I wished, I wished, I wished I had a particular shade of blue in my stash.

I’d seen her wearing it so I knew she liked it and I knew it looked great on her. The hank I’d overdyed a few days ago wasn’t bright enough nor solidly blue enough. If I drove down to Green Planet (anyone want a yarn store? Beth would love to sell it to you so she can attend to her family) maybe they would have something–but having such a firm idea of the exact shade I wanted, that was no sure thing and it would have to be in a yarn I liked enough. No skimping.

After a week or so of this I realized at last that I did, and found it: one of my last few skeins of the discontinued Cascade Epiphany in a deep royal, a cashmere/silk/royal-grade baby alpaca, long and carefully hoarded. It was just the thing.

We threw her a potluck birthday party at lunch today and I had to confess that I had not finished it but I let her see just enough of that blue.

That was all she needed. She was wearing an exact match to it (in something I hadn’t seen her in before) and exclaimed, That’s my favorite color!

The race is on, then, to finish it in time to be blocked come Sunday.

(p.s. Thank you, everybody. Today was much better than the last few, to my great relief. And it was all the better for my daughter Michelle having arrived in town for a wedding.)

There on the fence, preening. I grabbed my aging phone and wished. The chest markings of a juvenile, the larger size of a female–and there she goes! Not the adult I’d been seeing. She’s probably only been flying for about a month, then. Cool!

Meantime, I really wanted to get this out there today and not one day later and I made it to the post office before closing with ten minutes to spare. Someone needed a hug. Someone who’d just dyed her hair purple. It was just the thing.

Mathias modeling his second hat–he’s outgrown the first already.

A young mom I am very fond of is moving away and I very much regret that she is.  Even if I’m happy for her that getting out of our expensive area means that she and her husband will be able to buy their first house for their boys to grow up in.

So there was this cowl…

But I just wasn’t sure about the color. I dithered. I thought about it. At last, I stuffed a half a dozen other possibilities from my stash of finisheds into a ziplock and managed to stuff that into my purse, pleading for help first to G_d before I did that and then to her because *I* couldn’t decide: I asked her to pick one. Including maybe this cashmere one I’d just started.

You know, usually I like to be able to say I made this just for you. But I was just completely helpless this time.

She laughed and chose one (which was not the one I’d just finished) and for her, seeing lots of pretty things and being allowed to pick one out, of being offered that choice–this time, that was what was perfect, and had I known that beforehand I wouldn’t have sweated over it quite so much. Laceweight strands of baby alpaca/silk and of cashmere/silk knitted together in a cheerful blue–it was for her all along, now.

It was just a cowl. And it was everything, all at the same time. She confessed that she hadn’t ever been going to say such a thing, but, she’d really wished she had a knitting memento from me to take with her to her new life. A reminder of that talk I’d given in church a few weeks ago, too. And now she had one! She was so thrilled.

In that talk I had told a story of how knitting someone something had made all the difference both to them and to me.

You know what? I need to knit more.

Tomorrow will be a break out the wool sweaters day.

Which also means I can offer a particular someone at church a handknit cowl and it won’t be ridiculous in the heat. And if they come dressed for June rather than the weather report, they’re probably going to really really want that cowl just then.

And so I wove the ends in in happy anticipation.

One badly posed Christmas stocking because hey, I finally ran all the ends in and at long last it really is done and the hour is too late to fuss with the camera to try to get a better one.

Re the back loop: I ended up picking up stitches and knitting it in stockinette stitch with a second strand woven across the back of every stitch all the way up for strength and reinforcement. It was a good move.

I’m glad I went to the post office first thing today, because the phone rang a little after noon. It was B. She didn’t quite want to ask outright, she didn’t want to put me on the spot, so I volunteered what she wanted to know: her box? I got it to the post office. It was on its way back to the company that had sent her the wrong thing. All taken care of.

She was so relieved–and so was I that I hadn’t put it off till later in the day. It felt good to hear her happy.

And then I went and spent the rest of the day doing all the errands and all the things till I was too wiped to do anything but sit there and knit the back loops on the back loop.

