will be doing soon, but hey, I’ve got the rabbits over here, that’s my fair share. (Don’t. Tempt. Karma, Alison.)

Early on in this whole pandemic thing, when everything had been on lockdown and particularly so in our area, the county north of us decided that a customer could buy something online and the shopkeeper could hand it to them outside now. You could have that close a contact, briefly. Youcouldn’t browse, you couldn’t go in, you couldn’t touch their credit card machine, but you could do that.

This is when they were still trying to figure out the details of how covid-19 is spread.

I talked to one of my local shops, saying that what I wanted was two bags of a particular blue Malabrigo Rios that matched so that I would have enough for an afghan. I knew that officially it’s ten skeins per bag equals one dye lot; rumor, though, is that they’re matched up in groups of ten but that the mill produces more than that in each lot. But that’s a rumor.

So.

I wanted twenty skeins. I’ve found matching bags in the past, but I wasn’t going to be able to go in and eyeball anything.

Turns out the whole supply-chain mess meant the shop didn’t have and couldn’t get them in from Malabrigo for months.

But maybe her yarn rep had them on hand, she wondered.

Turns out she did.

Once those were delivered, I swung by the shop, they handed me the bags out on the sidewalk rather than frisbeeing them from, y’know, six social feet away through the car windows and all that and it was so good to see actual human faces again, not to mention old friends.

(Unspoken: Still here. Still here. And you too! Stay that way. Thank you for wearing those masks. Pray those vaccine researchers get their studies finished fast.)

I waited till I got home to see if my initial quick impression was correct. It was.

She’d been so relieved that the two bags matched like her rep had been sure of.

Now, here I interject a quick story about my folks visiting the dye works for a tapestry weaver in France at a time when they decided they needed just a bit more of this one color for their project, so the dyer was asked to create more.

He asked Mom if this and this matched.

She said no, not quite, and why. But no, sorry.

He hadn’t thought it was discernible but since clearly it was, he added just a touch more to the pot. There you go.

So blame it on the genetics. Here I was, staring at those blues, going, but they’re just not quite the same. This one’s more vibrant. This one’s darker. You can put them in all kinds of different lights and it doesn’t change the fact. It’s certainly not a huge difference, but…

So instead of becoming the next big project they’ve sat there for all this time because I can’t use them together unless I separate them by enough other colors and space that the difference might not matter, in which case I would no longer need twenty skeins of Matisse blue because half of the afghan would be something else altogether. Which has had me wondering if I should ask my friends who do diving and photography if they have a particular reef photo I could use, to riff on last year’s fish theme.

I’ve been musing about trying to match the one or the other, but I don’t know if inventories are back up yet.

Here, let me finish this other project first before I worry about it too much.

I just like to know what’s ahead.

Some years ago, San Jose’s Redevelopment Agency commissioned art for a park that was supposed to be of the god Quatzalcoatl of the indigenous Natives.

Jerry Brown on his second governorship later axed Redevelopment Agencies across the state, declaring them to be how the rich siphoned off taxpayer dollars to fund their private projects at the great expense of local police, libraries, and schools. Which is true, and that banning was long overdue.

So.

The sculptor offered a serpent with wings outstretched. One city counsel member thought it gorgeous. The head of the agency, who basically answered to no one, was afraid its pedestal would invite the homeless to take shelter underneath and he totally nixed it.

Alright then you get the serpent god in its coiled form.

The artist gave that admiring city counsel member a smaller version of it, and hers, made in what looks like weathering copper, is beautiful.

The bigger one for the city?

Plaster of paris, according to that first link, although I would think that would apply to the model but not the finished version; stone, according to the second. But either way, painted black. Hides the facial details nicely.

And yes, the late artist’s mother will tell you the poop statue was an act of revenge.

Someone tried to sue it out of the park by saying it promoted religion, but they lost, and there it stays.

With no more RAs around, the public gets to have public input on public art now. But oh, we do on this older one. A little late, but, we do.

The record for December snowfall in the Sierras has been 179″ for forty-two years.

We just hit 210″ and the month isn’t over, although the current storms probably are–but there’s a new wave arriving Monday. We’re at 70% of normal for the season so we need to keep going, but it’s been a great two weeks.

Meantime, up in the Pacific Northwest, Little Lily lou-who who is no more than two thinks a half dozen inches or so of snow is a very very good reason to ask for hot chocolate. Nonstop.  I am so proud.

Imagiknit let me know my Pocion Mecha yarn is on its way. I bought a single skein to leave the possibility open of getting to a LYS tomorrow and picking out more hat yarn in person but I wanted to know that that colorway would be here before the workers return, and tomorrow it should be.

On a random note of practicality: I read somewhere that the best way to freeze unused sourdough starter is to spread it out on parchment paper and then as soon as it’s frozen, crumble it into a small freezer container, giving it an easily-accessible form for later. So I just did that, wondering if it would pour out all over the place but it didn’t and finagling the parchment into the freezer space contained the starter, so, cool.

And randomness for its own sake: the Washington Post offers its subscribers a scanned-in shot of what the front page was the day (please fill in this form thank you) one was born.

Okay, I figured that was just trolling for data, but still, I was curious.

Below the fold, there was a story of a judge who’d had twenty young azalea bushes stolen from his yard while he was having a weekend at the beach, carefully spaded out of there.

It lists his home address, notes his tony neighborhood and the prices of the houses, and says the thieves even got the ones behind his ten foot fence.

Who on earth is allowed to have a ten foot fence?

His neighbors were hit that same weekend, and they, too, were at the beach. Their roses too were left untouched.

A truck was pulled over near that street with a hundred azaleas in back, and the authorities were requiring the driver to offer proof of having purchased them.

Okay, today, that would mean the newspaper doxxed a prominent judge–on the front page, no less.

The kicker is that the date on that newspaper? I was a crawling baby aspiring to walk. So per them, I was, in fact, born yesterday. And more than.

—

Edited to add: since I wrote that they have corrected the link.

One of the speakers at church today (if only there could be a link to our own ward’s talks!) mentioned Corrie ten Boom, whom I had heard of before but this story I had not.

She and her family hid Jews in the Netherlands during WWII but were eventually caught and sent to a concentration camp. Her father, sister, and nephew died; Corrie was released by mistake and made her escape.

Having preached forgiveness as a moral imperative and a means of spiritual and even physical survival in the camps, she continued to do so after the War, speaking far and wide on the subject.

At the end of one of those talks, a man approached her.

I can’t even imagine. She knew exactly who he was: he had been one of the SS guards in that concentration camp.

He told her how grateful he was for what she had said–and he reached out his hand to shake hers.

Forgive him, she told herself. Practice what you just preached. Live it.

Her hand utterly refused to move.

Help me forgive him, she prayed hard.

But she knew exactly what he had done.

Finally, in agony, her inner cri de couer was, I cannot forgive him. Father, You must because I cannot–and with that her hand was suddenly freed and she reached hers out to his and in the moment they connected she described an electricity going through her to him.

And it healed him.

And it healed her.