A side note for the non-knitters: when you’re making most cabled patterns, you cross the cables while working from the right side, not the purl side. This limits your crossings to every second, fourth, six, eighth etc row.

I had someone for whom I’d been thinking a hat would be just the thing, so two days ago I was debating with myself: a plain watch cap? After all, ribbing is very stretchy and it would be guaranteed to fit without my having to worry about it.

Or do something fancier, like, cabled? I was well aware that cabling requires a third more both stitches and yarn and at least that much more time: cabling is a bit slow and the work condenses in on itself so you have to have more of it to create a wide enough fabric. Which also makes for a warmer hat–more wool in the same space and with some of it doubled over itself.

But most men like their clothing pretty plain.

At the question it felt as if Robin were immediately there and laughing, telling me, Fancier! C’mon, you have the skills, what do you think they’re for?!

Still makes me grin to think about it. Both because the thought made her feel so close by and because it somehow evaporated any doubt on my part as to whether or not the thing would be appreciated or whether doing it this way would be worth the extra effort.

Now the thing about knitting a hat is that, using two open-circle pairs of needles to work at the venn diagram where they intersect, you always have a right side row facing you, you’re not going back and forth but rather you’re simply going round and round and round. There’s no having to wait for that sixth row to start the cabling: you can do it on the fifth one and break all the rules.

And I’m doing honeycomb stitch.

Real honeycombs have five sides. Five rows. Fives rule.

Somehow that just delights me beyond all reason. And the fit is coming out right, too.

I remember once when Robin discovered a chocolatier who did the most exquisite work. Reading her description was a good way to go on a chocolate torte baking binge if nothing else, and it was before Timothy Adams was available as a local remedy for such a keen oh-I-(quietly)-wish.

And then, you guessed it, a little while later there was a surprise box in the mail: they came in a delightful little hinged wooden box, so perfect in presentation in every way and then, oh wow! Definitely lived up to their descriptions.

She hadn’t wanted me to miss out.

There were two last plastic produce clamshells for the season on the Fuji tree last week guarding the goods from the squirrels, one at the upper right inside the fork in the dark branch here, you can see right where I picked, and one at the lower left corner. I opened the upper one Friday after a friend of ours did me a big favor with a physical task beyond my abilities. (I’ve started him a hat. He doesn’t know that yet.) He loves a good apple and to him it was the perfect thank you.

So I was standing where I took this photo from looking up right there into that part of the tree the day before Robin passed and there was no sign whatsoever that these blossoms were coming to be.

But I think I know now why I felt I needed to go back out there today and pick that very last apple of the year. Not tomorrow. Go see now. I did, staring in disbelief, and than ran for the camera.

Someone had sent me the most heavenly bouquet of apple flowers. In October.

Drying: a warm hat in half bamboo half pearl flecks. (My airport project a few weeks ago, finally blocked.)

Yet more zucchini to ditch somewhere on someone. Maybe I’ll take some to knit night tomorrow.

With Ellen. Twinset Ellen of Minnesota, who propelled the whole Warm Hats Not Hot Heads campaign, where she got about a hundred knitters together online, with India T of New Hampshire as our third organizer/cheerleader. The idea was to create a hand knit hat for every member of Congress to send them tangible testimony from their constituents that we wanted them to stop fighting and to sit down and do their jobs working together, and one House member actually referenced our campaign in a speech on the floor! He wanted us to succeed and that did us a ton of good. We felt heard.

We didn’t quite make it before the weather got too warm to consider wearing hats and people kind of gave out. But we got one for every Senator and at least half of the House and mostly coming from the members’ own districts.

It’s all her fault. I threw out a stray what if/if only and she went YES if, let’s *do* it!

A huge thank you to every one of you out there who knitted those.

She’ll be here. I get to finally meet her in person, and we’re going to Purlescence together. To say I. Can’t WAIT! does not begin to tell it.

The bramble coming over the fence: as much as I could pull up into view is gone now, and thank you all for the advice on what it was and what to do about it.

The yarn: Wink, a get-well gift from Karin of Periwinkle Sheep, set on one of my get-well afghans from six years ago.

