Note to self: 157 st, Rios, US 6, Libra color way, ~40″ in unstretched seed stitch, will widen out with the lace pattern.

The big blue project I’ve envisioned is going to take me awhile to find all the right skeins to go with the main color, so in the meantime I’m using up some good yarn in my stash for a good reason. There was a false start last night, a frogging, and a restart today.

(Oh, and, the hospital funding measure passed! The tax assessor race looks like it will go to a runoff but the one we so hoped for is way ahead.)

It’s your decor, I texted my sister, showing her colors but no details, and your choice. Do you want bright? Or subdued?

Subdued, she wrote back.

I’d been thinking more and more that she would; I’m glad I asked. The one I knitted last year does match her paintings better.

My fingers were getting antsy after spending yesterday and today trying to figure out what the next big thing was supposed to be. All this yarn, all these half-baked ideas, no sense of certainty.

I cast on a new one tonight because the Matisse Blue said that even if I knit it early last year it was next. I told Richard it was to make Y design. But Z is already going Hey! No, me, ME! I counted the stitches again to tell it to hush.

Let me go knit a single row while I remind it that I, in fact, am the boss of me. Not my yarn.

Sometimes.

Grabbed a random ball of yarn and needles and went with him to his doctor appointment, started another hat in the waiting room, got home, picked up the afghan, and now the third side of the edging is done.

All that is left is to rib out–now there was a Freudian slipstitch of a typo, as I decide to leave it there–the too-white beginning edge of the lesser-cashmere-content yarn. I finally no longer have live stitches elsewhere to worry about. Umpteen stitches, eleven rows.

So close.

I decided what I wanted to finish the most was the two hats for the two eye surgeons. I’m not going to see either one for two weeks, but you never know. (These are a tad darker in real life.)

So there you go.

Eighty stitches, 1×1 ribbing throughout, Malabrigo Rios, US size 5 needles.

Last week, I was sitting in the waiting room at my cardiologist’s working on this when who should come out but my rheumatologist.

He wasn’t expecting me and didn’t see me with my mask on so I called out his name as he went by.

He spun around in delight. I introduced him to my daughter. He looked at the knitting in my hands and exclaimed, “Oh, that’s pretty! Who’s it for?”

“The doctor who operated on my retina two weeks ago,” I told him, realizing as I said it that, wait, in all these years, I’d never knit anything for *him* and I’d known him a whole lot longer.

If it occurred to him he never let on. He cheerfully said to Michelle, “If you live long enough you’re going to need two things: a cardiologist and a rheumatologist.” And then he laughed at his own joke.

But it WAS funny, because the last time I’d seen him, a year ago, he’d sent a message afterwards marveling that “After all these years, for the first time, the ANA is negative.”

ANA being antibodies to the nuclei of one’s own cells, ie the single most definitive marker for lupus.

So I’d lived long enough to, in fact, not need him–assuming that holds.

“The system is fluid,” he told me years ago when I asked if an allergic reaction now meant one forever because I had seemed to have had less of a one on an exposure, and I’d thought it always went the other way, ie getting worse each time. Curious. I’ll take it!

Anyway. So today I finished all but weaving in the ends for this other guy.

Maybe there’ll have to be an appointment made, remission or not.

Or maybe I can just drop one off at the desk in his department with a thank you for looking out for me all these years.

I’ll have to actually, y’know, decide on yarn and colors and knit one before I can start debating delivery methods.

After several renditions of Are you sure, given that I wouldn’t hear it and he would and he’d be having to wake up just to wake me up when it went off, I set the alarm last night for 4:45 a.m.

My plan, discussed ahead of time, was that I would get up to say goodbye and to make sure her ride was coming and if there was any problem with it, I would wake her father up all the way and we would take her to the airport: him, to drive, me, to make sure he was safe coming back and not falling asleep.

At 4:42 a.m. I dreamed a bullhorn going off right in both ears and jump-startled awake. Oh. Right. Turned off the real noise before it could start.

Hugged my kid, who just glowed, and all was well. The 36-year impromptu wool stole for Rebecca is in Boston now.

I hope all who wanted to got to go to the No Kings day today. I so badly wanted to and we were going to, but I never did fall back asleep and by the time ours started at 1:00 p.m., I just couldn’t pull it off. I was with you all in spirit and onscreen (BBC video here) since I couldn’t pull off being on scene. I was so wiped.

So how was it in your town??

I knew better. I knew better. I thought I’d checked. Surely I’d checked.

Maybe eight years ago? Colourmart had a 50/50 aran weight cashmere/cotton yarn at a very good price, and then they put it on sale.

I bought a bunch, and then a bunch more. I made four afghans out of it (note to self: Amy Jessie Lucia Colette) and I pretty much used it up–oh wait there’s more, so I used that, too.

And then the price went up but it was the same best-of of those good fibers, and now it was 66/34 cashmere/cotton. Hey! Washed and wound some of that mill-end up, too, another huge ball ready to go.

Can you see where this is going.

