Celebrated Small Business Saturday at Cottage Yarns and Purlescence. Two 100 g skeins of Cascade cabled baby alpaca/merino for a grand sum of $5.77 from the latter’s sale table, with that AmEx promotion? Yes please.

Three’s the magic number of shops, so from there we celebrated at Timothy Adams for hot chocolate and truffles. We tried first to buy outdoor heating cables from the local plumbing supply place but no such luck, so, the chocolatiers win.

And then, having been up early yesterday and then up way late for an airport pickup and then a busy day today, I suddenly crashed. I was trying to do all. the. things. but admitted how hard it was catching up to me and Richard told me to go put my feet up. Take a rest. Sit. Now.

And that is why the baby hat is (finally) done. The next one will be far faster because now I actually know what it looks like when I’m done with that particular doodle idea. And I’m tired enough that I didn’t realize till I hit publish that I hadn’t even taken the thing’s picture (she edited).

It almost matches the yarn I bought today to make a baby dress with–close enough to look, rather, like I just missed.

So I will have to make a new hat and that new dress and it will all be good. Because you can never have enough baby gifts waiting their turn.

Purlescence recently got a new yarn in, as in brand new, only just released. And I bought a skein of it in Blueprint to try it out.

I had a person in mind, I had a deadline in mind, I had a project in mind.

But as I tried to get the thing going it did not seem to want to mind me.

I had not swatched–I mean, when you’re knitting a one-skein cowl with only so much yardage at hand the thing is the swatch since to me knitting is not some new thing: you can eyeball so many cast-on stitches and get a rough guess of what a certain pattern will come out to, size-wise, pretty much.

So (whistling) when was the last time I knitted a chainette construction in a dk weight? There are not a lot of those out there. This both compacts down into its stitch space because there’s so much air squishing out and yet it blooms out without going all angora on me. Curious. I like it.

And then I read Stephanie’s post and just laughed–okay, I’m not the only one here.

And so I was coming out with what would make a good hat. Assuming it didn’t stretch much once it hit water. Which I would not know till I finished but no, it would make a very pretty hat, definitely, yeah, that would work.

But did I have enough yarn? And I had not set out to make a hat. I live in a climate where people do not mess up their hair with hats, generally, since there is no great need to. Here the citrus trees wear more layers in freezing weather than some of the people do.

Did I want to buy another skein, then, and would the shop have the same dye lot still in stock? (Are you kidding me? Did you see that stuff going flying out the door after that much-anticipated box finally arrived?) It’s not that a hat takes a lot more yarn, it’s that a hat has to continue till it’s finished instead of at some random point that works for the knitter.

But even though it would certainly go over the head, or at least mine, it seemed a tad small for the top of a cowl for a larger person (which I am not), the yardage was disappearing fast, and I’m afraid of emphasizing the size of the person because of the smallness of the cowl–and so it stalemated on me and simply sat there most of today.

But it’s a gorgeous yarn and a soft yarn and ooh-fuzzy feeling without being fuzzy looking and it wanted to be knitted and finally I picked it up this evening and finished my pattern repeat–and then I did that increase and declared to myself, there: that settled it. It is to be a cowl.

(Well, it could still be a big poofy hat if I bought more yarn…)

She’s going to love it. Even if I have to find me a different she. But I don’t think I’ll have to. Either way, I’ll let her settle it for me.

Eyeing that gorgeous big skein from Abstract Fiber, because, y’know, I can always knit another cowl.

High-energy days are a wonderful thing.

Got up early this morning, voted first thing, (epic photobomb here. Look at that guy’s eyes!), was glad to see that the ballots were paper and verifiable and wore that little sticker proudly all day.

The cowl and my cousin’s hat and scarf are now in the mail.

I participated in a product testing trial, one of those quirks about living in Silicon Valley where there is always some new thing to prove the merits of and got paid just enough for my time to cover a mango tree with FedEx shipping from Florida. I like the idea of trading a little time for something solid and present and lasting that could grow and produce great fruit for a hundred years, with thanks to Dani from India for the guidance on what variety to get. (Yup, I still want my mango tree. So there you go.)

I headed from there to my audiologist to get the wax out that was blocking up the hearing aids–I once broke an earmold trying to do it myself. Um. Now they’re sending in for a new one. (It’s not just me!) There was a spare on hand that’s not a great fit from when I was very thin post-op but it’ll do fine for now.