I’ve mentioned previously that up till last August we had a whole line of weed eucalyptus trees sprouting profusely from a sucker running along the fence line. They grew to where they completely shaded the back half of the Fuji apple tree and then started to arch over the rest of it. The side that had been shadowed the most gradually became diseased and blackened, the leaves crumpling and falling off and the blotchy branches no longer growing. What was left looked so bad I was afraid it was going to spread and we were going to lose the whole tree.

I read up on apple diseases and the most hopeful thing said that simply solving the lack of light could give the tree a chance to recover and fight the disease off. The eucalpytuses had to go anyway for the sake of saving the fence (and they are ferociously flammable! You do not want eucalyptuses in California, even if they planted a lot of them in the 1800s) and so we did.

This is not quite a year later. In the foreground to the left is the edge of the Yellow Transparent apple and to the right the planted-this-year Black Jack fig. And then there is the big Fuji apple tree. All those branches on the right side of the main trunk are growing and green as of just this one year and it amazes me that it has gone from being very lopsided to what it looks like now. There was nothing alive in most of that area before. It recovered that fast.

All it needed was sunlight and a little looking out for it.

It’s going to need some pretty good pruning soon, and that’s a problem I didn’t think I would get to have.

He’s been working from home this week, fighting the edge of a bug (so am I) and keeping it away from his co-workers.

But this afternoon he suddenly realized he had a prescription we hadn’t picked up yet; was I up to going and getting it?

I was in better shape than he was, so, sure.

We’d just had a bit of end-of-season rain-blessed-rain earlier in the day, .16″, but looking at the sky and the weather report, that all seemed over with and the forecast said there would be no more. I reminded myself to be grateful we’d gotten that much, such as it was.

I drove home through a total cloudburst. In May? In California? Not that I’m complaining! The gizmo on our roof recorded .54″ by the time I got home and it’s at .58″ now. The yard is muddy. Water! (Edited Friday to add, and it rained some more overnight even though Wunderground said it would not. The total became .63″.)

Oh, and. I was going to tell you about that other cowl I stuffed back in the bag a week ago. It was done in soft Malabrigo Finito, knitted up in a twisted infinity scarf.

Sunday I went to see my friend Edie, as I do every Mother’s Day.

She surprised me with red and white miniature carnations and perfect, deep red farmer’s market strawberries.

Her son’s picture was on the mantle as always, forever the handsome, gregarious, blond 18-year-old who had been my daughter’s classmate. Her son-in-law greeted me with a warm smile, as did her other one when he arrived soon after. Her grandchildren were playing in the kitchen and the back yard, and I was suddenly glad that I’d grabbed a bunch of hand knit Peruvian finger puppets for my purse; I fished out five, one for each little one. A zebra and an alpaca and a…

She was wearing red. The cowl was red, and she exclaimed that it had been her son’s favorite color as she put it on in delight. “I’ve heard of these, but I’ve never owned one–and now I do!”

Adrian, Edie, and me. Why I come. And now I know why it had had to be that one. I can just picture Adrian looking over my shoulder as I picked out the yarn and then among the finished projects, knowing what would help his mom feel him close by.

Several years ago she’d given me a dwarf hydrangea plant and it had brightened my back yard ever since–but, I confessed to her in embarrassment, when the tree guys took out the olive it had been next to and the tree next to that while it was dormant they had moved some large rocks around and I’d lost my landmark of where it was. It had to have been under those rocks, because I’d never seen it again.

I sent her a photo yesterday. Mentioning it to her had gotten me to go look again–and there it was, coming back up, now, finally, after it had been dry for so long, against all the odds. Right there between my mandarin orange and my sour cherry tree, how could I miss it.

I can just picture Adrian grinning.

So much to say.

The bride’s father, struggling somewhat with the English, was delighted to find that we had a mutual second language (third for him) but laughed when I said I was deaf in English and French both. (Not quite kidding there in the happy noise of that crowded room.)

The ceremony on Friday was in Spanish. The love was universal–and it was intense. So. Much. Joy., almost as if we humans are almost too small to comprehend and take it all in. It filled everything. If ever there were two people meant for each other it was Derek and Mely.

