Finished that project, blocked it, wound a hank of Malabrigo, went looking for my other size 5s for it…

And found the second pair in a UFO.

Abandoned projects are often handy things when you want knitted gifts fast. I looked it over, saw what had stopped me, figured out a work-around, and an hour later, bam! Done! New FO!

That one had just needed a little motivation, is all.  Wish I could do everything that fast.  (Casting on…)

So many people to knit for all the sudden. Two weeks. No idea re favorite colors. The result today was my spending way too much time dithering: this yarn? (Digging through bins.) No, this? Started to wind one–no, that won’t do, not soft enough. My friend Robin sympathized with the dilemma and I guess that’s all I really needed: some other knitter who knew well what it was like.

And with that I grabbed the odd skein of royal baby alpaca that I’d knit two congresswomen’s hats out of , declined to be bored with it, and started in on it, figuring red was good for a lot of people and supersoft was great for pretty much everybody.

No way will I be able to do all that I want to do in the time that I have, but I’m far happier doing what I can do.

And Michelle at last saw a raptor above the house today. My camera zoomed outside.

In today’s patio news: you remember yesterday’s was curses, foiled again. And that Pam vegetable spray had apparently become tasty as well as entertaining.

I discovered that my parchment (porch-meant?) baking paper, which is silicon-coated, is quite wide, enough so that a single long sheet could wrap all the way around that pole up and down. Tape of course wouldn’t stick directly to it, but I could wrap it tight around corset-style, half a dozen places. Worked just fine. You could see the squirrels checking it out, grumbling under their breath.

In other news.

A line for Don’s list: I wondered if morning was ever going to come, and then it dawned on me.

I was trying to figure out the math on a pattern today after being awake from 4-6 am. Note to self: don’t spend an hour whining that you don’t want to get up–when the bag breaks, the cradletime will fall, get to it before it does skin damage. But you don’t think clearly at that hour.

Richard drove my tired self to Purlescence tonight. He’s a peach. (And while there I finally got something useful and working right out of my day with that pattern working out the way I’d envisioned; it felt good.)

Penny was there, hoping I would show up. When I did, late, she stood up, wrapped her new shawl around her shoulders wanting me to see how absolutely perfect it was, and then wrapped her arms around me in the most heartfelt embrace. She told me that when her Richard had brought it home last week, “I was just…stunned!” And she hugged me again. And again, a few more times. She looked radiant.

I know I shouldn’t need that kind of gift in return for knitting something nice for someone. But I have to tell you–it sure helps me cope with the dumb stuff better. And it sure motivates me to go knit for another someone else.

I do have a fair amount of yarn squirreled away to work with.

A new picture of my grandson Parker–he smiles now! And here’s what he looked like about the time we saw him two months ago.

So here’s the shawl story.

A few months ago I was at Knit Night when Sandi, one of the owners of Purlescence, handed me a bag of yarn and said quietly, “You’ll know what to do with this.”

Four skeins of sparkly Kidsilk Night and some Fino baby alpaca/silk laceweight to match.

I near-instantly did–all I had to do was glance around the room and see Penny in her soft shade of purple, her favorite color: Penny is one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet. It would be so cool to get to surprise her with something and blame it all on our mutual good friend.

I got Sandi to the far side of the room a little later, knowing that my idea of what other people can hear or not is always a little shaky but I gave it a try; I wanted to make sure she thought it was the right choice for what was, really, her yarn.

She was thrilled. Perfect!

Between chemo caps and all kinds of other things with more of a deadline, it waited. That and, I kept swatching cool new lace ideas using other yarns, wanting to make the most bestest perfectest wow-iest shawl ever, not wanting to waste the Kidsilk but not knowing how it would look in it either, then. You can’t frog Kidsilk–whatever you do, that’s what it is.

So in the end I decided enough with this indecision and went with lace patterns I already knew well, and it was the right choice.  It’s perfect.

Sandi was again thrilled tonight as I handed the finished shawl around the room. Penny wasn’t there, though; she had a cold and she was being careful not to share it. But her husband, who spins and weaves, did come, and after his turn holding it up and admiring it he stood up and came over, holding it out.

“What are you giving that back to me for?”

