Thank goodness Purlescence on Tuesday still had a few skeins left of the very lovely but discontinued Epiphany (royal baby alpaca/cashmere/silk) when I needed one in a particular color–from an early mill run, too, before production issues got it shut down. (Look for the 60/20/20.)

Speaking of which… It suddenly hit me as I pulled out of the post office: darn, I was going to snap pictures of that, I was going to count rows and make sure I had what I’d done written down right. I’ve made various iterations of that particular pattern, enjoying them all, trying to improve on it before I put it out for publication, but I’ve never made one quite exactly like that one and I liked it the best of all: the elusive perfection, or about as close as yarn and needles can come, and now it’s on its way to where it needs to be and the recipients will simply forever have a one of a kind.

I like that.

And then there were three. Judy’s yarn knit with navy, with a turquoise-green Manos Silk Blend, and doubled on itself. I find myself hoping they go together to a family.

I had a concert to go to early–it was festival seating–and no time to run to the LYS to get another skein of just the right weight and color to match up with it next. Stash don’t fail me now. Nope, nope, too thin and three strands is not a carry-around project, nope not that one either. Who around here keeps buying all this lace and fingering weight?

There was one: but it wouldn’t cost me the $12.50 price of the ball, it would break up a shawl’s worth of seven of them to replace.  I probably don’t need that seventh, but I am adamant about having too much rather than possibly not enough before I start. Still. I almost…and almost again, but no, keep looking.

There! Inside that bag, out of sight, forgotten about–the discontinued (darn) Misti Royal Baby Alpaca! Oh, that is going to be SO soft and SO warm and it’s the lighter color I wanted this time. Got it!

I got the cast on and one and a half rows done before the show started.

So I was talking to someone at Purlescence tonight who used to work for a major bank, and she told me that every time they did an upgrade, a few accounts somewhere got totally messed over.

That made me feel better because at least it made sense. Not that it happens at all, but that it had clearly happened to us.

Ours did a major upgrade just yesterday, as it turns out; I found that out when I tried to log in today, tried again, tried again, got a Contact Us message only, and finally gave up and called the number.

I got told the unbelievably-bad-PR line that I had to have my husband vouch for me, either on the phone or in person, that I had his permission to use our joint account.

Wait, *what!?*

I said we had had that account for 15 years, not to mention it was a community property state. Besides, all I wanted to do–but that I really really wanted to do for now–was to transfer my son his college tuition money.

The woman on the line took care of that for me but told me I needed to come in in person with proof of my social security number: the one I was giving her was not accepted.

They’d clearly assigned me a random string of numbers to replace mine and that’s all their computer would take. I still don’t even know what it was, since I couldn’t see it. They did the same thing to the login ID.

I went in, glad we had a local branch. Not what I’d planned to do with my day, but glad that I’m mobile, at least, so that I could do it. I told the woman who ushered me over the first thing I’d been told on the phone, and she exclaimed an indignant, “WHAT?!”

Got that one on my side!

She could not fix it. She tried again. She called over to her manager for help. She said I would get a confirmation email of my new password, and she called our son to get his okay, but apologized that it would have to be followed up with a signed form he would have to turn right around in the mail for me to be able to put money in his account.

Twist his arm.

Hours later.

There is still no confirmation email.

The email they said they sent Richard yesterday informing us of the changes never materialized.

Neither of us can get in.

They have all our money and we have zero access. I imagine that could cause some excitement at the state regulator level if it’s not fixed fast.

And the kicker?  I was going to get to the post office afterwards to mail in two hats and a few good warm sweaters for Vermont flood relief. I was at that bank so long the post office would have been closed before I could get there. I was afraid I would be spending a lot of time watching someone staring at their computer screen (and I did) at that bank, so, looking at my shawl project and going, no way, I grabbed yarn and needles and headed out the door. I needed something small, portable, and mindless.

I cast on while she stared at her screen. I continued at Purlescence, in between holding and playing with babies and knitters.

