Kathy and Rachel are neighbors to each other and Purlescence buddies to me; Kathy had an errand to run this morning, and so she came by here with yarn, a quick gab-and-g0. Mostly Cascade 220 superwash, mostly from Rachel, some from her, pick and choose and use what suits and have fun.

The happiest kind of peer pressure. Not that I needed any to launch right into it.  To Hayes with love from the whole wide world, welcoming him to safe harbors.

World’s cutest three-month-old waving hi at everybody…

While I wondered what yarn I had in my stash that was baby boyish enough, babyproof-ish enough, and natural-fiberish enough to keep me happy too; Hudson’s newborn cousin Hayes now has a name. As far as I know, he’s still at so far so good.

Still praying hard.

Knitting is another form of praying.

A hat would show I love him (as if there were any question) but right now, given Parker’s rapture at his blankie homecoming on the day of Hayes’ birth, my heart’s set on a blankie for him too after all that little guy has had to go through in his first week.

Oh, right, I already knit up the…and the…and that’s almost all gone too? Well, good then, I put them to good use (oh right, that was the…)

Browsing a little online: extra-extrafine ’90’s merino if I didn’t mind blowing a couple hundred bucks. (I wish!)

Budget vs good intentions. Reality vs perfectionism. Not to mention the new flooring we’re saving for.

Maybe coordinating sock yarns paired together? But there’s no loft in that, not the same thing for smushing your face into with glee like Parker did.

Hmm. Sometimes you just have to sit down and start. (Maybe tomorrow, after I let ideas sift through for the night.)

Anyone have any experience with machine washing and drying baby alpaca repeatedly?

I learned something tonight.

I finally got to go to Purlescence‘s knit night, the second time since May due to germs and travel and other friends’ schedules. I walked  in and felt like, oh, I’m home!

I had heard about the Halos of Hope program to knit chemo caps for cancer patients (finally googled it just now; I recognize the logo, that’s the place); those running it donate all their time so that there is zero overhead involved, only the mailing of the caps. They sell patterns for them to try to meet those mailing expenses themselves as much as they can. Benjamin Levisay had mentioned it on Facebook.

But I’d thought, well that’s nice but why don’t I just knit one and drop it off at the clinic’s hematology department next time I go in and save them the postage? They do actually have a collection table for such and I’ve thought for awhile that I should.

So I asked Nathania. I knew Purlescence had gone in in a big way, with a 24-hour Halos of Hope knitathon last weekend. (I missed it. Richard had a bad 24-hour bug and I sure didn’t want to contribute that to the gathering.) Two hundred and ten hats!

And that’s when I learned that Halos is aimed at those in medically underserved communities and where yarn money is hard to come by; here, there are a lot of knitters and crocheters, there’s a lot of people who are financially quite comfortable and it’s not difficult for the needs to be met: something beautiful, something artistic, something made with love and talent and skill and compassion and a good-deed outlet for one’s leisure time.

I mentioned I had an online friend who has to drive two hours to get to the nearest doctor, and she nodded, Exactly.

And then she told me of a woman here who was housebound and limited in her old age–but she could knit. She had talked to Nathania, wanting to contribute, and told her she could afford to knit maybe one or two a month; Nathania and the others at the shop responded with, Let us help you out with that. And so they gave her a large donation of yarn, and at the knitathon she got a ride over there and was just going to…drop them off in the corner and, y’know, slip back out the door…

No no, come, let everybody see what you did! And so her fifty-four hats got put in the center of the group for everyone to see and the woman got the applause and cheers that she wasn’t looking for but so much deserved.

She had earned her halo.

I remember how hesitant my mother-in-law was to ask me to knit her a chemo cap, and how deeply gratifying it was to be able to say, Of course I will!

And then another and another, let’s see, Mom’s favorite colors, and another and another, I tried to make her a full wardrobe of chemo caps.

Tonight made me stop and envision what it must be like to have–none. Wow. Soft yarn, small purse project, coming up.