There is, so far, a particularly bright spot in the election news here: the one-term Superior Court judge who repeatedly simply did not know the law, who did not understand why people were upset when she asked a criminal defendant before her–from the bench, in court–for a date–she seems to have lost. Her opponent, who by all accounts is very well qualified, spent almost nothing. That he is winning is a great justice. (Update: he did win. Good thing.)

And it is past bedtime and the local newspaper hasn’t updated any election totals in three hours. Time to give it a rest.

Picture taken before I washed and blocked it so it’s still in free form here.

I had almost forgotten just how good worsted-weight baby alpaca feels running through the hands on comfortable-sized needles.

It won’t get there the same day as someone’s terrible-rotten-no-good-I-think-I’ll-move-to-Australia day that happened this past Wednesday, but it got started then and it’s blocking now.

For someone who didn’t know I was a knitter.

Man, that feels good.

TWO! I have *never* seen them hunt in tandem before.

The first hawk swooped down, appearing suddenly from above the awning and right back up above again in a half-circle to herd the prey. Then immediately after a panicked mourning dove bonked its head on the awning and staggered away out of there, the hawk’s mate burst out from among the elephant ears on the patio and after it.

Two! I had no idea the second one was there.

Maybe come spring I’ll finally get to see a Cooper’s fledgling toddling around my amaryllis pots again–it’s been a few years.

Meantime, the baby blanket: it is celebrating Aftober after all. I DID it!!

Knitting and all the happy anticipation of a beautiful blanket for a coming granddaughter is fun. Sitting icing your hands afterwards for twenty minutes, no stitches, no turning pages, no clicks, not as much. So as I iced I was doing the math in my head.

Sixty-six rows in the last three days. Two hundred eighty-eight needed altogether, unless I decide to add another 16-row repeat or two past where I’m currently aiming for.  But as planned that means I have 75 rows to go.

My friend Afton recently threw out her annual challenge to all the knitters she knew to finish a project or projects, something you’d been wishing were done, before the end of this month. It looks like I’ll make it. Aftober here I come!

(Edited to add, I was thinking it’s been taking about eight and a half minutes a purl row, about nine a right-side row, but–scribble scribble–that’s a guess and it would come to 87.3 hours for the project. Yow! I really don’t think so, 45-50 sounds far more likely, but I do feel better about how long it’s been taking me.)

(Edited later to add some more, that original timing was when I had the flu. Healthy, it was five minutes a purl row. That’s more like it.)

Writing it in case I need to look up later what which when: the antibiotics aren’t quite enough on that cystitis yet (but far better than not having them), while the Crohn’s tries to hog the attention. I think I need to move up that GI appointment.

And so: I put my feet up and got 21 rows of 189 stitches done so far today.

I happened to be outside for just a few steps’ worth when I saw, ascending above me and then very high, not one but two hawks. Definitely not turkey vultures but hawks. Gliding on the thermals, circling away and then back around to each other in an intricate dance, and if I had wondered at all if Coopernicus still had the mate I saw him courting in February that definitely seems to be a yes.

In several minutes’ watching there was one single leisurely wingbeat to catch the best of an updraft as they gradually spiraled into the distance.

Then this evening I went out to water the pear tree. Coming out the door, I glanced at the neighbor’s redwood: it and the silk oak just past the other side of our property are the two that the ravens and the hawks are always duking it out over.

No sign of any bird at all.

The pear was near the silk oak and as I approached, again, all was still, just leaves in the breeze. There’s almost always something up there but–

–and then a burst of movement from fairly low down and close by as the Cooper’s hawk cakked at me for invading as it stormed out of there.

Surprisingly soon a mockingbird, and then a second mockingbird, flew onto the telephone wire across the fence at a third neighbor’s, watching me, tails set towards where the hawk had gone–I seemed to be more interesting, but they were not ready to sing yet. (I was remembering the night when one had been singing relentlessly in hopes of a mate and so, window open, Richard had sung a song back at it. Birdly silence as it listened, and then–it sang his tune back to him!)

Wait–I forgot to sing to them to get them going. Well then.

Another half a minute of watching them and me and then finally convinced it was safe, a raven, one single raven, suddenly flew from behind the mockingbirds, giving the most subdued half-hearted single caw I have ever heard out of one of them. It was going sideways from the trajectory of the Accipiter Cooperii to arc around my yard, not quite directly over, flapping hard while heading towards that redwood now that it knew that the hawk would not be there to challenge it. See?! King of the mountain! So there!

