I started another cowl after last night’s post and finished the first skein today and at that stopping point considered: it really did need a second.

But I decided that I had done all the vivid Barbie-pink pearl yarn I could stand for one day, in part because with the sun gone, the artificial light did not improve the color for me, even if I think it’s just the thing for its intended, and meantime some super-soft, thick, braided Classic Elite Chalet yarn had been jumping up and down at me yelling louder and louder. It was emphatic that it needed to jump the line, and so I let it. Just for the evening, I told myself. It works up fast.

I have a hat like this with seven repeats. But there were only 98 yards to work with–and again, it’s quite thick–so we would have to go with six. (Note to self: needles US 6 and 8, 60 stitches.)

And there you go. It reminds me of a carousel somehow. Up down up down hold onto that line anchoring your character and a curving top above with those angles built into it.

As I was knitting it, it dawned on me at last that the person I sometimes see at church with the tracheotomy probably doesn’t want the possibility of loose fibers near her throat, but in this long cold spell we’ve been having, (34F as I type) a melt-in-your-hands-soft hat could be just the thing…

On the day of the first decent rain in a month, out in the yard these August Pride peach flowers are darkening on their way out while the Santa Rosa plum is just getting going. I’m hoping that most of the buds wait a few more days for the sunshine to keep some pollen for the honeybees and fruit, but hey. I’m just relieved it’s raining. (That is an understatement. It’s been bad.)

The tree bracelets down there are wide paper-thin strips of copper to keep the snails from crawling up at night and eating the flowers and fruit. It works, too.

Today’s half a cowl so far: the Cat Mountain Fiber Arts yarn that I bought at Stitches–I’m not seeing it on her site (yet?)  50/50 merino/silk, 225 yards/100g in the colorway Wood Nymph. Pretty stuff.

Hey, Dad, one of your amaryllises is blooming. Thank you!

And on the cowl: I wanted to use up every inch of that beaded yarn, to put all of that good woman’s work to use.

I found myself wanting a bigger motif at the bottom. Given that the beads will go in through a loop but they do not want to come back out of them again and if you do, the antsy little strand they’re on catches along with the bead and starts tangling, one really can make no mistakes with this stuff. Pushing on the yardage when there was absolutely no more and no backtracking was dicey. But I wanted to so I did.

I should add, after I weighed a few times as I went along and prayed a little bit to stay on the safe side.

And I got it! Casting off right after a yarnover row is fine when you have to. But I finished that bigger motif and I really like how this cowl came out.

Five beads left. I don’t think that vendor would mind.

Exquisite stuff. I had no idea I actually did like beaded knitting.

A lot.

Of course, having the yarn pre-strung does speed up the process.

I’ll try to get a picture tomorrow.

There was an older woman at Stitches selling 76 gram 200 yard skeins of three plies that she’d clearly plied herself: because one was 85/15 cashmere/silk, one was silk, and the last one embedded in there was a strand of mylar/nylon sparkle.

And that sparkle yarn had hundreds of matching cobalt-blue glass beads strung along it.

She had done that stringing herself.

And she was selling those skeins for $18.

I bought just one, and told her I knew I would regret that. Which I do. I was in Stitches overload and sparkly isn’t usually personally my thing but even then I knew I would wish for more of this stuff. It was very striking. I asked the woman if she sold them online and her response was, no, because she can never keep up.

I went looking today out of sheer curiosity and found lesser amounts of wool beaded in villages in India for three times the price and a beaded cashmere yarn for $74 for, again, less yarn, and realized that my take that the lady at Stitches was seriously undervaluing her time and product was definitely an understatement.

So here I was today, not thinking of that at all but rather of a friend who sings semi-professionally and who loves a good formal dress for a performance. She wore a striking new cobalt-blue one to church yesterday. She is a profoundly kind human being and I told her a week or two ago that I wanted to be like her when I grow up.

She laughed in surprise and told me I had that backwards.

Yesterday, though, she opened up a little to me about how hard this parenting three small children thing was being just then. I sympathized; I told her of when my two-year-old had danced to make the four-month-old giggle, had suddenly stopped, pulled back her foot and kicked him hard in the face just to see what would happen.

Mommy grabbing her shoulders and screaming, NO!!! in her face as the baby screamed hysterically is what happened. Trust me, they’re good friends now.

So here I was today, thinking of her needing a hug and a you’ve-got-this, winding a skein of superwash wool to match that dress: practical, soft, and one less thing for her to stress over. And I sat down to cast it on.

I only got to about four stitches. The wool just refused.

But with little kids and a baby surely that’s what she needs, and it’s the right color….!

I looked up mid-self-argument and saw that beaded yarn.

Sometimes it feels great to be more than just the mom.