You’ve seen the first picture, right? What you can’t see on that first one is a whole bunch of other loops besides the ones that show there, pulled way, way out.

Sometimes when you have to go to the blankie hospital, you have to get stitches.

I spent several hours again on the thing today, using Friday as my inner absolute, past-due deadline.

All worked back in now. Kitchenered across the break.

I kept laying it out on that rocking chair, done at long last–and finding two more places where Parker had worked more loops loose. Fixed those, laid it out–two more. Flip it over–oh wait. And there’s this whole pattern-repeat area where he’d pulled row after row in a row, open wide and say ahhh…

Five o’clock was running in my direction fast and I so wanted to be able to tell them that Parker’s blankie was finally on its way back home.

Four thirty-five I pulled back out of the parking lot.  Tuesday they get to open the door and the box will be there.

Last Sunday I finally saw her only as we were pulling out of the parking lot at church; Richard turned the car her way so I could ask. From the other side of the car I held up my needles and the stitches I’d done so far and asked her if she liked the color?

For who? she puzzled. It didn’t immediately sink in, and then she was stunned and overwhelmed: Oh, anything! Any color! Thank you!

She gave me a great gift in that moment. She gave me back that sense of, this is why I do this. To make people feel that loved. What all that yarn is supposed to be doing, not sitting around wondering what it wants to be when it grows up. About time I really got back into it!

And so I kept an eye on how long it took me to do the long rows, how many of them I was going to need to do to finish this thing, and kept at it till finally last night at about ten pm it was finally done and laid out to block. I wove the yarn ends in first thing in the morning.

And then I hedged my bets: I wore a shawl in a different color silk to give her a choice, and she duly admired it but knew I had knit that light pink silk one expressly for her and she’d clearly been hoping all week to see it again very soon. It was hers.

I can’t give back all that she’s lost in recent years, much less whom she’s lost. But I could give her a warm, soft wrap around her shoulders any time she needs to feel one there.

She just has no way to know how many more people will be blessed because her appreciation ran so deep. I know what knitting can do, I shouldn’t have needed that–but I did.

Cast off or do another repeat, cast off or…

I knitted a long time today, grateful for all the comments on flooring–they really helped us narrow things down, thank you–while avoiding doing more looking until after dinner in hopes of getting this project knitted.

I think it really does need one more repeat.

The looking at flooring definitely does.

I had on a rust-colored blouse I don’t often wear–it’s a little old now–and a dark brown skirt, thinking I looked a bit autumny for the day of summer solstice, but hey.

No, really. June 21 is summer solstice mostly, but here on the western end of the western time zone I’m told it officially happened today. San Diego’s sun actually set 45 minutes earlier than ours did when we were there–it’s that much farther east. I’m not quite sure how all that means we get solstice a day early, but whatever.

So.

I was finally knitting for the first time since Monday’s rough tumble, finding it comfortable to do now and a relief that it was, when I felt eyes upon me.

I looked up.

There was a little Oregon junco, a fledgling, just a baby, really, watching me as stitches grew from my hands: nesting season isn’t over for you?

It dawned on me that I was wearing much of the coloring of the little one’s parents. I was charmed. I blinked; it blinked back. I watched a little while and tried again. It turned its head slightly to get a better view, and again blinked back.

And so we enjoyed each other’s company eye to eye a minute or two. I have done this before with the bigger birds out there, but the flighty little ones? This was a new thing.

Then it roused itself, went back to eating, and flew, done. And I finally got past the very beginning of the shawl I had promised myself I would make my suddenly-widowed middle-aged friend.

It feels so good to get on with it.

Love your dear ones.

I bought the aqua silk for me. It would so show off my favorite blouse.

I’ve been using it to design a new pattern with, and it stalled out for about two weeks between the traveling and trying to decide what direction to go in next with it.

I’ve gotten past that, been knitting quite a bit yesterday and today and am down to 30-odd grams left to work with out of the original 160 g. (Colourmart seems to nearly always tuck a little extra onto their cones.)