…And there will now be a third hat going out to Vermont, again knit from Judy Sumner’s giant merino/silk hank. And I am finally admitting to myself that I felt all along like there had to be at least three with the same yarn in all of them or I would feel quite disappointed later. Another person needed one like that, someone somewhere out there, known to God.

And that’s far more important than any silly computer nonsense. But it took the computer nonsense to get me to put aside what I thought I wanted to do and sit down and start it. It had felt compelling but I had ignored the feeling–it is such a relief to watch it coming to be after all!

Knitting two strands of soft merino/silk dk on 3.75 mm needles in tight cablework was like knitting at sock density and took me longer to finish than I thought it would. But it will be warm.

Ellen of Half Pint Farms in Vermont named this colorway Evening Shadows. We were in the Green Mountain State three years ago, just before the leaves turned, and I fell in love with how the fog and shadows from the mountains painted the world in purpley blues across the pined forests–add in the Judy Sumner connection to this particular hank and nothing else would do for knitting for Vermont relief.

As I finished it up today, I was distracted a moment by a California towhee outside my window, a Claude Monet study in browns: when you get a chance to see them up close in direct sunlight, there’s actually a surprising amount of other shades mixed in there, even a bit of brick red. They are designed to fade into the landscape, and yet they are a fair bit more complex than one expects at first glance.

They are not skittish birds. They never fly into the window, even when a hawk threatens, they just head straight for home. They never try to crowd onto the feeders, whose perches are too tight for them anyway: they know what they want and they know where they want to go to find it. (I should be so lucky when I’m stashdiving, said the woman with scars on her arm from going through a window as a kid.)

And I promised to show Karin‘s yarn: here’s her Atlantic color sock weight she gifted me with; it’s deeper and more intense in real life. Pretty stuff.

On to the next project!

From India, who along with Ellen helped get the Warm Hats Not Hot Heads campaign going in January, wherein our fellow knitters helped us get 262 handknit hats sent to members of Congress to ask them to work respectfully and peaceably with one another:

There was a speaker in church today who, from the heart, spoke of how Jesus had given up everything. Everything.  Had suffered everything. For us, so that if we would repent of that which separates us from God and come to Him and embrace Him, we too could be filled with the love He so freely offers to all. He knows each one of us personally.

Then he read the story of the rich young man who had come to Jesus seeking spiritual advice.

That was it. That was exactly what I needed to hear, boom, straight to my heart. My lingering inner question about a certain project I’d worked on…

All selfishness evaporated on the spot and I felt such a joy as I looked forward, at last, to giving that beautiful bit of knitting away. I knew exactly whom it would make quite happy.

And to think that before that point I had thought, not quite out loud to myself where I could hear it, that I somehow could do better with it myself than that?!

The nurse, same nurse (oh good) as during the surgery brought me back into the exam room and said she was the one who was going to take out the stitches. Or rather stitch.

Only one? I asked, wondering at all the black thread I’d tried to see in the mirror on the top of my head back there.

Only one.

I stopped her a moment first and pulled out a red gift bag.

She’d seen this process before, she knew what that meant. She was delighted, disbelieving–and then, “Can I look…?”

Well, yeah!

She looked and her grin got even bigger: “Oh, I LOVE that color!”

And then we got down to business. There was a fair bit of work snipping, tugging carefully, a number of tiny pieces of strong thread coming out bit by bit, making me a bit of a redhead in the process.

So it’s true.

I’ve been frogged.

I wrote this yesterday afternoon and then our server died. Richard was up late wrestling with it, knowing people would worry (plus he wanted me to have my web access.)

Not sure when the lidocaine finishes wearing off, but for now I am a bit of a numbskull. It is a highly odd sensation to have your ears pulled together by the top of your head.

As the dermatologist got set to leave, I asked her to grab the white paper bag with handles sticking out of my knitting bag. She did, wondering, and then pulled out the scarf I’d made her: Handmaiden Camelspin (luminous and a bit greener in real life). “I love the colors!” as she felt that soft yarn and I explained the 70/30 silk/baby camel content. I can’t help it; I’m a fiber artist, it’s important to me to say what a thing is made of.