My friends RobinM and Kunmi in Maryland gifted me some time ago with the surprise of a very generous gift certificate to Purlescence; I wish they could have seen my face or Nathania’s happy anticipation at the shop as I opened that envelope and gasped, stunned, thrilled, trying to take it in.

I got to see that same look and I wish they could have, too.

A few weeks ago, I had in my hands the last skein of the Cascade Epiphany I bought with that gift: a blend of cashmere, silk, and royal baby alpaca, the finest grade, one of the softest yarns in my stash.

And it was red. Slightly on the bluish side. Which *I* like but I dunno… Sometimes it’s an effort, though it shouldn’t be, to let go of working with the yarns that I favor and to use ones the recipient would rather.

Not having met the bride yet at that point, I went combing through Facebook photos. I wasn’t seeing it. But still it felt like nothing else would do–one would think I could reconcile those things, stash, dyepot or yarn store if need be, color choices showing up in pictures, but I couldn’t so I threw the problem in G_d’s hands: please help me get over myself and my love of this yarn I’d been saving the last of for just the right thing if what I’m supposed to be knitting her is something else.

Stubbornly, nothing else was coming to me and that red just felt all the more right. Huh. I didn’t know what the climate was like where the bride was from but I did know she’d be living in a cold one for awhile here and that Epiphany would make a good warm cowl against the skin. And so I knitted it up.

We were some of the first to arrive at the rehearsal dinner Thursday, guessing on the rush hour traffic on the careful side, and so I had a moment to hand the bride a small gift and to tell her, This is for (specifically) *you*.

She was wearing a fabulous dress–and that cowl was an exact match. The tape had come undone off the top of the wrapping (never buy flocked gift paper, it sheds little glitter bits all over everything and it doesn’t stay taped) and she peeked in and gasped. “That is my FAVORITE color!”

Several months ago I knit another warm cowl out of Malabrigo Arroyo. The colorway was beautiful but not really mine; I kept thinking it would look fabulous on someone who was Latina, but whatever, the feeling was that I needed to knit this and I needed to have it ready on a moment’s notice. It’s easier to knit something in happy anticipation of a specific recipient but I had no idea who the who was. Just that it needed to become a thing.

This was before my nephew announced his engagement. Even after, the cowl being finished and put away and forgotten, it didn’t dawn on me.

And I made another one out of silk that didn’t get very long, just a sweet little thing is all; my hands were hurting, the lack of give to the yarn helped not at all, I had no idea why I was making it and at the time I just cast it off and called it done. This was right after the Arroyo.

Last Tuesday I was packing my bags for the trip and wrapping the bride’s cowl in happy anticipation.

At the last second, when everything else was in the suitcase and ready to go, on some impulse I went looking and I found those two forgotten cowls. I found a third–and felt no not that one at all, put it back, and I did. More on that later. But the Arroyo and the silk went into my carryon. I still hadn’t figured out why.

I did very quickly after I met Mely’s family: her mother was a cheerful, sweet, funny woman (I didn’t have to speak the language to enjoy how much laughing went on wherever she was) but she was seeing her daughter off in marriage to a good man–but one who lived on a different continent, as would her daughter now. I can only try to fathom how that would be. She needed a sense of connection to the love all of his family feels for all of hers during the lonely, missing times to come.

Mely had probably shown off her cowl to her mom by the time I opened my purse again at the end of the rehearsal dinner, but I don’t know for sure.

Two cowls.

Her mom exclaimed over the knitting, and her close friend, who had been sitting at our table during the dinner getting to know us a little and who now lives near where the bride and groom will be living and who had played translator quite a few times over the course of the evening, told me something I didn’t quite get about I think the mom’s attempts to learn to knit. I could have gotten that wrong. Whatever, they both appreciated what had gone into the making of those two things.

And then her friend got it and translated what I said again to the mom: Choose. Pick your favorite.

Mely’s mom gasped, stunned. It had not occurred to her! And–! Really?!

She considered a moment, stroking the fabric on the soft Arroyo; she held it close to her face and neck and then holding onto it threw her arms around me. She laughed in delight and put it on. (Not so much on the matching on that one but there are other outfits. Definitely colors that look good on her.)