Not a fan of synthetics, and this one was washable wool, but still, maybe I should make a mothproof one next time? Since such things tend to have sugary food in them and then be stored for most of a year sight unseen. What do you think?

Only a little strange. Not to mention upside down. But it would be really warm if he did.

The Christmas stocking: a few more repeats and then the toes. The cable patterns are all variations of a simple 2×2 on the fourth row.

Um, when I decided how long to make it I didn’t really consider how much the heel would add to that. My cousin’s going to have to work hard to fill that thing. Raise the mantle, maybe?

It never occurred to me until today that the sewn, flat stockings my mother-in-law and I made my kids have the names facing outwards and the foot going sideways. Of course, because what else, but I was halfway through what you see of the foot here (which is resting sideways for the photo) when I realized that either half the name wasn’t going to show when you hang the thing, or if I center the hanging loop directly behind the name, the foot part is going to be sticking straight out into the room. Is that odd? Or just to my eyes used to one thing? Where would you put that loop?

Next is to pick up the stitches at the top and knit and then tack down a second layer of that ribbing above the name for strength, now that I can see that it needs it, along with making that future loop, wherever it will go.

Sam sent me a photo of her qiviut headband from Oomingmak.

Devin holding Mathias May 9 with their six month old puppy looking out for her new buddy, and Mathias yesterday, growing fast.

Meantime I finally figured out how I wanted to finish that Christmas stocking for my cousin’s son–how big of a heel to turn, how to incorporate the cabling pattern into it, etc etc, and I’ve been working on it like crazy. I think I’d better go ice my hands.

While in Alaska I started a sweater for Mathias. Baby cables, I explained to my son-in-law, are the simplest and smallest form of cabling.

Cabling?

As in fisherman sweaters?

He drew a blank.

Aran sweaters?

This wasn’t helping.

Alright then so I needed to demonstrate.

I decided about six inches into it though that I didn’t have enough yarn to finish. (Actually, after I got home I found out I did, I had more than I thought–I just hadn’t brought it all.) Well… What Mathias actually needed was a newborn size hat anyway. Let’s see, the front of a sweater is generally equal to the width of a hat, so, there you go, and I decreased at the top, sewed up the seam and called it good.

And if Comcast, which has been flickering all night, will hold still long enough I’ll post this and the photo.

(With apologies to James Taylor, or ohmygoodness here, with Milton Nascimento.)

Sewed the shoulders, half the first sleeve…

With the back of the sweater inside out. *Yesterday, repeat from *.

In my defense, I was distracted by incoming baby photos.

The Rios sweater is a riff on a baby pattern I bought from Imagiknit at Stitches.

I do not love piecing sweater bits together. And Purlescence no longer exists for me to hang out with other knitters while I do it. So I dragged it to the audiologist‘s.

The fairly new woman at the desk confessed when I checked in, “I know you’re totally a knitter but I can’t remember your name.” She became knit-worthy on the spot.

She and the audiologist were thrilled when I showed them who I wanted to be able to hear and it clearly made a scut-work task (ooh, scraping ear wax out of tiny spaces: thrills chills and excitement) a lot more fun to do. I’m trying to live up to their example.

Finally got to the top of the first side, wool in hand, and only then did it hit me: you’re supposed to sew the sleeve on first you doofus.

Yes I really did do that.

Well, it would keep him from scratching his face, right? They do make belegged straitjackets for newborns (whatever the official warm-and-fuzzy word for them is.)

Yeah, no. It took me awhile to un-run that end back out. Random suppressed giggles and an awareness that if I could feel that yarn pulling (my ears were on their own just then) then normal people could hear it going zip, zip as the pieces fell slowly back apart, and so much for showing off.

They were very kind and pretended not to notice, but I wasn’t the only one trying not to laugh.

I want a baby sweater pattern that’s done all in one piece. The yellow wool one Aunt Mary Lynn gave us when John was born that I passed down to Parker when he was born: how did she do that… Coming down to points that crossed over in the front… I could certainly figure it out but it’s so much easier when someone else already has. Take my money, save my time.