I was about to bind off the top of the afghan and then start in on picking up the sides to match. I compared it to the beginning edge, wondering at how different the gauge was from when I’d started all this, when…

Do you see it.

I suddenly, finally did.

My one consolation is that the slightly beige one has to be the one with more cashmere in it, because cashmere does not naturally come in the bright pure white that sheep’s wool and of course cotton can. And it is cushier. So clearly it was the cashmere-ier yarn at the end and the 50/50 at the start.

I would have mitered the darn corners if I’d known I would have to do all four edges at once.

I could simply get rid of the edgings altogether, though that would make the afghan shorter than I’d prefer and the stockinette green and blue would curl.

But knitting in a backwards direction from the connecting row at the starting edge will jog that whole new part sideways by a half stitch and look funny. (Will a non-knitter notice or care.) But I don’t know that I have enough of the 50/50 to do the whole thing.

Well fudge.

I finally finished the last peach tree. Now to finish the top and the border.

I kept squinting at the thing in the sunlight today, staring at the colors I was never able to see completely accurately during all these months: not crisp yet, but cleared out. Cataracts add yellow to everything, and I’d say gray, too. So with the one cataract out, the retina part has months of healing time left but I think I can see now how bright that green actually is and at long last that yes, it really does go well with that blue. It always did.

I did better than I thought I did.

Wonderful talks, wonderful people, loved the guy from Louisiana talking about his momma’s home cooking and how adding that metaphorical good dose of spice that comes from G_d, the spice of loving and understanding and compassion, makes everything go down better for everybody.

I do confess to being occasionally distracted by the fact that not across the house in person, and yet on the screen, I saw people double–in different colors. White shirts turned deep pink, complexions reddened greatly, a yellow and green tie turned plain orange, left vs right eye. So strange.

I finished my cowl and, with memories of New Orleans in mind, wished I could try the beignet Dad never quite got around to when we were there.

To my sister Anne: don’t look.

I’m debating adding a splintered-off base of the tree to the end of that top log on the beaver lodge, and if I get really determined and if it works out okay, maybe the beaver itself. Maybe. And add a stitch to the turtle’s front leg on the far side to balance it a little better. Etc etc.

And of course eventually it will have a border all around. I don’t usually do white for a border but in real life it matches bright for bright and I quite like it. The only thing is that the gauge of that particular yarn came out looking looser than the others in the body of the thing. But hey. Ribbing can have its own character.

My memories of West Virginia are of gleaning huge peaches two weeks after the commercial harvest (for $2/bushel if I remember correctly, Mom?) and of visiting Harper’s Ferry and standing above where our Potomac River and their Shenandoah River come together in a huge rush of water.

I knitted in that little beaver lodge anyway. Just to let nature speak up for itself. 

It’s slow going, and the photo is of the back of the first tree because the second photo I was going to compare it against got carded at the door and bounced for being too young–or something, who knows. But. The second peach tree is about 2/3 done.

The peach color that looked pink once it was set against the green: you know, peach blossoms are pink. Just in case anyone asks.

(That’s my Baby Crawford tree from a few years ago.)

Being way behind on my inner deadline, I started the day with this picture and the determination to finish that first tree.

I finished it.

Oh wait–no, I think I’ll add one more row and then a half row on that side.

…Okay, *now* it’s done. I was right. I like that better.

Back to the afghan, made good progress yesterday. Ran out of that ball of blue and went to start the next.

Crum.

It’s a thin weight and I’ve been knitting it doubled but there was only a single ball ready, wound up who knows when. This is the problem with working from cones: you have to hank, scour the mill oils out, hang, dry, and then wind every single one. Quality+mill outlet price+cashmere=work+time.

I went looking, found the rest of the cones and there was one cone’s worth that I’d already washed and hanked. Yay. I wound it up, and then wound it again along with that first ball because, two strands, intarsia, I’ve learned not to have two separate ones rolling around tangling when you only have to have one per color or section.

Knitted a good bit of the day.

Got up this morning and this time I finally saw what had been nagging away at my subconscious that whole time: I now had three strands of that blue on that new ball. It had already been double-wound when I did all that work yesterday. That’s what I get for letting it sit there waiting for two months.

I should maybe frog yesterday’s rows. But the beaver dam is finished now, the second tree is started now, that rock in the water is started now, that foreground tree is at its uppermost branches.

I had plenty of time to think about it while I slowly, carefully, unwound that tripled ball back into single and doubled ones. With resting my shoulders and hands time, those *558 yards took me most of the day. How, when you pull two strands straight up from the floor to wind them together, do they end up needing to be constantly untwisted as you take them the other direction? It was very obvious which two had been together a long time and which had not, and yet…

I picked up the afghan and carefully examined it in sunlight, room light, and thought, nah, it’s good. Nobody could tell that part was slightly different but me.

But you know?

I think I’ll let it sit in my brain and see how I see it in the morning. Sleeping on it, it turns out, is a good thing.

—

*Half price at the time.

She said maybe brown.

It’s going to be over 90F. I’ve got some dark brown ready to go after this but for the moment I’m thinking let’s try a lighter version and see how it flies. I can always keep going.