Her friend, meantime, was wearing a dress that quite matched that bit of silk that I was wishing I had made longer–but it was enough. I turned then, and, picking it up, placed it around the friend’s neck.

Now SHE gasped. “It’s my favorite color!” And it did match her dress.

A very small, almost trivial part of the weekend. And yet. In an evening of love, of changes ahead, of returns shortly to where we live with everything different now, we all felt a little more that we were home among each other.

And that good woman has a tangible reminder of trust that her daughter is well loved where she has landed.

Michelle flies out for a wedding tomorrow.

I finished the project for the bride at 9:30 tonight. We just met up with her–and she sent us home with the blueberry crisp she doesn’t have time to finish off. Twist our arms.

I had what I hoped was just the yarn.

I asked my knitting friend Kevin at Purlescence for advice on how long to make it, having never been a teenage boy (and having never actually met that particular teenage boy). Short beanie? Brim? He laughed and said make it as long as that skein will let you take it. (I only had the one.)

And, I thought, he lives in California now but the whole of your life is ahead of you where he is. Look at my oldest now. Alaska! He might need it. And so I think it came out long enough for a good brim. (I cast off with–here let me go look at this strand a moment–a single yard left over.)

I sent off the hat: Malabrigo, because only the best would do.

There are pages and pages of story here and most of it I don’t know and never will but this I do know: that it was one of the most important things I’d ever knit.

His father later exclaimed to my husband, And it’s so soft!

And it all started because I forgot my phone…

We left yesterday morning for the trip southward and got back well into dark.

This evening, after two days of not being out in the yard, there were not just flowers with bulges at the bases but actual cherries, lots of cherries and there will be more as more petals fall away. I am utterly smitten: homegrown cherries on our own tree for the very first time ever, with some branches just starting in on the whole process. The third year’s clearly the charm.

The old Yellow Transparent apple was gray and wintery-bare Saturday with one single hint of life that is now a fully open flower at the end of a gnarly branch. So much more now. We will have cooking apples in June.

Inside, I finished a soft MadTosh merino hat but missed my chance to hand it off to the person who will give it to its recipient. There will be more days. He doesn’t know it’s coming and the anticipation of the surprise feels so sweet.

Trying to figure out how to get produce clamshells over all those cherries–or not–I think I definitely need to find some unsweetened Koolaid packets. Dilute them in water with no sugar, and an orchard back home near Camp David when I was a kid sprayed it on their cherries to make the birds reject the taste and leave them alone. I can only hope the squirrels and raccoons (who can tear through bird netting if they’re determined enough) feel the same way.

(Edited to add, I just found a review on Amazon by someone who spreads unsweetened Koolaid in his lawn to keep the Canada geese out. He said it MUST be Grape. Alright then. Grape it is!)

The Bababerry that was a dry-looking stick a few weeks ago. The grower’s description, here.

So I have someone I need to knit for, and I’d settled on a type of yarn that I thought would work well but not a color. I’d narrowed it down pretty much to two.

They were cones of silk from Colourmart2.com and still in the thick plastic bags they’d come in.

I hesitated and finally ripped open the one on the left and tucked it into a ziploc with needles for an errand where I was likely to have to sit and wait awhile. Colourmart’s bags are more bug proof than mine and I like keeping the yarn in them till I’m ready to set it to needle, so, this was supposed to end my inner debate once and for all.

It did, actually: the instant that thing was open I felt a surprising pang of disappointment–but I ignored it and kept getting it ready for my errand, where, it turns out, I did not have time to knit a single stitch. And the longer I carried that cone around the more certain I was.

Well then. Now I finally knew: the other one is the one. Clearly.

It’s lined. It’s thick. It’s plain. It’s simple. It’s in a good guy-type color.

And at long, long, long last, it is done for my brother who, when he moved to Colorado, there was hail the first week big enough to dent his car–in August! So he needed something wind- and snow-proof to the very best of my abilities. Merino and silk, 50/50, four layers when you fold up the brim. Merry Christmas, Morgan.

Although, they might need such a thing in Huntington Beach near Los Angeles, too–where, as they described it, people in shorts and Ugg boots were throwing snowballs today.

I put off doing the seaming for at least a month. Deadlines are a wonderful thing.