And it was important to me to tell that good woman what a difference she made in her willingness to drop everything and see me right away.

(Tuesday morning, getting ready to get Michelle on her train.) By the way, I was looking at some old pictures of us holding Parker in February, and there it was–a clear shot of my part in my hair. No sign of the lesion. So it did grow that fast that recently. 2 cm. And my head already feels better than yesterday.

Annnnd she’s a-comin’ round that race track for another lap. Will she start to decrease? Will she go on?  Does she have enough yarn? (We’re in the black hole here, folks, the tape’s saying 8.65″ one minute, 7.5″ the next.  You never know when she’ll pull out ahead of the crowd of stitches.)

Yes! She’s going for another round! And another! Look at that determination. And another! She’s got another skein coming if she thinks this one’s going down. Go go go!

Now, we’re heading into those last laps. It’s fair, isle say, to think she could put a plain round between every one of those decrease rounds and still have enough; what do you say? Looks like she’s going for it. GO GO GO! Almost there, almost there, allllllmoooooosttt…

…And she DID IT! With twelve grams left and a whopping twenty-five yards for the WIN!!!

Ever have your knitting all in a well-behaved queue, knowing exactly what you’re going to do next and what after that and all according to plan? And then have something in your stash leap onto your needles completely of itself and absolutely demand that no, you have to do what it says now.

Matter of fact you suddenly realize it has played loop the leap on you and has you all wrapped around its little needly fingers. And there you go.

Ever have a project, as you knit it in delighted unanticipated anticipation of the outcome, of the person you hope it’s going to make a difference to, tell you that it is THE prettiest, best thing you ever made ever? You argue with it, you know it’s silly, you cite examples–but it grins right back at you and tells you that you feel this way the most when you’re anticipating most happily on someone else’s behalf, and yes you felt like that two weeks ago on that Epiphany shawl (and it was true!) and on the and the and the but for all of that, why, yes, this IS it. The very best thing ever for this particular moment. Can’t wait to send it off.

Yes. I have definitely felt that way too.

Cheryl asked me yesterday if I had a lot of yarn, and I laughed and answered with a story on myself: the hot water heater once burst and flooded out the back of a closet where there was, ahem, more yarn tucked away–Richard knew about the stash in the family room closet…

But I’ve been thinking since then that although I was sheepish about it at the time that that happened, telling that tale that way wasn’t fair to my husband.  He has so often seen me find out about a need, someone who needed support just then, and seen me go to my stash and find what felt like just exactly the most perfect yarn to launch into for them and I go for it on the spot. Knitting is love made tangible. He has seen the joy. He has shared in that joy.

And I knew he got it, he really got it, 18 years ago when his sister, whose name was also Cheryl, was diagnosed with late non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He asked me if I would knit her something? And he insisted on coming along, driving me and our four kids across the Bay to the  now-gone Straw Into Gold store in Berkeley where the stock was immense, helping me pick out colors for her multi-colored vest. (There was no way I was going to feel sure I could get sleeves to fit from long distance, but a vest, that I could do.)

We wrapped her in our love together for eight more years.

I actually asked him just a few days ago, after a small cone arrived from Colourmart, if he minded how much yarn I had. (Side note to my fellow knitters: those come with mill oils that feel like dried hair mousse and the yarn must be hanked and scoured in soapy hot water, dried and balled before knitting, a lot of work and the missing steps that you pay for when you buy a yarn store yarn. But the cone was Zegna Baruffa, very soft, and the prices are what they are.)

He looked astonished. “No! That’s what makes you happy!”

Not just the collecting it, not the owning it, but the impish anticipation and then the moment in the recipient’s face (whether I get to see it or not) when it all comes together: every skein is a symbol of those moments. My job is to make them come to be in real life.

And this is true, too: the gift my lupus gives me is that it sits me down, especially on a bad day, and demands: KNIT.

So that it becomes no longer about me.

