I was on what I’d decided was going to be the last repeat when the so-obvious smacked me upside the head: I know who wears turquoise. (Which this is in real life.) A lot. Like, does she ever wear anything that’s not? Her dad just passed away–you know she could use a good hug. And she’s a knitter!

I used 40 grams of the merino/silk and I have 90 g left. We’ll see how the length and fit of the thing looks once that lace is dried, and if I need to make a second on a larger scale to match her better, I certainly have plenty to do it with.

I’ve wanted to knit for her for a long time and at last I have a plan. And maybe even the cowl.

Meantime, this is how the back of the pattern that my Water Turtles shawl is done in looks like, and I just think it’s really cool.

Thoughts during a summer full moon’s brightly lit and long, sleepless night:

Y’know? I have a lot of people I want to be knitting for right now for a lot of very good reasons.

If I put another day’s work into that afghan project I’ll have a really nice soft black scarf that the recipient will love just as much as any bigger object and would probably actually use it more. How much the yarn shrinks or blooms wouldn’t matter then: I could seam the ends for a doubled-over infinity scarf or leave them open, and I don’t even have to decide yet. I can knit it to the point where I’d cast off if I were doing that, leave it waiting, and if I find I want to and have the time I can keep going from there as I’d originally planned.

But right now is just not that time, no matter how much I might want it to be. I might even be able to pull off doing both from those cones–making the scarf a swatch. A really big swatch.

The moon finally went behind the camphor tree’s leaves, and at some time well after 2:00 am I fell asleep at last.

I cast on a turquoise cowl in the morning.

Yardage times desired length divided by time…

And so I supplemented the 900 grams of heavy dk weight with 760 grams of a matching thinner 4-ply, even if it meant waiting for the second cone to arrive. It just came.

I swatched on the 10s–that would go fast for sure.

In your dreams, honey. I scoured it in hot water, hoping it would shrink enough. A little, maybe, but, c’mon.

I swatched on the 9s. Give it up, honey.

8s are as low as I’m going. It *will* shrink, but it will also bloom out when I wash the finished afghan. But I am not pre-scouring two pounds on that niddy-noddy at once. Okay, then, we’re on.

It’s a race to see which runs out first, the yarn or me. Me. There’s probably ~2500 yards on the dk and twice that on the 4-ply, and starting a black afghan in two strands of loosely-plied yarns was probably not my smartest move–it was the fifty bucks for two pounds of cashmere (the best bargains went fast) that did me in and here we are.

I’m figuring I need to do five inches a day to totally be on the safe side, time-wise. So far, I’ve done a whopping three. Which is actually not shabby at all.

(Edited to add: got it to 4,” we’ll say five if you stretch it. Meantime, someone’s setting off illegal fireworks outside and made a skunk mad, which is good for my asthma but probably not what they intended.)

Bedtime. That satisfying snap as the last of the ball is broken away at last. Lights, action, camera!

I’m just really glad right now that I made two more skeins of this yarn, because it exactly matches a sweater I love. I’ll have plenty of time to knit another before it gets cold.

Dropped my glasses off the top of my head when I stood up to answer the phone and then I stepped on them.

It was bad. There was just no putting those back on. All I could do was wait for Richard to get home from work to drive me over to For Eyes.

A dozen feet away was close enough not to be too fuzzy when a Cooper’s hawk skidded to a stop on the concrete just on the other side of the glass door. It considered me a split second as a finch on its back flailed away wildly trying to right itself (its hard thwack on that window had snatched my attention) and he grabbed it and was off.

The younger employee went, “Wow, you really stepped on them,” and given their age (I’d reused the same lightweight metal frames through several prescription changes–I bought an extra pair eight years ago so I could) she was afraid she would break them; the more experienced middle-aged guy, the one I took a tumble in front of last week, was sure he could do it and she was sure he could if anybody could and handed them over.

At this point I’ve been in there enough times that they were not surprised to see me pull out the knitting project I started today (after I did indeed add a repeat to yesterday’s.)

He was glad to see me back and looking none the worse for that fall and made a point of getting those exactly right. He totally rescued me, and was very pleased to be able to make such a difference. I can see again. I can do things again. I have my life back.

They both adored the picture of Mathias in shades and even asked to see more pictures of the baby, and I thought, I really like you guys…!

(Yarn: two strands of a dusty purple-plum cashmere laceweight, a gift from Sherry in Idaho, and two strands of a brick red merino with a touch of sparkle to it, plied together on my spinning wheel.)

Hank to ball to I’ll decide in the morning if it’s finished or if I want to add another repeat. Malabrigo Mechita in Whales Road colorway, and I’ve only used 32 of the 100g so far. That’s one very cost-effective hank of soft, washable merino yarn.

A confession: I was working on what I wanted to work on rather than the colors I think the next person in my mental queue would prefer, and that made me want to push on and try to get it all done by the end of the day. I didn’t, quite, but tomorrow I can get to hers instead of having this still in the way. (Much.)

Sometimes you just have to recharge your batteries by knitting what pleases you, and that’s okay.

Bring on the icepacks.

