The question stumps me from time to time as it comes up.

How do you pick a color for someone you’ve never met and have no pictures of? I expect I will be meeting her soon, and she definitely deserves something handknit.

To the best of my knowledge, she does not know I knit.

Usually the best answer is to stare at the stash and wait for something to yell, Me! Me! Okay. I’ve done a little staring, though, and two days’ worth of hedging and wondering and not starting and it’s beginning to get to me–so for my own sake if nothing else I’m just going to go grab something nice and soft and go to it.

And take along a second or third project just in case.

Just kidding on the itchy part.

The Yellow Transparent apples are twice the size they were last week and just a few weeks away from picking time. Crunchless and definitely a cooking apple, but a prolific one. Bonus is that the critters don’t love their tang.

And here’s the finished bit of froth from yesterday, blocked with the scallops left as is. It wasn’t till it was dry that I realized I’d been seeing Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s photos of the wedding shawl she’s been making for her daughter and that that same stitch pattern had jumped onto my own needles. Knitting is contagious, clearly.

And now the next Venn diagram begins.

The good thing about those long travel times? The blue, flying out. The pink, flying home.

(Yarn descriptions in the mouse-overs.)

Whose wools these are I think I know

Her house is a journey away, and so

She will not see me stopping here

While watching my needles fill, slow

The wools are lovely, dark and deep

I have promises to myself to keep

I have miles to knit of woolly sheep

Miles to knit before I sleep

That makes 484 g, including ties, and 1358 yards of the dark/med/light, in merino-silk/cashmere/cashmere yarn. Writing it down so I can find it later for sure.

It looks like I spun a raccoon. Or a tabby cat.

And then I started in on a new batch: the same medium and light brown cashmeres and adding in a white strand for the third, plying it back on two strands of the light brown, of which I have much.

But that’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is that I went looking in my stash for a particular old cone to do that with but right there behind the door was one in the color I wanted marked Crudo.

Hey. That’s not merino, that’s cashmere, too. This spinning project just went up a notch.

The inside of the cone had the number of yards left scribbled on it to warn myself it wasn’t the full 150 g anymore–and it dawned on me when I had used that cone before.

Size two needles. Gossamer-fine Seafoam lace. It was for my kids’ old pediatrician, knitted after I’d stumbled across her husband’s obituary in the newspaper. It said he loved the beach…

A gasp, “I LOVE cashmere!”

And, best of all, that I had made it for her. She cherished it, which comforted me when I had come to try to comfort her.

That white cone definitely has memories. I need to do right by the rest of it.

The first weekend in April is the Mormon Church’s semi-annual conference time, two two-hour sessions Saturday and Sunday each, streamed live.

Two cowls.

Started the second this morning and was very nearly done with my ball of yarn when I looked down and realized at long last why it had been acting so odd in my hands: I had knitted it in a mobius strip. And not noticed. Which is fine if that’s what you’re going for, and fine even if it’s not, but to not even register that that’s what was going on–well, a, they were good talks, and b, yeah, the head smack thing. There is a little bit of concussion relapse going on after all.

But the talks! One man with a British accent, Patrick Kearon, spoke this afternoon of talking to Syrian refugees who had made that horrendous trip in those rubber boats, of what it was like to try to meet their needs and be physically present as a witness to their suffering. He declared he wasn’t speaking to the politics of what was going on, he simply wanted to speak of the individuals he’d met. He spoke of the children. He said some of these people might someday be our doctors, teachers, nurses, engineers–as some of them already were.

Re their plight, “This experience will not define them. But our response will define us.”

President Uchtdorf, who was conducting the meeting, was fighting tears as he stood afterwards and his voice choked and we knew his family had been refugees too. They had escaped East Germany with their lives, barely, his parents at separate times so as to try to avoid suspicion immediately before the wall had been built.

In an earlier session, he had described watching the lightning that came from the sky during the war that had fascinated him as a small child. A picture of Dresden flashed on the screen: a thousand years it had taken to make what it had been–and then it was gone (crumbled stones at the foot of what had once been. Breathtaking, heartbreaking.)

And then.

That beautiful old church had stood for so long.

Another photo. They decided to reclaim all its old stones that could be and now there are dark gray polka-dotting squares scattered in the lighter new stone walls as a memorial to what had been and a declaration of renewal. A new landmark church. An Easter setting in its own right.

Today’s refugees are between the rocks and the new place.

Merino from the gifted Karin of Periwinkle Sheep.

Impromptu stitch holder to remember where the round starts courtesy of my hair.

I was sweeping safflower seed hulls around and out from under the bird feeder in the dark tonight and of course I smacked my head hard into the thing and thought, well now that was bright, wasn’t it. Like I could hardly have guessed it was there.

This time I didn’t have to fight to keep breathing, so I think no concussion. (Looking at that old day-after post, I guess I should add, So far.) My sweet husband asked me a few times if we needed to go to the doctor, because, yeah.

So far I think we’re okay. Even if the idea of a seventh concussion does–well, since I didn’t quite recover entirely from the last one, it does give one pause.

Woke up to the thermometer reading 38 degrees out there this morning, even colder than yesterday. We’re definitely doing the March is going out like a lion thing, and it looks like another two-frost-covers night tonight.

On the other hand, it’s been great for wearing warm handknits.

Part of a baby dress in soft Malabrigo wool is blocking, just to see how big that lace would grow to before I continue any further: I want to get the proportions right and I’m totally winging it.

Grabbed what was closest and softest to hand from my stash and knitted up a third of the first skein of Woolfolk Far while watching the Iowa town hall meeting tonight. After shivering in DC last week I was stuffing that cabled yarn onto size 4mm needles for a thickly-knit cowl.