But as I’ve been carefully counting stitches, tinking, reknitting, pushing ahead, something has been persistently tapping me on the shoulder, and the name in the thought was a surprise when it first came yesterday–and then near-instantly it wasn’t.

This is not for me. Or if it is, then I need to pay attention to what colors she likes and make her something else, but it is important for reasons that I know, and there are always others that I don’t, that I knit something non-trivial for her. And if after blocking this turns out to be just too tailored to small-sized me than I need to tweak it when I start over, but it doesn’t feel like I’ll be having to do that.

I have wondered since her great loss a few years ago–but that’s her story–if there were anything I could do…if I should put my knitting time out there, since quite honestly not everybody gets knitting and it doesn’t do much for some.

If it might help.

The answer is yes and somehow the answer is now. It sure wasn’t my timing. Maybe the universe was waiting for me to knit the exquisiteness of silk in aqua? But it’s clearly not about me, and if that color silk is not quite it I’ve got a few others at the ready. I’m on it.

One person besides the driver has to stay awake at all times, I reminded John before he left. He was very much with me on that one. And so he got home at 3:2o this morning safe and sound.

Meantime, a friend offered three large produce clamshells. I got at least five apples snapped inside them, thinking as I arranged them around leaves and twigs and fruit that I definitely owe her a pie in four months. Squirrels: thwarted.

Back to the endless baby sweater. If I’d knitted it in cables it would have been done long ago, but I went for a simple 3×1 rib: on one side, it goes in single-stitch vertical lines against a purl background, and on the other, it pulls widthwise to show you what it really is, but relaxed, the purl stitch vanishes down into the fabric and it looks more like stockinette. I so rarely knit something that simple that I’d forgotten that 3×1 does that.

Part of me is charmed while part of me is mostly by the fact that it’s within 40 rows of being done. That and–just wait till I get to see the baby it’s to go on, that will cure any doubts about it on the spot. It’s not about the knitting at all, it’s about Hudson.

Okay, that just totally perked up my needles. Back to it!

If you need to ask, you need to do it.

I’d done the hot water scouring to get the mill oils out of the silk baby afghan and the rinse water still had blue. Should be fine, thought I a few days ago, and laid it out to dry.

It bugged me. I finally said something to somebody, more to out myself than anything.

If you need to ask, you need to do it.

And so yesterday it was hot water rinse after hot water rinse and when I say hot water, I mean my husband left the setting on the new water heater higher than we’ve ever had it: I was putting that afghan in and then pushing it down into the water with something else so I wouldn’t burn my hands.

Finally, on the fifth time soaking (making seven in all), it came out clear enough to wonder if any blue effect left was just reflections across the water from the afghan itself. It felt okay, finally, so, done.

The afghan and its matching hat are a lighter blue than they were. And that’s fine.

Meantime, I called my mom today and it was not that much different really from the usual in terms of hearing her. Huh. A letdown.

Richard came home: “Oh good, you’re wearing the blue tooth.” (Second glance.) “But why don’t you have it turned on?”

Oh. Riiiiiight. Forgot that you don’t just take it off the charger in the morning like a cellphone, you have to turn it ON. Duhhhh.

And then I went off to knit night, where I heard one woman’s voice–and from across the noisy room–for the first time. Ever. Hadn’t realized I actually didn’t know what she sounded like.

Another woman, after I explained I had new hearing aids, went, “So that’s why you don’t sound deaf anymore.”

“I sounded deaf? I try really hard not to.”

And then she added, “I’m going to have to be careful what I say now,” and laughed a good one.

I knitted the afghan working from two cones of silk at a time, four total.

Today I sat down to see if I could wrangle a baby hat out of the rest of the cone that had the slightly largest amount left. Single stranded instead of doubled, part because I wanted a finer fabric and part because there was so little yarn now. Eyeballing all the way,  hoping I was leaving enough for the decreasing at the top, checking Bev’s size chart, and yay, I made it!

