Life threw me one of those moments where I needed to make something for someone and it needed to be made specifically for that someone–no taking one out of the already-readies–and it needed to be done by, one could only wish, tomorrow.

Friday will do in a pinch.

I needed to start NOW. Trying to decide what yarn it should be threw me into a major stash diving, where I came up with two old partial-skeins of Cascade Epiphany in a deep royal blue. (Discontinued but I found this page for substitutions if you want.) That was so totally it. Super soft, a color that looks good on everyone, and it wouldn’t take too long.

But in sitting down and thinking cowls (while being really glad you can make one fast in a pinch) it occurred to me that the last time I’d made one in such a dark color was the black one my older sister had requested at our dad’s birthday get-together, early June. I remembered. The last two skeins of black Woolfolk that Purlescence would ever sell, a souvenir before they close next week–I knitted it up on the Alaska trip, which is fitting given that Kaye, one of the owners, is from there and my sister fell in love with the place last year as much as we did when we got to go.

Wait.

Did I ever mail that?

Not that I could remember.

Then where would it be?

Not with the finished cowls. Huh. She just broke her upper arm, and giving her something she likes that she can put on by herself would really be a good thing right now; I needed to find that.

Okay, so, I sat down and quietly started knitting a bunch of rows and as such things do, the thought I’d been looking for came right on in and pulled up a chair beside me.

Which got me out of mine: I couldn’t possibly have, could I?!

I had. I’d left it in the small carry-on bag this whole time. We’ve been home from visiting the kids in Anchorage for two months and man am I slow.

So now I have two of them to hurry and get in the mail. Carolyn’s big black blob is rinsed and shaped as I type and will be dry in the morning; the one on the needles, not so much.

And *then* I do the top edging on the afghan.

Got the heart monitor off today. After two weeks it feels strange somehow not to have it attached.

I sprinkled the white afghan with a bit of water and then more water to see how much the lace would spread out.

It didn’t. At all. The stitches settled into place nice and flat but the motifs certainly grew no bigger, much to my surprise. I really had knit it tight–but there was just no getting around the fact that that meant the piece was a little shorter than I wanted.

Two days, thirty-two rows, six and a half inches and another pattern repeat later, and this time the lacework part really is done. It had needed it. An afghan should cover your feet and go up to your chin and with a fabric so beautifully drapey, it should puddle around you a bit, too, be lavish not stingy, a little extra all around. I am so glad I did that last repeat, and one absolutely can’t complain about getting to knit cashmere and silk.

A little seed stitch in the morning, a little edging, and it’s one for the history books.

Random thoughts:

I googled why squirrels don’t like figs, because my friend said they don’t, and oh goodness oh yes they definitely do. I guess mine just haven’t found out what they are yet.

So, more acanthus stalks now artfully placed going up the tree trunk all around like it’s ready for some Burning Fig festival.

Funky color play with the lighting there (picture taken standing up). I really do need to block that.

Blog or knit more, blog or knit more…

Kept knitting till my hands made the decision for me. Yay icepacks. Five more rows tomorrow and then I think I’ll add the seed stitch edging across the top and call the thing done. To quote a little more Moody Blues, “What you want to be, you will be in the end.” All along it has wanted to be bigger wider longer than what I’d originally expected and it refused to let me quit any earlier, and I’m glad of that now.

But it seems incomprehensible that I won’t have that project still demanding and nagging and bossing me around–how did that happen already? Mixed with, FINALLY! I’m–well, no, I’m not done. Almost. Close!

Yeah, right, just wait, tomorrow I’ll look at it and keep right on going past that point because I have the yarn and I can.

Maybe, but I don’t think so.

The bottom third of the Indian Free peach is tucked in because that’s where the birdnetting hit the top of it this past spring and after an initial tight squeeze, it grew right on through. Looks kinda like a compression sock on a tree.

And yes that fence is six feet tall and yes it’s eighteen months old.

Meantime my somewhat far-fetched goal for a Saturday had been to do a sixteen-row pattern repeat on my afghan (3856 stitches’ worth) but as we got past noon and there were all these errands to run I was resigned to the idea that it just wasn’t going to happen.

Turns out it was the errands that weren’t going to happen after he got out the red laser pointer thermometer thingy: the next thing you know, he was making a dot on my wool-socked feet. All it needed was a cat chasing it. What?

Then at his.

Why are you…?

Actually, it was pretty genius. His foot with the wound was ten degrees warmer, consistently, and that sealed it: he finally called the doctor.

The doctor: Go to Urgent Care. Now.

Turned out there was swelling above the ankle now and it had gotten much worse over the course of the day.

H o u r s later I finished that pattern repeat a half-minute before the nurse finished winding that white netting tape around and around. But the important part is, another day and he might well have been on IV antibiotics and it looks like we came in soon enough.

Yay $5 laser thermometers. Not just for measuring caramel sauce temps. Yay geek geniuses. Yay for antibiotics that still (hopefully) work.

