It’s come a bit of a way since Wednesday. Eight and a half inches in four days plus the cast on the day before.The waves will come closer together as they get towards the shore; they’re starting out farther apart than the last time I riffed on this idea.

Math says that a gradual decrease the way I want the way I’d planned it means doing four of each set.

Four is an awkward number visually: if the eye can tell, if the numbers are low enough, it wants odd numbers. Hmm.

Once Australia’s postal service gets the Malabrigo yarn to finish the other project here then this one goes into timeout. But it feels great to be getting what I can done in the meantime. As for how many of which repeats, eh. It’s all good.

The coastal afghan on small needles is just long enough that I can begin to see how it really is going to be, but there’s not really enough to show it off yet. Eight and a half by 49″, five rows per inch or six and a half as the black hole yawns, either way, it takes time.

I found the color I’d wanted all along but couldn’t find and didn’t think existed in Rios: a near white with a touch of not gray but blue for the fog. Littleknits had it. Cosmos. It’ll be here when I need it.

I just got a good reason to push hard and get this done at a not-leisurely pace: there is a third person I really need to knit an afghan for between now and Christmas, I mean, like, I really really do.

P.S. Peregrine update here.

66/34 cashmere/cotton. I finished it this morning. The weather is going to be cool through Friday, then start being hot–I wanted her to have it now.

And so I broke my own rule: I did not block and dry it. I figured those were both limp fibers and the pattern wasn’t curling up like it would in wool. Good enough to go.

This was for a friend who looks out for everybody. When Richard was in the hospital for nine days, she brought me a half gallon of homemade soup to eat when I got home from the hospital for the night not wanting to do anything but just sheer survival.

She told me not to worry about bringing that giant Ball jar back.

Today she was talking to her cousin, who is going through a rough patch, and I slipped a small handled bag next to her trying not to interrupt; I got a small nod of acknowledgment and got out of the way.

Richard had watched me with bemusement as I’d pulled a sheet of blank printer paper into a circle, put the ends of it into that jar, stuffed the cowl in the center, and pushed them both on in there. I adjusted the paper so there was no gap to let one see what was inside it and with the lid on top, there you go.

I didn’t have to be there when she pulled the jar out of the small bag to put it away. When she went What? over the paper. When she opened the lid. I got everything I needed just out of anticipating it all and yes when she did she immediately called, deafness or no deafness on my part, to exclaim over it to me.

I told her her husband had told me her favorite color.

And now she needs to tell me her cousin’s.

I’m finding myself in that spot where I have some idea of what I want the next big project to come to be like, I’m fully aware that it could turn out nothing like that once I get going and start letting it boss me around, I’ve sketched a few sketches and wince-laughed at my drawing inabilities and no not like that and in the end, nothing has shown up on any needle yet.

I know that if I rush it for the sake of having something that feels important to make I’ll regret it. I have to take the time.

I also know that the aphorism, ‘Begin: the rest is easy’ surely applies as well.

In case you ever wanted a working definition of the word ‘dithering.’

The pictorial afghans take about four months and I can’t give one to one grandchild till I have at least enough for all of them. Plus I need an afghan for my younger brother for this coming Christmas.

Okay, now that I’ve got all that out of my system, where’s that blue Rios?

Six of them: if it’s April, it’s someone’s birthday around here. The phone rang, FaceTime buzzed, then the doorbell: Surprise! Doordash, two mini cakes, making sure things were done right.

The next birthday girl chimed in: the baby should arrive late next week.

So her new daughter, too, might join the Aprilization of this family if she wants to. It is possible they’ll have the same day.

I asked if she wanted to see a photo or wait till we could bring it to her?

A photo!

And so she got this and the story of the clover chains and loved it.

I wondered if knowing her baby afghan was finished was that one last thing she needed in order to feel ready to go.

With you all the way, honey, with you all the way.

I decided to start a ninth repeat because why not. So the baby blanket isn’t done, but the progress picture is stalled out in the ether. 179 stitches on size 5s and past 40″ square unblocked in 18 days.

Meantime, the next mom-to-be is getting her finished baby afghan on Saturday and I can’t wait.

This was the first two cones of cashmere/cotton 50/50; I’ve started on the third.

One oddity of this pattern is that you basically knit it upside down.

IthinkIcanIthinkIcanIthinkIcanIthinkIcan…

I remember the big (to my childhood eyes) field between the church and the Safeway on the Maryland side of beautiful, woodsy Western Avenue in DC and the clovers that dotted the grass and spread down that field. We would pick them and make a slit near the bottom of a stem with our fingernails and slide the stem of another through it, chaining them into flower necklaces that celebrated with us for the rest of the afternoon and then quietly gave way to nature.

White clovers had some of this yarn’s color at the center, with all those curled white petals above. A few were purple.

I’m sure the older girls taught the younger ones how to do this, though I mostly simply remember making them with my best friend Kathy. Those older girls would have included my older sisters–and Richard’s.

Whose cancer finally took her when her youngest was in college.

