I don’t know what design and I don’t yet know whom it’s for. But for weeks now the soft gray Colourmart-sale cashmere in my stash has been whispering, then a little louder, ever persistent: Could you finish that afghan soon? Because I really need to be next.

I have Rios, I have colors to play with, I have intarsia on the mind–doesn’t matter. It will be monochrome and it’s the next big project and that’s just that. No other yarn will do, no matter how much more practical I think washable wool is for someone whom you don’t know if they’ll want to bother with taking good care of it after all those hours of work on my part. When you don’t even know who it will be!

That one.

I’ve said a few prayers about it and keep coming back to, that. is. the. one. Okay then.

All I can do is hope they do take good care of it and all I can know is that that has to be next so that I’ll be taking good care of (fill in the blank) them.

When I let my yarn boss me around like that, it always comes out right.

But I have at least a month more to go on the current one first, so, no great reveals to any of us for awhile yet.

She’s one of our local church leaders, and like all of them, a volunteer.

She had been asked to help with local veterans.

They needed to feel cared about and the weather is cooling, she said to me, and she wanted to know if there were any other knitters or crocheters in our ward besides the three of us she knew about? Would it be do-able to ask us to knit hats or scarves for each of them?

I did not know at all how many people she was asking about nor over how large a geographical area. It might well be that she wasn’t sure yet herself.

I told her the story of someone announcing in the women’s meeting years ago that maybe I could knit everybody a scarf?

My first reaction had been a horrified thought of, You have no idea what you’re asking!

But somehow…it sank in. I could at least do some.

There was no kind nor reasonable place to stop once I’d started, but I didn’t say that–and I did love watching people’s faces light up.

That is how, I told my friend, I spent 10-15, sometimes 20 hours a week on those. For eighteen months. I didn’t get everybody because some people moved out before they could find out they were supposed to get one, but, that’s the kind of time we’re talking about. About ten hours for a cowl, about five for a hat. (If they’re nothing particularly complicated, but I didn’t say that.)

She said something in there about making blankets and I told her my current one takes about two hours an inch to do (again, that’s the simpler sections, but her eyes were big enough–my point was made.)

Okay, then. Wow. She’d had no idea it would take that much time.

Maybe we could tie quilts? I asked.

An old friend back visiting for the first time in twenty years grabbed my attention for a hug and we left it at To Be Continued.

He’s not two anymore, reacting to being a new big brother. He really deserves a new afghan. That one was definitely well loved.

That thought, and how taken he was with my ocean pandemic project, is the push I need from time to time to keep going on the current afghan that slogs on. So that I can have an adult-sized one ready for each of the grandchildren so I can give him his when he graduates from high school.

Or better yet, sooner.

Project Notes:

Malabrigo Rios, Hollyhock, size 7 US (note that I knit very loosely), I cast on 80 and did diamonds in multiples of ten for three full diamonds, at which point on the row immediately afterwards I did a yo before and after the sl1-k2tog-psso at the tip of the diamond on what would have been the wrong side row if I hadn’t been knitting in the round.

This made diamonds in multiples of 12. It also meant every other diamond in that section had a bottom half longer than its top half, which showed a lot to my eyes while I was knitting it, but after rinsing and drying I had to look closely to even notice. So: I did one and a half full diamonds in the larger size and managed to win at yarn chicken with several rows’ worth to spare.

Next time I’ll cast on 90, even though that won’t get me as much length, in order to make a looser neck.

I really should go run in those ends.

Finally feeling this again.

Add a little more color to the rock in the water near the beach. Start some tree roots near the edge of the hilltop, not nice and neat but gripping tightly against the winds sweeping inland. Like that. Yes.

That’s what the coastal afghan had needed to get me really going again after a week on sewer cleanup: new parts, new colors, new interest. The dark green merino for the branches arrived a few days ago and is ready for me.

The latest mindless Mecha hat on the needles, where the colors do the work.

I actually need to go buy more for the next one.

P.S. Given how many of the most scenic homes in Pacifica are now swimming with the fishes, I don’t even know how this place is for sale. Don’t step out the back door. Did the realtor even go in to take those pictures, or did they send a drone there, too?

Update: if you can access it, here’s the history of the place. It was a telegraph and radio transmission station, and Richard Byrd reported on his Antarctic expedition through it 98 years ago. Someone turned it into a home in 1945.

The trees are coming along.

I didn’t manage to squeeze the whole thing into the picture and it was a quick photo in the fading light but this gives you the gist of the thing.

They were talking in church about the importance of service and asking for stories of times someone has made all the difference to you or you to them, and of course there’s the thought of, how do you sum up what all (sweeping arms wide) of life is about?

When it came to me, I said, I’m wearing socks that H made!