Instantly I knew why, in all the time I’ve known Becca, I’ve never yet made her a cowl. It was because her yarn hadn’t existed yet, and I didn’t know that, but now it does and it is perfect. Nobody else will have one like it, and that’s okay: nobody else does what she does.

I sent a note in thanks to the woman who’d strung those beads and she was very pleased.

I’ve got the stitch count. I’ve got the first row. I just have to get past the feeling that I only have just this one chance to knit this gorgeous yarn right–and that after that I may never get to again.

I put down the afghan and came over to the computer to try to figure out what to write about tonight and an email had just come in: Jerry and Vivian, with her saying she’d stolen one of his hats for the picture that they were posing for.

With the most radiant smiles.

I tell you.

I described to them what Stitches West was, that it was this coming weekend, and to let me know what colors or fibers they’d like next and I’d be right on it. And I wished they could see how big the smile was on my face too right now.

Progress.

Meantime, the blueberry flowers look like pale blueberries, the first two Santa Rosa plum blossoms opened today (that’s the mango tree under the frost covers for the night in the distance), and the August Pride peach, which spent last year in curl-leaf-disease survival mode, is in sparse but full bloom, giving it its all.

Yay for the postal employee yesterday who checked that zip code before letting my package go into the system: I had two numbers transposed. The rest of the rather unusual-sounding address was a match so it was clearly going to the right place now.

I drove home after Jerry’s two hats went on their way feeling grateful beyond anything I could begin to say that I could do something that could actually help–what do people do who don’t knit?–and I pictured their surprised faces as they opened the box. I really should make the whole family matching hats in solidarity with their dad, but, at least there’s a start.

Then I dove back into the waiting afghan.

Early last week I was at eight repeats and wanted sixty and I was fighting the sense of, how could this ever be done?

So just do it. After nearly seven hours’ work on it today I hit forty. (I am alternating typing with icepacking.) My yarn planet has gone from Saturnine to Martian, with Pluto a little too wishful thinking quite yet but I am going to have to scour more off the cone soon. That’s a very good problem to have.

Like the hats I just wish, really really wish, I could deliver it in person when I’m done. Which won’t be too long now.

As of just now there is a second soft, washable wool beanie (Bobby Blue to go with the previous Stonechat brown mix) to mail to my friend with the massive skull scar curving widely from the top of his head and halfway down  in front of his ear. The good news is that it was a slow tumor, and there are treatments in trials for curing it. They couldn’t get it all, but they believe they bought him plenty of time before they have to face it again and there is great cause for hope. Thank you for all your prayers and good thoughts Jerry’s way.

The best news is that he feels completely himself again with it gone, and that was no sure thing going in.

(Note to self: Malabrigo Rios, size US6 needles for the body of the hat, 80 stitches was the right number in stockinette. I considered doing cables but thought, nah, he doesn’t need the extra warmth where he lives. He just needs not to look quite so Star Wars bar scene-ish while his incision line gradually recedes.)

The rest of the Tropic Snow peach flowers have opened and the tree is just glorious.

I had to wind, scour, and let dry the next 300+ grams of the coned afghan yarn, having run out of what was ready, so knitting-wise I had a day or two on my hands.

Thus this cowl of long-hoarded Handmaiden’s Camelspin came to be. Lovely stuff, from lovely people, made mostly of silk and it puddles just so (lack of selfie skills notwithstanding.) Nova Scotia was the colorway, if I remember right, and there’s a bit more green to it than shows here.

I really, really like this. I really like even more anticipating surprising the person it’s for.

There’s enough yardage left from the one ball that I could make a second cowl, and it wouldn’t have to be too much smaller.

I had this afghan I needed to make that I’ve mentioned from time to time for several months now.

The first try ended up being cast off and declared a scarf–spending more time on its yarn was not making me like it better. Done.

The second try got started but was put aside while I tried to decide if I wanted the lace to be a great big border around a drawing in knits and purls of the recipient’s house. Which I have never been to. And which I didn’t know how to ask for a picture of without having to explain why I wanted it–when simply continuing the lace would make a perfectly fine blanket. I dithered. Which means I stopped.

Aside from an hour here and there, which gradually, naturally answered the pattern question, it got put aside again for all the Christmas knitting: ten hats, who knows how many cowls, things that all had a definite time limit–while the afghan reproached me. I’m not good at having multiple projects on the needles but it was just too much to try to get that big one done and out of the way first.

I took it with me to a knitting group get-together Tuesday morning to make myself really dive back into it at long last, but as it dangled from my circs, it was inwardly embarrassing that another knitter couldn’t instantly peg it as an afghan and it made me determined to get it at least to where it was obvious what it was, fast. It was long overdue.

Today, after three straight days of putting my all into it, it is nearly half done and after all this time that feels just unbelievable, and very encouraging.