Yeah I could rip out the last dozen rows to add another two of them to the main part. No I’m not going to. (No I did not snip it off yet, either. In case a new day gave me more patience.)

I wonder if I could squeeze a pair of baby booties out of the other near-empty cones. Because just one would look funny.

Four more rows of ribbing to finish off that baby afghan as I type. Got the 25 repeats done I was aiming for and found I had maybe maybe enough yarn to do another–and decided to save it for a matching hat (it should stretch that far) and baby booties (which might even fit before he’s three this time. I can only get better at this baby knitting thing.)

Meantime, being thrown so badly back into serious sickness by a common bug had me more worried last week than I wanted to admit, even to me.

Michelle M quilts as well as knits, and four years ago when I was doing all that hospital stuff she was making me a get-well quilt. Somehow its shipping time wasn’t quite there yet… Till she asked me about a week ago how to get this to me?

It’s far prettier than my nighttime sideways snapshot shows. The anticipation, the box, lifting the quilt out and going oh wow!, feeling thought about and cared about and marveling that she would go to all this everything for me, it gave me a tremendous sense of reprieve that I don’t quite know how to say. Her timing was perfect.

And she had no way to know it, but my mom quilts and several years ago Mom and I went to a quilt shop and I picked out fabrics for a quilt for her to make me whenever my turn in line should come up (no hurry).

The light fabric Michelle picked? I did too, or one very like if it’s not that exact one.  Mom’s will be different and the two will go very nicely together. All the more perfect.

The forever question: if you were making a baby afghan out of  a very good natural-fibers yarn, would you stop at baby size if you had enough yarn to make it toddler/young child size or even bigger, or would you continue on? Receiving blankets are so necessary but have such a short need time.

I was going for continuing on, knitting all afternoon with the stereo going. A break for icing my hands and a two hour break for picking everybody up. (When the VP grabs you on the way out the door, the taxi driver cools her flats in the parking lot.)

I almost but didn’t take my knitting along just in case. My hands needed me not to.

Mixed with, the sense of impending arrival is strong and I want it finished by tomorrow night and all ready for him.

It’s slow knitting. There’s still easily seven hours’ worth of work left if I’m going to go for every last repeat I can squeeze out of this yardage.

How do you decide how big to make them?

They grow so fast…

Yesterday’s Tropic Snow peach is noticeably bigger than yesterday and the last of the flower that was attached to it is gone. It’s almost April and it’s supposed to be ripe in June, so I guess it’s not wasting a moment. I stuck a finger down into the dirt, which could use some mulch: good. Still moist enough, don’t have to water yet.

I saw the beginning of two on the August Pride, too; they weren’t discernibly certain yesterday. Now they’re well past the just-a-guess, along with the new green plum needlepoints on the tree facing them. That little bit of rain last week didn’t hamper those blossoms after all.

I really like that planting those peaches has gotten me in the habit of walking around the backyard in the evenings and taking in the green and the growing and claiming it for my soul. Watching a bit of God’s knitting coming to be as the daylight stretches slowly longer.

Meantime, it looks like I’ll be able to make the baby afghan go further down towards my feet than I had thought the yarn would be able to reach to, good, and…after a week of dodging it, I’m finally catching Richard’s bug. Hoping that a cold will just be a cold.

(There was a get-together tonight that I was really looking forward to. My chocolate torte got delivered but my conscience needed me not to share the germs and I walked the garden here instead. To the vector, go the soils.)

The new grandson is due in a month.

His big brother came three weeks early.

My daughter-in-law’s mother had her kids early like that, too.

I figure I’ve got me about a week to finish this and everything else I can think of. And after all the decades of not wanting to knit baby sweaters or booties, of fighting too hard against the knitting-is-for-grandmas stereotype (I mean, I was ten when I started…) on my second go-round now of actually being a grandma I think I’m finally getting over myself; I can’t wait to knit a baby sweater after this afghan is done. There is hope!

(But just in case I waver, I’m outing myself. Again. Peer pressure: it’s a good thing.)