I put off running the ends in on the red jumper for longer. Deadlines are a wonderful thing.

Malabrigo Arroyo for the English Rose pink and Malabrigo Rios in the Ravelry red–only the softest for my grandbabies, and only superwash for my daughter-in-law and son to have to deal with.

I was late for knit night because I was stitching up those four pink side seams at home where there was no question there was enough light. The last part I did was around the armholes, which I should have had curling the other way.

Next thing you know I might even make baby booties. That fit. But here, let me run the last of these ends in first.

A snag on a favorite sweater that dropped the stitch almost the whole way down the armscye. A Christmas stocking handknit by my niece’s grandmother (or maybe great-grandmother) that their dog had gotten into.

My sister-in-law doesn’t knit but she knows I do.

So here are the two arms side-by-side afterwards. I was working up the purl stitch on the left closest to the seed stitch area.

Except that when I started I was doing it stockinette side out rather than purl side and I had to drop it back down again and start over.

If you look down to eleventh row above bottom left, you’ll see where I goofed–I needed to have dropped back again to one stitch more than I did: there’s a knit where it should be a purl, and I didn’t notice till I had sewn the last, topmost stitch up with a bit of matching silk and tied it triumphantly off.

Given that I couldn’t entirely see the tiny stitches half the time and dropped individual ones repeatedly, we’ll just take that one knit one there as a kind of proud signature.

Then I tackled the dog-clawed: with a matching white yarn (yay stash! Oh wait–I know it does in artificial light, didn’t test it in sunlight but that’s as close as it was going to get, and yes, there are many versions of white but it felt like I matched fiber content too so it should stay matched) I first connected all the open loops top and bottom, making a square, and then I tried to reroute back up the various loops complete with my strand still in the uppers and lowers as reinforcement.

The first area looks very good, the second one, which had more damage and didn’t still have the sideways bars to work with (I should have made some, in retrospect) looks repaired. But it’s repaired. And it certainly passes the galloping-horse standard. (If you can’t see it from…then don’t sweat it.)

And now it has love for the young woman whose name is knitted into the cuff of it from a second woman joining the original knitter.

Tiny stitches, slippery yarn, slippery overly-reflective metal darning (because we’re too polite to call them d**#!ning) needles and a death grip on such–but I did it and it is done and it is deeply gratifying to know mother and daughter will have those home in time for Christmas.

And that it’s all over with.

Can’t blog now must finish knitting nieces’ Christmas presents….

How are you guys coming along? (Or is it fair to ask.)

Edited to add… DONE!

My five siblings and I do a round-robin on Christmas gift giving and this year it’s our turn for my brother with four daughters. Here, let me just block this one and then run in a few ends and they should all be in the mail come Monday.

Almost as much rain in the last two days as all of last year. Flood advisories have been in effect.

And yet, when the sky held its breath a moment I did finally risk it and run an errand today. I could have waited a few days but it just felt like, go.

Which means I was in the right place at the right time to run into a woman I hadn’t seen in several years, a widow of my parents’ generation. “Marilyn?!” It did us both good.

When I pulled back into my driveway, there was–this is getting to be a daily occurrence–my Cooper’s hawk right overhead, free from any corvid harassment this time, simply seeing and being seen. Loved it.

Back to work. I wondered if I should join the ends of a scarf that came out a tad short and call it a double-over-able infinity scarf for a niece? It was a Stitches splurge two years ago and one skein was all there was or ever would be. (Handdyed cashmere, people.) I should ask Morgan what his youngest would think since it’s in her color. She’s old enough to take good care of it. (Handwash. Tepid water. No agitating around.)

Tomato plant: this is the one that sprouted three weeks into September that the squirrels planted. Now I just have to keep them from it so I can begin to guess what the variety is as it grows. December tomatoes! I guess I can’t complain about how it’s been 15 degrees warmer at night than the norm for weeks.

Anyone with any experience growing cherries, meantime: do you get individual flowers per each growth bud in that cluster of four or do you get clusters of flowers from each growth bud? I assume the single ones here and there will be next year’s new limbs.

Half the fun is watching and finding out but I wouldn’t mind flipping ahead in the book.