Part of what happened was I realized I did have a deadline after all: Stitches West. It’s only two weeks away and you know there are going to be new toys that I’m instantly going to want to play with. Anticipation is way more fun–and I’ve finally found that place where there’s great anticipation in this afghan, too. It’s gotten really pretty. I can’t wait to give it to where it’s going.

Walked into Cottage Yarns in South San Francisco Friday, and just inside the door was one single skein left among the other colors of Malabrigo laceweight baby alpaca/silk.

“That’s exactly what I came for!” I exclaimed to Kathryn. Archangel. Perfect!

I had some cashmere, red plied with a nearly tan off-white, a bit thinner than I wanted to work with. The silk content with the alpaca wasn’t so high as to make the strand snag and slip out if I knitted these two together but it definitely added a sparkle, and the mostly-salmon colorway bridged the colors in the cashmere.

The fabric they made is SO soft.

I knew before I started this morning who it’s for: a woman who is generous in every way, so her cowl needed to be, too. It came out a good size, and I ended it with a right-side row of yo, k2tog across (and then a purl row before casting off) to let the bottom edge fan out just a bit without having it sag or to have to add anything more than that. I wanted to be able to call it a night with a sense of accomplishment to the day.

Suzi was wearing something today that exactly matched this. Nice. Not that she knows that yet.

Nine repeats across and seven repeats down on size 8US later, it is drying.

(Photo from Richard’s phone, since mine’s still on strike. It embiggens.)

I started to cast on with something else, but a ball from stash that I had not seriously considered got louder and more insistent with each stitch till I ripped the other off the needles and started again with this one. Why yes, my yarn is the boss of me.

Each row of Malabrigo Rios in the beautifully-named Stonechat was like a slow drive through an old redwood forest,  glimpses of light peaking through the quiet shades of brown.

And then there are the near-black stitches popping up here and there.

Redwoods can be hit by lightning and catch fire, as any tree might–but unless it gets to the canopy, the tree itself, I was told by a park ranger when I was a teen, gradually puts that fire out, even if it smolders for months. The flames simply don’t take them down.

The Stonechat was right. It was definitely the right yarn.

Note to self: size 6US needles in the body and 84 stitches. Kept to beanie length because it’s to cover the surgery scar on Jerry’s head rather than purely for warmth, given where he lives.

She loves orange, she told me last June. And blues. I didn’t have much orange in my stash–but I had this old ball in Lisa Souza’s Joseph’s Coat colorway.

I found the pictures. They were taken at night and by the bright light of day and the cowl was mostly somewhere in between, and maybe some of you remember it. I sure do. It came out so unexpected.

It started off with all the colors kind of melting together into an almost-purple, but then when I added a few stitches to widen it it changed the whole thing abruptly: individual colors stood out on their own and became like the brightest sunrise against the darkest clouds. I expected them to go back to how they’d been after I added a few more but they simply formed a new pattern altogether yet that continued off the second one.

No matter its quirkiness or even faults, of the three, this was the one she wanted to take away as a memento of the years they lived here.

I heard the news.

She’s a young mom.

Whose husband is now fighting a brain tumor.

That which they had gauged their plans by was suddenly thrown to the winds and what they are going through now is radically different from anything they’d wanted or expected. And yet there he is in his hospital picture, smiling, same as always.

In a hospital cap.

He needs a soft handknit one, stat. Even in San Diego.

If you feel inclined to say a pray or to Think Good Thoughts in Jerry’s direction and his family’s, it would be lovely. The G_d that I believe in honors either as love: and love is what we are sent here to learn and do.

May that great Love sustain them through all that lies ahead.

My sister’s son and his wife had a baby at Thanksgiving, and they were flying to, you guessed it, Salt Lake City from Atlanta that same week to show off the baby to her dad. We so wanted to see them and to meet their little boy but the overlap time on our trips was tight.

We got up early (our time) Friday morning and hoped that the rush-hour traffic would allow them to make it.

They showed up late and apologetic because the baby had soaked through his clothes just as they were leaving…

We chuckled. Hey. Babies’ superpower is wrecking your walking-out-the-doors.

And so we got to meet her dad, who was driving them to the airport, and to spend about fifteen minutes together. I surprised them with a soft wool hat. (Color in link.) Washable, because hey, I remember what it’s like. (My daughter said her nine-month-old, while his diaper was being changed last week, managed to spray himself in the face rather than them and was quite outraged at the indignity.  Clearly, washable hats are all the more the way to go.)

It is amazing how much living can cram its way into fifteen finite minutes. It was a privilege to see the two of them so happy in their new parenthood as their wide-eyed little one took in the new faces and scenery around him before being whisked off to the crowds and the skies and at last, home.