If I could get my phone to let me take another picture, I’d show you the half-done one I started this morning in navy 4-ply Scrumptious by Fyber Spates. Take this pattern, move the decreases to the centers of the diamonds, dark blue, there you go.

Yesterday’s silk came out such that when I tried this cowl on and looked at how it shimmered under the skylight, I instantly wanted to make more like that for more people and I do have more colors of that dk silk in my stash.

The Scrumptious was not one of them. But somehow this morning it wheedled its way onto my needles anyway and told me it wouldn’t take more than a day or two, promise! So I’m trying to hold it to that.

It made it up to me as I went along with it by reminding me how (name redacted)….wears navy a lot… And could use a hug right now.

And a superwash merino blend is likely to be a lot less stressful on a new mom than pure silk might be.

Now that I know how to make the dk silks in my stash work up well into a cowl and how they look and behave when I do… (Mine is like these, somewhat darker and greener than the fawn.)

That’ll be a good stopping point. I’ll put it down when I get there.

Okay, fine, so, the end of the row after that, then.

(Finally…) enough. Stop. Put it down.

It will be done by tomorrow. But not, no matter what my hands and eyes still want at this hour, tonight.

The picture’s the bright-light version of the colors, which are generally more subdued.

There was a baby shower tonight for someone who was a one-year-old with our then-one-year-old daughter when we moved here, and the best anniversary present my husband gave me was to urge me to go ahead to the party and enjoy.

I got there right at starting time–and there was Vivian and a chance to talk to her in an aside without its being in front of lots of other people and at a time when she was not having to deal with movers nor small children.

The blue I finished a week ago. The brick silk was an abandoned project that I hadn’t been able to make myself frog but at that gauge it just hadn’t been working as a rectangular scarf: the weight of it was going to pull and sag the stitches long over time the way loosely-spun loosely-knit silk can do and it had sat there hogging that pair of needles for a year.

Knowing she liked orange had gotten me to pick it up this morning, consider it sideways–hey! It does fit over the head when I pinch the edges together! (Barely.) I went to town with it, widening the pattern so it would go around the neck in layers just so. I am totally glad I saved that! (I did have to put a seam up the back.) UFOs can be great to have in a pinch, and she really liked it. She loved them all.

She laughed when I quoted her, “All the colors. Mostly orange. Blue is good.”

And then I told her this: I had bought that variegated Joseph’s Coat yarn from my old friend Lisa Souza maybe ten years ago and it had drifted to the far regions of my stash.

But somehow, and it was either Friday or Saturday, I had gone through bags and bags and found it and for no reason whatsoever I had pulled it out and put it front and center in the family room, so that when I got home from church Sunday after that conversation with her there it had been. Right. There. I hadn’t even known yet that she was moving away, much less what colors she liked. I had knitted it the rest of that day and all the next.

I found it intriguing how the yarn had split itself into three sections: the yarn was the same yard after yard but how it came out was not. “Kind of like raising children,” I said, and she laughed again.

She loved them all, but that one. That one spoke to her.

Her outfit looked like she had picked it out to match that cowl and she proudly wore her Lisa Souza the rest of the evening.

And then.

It was a large turnout: older women who’d known Kimber all her growing up (or almost, in my case), young women she’d grown up with, quite the reunion, and that end table in front of her was stacked pretty high. Which is good, given how many clothes babies go through every day.

Her sister had crocheted her a soft baby blanket and everybody oohed and aahed in appreciation.

More baby clothes… Towels, binkies, lots of pink in happy anticipation of her finally getting a girl on the third try…

Almost the last one. Kimber went to pull the envelope off so she could read it and tugged hard enough that some of the wrapping paper came off along with it.

She gasped and looked at me: that had to be from me! Right?!! She knew how big that package was, too. !!! She opened the card, took a deep breath to see the rest of what was inside while filling her mom in next to her (it was really loud in that house)…

and pulled out the baby blanket.

The machine washable and dry-able baby blanket in colors she loved so much. Colors that I had struggled to push myself through. Colors that were perfect for her.

One of the older women pulled me aside afterwards. She used to be a Knitter with a capital K but it’s been awhile.

That yellow, she said. In that pattern. It’s reminding me of–I don’t remember, but it’s reminding me of…(she shook her head) something!

It was absolutely compelling to her, and driving her crazy that she couldn’t remember what it was that had been.

It’ll come to you, I promised her. It’ll come.

I just bet you it’s that she knit somebody something once….

Blink. They’re what?! (I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, some other friends moved out of their rental house after the landlord doubled the rent, which had already been high, and it’s gone up that much again since.)

Vivian, I heard…?

“I don’t want to move again!” But yes, it looked like they were, and in the next week at that.

“But I haven’t knit for you yet!” As if that could keep them here. I don’t want them to leave.

It was like I’d thrown her a lifeline of something positive to hold onto in the stress of uprooting with kids and she answered with emotion, “I would LOVE to have something hand knit from you!”

“Alright, what colors. What are your favorite colors…”

“All of them!” and then, “Orange.”