Just because they can doesn’t mean they should keep at it. Their only reward is seeing the boxes tumbling down.

But clearly the sport appeals to them. At this point we have a lot of green Fujis in the fridge and not a lot left on the tree and what you don’t see there is the ends of the branches that were broken in the act.

On the other hand, stepping a few feet to the right, the squirrels have not yet realized that figs are food–or rather, there was one bite in one very green ditched one on the ground awhile ago and that was that. I left it there so its buddies could all taste it and go eww, too.

And so Richard and I split our first-ever homegrown summer fig today and that, my friends, was exactly what a fig aspires to be. The depth of flavor, the sweetness, the intensity that gives one last did-you-catch-that? at the end. Two more are becoming reddish brown and starting to droop and I’m really liking this idea of my forty-nine more taking turns ripening one by one.

Oh, and, the afghan? Debby’s friend’s ‘what if I wake up stupid?’ comment is exactly why I have to rip immediately when I have to rip.

It’s so good to be able to say I got way beyond those rows today. The yarn held up well to the abuse, too.

Suddenly wondering what knitting needles made out of applewood might be like… I know, I know, don’t encourage them.

I goofed a row in the waiting room apparently at the point when a woman walked past, considered, came back and exclaimed over my knitting. I liked that part.

The rows after built on that mistake till at last it dawned on me tonight. Fudging didn’t work–I tried.

I laid that afghan on the floor and ripped out a thousand stitches. It hurt. And it felt deeply satisfying: it will do what I say because I said so and I will thank me later for it.

I reknit the goofed row right and was quite done with it for the day. But always get past the horse where it threw you if you can, I figure.

One of my sisters wants a black cowl and for her that will definitely happen, though it does remind me of one time when I wanted to knit someone a black scarf. I picked out a soft camelhair yarn to push myself to be willing to work with that color.

Small black stitches are of course harder to see to work with than when I was a 20-something and I confess I never finished that particular project–but the person never knew anyway, so, hey.

Turns out it was just as hard for a camel to through the needles with my eyes.

Every now and then, even the online mapmaker folks goof. Don’t know if you’ve encountered it but I have a couple of times. Like the time I was trying to meet up with an old college roommate and finally pulled over and called her.

The map said this road connected up with that. Turns out that the one stopped a block shy–you had to go around this other way.

So. I used to on rare occasion go to Green Planet Yarns when they were in downtown Campbell, but parking there was always horrible, and Purlescence was closer and easier all around, so, eh. I did like the owner, though, even if I didn’t know her very well, and she stocked some nice stuff.

And then Green Planet moved to San Jose.

The map…

I tried. A year ago I spent an hour wandering around on (turns out) the wrong side of the freeway, pulling over several times to check my phone to see what it was saying now, since I couldn’t hear it. Finally I gave up in frustration and headed home.

I joked with Kathryn’s husband at Cottage Yarns a few days ago when I went to show her the Mecha afghan that I’d be back in two weeks (again) with the next one in Rios, but after all that color intensity, when I actually sat down to knit my eyes said no. I actually finally wanted to knit up some vanilla dk weight cashmere/silk I’d bought from Colourmart a few months ago: I wanted plain ordinary white and I wanted to knit that warm, soft yarn, even if it would need small needles and even if superwash merino might be far, far more practical. I’d bought this because I wanted to make this, so, so there.

Grab the impulse while you’ve got it and go.

Hmm. Size 4 was making a great fabric but I learned in one little swatch that my hands needed a little more give, a little bigger loop for that needle tip–and that it still looked fine on 5s. (3.75mm)

My circular 5s were 24″ long. Wait–how, after all these years, could I not have…! Surely I do in some forgotten bag somewhere, but oh well. My 231 stitches were packed in so densely that it was a constant fight to push them along or out of the way. My hands never got to relax nor could my eyes see the pattern coming to be.

There was only one thing for it. I knew who would have the brand needle I wanted.

Yay for repaired maps: this time I found them.

There was not a soul I knew in sight. That felt strange.

But the clerk was friendly, and I bought a skein of supersoft thick wool in the most perfect purple, a semi-instant cowl-to-be. The color won.

She offered to wind it up for me. And not only did they have my needle–they were closing it out. They had one last rosewood 40″ size US 5, and it was on sale and it was perfect and I got exactly what I’d come for. And a 40″ US 4, too, because.

Re the yarn: Sure, thanks!

Which means I had a moment to just stand around, or….

There were two knitters at the table. They invited me to join them and then included me in on the conversation as if I were just as much old friends with them as they were. They told me when they’d be hanging out and that they’d love to see me around again.

I think my transition to Purlescencelessness just eased a bit.

In progress, and done.

A close-up including of one of the dark spots at the center.