Robin wanted to knit her sister-in-law something, maybe a hat, or, say, fingerless gloves for walking the dog; we agreed to all meet up at Purlescence for yarn choosing.

I had shown her my qiviut project already, so I brought along a shawl I had started doing in Cascade Epiphany before putting it down to work on all the crazy-knitting I did for my family reunion.

I related to them the question I’d asked Kaye last night: “What would you say is the softest yarn in your shop?”

Kaye had thought hard a moment: “The Epiphany. That, and the Cashvera.” (The latter is heavier and part synthetic.)

The two sisters checked out both; Robin asked me questions. Yes, I’d made a hat using 70 stitches and knitting the Epiphany doubled; for a single-color hat (unlike mine), knit plain-ish, one skein should do it.

Robin’s sister-in-law, who isn’t a knitter, tried to resist being splurged on, and yet–she in a way returned the favor: she said how wonderful it surely would feel for Robin to have that yarn going between her hands as she worked with it, and it was clear she wanted for Robin to be able to enjoy that.

Can you just picture their smiles as they got in their car to go back to work? I got to see it. Purlescence now has two fewer skeins of that gorgeous royal blue.

And having paid all that attention to that yarn myself during all that, my needles had an Epiphany of their own for awhile after I got home. While they were checking out the shelves and the shop models, I’d worked out the kinks of the pattern I was putting together and had gotten past where I’d let it stump me previously.

And now I am making the leap into the unknown with the qiviut, too, from part one to part two: how will a yarn I have never used before look all dressed up in these laces? I’m finding out.

Larger-needled project and small, switching off as the hands tire of holding one or the other, a slow, lovely dance back and forth.

Begin the Beguine.

I did not know when I booked my trip that my aunt and uncle who live in Virginia were going to be flying in to Salt Lake City, where my folks now live, that very weekend–and that they would be joined by three of their children and their families for a celebration of their own. I hadn’t seen most of them since our big reunion for what would have been my grandfather’s 100th birthday in ’98.

I did know that there were cousins coming from my dad’s side that I hadn’t seen since my youngest was a preschooler. And that another uncle was turning 90; one of his daughters flew in from Florida for that get-together.

I did not know I was going to get to see a relative on my husband’s side who’s been fighting cancer; I hoped so, but I didn’t know. She was a good distance away; timing of treatments was an issue; I was not going to have a car.

But my son John and I did get to after all.

I got to see Abby, too–and to see her walking! With crutches, but her dad told me she’d walked a little without, too. And then told me, with her in the room, that she just *loves* it when he talks about her in front of her, totally calling himself on it like a good dad would: he saw her point of view and let her know he knew it and cared about her feelings while trying to fill me in so she wouldn’t have to explain everything to me.

I had introduced myself to her as the one who knit the purple hat.

Oh!

It was reunion after reunion, joy after joy, love held close, coming in a five-day-long stream rather than an exhausting all-and-then-nothing day. And I got to see my brothers, my sisters, my parents, and of course my youngest son, my nieces… The list goes on.

And to watch the news, rather a novelty now for this non-TV-owner. Remember my staring up at the new white stuff when, come on, guys, this was Memorial Day weekend? A skier on the screen was exulting that this was the best snow all season and the resort operator was saying they planned to keep the slopes open weekends till the Fourth of July.

That ski resort was where we held that big reunion, the slopes properly cool but summery, in August that year.

And–be still my heart. There was a sign telling people to watch out for falcons! http://wildlife.utah.gov/dwr/learn-more/peregrine-cam.html I’m just sorry I didn’t get a picture of the sign, much less the birds themselves.

My brother Bryan made a side trip to Arches National Park as part of his vacation and showed us the photos he took; one was of an antelope. An antelope!?

He smiled the happiest smile, affirming, “An antelope.”

Wow.

I got to see a striking black-and-white magpie, long tail flicking, landing on top of the low stone wall alongside the cemetery where our grandparents are buried. And a dead fox near the airport.

Bryan wins.