I remember, when our kids were growing up, her backyard sewn in meadow flower packets that had beautiful wildflowers blooming all summer. Cold, cold water from the mountains ran past it all in a tight stream hemmed in by squared stones set in place just so by pioneers at the beginning of the western water rights era so that their children’s children’s children could help things grow.

Her youngest will soon have a baby girl of her own.

Clover flowers in a meadow. With hopes of making chains of necklaces with the little one someday in memory of her grandmother.

Notes: Size US 9 needles, 828 grams, 166 stitches, dk weight cash/cotton 50/50 in light wine from Colourmart knitted doubled, 14 stitch leaves with seed stitch edges, start to finish three weeks and a day, final unstretched unblocked width and length, 45″ x 56″. I took its picture with a single row and the cast-off still to go because I was losing my daylight angle fast.

Ends need to be run in, but I still get to say it: It is soft and warm and it is done.

Forty-five by fifty-four long with an inch to go, with the knowledge that that yarn shrinks about 25% lengthwise and 10% widthwise if thrown in the dryer. Which I intend it to be able to be. My goal was to finish it at the three week mark and I did–except for the four rows of seed stitch at the finish. So close.

I went looking for the other cash/cots around here and found them; they could make a great monarch butterfly against the background of something else, but not the color that had been picked out. Not Yellow Swallowtail nor Blue Checkerspot butterflies either in there.

So that idea will have to percolate towards some future project.

It’s been an intense knit and it is almost. Done.

Back to the afghan, then weighing the yarn, calculating how much I’m using, how far I can take it…

While doing that, I was picturing the one I’m going to make after this and had the sudden thought, But you know what? I could take these other colors I have and knit an intarsia Monarch butterfly into it.

Because babies would never ever work their little fingers into the worked-in ends and pull that part of the design all apart.

…As I remember re-tying the ties on a tied baby quilt every night after my little one was asleep, being careful to never let him see me so it wouldn’t become a game between us in his mind. He wasn’t old enough to crawl but he loved a good challenge at bedtime.

Hmmm.

(Photo from yesterday, didn’t take one today.)

Eight and a quarter repeats now after doing 21 166-stitch rows today. I haven’t worked this hard nonstop on an afghan since my grandkids’ cousin was born with a wrapped cord and not breathing on his own for his first fifteen minutes while the hospital scrambled to replace his blood and cool his body in a protocol Stanford had pioneered not long before.

I typed the above thinking a fervent oh, if only, wanting to hug my friend Jody whose granddaughter did not survive that complication.

That baby’s mom and dad needed a tangible symbol of all the hope and prayers sent by everybody.  I didn’t have the stash nor funds for more superwash merino to do it in one color, it was stripes the length of each skein and friends chipped in with more skeins of their own to be a part of the cause. Ten days start to finish.

I was told afterwards that that baby emphatically did NOT like to be cold. (Gee, I wonder why.) That made me all the more glad we had sent him our warmth.

He is turning 13 this year and doing fine.

Do you ever get yourself to keep at it by telling yourself that if you do this one row, you’ll never have to do it again? That that one row at least will forever be finished?

And then the next and the next and the next and the next.

This blog post brought to you with thanks to the makers of blue ice therapy gel packs.

I’m figuring I’ll probably take it to nine repeats.  Seven hours post-photo I’m 160 rows in at six and a half.

Twenty-six thousand, five hundred sixty stitches since starting late Wednesday two weeks ago. It keeps surprising me by actually getting bigger from my working on it as nonstop as my hands will let me.

P.S. I checked my inbox during one of my breaks and Etsy was sure I needed to see handmade felted-wool slippers.

Because everybody needs a hedgehog in a tutu on their foot. From Ukraine! The honeybees and a hive–wow. The sunflowers. Well done.

Still randomly laughing. He didn’t say, but I bet his wife had thoughts on the subject…

Last week I offered the surgeon his choice of a few hats. Another one was on my needles just then–he knew I’d made them.

He hesitated and his face looked as if I’d put him on the spot so I assured him, You don’t have to. It took him a moment but okay, he found a shades-of-brown Rios one and let me give it to him.

And I thought to myself, You’re thinking skiing and Tahoe and adequate warmth and I’m sure you do have some synthetic thing more windproof than these. No sweat. The irony is that the one he did take was the least warm of them–although, the easiest to tuck away.

Today was a post-op follow-up and I’m the one driving at the moment.

I almost laughed (don’t, don’t, I didn’t) when the guy near the end stopped and turned away from inspecting stitches to me and asked me about his new hat. With quite a bit of enthusiasm. He told me how much he loved it. How he keeps it in his pocket (which he patted.) It was so soft! Was it wool? ..Merino? (Said hesitatingly, apparently unsure that I would know what merino meant. Oh you sweet summer child.)

I told him yes, merino, that it was super wash treated so you could run it through the laundry but it would fuzz out so if you don’t want that then hand wash, and that it was hand dyed (let’s not get into the granularity of kettle dyeing descriptions.)

He very much appreciated it.

And I so wanted to tell his wife thank you. Still laughing. He’s a quick and willing study, for sure.