Which happens to be in black, because that’s what there was. The sooner I finish it the happier my eyes will be but the longer my hands get to caress it the happier they’ll be.

The Democratic National Committee had threatened the candidates that they would be banned from future official debates if they set up their own, so instead they took that stage and the questions from the audience one candidate at a time, competing in the immediate sense only with themselves, connecting better with those who’d come to see who they were. I liked it.

Meantime, in solidarity with the good folks back home trying to dig out of their record-breaking blizzard, one of my peach trees broke out in a bit of spring for them. The name of the variety? Tropic Snow.

Finished a cowl, rinsed and spun it out, laid it out to dry and went looking.

My needles have all this yarn and nothing to wear.

I know exactly the shade of blue I want to start in on next and why and I have it, too, just, in a worsted weight when I want to start with something lighter.

Hmmm…

Forgot that when you join the knitting ends on the circ to start knitting in the round, you don’t want a mobius strip, much less something with every twist around the needles the little stitches think they can get away with. They were little kids twirling the hulahoop.

Forgot to knit with the yarn from the ball end, not the leftover bit from the long-tail cast-on, for which, by the way, I used far too little on the first try and then far too much just to be sure on the second because my eyeballing the amount like usual wasn’t working so I did that part twice, too.

Then I couldn’t wrap my brain around the very simplest ten-stitch lace pattern that is on my go-to list for brainless carry-arounds–I had to go look it up. Two sets of decreases each side? Is that right? Wait. Okay. Yes (pause) it IS right. And at last I got four rows done and the lace settling into its familiar routine.

My brain is trying to tell me I had a long day yesterday and to give it up and go rest up for tomorrow so it can get better. (The time stamp above is later by an hour than I am.) But at least I got my project started, because beginning anything is the hardest part of all.

No. No blogging, no more distractions, just sit down and finish that hat. Even if you don’t remember how you finished the honeycomb cables off in pattern last time.

Well all right then. 

Last time I was at Purlescence I asked Kaye what was new and she showed me a suri alpaca/silk blend that looked like Kidsilk Haze, only softer. Cumulus by FyberSpates. Very nice stuff, and I love a good alpaca.

I picked out a vivid turquoise blue, telling her, Someone needs this color. I don’t know who, but it’s speaking to me: someone needs this.

That skein was the cowl I knit up during my eye doctor appointment last week. I brought it to knit night tonight to show off to Kaye (while wondering if I would find out where it was meant to go).

Cari came in and I headed over next to her to chat awhile and catch up.

She saw the cowl and exclaimed over the color as I handed it to her. I didn’t tell her, but I’d actually thought of her at first sight of the yarn but had dismissed the idea because I just didn’t think it was her color and then I’d totally forgotten about it .

But oh, it was. She held it against her neck (I didn’t know she’d been looking for something that wasn’t itchy.) Her eyes closed a moment in ooh…aah.

And then she tried to give it back to me.

Nothing doing.

“Nuh UH!” as she tried again.

An impish grin from me with a pleading, “Please?”

She crowed in delight, took off her scarf, put the cowl on and kept it there. She asked me, Where did you…? and then went over to grab a bunch more skeins to match.

And I confessed to her that that time I’d given her a cowl before? I’d made her one, but I’d hedged my bets on the color and had grabbed a second from my stash at the last second and she’d picked the second one and it wasn’t particularly soft and it had bugged me that I hadn’t given her a soft one. Now at last I had.

A few minutes later, I happened to pick up a Dream In Color skein, loved the color, and put it back. “I don’t need any more yarn.”

Next thing you know she was buying it. She was already knitting a hat in that exact same yarn, she just hadn’t brought that project tonight.

Alright, that removes temptation quite nicely, thanks, thought I as they rang her up.

And you know what happened next. My purse snaps rather than zippers shut. Yes she did. “Fair’s fair!”

He was gobsmacked.

A week ago, as a middle-aged widower himself, he grieved with me at the sudden passing of my friend Robin the day before. He had never met her, but deep and personal loss, that he knew even better than I.

Today I told him I had had this machine-washable wool and I’d wondered…and then, as I’ve said here, it had just felt like she’d settled my question re a plain watch cap vs something cabled, how to know what he might prefer: that instant feeling of her laughing and the words, “You have the skills, what do you think they’re for?!” How I’d laughed, too.

How it had come to be like this, then. And I thought, Robin’s still blessing people.

I thanked him again for helping us out Friday a week ago and explained that it was a honeycomb pattern for the bees that make all of life better–for, well, everything and everyone. Truly, nothing else would do.

The man is a master gardener. He looked at the hat and at me and held it close to him and exclaimed, “I will treasure it for the rest of my life!”

I ran in the ends after I took the picture: the hat (after frogging and redoing the decreasing at the top), it is done. Tomorrow I get to give it to the friend who so much earned it and who has no idea it’s coming and I can’t wait.

Yarn: Cascade Longwood, a soft, superwash merino. If it matters to you, note that the Peruvian-milled and more recent Chinese-milled stock have different gauges, with the Chinese being thinner last I bought any. Their 220 yarn, too.

Meantime, I’m trying to figure out how to safely snap clamshells over the figs. When they go from being held straight up to stem up and fruit downward it’s a good thing, and mine are starting to get there.

And if you’re curious, NPR has a story here of how cultivated blueberries came to be. It took one determined woman a hundred years ago with just enough information, a little land, luck, help, and a whole lot of determination.

And neighbors willing to take walks through the woods.