Which took her by surprise. She was thrilled. She tried to wave it off a little by saying it was the auction fundraiser, but hey, we were on to her. It was love, pure and simple, that got her to spend all those hours on them. All I did by donating to that camp fundraiser was to give her a direction to point it in for one moment out of many.

I didn’t work on the afghan yesterday because I was at the next stage in the picture but hadn’t decided how I wanted to configure my trees: branches reaching up? Or down? They’re more redwood-like if they’re going down, but the way the lace flows it’s just plain prettier reaching up.

How would you integrate that with trunks? How can you have redwoods without them? My typical lace pine pattern has repeats of each size of branch in order to add a sense of height, but a lace trunk would be off-center by a stitch.

So, I told him over dinner, I went looking through Ravelry patterns to see what other people might have done with the concept of a simple lace tree–and what I found, over and over, was people using Barbara Walker’s Christmas Tree pattern or her Fern pattern, which I hadn’t thought of as tree-like but okay.

Not much to learn there.

But it was the, Now if you’d done this with it it would have been more original and if you’d done this you could have had… Well, probably not like that but unless you wanted a date palm trunk look but like that…

(A side note: there is the iconic shot of Palm Drive, the entry to Stanford campus lined with palms. What they don’t say is that they take a chainsaw to the lower trunks to shave them smooth, obliterating their criss-cross patterning to keep rats and mice from nesting in all those little pockets going up to welcome the new students. And I could knit them back in now if I wanted to. Hah!)

Hey.

It’s not like it’s some great grandiose thing, and it’s not the palm trees. But definitely there is some personal satisfaction involved: I got it. My redwoods. I definitely think I got it. Given that I’m three weeks into this afghan, it took me long enough.

I didn’t know till I had to.

It’s 21″ unstretched.

Another repeat and a first rock that looks a little lonely and out of place there all by itself. It needs a couple of friends.

Meantime, the peregrine fledglings went through three rescues between the four of them and are all flying around fine now and having a good time. Here they are, mugging for the camera.

And another repeat.

I got a note from both the Australian post office and the sender to let me know my new Rios was in the US now so that I can finish the Big Sur afghan.

Meantime, 15″ on this one in one week is fast but our post office would really have to mess up for me to finish it before that gets here.

I know, don’t tempt them.

I woke up this morning with visions of how I was going to knit my rocks. I’m almost to the right place to start them.

I have no idea which one I’ll finish first. I’ll just have to wait to see that new yarn, put it together with this to have a good look at everything, and then let them be the boss of me.

So there I was, finishing up that fifth repeat before the distance between the waves starts to shrink going towards the shore, and I was remembering that time we went to the beach with my little brother and his wife. Pacific Grove. After a visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

The tide was out and there were large rocks strewn across that beach. Not much in the way of sand, just smaller stones everywhere. The kids started climbing up to play king of the mountain and they were having a good old time, so, hey, why not. We’d already cautioned each other about never turning your backs on the ocean and sneaker waves and all that, even if the water was a fair bit away.

So I climbed up on one, too. Above waist high as I remember. So did our visitors. We were all a little spread out.

Now, this is a really dumb thing to do when your sense of balance died in a car crash and there’s this ocean thing that means the visual ground isn’t holding still.

My sister-in-law took in the situation and quickly ditched her rock to climb up on the platform that mine made, and just barely in time–I suddenly in spite of myself started to pitch forward headfirst onto the rocks below and she grabbed me hard and fast and pulled me back to safety.

We took a deep breath and I thanked her as I got immediately off that rock, common sense reclaimed. I was and will forever be grateful to her.

Stitch after stitch after stitch… What would make this more interesting and more of a memory…

That day at the beach!

I started thinking how I could add rocks. With yarn overs? Add stitches, since lace expands and crossed stitches contract, then cable them? I tried to visualize possibilities.

If you make like a honeycomb cable, only bigger, so that you have three or five stitches in the center at the widest part, you could with that center do a yarnover-p2sso-yo. It would be a depression within the cable-raised circle with a focal point at the center. You could have another bit of Old Shale bumping up against it with the k2togs split and the purl ridges sweeping around the outer edges. I’ll have to try it out.

I might not have perfected rocks yet but I just figured out how to knit tide pools by texture rather than color and I am inordinately pleased with myself.

So one 12-row repeat is about three and a half hours plus all the required breaks thereunto.

Meantime, my apricot tree that went into the ground last spring was (finally!) growing visibly this spring, to the point that you could see the difference day to day if you paid attention.

Not so much this past week.

I went out there and took a closer look today.

Instead of new red leaves what I’m seeing instead is brown and in the crotches of the existing branches.

Those take a lot of energy. Those are fruit spurs for next year’s flowers. My seedling is actually getting there.