Orange? Somehow that surprised me. Smiling ruefully, wryly, thinking about Green Planet Yarn’s being up for sale and my ever-diminishing chances to experience a yarn before I buy (and there was certainly no time to order any!) “There is not a plethora of orange in my stash.”

She laughed, and that felt good.

“What would match most of your clothes?” In case I could still make her happy with what I had at hand. “Blue, I have lots of blues.”

“Blue is good.”

And so I went home and searched through my stash, and almost immediately, because somehow just a couple of days ago I had inexplicably found it and put it Right There and then forgotten all about it, there was this baby alpaca “Joseph’s Coat” colorway from Lisa Souza‘s dyepots. All of them. Mostly orange. Blue is good. Well there you go.

And so this is what I spent most of the rest of the day on–that and our taking Michelle to the airport. What is fascinating to me is how it went from punctually-random intermixings of colors to growing stripes, definite stripes, when I changed the number of stitches on the needles. Curious. It will look like they all melted into each other at the top.

I have the plain light slightly-grayish-blue cashmere of two cowls ago as a backup, since that one didn’t go out yet and given that I am suddenly on such a tight time frame.

I finished typing the above, looked again, and finally figured it out: it looks like the pinwheel-on-a-stick toy of my youth that you blew on to make the colors twirl around to see if you could get it going fast enough to make them all run together. The center always did the most.

I was in the home stretch, one eye on the clock, thinking, I can get this done before bed and even still get a little blogging time in.

Michelle, who’s in town for her friend’s wedding, texted me: could I? Pretty please?

She’d been going to make an almond cake from the fresh almond paste she got at Milk Pail this afternoon: one of the perks of a trip home. But there was no way she was going to get back from that reception in time tonight–it takes an hour to bake.

Well, hey, I can make one of those really fast… (The recipe says baking powder in the list of ingredients, baking soda in the instructions. Do it in baking powder.)

The cast-off was finished at 10:55. The cake came out at 11:00 pm. I did it!

I wished, I wished, I wished I had a particular shade of blue in my stash.

I’d seen her wearing it so I knew she liked it and I knew it looked great on her. The hank I’d overdyed a few days ago wasn’t bright enough nor solidly blue enough. If I drove down to Green Planet (anyone want a yarn store? Beth would love to sell it to you so she can attend to her family) maybe they would have something–but having such a firm idea of the exact shade I wanted, that was no sure thing and it would have to be in a yarn I liked enough. No skimping.

After a week or so of this I realized at last that I did, and found it: one of my last few skeins of the discontinued Cascade Epiphany in a deep royal, a cashmere/silk/royal-grade baby alpaca, long and carefully hoarded. It was just the thing.

We threw her a potluck birthday party at lunch today and I had to confess that I had not finished it but I let her see just enough of that blue.

That was all she needed. She was wearing an exact match to it (in something I hadn’t seen her in before) and exclaimed, That’s my favorite color!

The race is on, then, to finish it in time to be blocked come Sunday.

(p.s. Thank you, everybody. Today was much better than the last few, to my great relief. And it was all the better for my daughter Michelle having arrived in town for a wedding.)

There on the fence, preening. I grabbed my aging phone and wished. The chest markings of a juvenile, the larger size of a female–and there she goes! Not the adult I’d been seeing. She’s probably only been flying for about a month, then. Cool!

Meantime, I really wanted to get this out there today and not one day later and I made it to the post office before closing with ten minutes to spare. Someone needed a hug. Someone who’d just dyed her hair purple. It was just the thing.

Mathias modeling his second hat–he’s outgrown the first already.

A young mom I am very fond of is moving away and I very much regret that she is.  Even if I’m happy for her that getting out of our expensive area means that she and her husband will be able to buy their first house for their boys to grow up in.

So there was this cowl…

But I just wasn’t sure about the color. I dithered. I thought about it. At last, I stuffed a half a dozen other possibilities from my stash of finisheds into a ziplock and managed to stuff that into my purse, pleading for help first to G_d before I did that and then to her because *I* couldn’t decide: I asked her to pick one. Including maybe this cashmere one I’d just started.

You know, usually I like to be able to say I made this just for you. But I was just completely helpless this time.

She laughed and chose one (which was not the one I’d just finished) and for her, seeing lots of pretty things and being allowed to pick one out, of being offered that choice–this time, that was what was perfect, and had I known that beforehand I wouldn’t have sweated over it quite so much. Laceweight strands of baby alpaca/silk and of cashmere/silk knitted together in a cheerful blue–it was for her all along, now.

It was just a cowl. And it was everything, all at the same time. She confessed that she hadn’t ever been going to say such a thing, but, she’d really wished she had a knitting memento from me to take with her to her new life. A reminder of that talk I’d given in church a few weeks ago, too. And now she had one! She was so thrilled.

In that talk I had told a story of how knitting someone something had made all the difference both to them and to me.

You know what? I need to knit more.

Tomorrow will be a break out the wool sweaters day.

Which also means I can offer a particular someone at church a handknit cowl and it won’t be ridiculous in the heat. And if they come dressed for June rather than the weather report, they’re probably going to really really want that cowl just then.

And so I wove the ends in in happy anticipation.