Hawks glide smoothly even when their wings are going. Corvids’ bodies kind of bounce up as their wings go down and slump down as they lift their shoulders up for the next beat as if they’re just barely keeping this heavy thing airborne.

Airdancing this morning, make-a-break-for-it dancing in the evening. And even though the raven would tell you the results are up in the air, he was just winging it. The hawks are definitely the more talon-toed.

Tomato plant pictures: the volunteer that’s a month old and a view of its new buds. Hoping to get Ellen in her much colder climate some quick-grows for next year from this thing.

And then there’s the heirloom variety still going after six months.

Meantime, yup, tried the cranberry juice, tried the vitamin C, but still woke up with a trip straight to the doctor. Thankfully there are still some antibiotics that have not yet been made useless by the unethical feedlot practices of the big bioag producers, and so I am no longer passing blood.

Never mind all that–I was just sick enough to put my feet up and get some serious knitting time in and I’m delighted at how much I got done.  The 45×60″ I want while using size 4s is a very long slog but I can actually tell the difference from yesterday. (Pass the icepacks.)

Gradually building my strength back post-flu, including in my hands. I’ve had to stop knitting to ice my hands about every hour’s worth and have been reluctant to push it.

And yet somehow I’m still about 3500 stitches further into the baby blanket than I was this morning, with more than that yesterday, going from two and a half motifs to nearly six in that time with about fifteen to go.

(And here is where I wave a picture at the blog, except that I’m still trying to keep at least some of it a surprise.)

After several false starts and a whole lot of stitches the hat is begun.

Okay, that’s my obligatory bit for the day. What you really want to read, if you haven’t yet, is Stephanie’s post.

If you already did you know that her sister-in-law lives in Madagascar and that once a year she flies home to Canada and buys all the yarn for the next year. (I. Cannot. Imagine. A woollessly-enforced cyclically-stashfree life? All planning no sudden hey-I-could? Yow.) Likewise, once a year she gets to give out all those things she has knit in happy anticipation of sharing her love in ways that will stay when she has to leave, waiting, waiting to be able to give  out that wealth of knitted happiness.  A sweater’s sleeves that were made for toddler Lou with memory of his arms around her neck in a hug, as Stephanie writes. The new baby in the family who needed warmth against the Canadian cold…

And that was the suitcase that went missing July 31st.

After her trying every possible method of extracting it from the airline and then giving the okay to her sister-in-law, Stephanie finally put the word out to the knitter world at large last week.

I know I’m not the only one who said prayers. I also believe in a God who answers anonymously through the actual doings of people to encourage them to look out for each other, and sometimes there’s simply someone out there who needs to know enough to act on a hunch or enough to know to do some looking. They just have to get the word.

Whatever, however.

That suitcase came home to Canada today.

A year’s worth of near-daily work. Safely home.

Y E S !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I did it.

I deliberately put on my purple skirt this morning. Now, this purple skirt and I have a problem. It shades slightly towards the brown side, unlike the supposedly identical broken-zipper one it was replacing that I’d loved, while the top I’d ordered to match it does not.

They clashed. I overdyed the top and I love how it came out but it still doesn’t match the skirt and my eye is not happy with them together.

So yeah, I wear plain white with the skirt that arrived not quite the right color. The price of hating going shopping.

And the reason I mention this is the scarf. The long, soft, endless, boring, pretty, repetitive, densely knit, heavy, I’m going out of my mind scarf that I’ve been desperate to get off my hands and off my needles so I can dive into the baby stuff before my granddaughter arrives, because I know if I abandon it again it will stay abandoned and my cousin’s move from warm California to chilly England was postponed so she doesn’t have to have it this month after all and that makes it way too easy to say oh no hurry then, whenever.

It is purple. And it is a prettier purple than either of the two in my outfit and yes I did put on that skirt and that top. Deliberately. By putting on that combination I only love separately I knew I was making it so my eyes would want all day to reach for the shade that peacemakes between them. The scarf is actually also two different shades playing together–only they really do, the Malabrigo Arroyo in Borrajas and the heathered mink laceweight, calm and steady and setting off the best in each other.

You would think those yarns would work up quickly. You would think wrong. In all these weeks I’ve knitted and knitted and I’ve blackholed it the whole time.

Till at last calling towards the other room tonight: “Did you hear that snap?”