Malabrigo Rios. Just plain stockinette, so the sides are curling in until I can get them sewn to the other side.

Newborn sizes do knit up fast. My hands needed lots of breaks today and yet I still got the back done and the front begun. Five inches past the cuffs when it’s time for the sleeves? I can do that.

I was by no means sure I had enough yarn for cable work. Plain is warmth enough this time around.

And more amaryllises opening up.

So there was the woman at church I don’t know well but I wish I did, whom a worried friend told me was suffering from depression these days.

I kept an eye out for her last week and quietly noted the dress she was wearing: close to the color of that blanket I just finished (of which there is no more yarn.)

It was a cheerful color, and that can only be a good thing.

I knew I had a lighter shade that would go well with it–and not only that, it was the last of my stash in blue of the discontinued Sublime yarn made of pearl chips dissolved into a rayon with a high-quality bamboo. It is as soft and shimmery and warm as a good silk while being hypoallergenic; it is, literally, a string of pearls.

I’d just moved those two skeins to…somewhere…a few days before. I had actually had them in my hands before that conversation with that mutual friend. Where on earth had I put them?

And thus a highly frustrating week, knitting-wise: I wanted to make a cowl for her before Easter Sunday and I could not for the life of me find that yarn. And it’s not like there were so many (normal) places to look, either. I could have just given up and done something else, and almost did, but for the absolute certainty that that was the yarn I needed it to be. It just was. And I didn’t want to start something else for someone else and get sidetracked.

I finally found them Saturday. How on earth had they ended up in a ziplock with a wool sweater? Hello, brain? There was no way I was going to get it done, or even very far along before Easter services, but at least I got it cast on and a few rows so she could feel the fabric it would be making.

I put it in a ziplock in my purse  for the morning, along with a green cowl just to make sure and to let her have a choice–or something else altogether if she wanted, say, pink polkadots. It would be for her to decide.

I invited her to sit by me a moment after the first meeting and showed her, apologizing that the blue wasn’t ready. When I offered her an infinity of hypotheticals as well as those two choices she was exclaiming, Oooh, the blue!

When I mentioned her dress of last week, and how I didn’t know if it was her favorite or somethingshejustgotonsalebecauseIvecertainlydonethatormaybeshereallylikedthatoneor

She laughed and interrupted with, “That is my FAVORITE dress. I spent a long time looking for just that.”

I told her about the actual pearls made into the yarn and how it had demanded that it be the one I knit for her, even when I couldn’t find the silly things (at the same time, I had needed to be sure it was what *she* wanted.) So she would just have to wait till next week to get it.

She loved it. She was blown away. She was very happy about the whole thing and can’t wait to see it finished.

And it wasn’t till later that the obvious hit me: y’know? When you’re depressed, having something you’re looking forward to while you know someone’s looking out for you–that’s not a bad thing. That anticipation is not a bad thing at all. And it’s much more important than my need had been to just go get this done and out of the way so I could move on to something else. The longer I’d searched the more my focus had shifted away from, where is that yarn! To an even greater sense of, Please, G_d? I want this to happen–for her sake…

Glad I lost it. Glad I found it.

Someone happened to say something about someone she was worried about and with that sense of freedom that comes with having just finished a big project, even the ends run in, suddenly I knew I had to interrupt the queue: “A cowl wouldn’t take too long. What are her favorite colors?” Clearly this needed to happen.

The mutual friend was blown away, and came away going, I need to knit. I need to take lessons from you. I need to learn to knit!

I grinned that I’d be happy to teach her.

Meantime she’s got some sleuthing to do. She’s right on it.

So the net went down and the knitting needles went up. (Fixed by the resident geek when he got home so here I am.)

A pattern repeat takes an ounce of yarn and out of my three big skeins I have about half an ounce left, so that’s that. Cast off tomorrow and the Little Boy Blue baby blanket is done.

(It’s so weird to have to delete enough emails from my gmail account to get my iPhone to be willing to take pictures again, I mean, whodathunk? The resident geek is who. Okay, I’m working on it.)