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.

I knew nothing of his background when we first met, and I’m glad of that; I got to know him a little with no preconceptions. His Scottish last name matched my great-grandmother’s and we figured we were cousins way back there somewhere.

Gradually, some of his stories seemed farfetched enough that I wasn’t sure I believed them.

Today I found out how true the one I questioned the most was. I was not expecting that.

His close friend from high school played a flamenco tune that James had taught him to play on his guitar all those years ago, and talked about James’s stage name and how he’d come by it and the travels and lessons and performances.

So that was real. That wasn’t the imaginings of a hard-core homeless man who once threw a major tantrum at me when I emailed him of an apartment opening for those who wanted to come off the street. I’m sure he saw it as me looking down on him, but it was pure naivet’e. He was where he felt comfortable being. In the end, just before his kidneys finished giving out, he did in fact accept moving into a place built to help people like him. That was his offer of comfort to the rest of us.

James was a gifted artist of a gardener. He was hired by someone I vaguely knew who was building a mansion up in the hills who described James as working on his own time and in his own way and you can’t rush him; all you can do is know that it will be glorious when he’s done. Glorious is a direct quote.

During a slow patch for him, I tried to hire him to come copper-spray my peaches against leaf curl disease.

I thought of him this morning as I did that task myself.

I walked into the church this afternoon; I’d met his mom, but surely this was his sister next to her. It was.

While their mom was talking to someone else, I told his sister–who made sure afterwards that Mom heard it, too–that James had refused to allow me to pay him that day when he was done. Said it was his gift to G_d today, that he likes to pick someone to just serve the Lord to and that was that.

Knowing his strong faith, I said, But the Bible says wo to those who oppress the hireling in their wages!

Didn’t budge him. He had done it for love. Always would. Please let him know next year when to come. (I confess I did not. I like to pay people for their work.)

And so I had knit him a soft wool blue cabled hat in thanks. James gasped at it: “I will treasure it the rest of my life!”

His sister said, “Oh, THAT’s where…” and trailed off. She’d wondered…

I did not dare ask how rare it was for her late brother to own and to keep something nice.

I keep thinking I’m getting close to finishing this baby afghan and I keep thinking, no, at least 10″ more: Colourmart’s swatch showed a 3.9″ tall swatch shrinking to 3″ in the wash. I have to knit that extra length that’s not going to be there.

It will fluff and puff out into exquisite softness.

Here, let me go finish my 2″ quota for the day. Meantime, I love my front walkway this time of year and the first peach tree out back is about to burst into pink all over.

(Are the tops of my photos getting cut off for you these days? Or just over here? It’s not been letting me fix them.)

The eye is pleased with things in odd numbers, when the number of things is low enough to be able to tell. So, three trees, right?

There will be four members of that family when this goes to its recipients. One tree for each of them, because you don’t want to leave anybody out.

I wrestled with those conflicting ideas; each redwood is up the hill from the one before so I’ve had time to stare and study and decide. But in the end, that baby won: he is getting his own. (Starting in a couple more rows.)

They are all done gansey style rather than in a lace pattern that would present more obviously because yes I have yarn overs where the waves lap the shore below, but where the blanket will be covering the baby up while he’s very little? Let’s keep that a solid fabric. For warmth. For at least partially avoiding little fingers yanking on the holes. And because I’m the knitter and I said so.  

There have been two visiting nurses since last summer (plus two substitutes we never saw again) making sure Richard’s bone infection in his foot doesn’t get worse.

The one who comes most often got a hat last week.

The other, the head honcho, comes much less frequently so I was delighted today when it was her. She’s the one who read one of his doctors the riot act over the phone from our kitchen when he was refusing to acknowledge that the infection was still there and still needing to be treated–when in fact it was spreading.

Got that tamped back down just in time. Let’s not do the sepsis thing, okay?

While she worked, I was in the other room going through the the finished-hat stash, wondering why I hadn’t run in the ends on that blue one, and so that got done.

But the one in the Indiecita colorway: that was the one. I was so sure of it. I moved it to the top of the stack and then admired all those pretty colors in the sunlight, both the brights and the quiets in those hats, before getting back to the afghan at hand.

She finished up and the front door opened.

Wait! I ran to her. Teal Feather, Blue Jean, Volcan, Piedras, and the Indiecita, I held them out: Pick a color.

Oh there was no question that one on top it’s gorgeous! She laughed for surprise and joy and put it on her head and gave me a hug and about skipped down the walkway, so happy! She got to have something I made! She got to have colors she loved! It’s so soft and warm!

I tell you: she’d earned that. She had so much earned that.