“What snap?”

“The snap when the yarn breaks.”

“It’s bad when the yarn breaks!”

“Not when it means you just finished your project.”

And that, that, is how you get a two month long stinking endless dragging scarf project off those needles. Make it be the place where your eyes get to rest. (And turn on the stereo for some music relief and laugh out loud when you discover how much fun the little grandsons had moving all those pretty tiny buttons around on the stereo equalizer.)

Pardon me while I measure the thing for gauge-swatching and cast on the matching hat, quick, before the day is done. I’ll wear that skirt again if I have to but next time the top is going to be white.

(Pottery by my friends Mel and Kris and sons at mkwares.net.)

So, today.

My oldest got hit by a taxi. She assures us no serious injuries, but yow. I’m grateful it wasn’t worse–while fighting my mama bear instinct to want to scream at the guy, What did you think you were DOING!!!

Ahem. And. At noon, Michelle showed up bearing hot chocolate from the shop where we’ve been meeting up with her and her cousin many a Saturday morning, wanting to make sure that, flu or no, we didn’t miss out. I couldn’t drink much but what I did was great and the rest is in the fridge in happy anticipation.

And. The doorbell rang, 5ish. A friend from church bearing dinner, and she had absolutely no way to know I’d been craving pasta and cheese and Italian sausage and a good substantial sauce all day. No way. I hadn’t even said it to Richard. And yet–there it was in her hands: a very good ravioli, lots of sauce that appeared to be homemade (I very much want the recipe) and with a lot of Italian sausage in it, and I could not have imagined up better than what we were offered. Susan! We both had seconds, and for me this week that’s really saying something. Happy us, there were leftovers.

Carrot cupcakes, cut-up watermelon, multi-seed-and-grain bread (that last would have to be for Richard.) She took the time to make that and bring that while arranging her 98-year-old mother’s funeral and affairs and I’m just kind of blown away.

And.

I knitted. Not a lot, two 45-minute segments where I was going v e r y slowly but making noticeable progress on the interminable purple cousin scarf. (Yes it’s still going on.)

Because today was the first of two days of the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, two two-hour sessions two hours apart and tomorrow likewise at 9 and 1 our time, and knitting during Conference has always just been a given, and Conference projects always have their own bit of meaning (even if that meaning more than once has been, while I was doing it, finally something that sat me down in my seat long enough to finish this!)

I listen and get my priorities back in gear and feel spiritually charged up while at the same time, and peripherally to it all, create things to make someone out there happy. ‘Oh, I made this one during Conference’ makes it a happy thing indeed.

I think Sunday afternoon we shall have a purple scarf at last and the beginnings of the hat to match. See? That’s the other thing Conference offers: an abiding sense of hope again.

I even started to forgive the taxi driver. I still hope he got caught, if only so he won’t repeat the errors of his ways.

Uh, yeah, so, I’m still working on that one. Good thing there will be more knitting time  spent listening to wise and loving older people telling their stories and of their trusting God’s love come Sunday.

Saw yesterday’s cowl recipient at church and stopped her a moment, just to make sure: would she prefer some other color? Because if so I had a ton of yarn and I…

She stopped me right there: No no she LOVED the bluegreen in the one she got, it was perfect! It could *never* be better than that one.

And the enthusiasm in her voice said this: it wasn’t just about the color. It was about the moment in which she’d received the thing from my hands. Never take it away or diminish it, it was the only one with that memory and so it was the best there could possibly be. (And she truly did love that color.)

She has no idea how much she gave me. Again.

This has nothing to do with the story, but, the pews in the building where the stake conference meetings are held always hit my back just exactly wrong. There was another meeting there this morning and this time I remembered to grab a small pillow off the couch and stuff it in my large purse.

And as I was getting dressed this morning, what I’d planned to wear simply felt wrong: it felt too fragile, too easily damaged. This made no sense whatsoever. Wear something indestructible. Why? I argued with myself, I wasn’t going camping, I was going to church. Wear the boring black polyester skirt, came the insistence yet again: can’t hurt that one. What a weird thought, I thought, but, I did.

So. The story. Somewhere in my brain, all morning church meetings start at nine and when you have some percentage of 1800 people in that stake converging on one building, however large, parking is going to be intense. If I didn’t want a long autoimmune-risking walk in the sun we were going to have to get there early, so we headed out the door at about 8:15.