Now, if only he’d followed it around looking for any shed winter undercoat for my spinning wheel… G’wan, go back, bro, you know you want to…

Michelle picked me up at the airport this afternoon. It was so good to see her again. There’s nothing like family. We drove home, the post-seasonal rain gradually letting go; we walked in the door, I looked out the window, wondering–

–nothing around. So still. So unusual. (So much food available around here this time of year whether we provide any or not, so while I was gone, the others did not.)

I walked into the family room.

Immediately two towhees hopped in perfect tandem onto the wooden box.

Okay, I got the message. I’ll unpack in a moment. I went out and filled the feeders and one of the little Bewick’s wrens didn’t even wait for me to go back inside before it swooped around, singing loud and close enough by that I actually heard a few notes: Hey everybody! Feederfiller’s back!

It was like a Disney movie in slow motion. A few at first, then more and more, crescendoing till about two hours later, the whole crew was back. And more: a female scarlet tanager flew in, a bird I’ve only seen once and that was a year ago. I went Oh wow! out loud and scared it right off.

They hadn’t gone totally unfed; I’d succeeded in hanging a suet cake long side up where the squirrels couldn’t get it but so that the wrens could stand on it the way they liked to, without having to hang off the sides.  I saw the titmice working at it in twos, too, then chickadees: clearly, that idea had worked well.  And it wasn’t quite empty. Yet.

I put more in there, too.

It was the same old birds, for the most part, but in my absence some of their patterns had changed. It was fascinating to watch, not that I had much time to spend doing so.

A pattern of mine had changed, too, one of avoiding the project that would not be frogged: I hauled out a kid mohair UFO before the trip, abandoned ten years now, a shawl. At 16×50″ it is now nearly done and my seatmate and the stewardess raved over the soft cloud of lace.

I wonder who it finally needed to be done for.  I do know that memories of that trip and of all that love are knitted into nearly all its stitches.

Now she has it–now I can say it.

My friend Chan, whom I’ve not yet met in person–we tried last time I was back East but we didn’t quite pull it off–listened to me agonizing over knitting that cotton chemo cap I made for the in-law who does not wish to be named (there are two, actually, and their diagnoses were three days apart; it was not a fun week. Only one wanted a cap.) It was so terribly slow in the making–my hands could only handle a few rows a day. Cotton just has no give to it.

Chan made the trek to her not-close yarn store after carefully asking me about colors and came home with some very soft cotton yarn. No, she would not let me pay her back for it. Yes, she was determined she was going to do this, for a woman she’d never heard of before. (And isn’t that just the coolest construction?)

I got an email this morning from the recipient, exclaiming over her new hat, saying it fits well, saying how perfect it is as their weather has been getting hot, and saying that she believes that knitters are loving people.

My words are terribly inadequate but they’re what I’ve got: thank you, Chan. Thank you for being  in this life thing together with us. We feel very blessed.

Wait, what on earth was…? (Consulted Sibley, Google.) I tried several times to get its picture and failed.

Remember my male junco/female house finch couple last year? Turns out they do occasionally mate and rear hybrid offspring.

There’s nothing else it could have been. Curious.  Given that it was molting a bit but only on one side, I’m assuming it’s a yearling from that coupling last year.

I saw it come in three times today. It was small, like its father; it stayed on the ground and never flew up to the feeder, again like the junco.  It was bolder than either parent’s species, perfectly willing to scoot under the wooden box for the bit of food I put under there for the wrens in the mornings so that they don’t get bullied away by the bigger birds, a place where normally only the wrens go . There was room for it to stand upright, too, just barely, and the towhees and finches never do more than a nervous reach and grab with their beaks while standing as far outside as they can manage.

But this one, having been different from the others on the patio from its first moment, didn’t mind doing the job properly of taking care of life, even if it meant thinking underside the box. The best food is worth the effort!  It danced out a moment later with its prize, then hopped back in fearlessly for more. Cool.

What would you name such a bird?

Meantime, the Malabrigo Rios watchcap in a dark Solis colorway is done; it took 46 g of the 100g skein. On to the next project!