I think the variegated-purples skein at the end was a bit too much purple, although it was a good transition from the red (and I needed the extra length and I knew Kathryn didn’t have a second bag of Anniversario in that weight.) The mostly-red skein was definitely a sharp transition from the green-purple–maybe I should have alternated pairs of rows of those two for awhile.

But then not a single skein matched another one anyway so why change how I’m doing it now, I kept figuring.

I like the purl side better because of the way the purl bump colors play with their mates, definitely a different effect from the front (see the in-progress photo at the top).

All along my eyes have proclaimed this my Northern Lights project because what else could this be?

And if I were really good I’d knit the fern lace motif again for one more purple skein, unravel the afghan’s cast on, and kitchener the two pieces together to have the ends matching.

Ain’t happening.

Some notes on the yarn: I was trying to arrange the skeins in a symmetrical pattern going across as much as possible. I found the early skeins just slightly muted compared to the others, but for what I was trying to represent that’s fine.

Definitely a fun afghan to curl up with. And warm. Not sure I’d do it again exactly like this one but I’m glad I did it.

This was going to be the last skein. See all that purple? The afghan needed to end in mostly-purple.

Amazing how much of this didn’t come out looking that way at all, including a ladder alternating in black and bright lime. The colors all along have been like kids at recess, spreading out across the playground.

Eh, the blanket could stand to be a little longer anyway.

So tomorrow I wind up a mostly-dark but variegated purple, a +1 to the dye lot bag and originally intended towards a border anyway, and finish the thing.

Six days later… 

My mango tree had two branches when it arrived in December nineteen months ago, twelve by the end of last summer, and it looks like we’ll have forty-five by the end of this.

(Fruit next year, then, right? Right, tree?)

All tucked in: the afghan now covers the feet if you don’t pull it too high up in your lap.

I kept looking at it draped over my knees towards my hands and thinking, how did that happen already?

As far as I can tell unblocked and still on the needles I’m at about 60×40″ so far. Malabrigo Mecha in Anniversario colorway, one skein for each of the ten years that Malabrigo is celebrating with that name and that kaleidoscope; I started it last Friday (after ditching the purple that was going to be the border–I think it’ll make a great sideways-knit scarf.) Photo taken in today’s late afternoon light a skein of yarn ago.

Every hank in the dye lot is different. Every one somehow works within the context of the others: even when I don’t think it will, it does and then the one after that confirms it and I can’t wait to see the whole thing done.

So the answer is…

Start over on bigger needles with 60 fewer stitches and in a lace pattern which of course will relax outward once water hits it.

Today’s afghan is in the multi-color “Anniversario,” celebrating Malabrigo’s 10th year, of which I bought the bag of ten. Maybe add an edging later once I see how all the variations between all the skeins play out. (I’ve learned.) Note that I’m starting with the skein that most closely matched yesterday’s “Paysandu” purple.

But I’m not ripping yesterday’s out. I had the first of those three skeins of Mecha knit up quite tightly on 4.5mm needles, deliberately so and in a pattern that tends to collapse in on itself for the increased warmth of that, too–but that means that for a 56-60″ wide blanket by golly I was getting three and a quarter inches’ length per skein. I dare the wind to try to blow through those stitches.

But to get it to the length I wanted would require 19 more skeins. Blink. Yow. As I type this I realize that it means twice the wool in not much more than the same space as what I’m making now, and hey, if you want warmth and cushiness….

So I have to do that other one, too. Eventually. It helps that I love it. I think the thing to do is from time to time go find a few more skeins, and then more skeins, and then more skeins, in colors that I think will go well with the start of it and just play with it from there. No hurry.

I even found a fourth Paysandu skein from my Stitches stash and it matches as well as any of them (pretty much).

I had a serious dearth of superwash merino around here.

In the store the purple looked like it would make a good foil to the multi-color, and so I got them home and dove in.

In swatching, the two-yarn lattice pattern I was going to do went out the window: Mecha seemed too thick to pull that off well. How about framed in purple on four outer edges.

I’ve knitted nearly the entire first skein already.

Now that the lower border is done and it’s time to switch to the brighter yarn, I’m not as confident about the mashup. I stopped midrow, grabbed the second yarn, and simply stockinetted till I’d gone through several quick color repeats.

In the right light it’s good, even if that bright fuchsia does scream Look at me!

I’m still not sure. I think Kathryn hadn’t been entirely either, although she wasn’t going to talk me out of it if I wanted it.

My husband says that me not being sure of a color combination is not a good sign for that color combination.

And of course colors influence each other, and in the original plan they would have been all over each other, interacting constantly, but now they’re going to be off in their separate corners.

Like two-year-olds in parallel play?

Hmm.

Okay, these are (the most flattering, frankly, of the) nighttime photos but then the finished thing will be used day and night. So there’s that.

The real answer is to just go buy more purple and not fuss any more about it.

The real question is, do they have more. At the rate this Pythagorean pattern is eating yardage I’d need (yow) the whole rest of the bag.