Only… There was a smattering of people, maybe a dozen if even that, but certainly not the number usually gathered by the half hour before the start. Huh.

(In a small voice, oh. right. duh.)

And so we had an hour and a half to wait in. My good-natured husband said, Well, he thought that had been a little early but he wanted to get good seats and parking for me, so, *shrug*. No biggy.

I got to talk to an old friend for awhile.

My glasses were bugging me. I’d been going to clean them before leaving but had forgotten but I certainly had plenty of time to spare now, so, off I went to take care of that.

One of the things about having an ileostomy is that one has to use the facilities quite often. I was there, so, whatever.

The door refused to unlock to let me back out of the stall.

Wait. I tried again. This is not rocket science.  You just unturn it.

Not that way either. It was jammed hard. Richard later said, well, you could always have called me and I’d have sent someone in, to which I reminded him I’d left my purse with him.

There was simply nobody around. Give it an hour and there would be a steady stream of people but not right now. I gave it my best as good as my hands could do but the thing just would not budge. Likely nobody would hear me. I could stay there.

Or not.

The floor, thankfully, was clean as far as I could tell. In the utter epitome of grace I got down on my hands and knees and scrambled low underneath the door, got out, reached back under, grabbed my cane, and washed up.

Then I went looking for help. I found Randy. Randy knew everyone and he had keys to everything.

Because so very few people were there yet, we were in no one’s way as I minded the bathroom doors while he went in there and tried to fix that lock. Having gotten tools from a supply closet, he got the thing open–but he could not keep it from re-jamming and the next person was going to have the same problem. Not cool. Not when there are I think four women’s stalls in the entire building and there were about to be that many people present. He thought a moment, walked across the building while I stood guard, came back, and handed me a piece of paper and scotch tape. He handed me a thick pen.

“Door lock jams. Do not lock this door.” (I needed to be able to write it in Spanish, Samoan, Tongan, Vietnamese, and Chinese, too, but at least it was clearly going to be a warning, and most of those members did speak enough English.)

“Looks good,” he affirmed, it being what we could do for now, and waited a moment as I went around the corner past the rest-and-chair area to put it where it needed to go.

It happened when no one was around to be embarrassed. And I’m old enough not to bother to be embarrassed, it just simply was.

It didn’t happen to, say, an 85-year-old with mobility issues as the building emptied out leaving nobody to know. It didn’t happen to a small child who would then simply leave the door locked for everybody and long lines after her.

It was a small thing, and leaving the door unlocked would be a pain–but it surely also inspired multiple moments of, hey, could you hold this closed for me and then I’ll hold it for you? Acts of kindness imposed by randomness, in all locklihood.

I got home glad I’d worn that sturdy skirt, put the small pillow back on the couch on top of the old afghan I’d taken it off of…

…And only then did I finally notice that the thing seemed a tad lumpy. Huh? I pulled it back.

There, underneath, was the long-missing baby blanket I’d started for my granddaughter on the way. The white one I’d begun for her christening day. Right there at my knitting perch. The Rios yarn I ordered yesterday in replacement? That was pink and much thicker, so as to be an everyday blankie like her brothers’.

It’s all good. It’s all very good.

I worked on the baby sweater and would have finished it, wanted to finish it, but my hands needed a break from knitting tight and small. One more day (again), I guess.

The baby blankie, which had maybe a foot done, is still not found. Ah well, there will always be a baby who’ll need that UFO come the day. And I still had questions about cashmere, especially after googling for Rios in the colors I was interested in and getting nowhere.

It finally dawned on me: if I had questions about machine washing cashmere, of course I knew whom to ask and where to find the best. Lisa Souza! Shot off a note just now, admiring the color in that upper right corner there. Nobody else I’d rather have dye it for me, for that matter; she and I go back twenty-odd years, to when I first met her spinning in her redwood-ring faerie eyrie at Kings Mountain Art Fair.

Yes it would be very expensive.

You only get born once.

Waiting to hear back. Not setting my heart on it. Yet.

——–

Editing to add the next day: Lisa says that her friend Holly makes lap blankets of that 8-ply Lhasa cashmere for the elderly, very lovely. It could certainly be done–but the scruffication that would come with the use and laundering a baby would require of it is something that just would be a reality.

I hemmed, hawed, and at last went with (I found some!) the superwash Rios that I’m much more familiar with. Three blanket-years in, it’s fulled without being too fuzzy, no pills, so soft, and  the blankie is still the same size.