I looked at him steadily as I said that.  He did a doubletake. I got the delight of watching it dawn in his face and then to see the joy in his eyes as he suddenly looked forward to sharing it with his beloved wife when he got home. I got a glimpse of the deep love that defines who that good man is.

I could not have asked for better than that. I felt almost an intruder in the moment, and blessed for it. I owe him my thanks.

Later in the evening, another couple came in, new parents who’d gone through the process of becoming certified to be foster parents, who were surprised instead with a call by their social worker offering them a newborn for adoption. Which is what they’d most wanted but never dared dream for.

I got to meet their new daughter tonight. Six pounds something is just so tiny. And so perfect. And they are so in love with her!

As were we all all around the room.

Y’know, she might need a tiny hat or something… (Superwash, superwash. Well, I know I’ve got some in blue…!)

1. The little silk chemo cap I made arrived where it was going and I received a note from my beautiful relative along with a picture of her wearing it. She made my day.

2. I wrote a little while back about Sue Nelson and XRX’s fundraiser to help pay her medical expenses: they were raffling off their Great American Afghan, a part of their company’s history, in hopes of her being able to continue her experimental treatment for her cancer.

The winner of that raffle was announced tonight. And Angela Tennant, the winner, had one request.

That the afghan be given to Sue as a comfort and a get-well wish, helping her feel warmed in body and spirit.

I don’t know Angela Tennant, but this I can say: tonight she declared herself a friend to us all.

A day of numbers and budget and paperwork and just plain having to be  a grownup.

Oh, and in case anybody other than me is curious, here’s the abstract of the paper on why prednisone doesn’t work on lupus patients like me (with thanks to my daughter Sam for the link).

I took a break, cranked up the music, sat down and knit. For several hours. Watching something new coming to be in my hands in a color not usually my favorite, but because I know how much the person getting it is going to like it, it can be my favorite for just this little while–that familiar happy anticipation was just what the day needed.

I can’t wait till I can wrap it around her shoulders!

Happy Birthday, Michelle! The sky threw confetti flakes on the day of your birth in celebration!

Yesterday and today were General Conference, wherein members of the Mormon Church can listen to their leaders speaking. One of them, Jeffrey Holland, said that they do not assign topics nor coordinate talks between themselves, rather, they each pray for guidance and for their listeners as well as themselves and take it forward from there.

It’s interesting, but it is a bit of a knitting marathon while we watch four two-hour sessions together over the ‘Net over the two days. Yesterday’s got that Malabrigo hat finished.

Today’s, a new chemo cap for an in-law. I’d forgotten that in my stash was some Rowan Pure Silk DK tucked away, bought on closeout at Purlescence, the only way really I could afford it.

I got it about a year ago, well before her diagnosis, on the grounds that I had no pure silk yarn in my stash, there are a lot of allergic people in the world, and at some point it could well be exactly what I needed even if I had no particular reason for it just then. The color was nice but it was going to be for someone else. There were three skeins on the table, and I hesitated; two seemed the right number for no reason I knew. Three would make a shawlette but that just didn’t feel like quite…somehow…

Two it was.

I can usually talk myself out of that sort of unplanned purchase, but this seemed important.

And then I simply forgot about it.

I found them recently, totally surprised at what was inside the bag–where did I?  Oh! I remember! And I had an allergic in-law whose hair and recent chemo round had not played friends.

And yet Thursday I again did not remember that silk; I grabbed the Malabrigo on impulse while wondering what I was forgetting, and ran out the door.

Had I thought of it then, the Malabrigo hat would never have come to be, and I’m very very grateful it did.

So now tomorrow, just as soon as it would have been anyway, one new silk hat will be in the mail to that good woman to cheer her up amid all that’s going on right now. We talked to her between Conference sessions; light lavender? She loves light lavender!

And meantime, in the entirely silly news department, the new and obnoxious leader-of-the-pack squirrel I mentioned that taunted the hawk taunted me today: all the others know, you do not touch Feederfiller’s feeder and you do not climb the wooden pole next to it. I have them trained.

But this big newcomer not only leaps at the feeder, shaking out just enough to encourage it, but today it hung onto the pole at the jumpoff spot, marking and announcing its territory for all to see that it and it alone claimed this prize.  Mine! Sunbathing vertically right there.

It kept its eyes on the other side of the pole away from the house. That way I couldn’t see it. It was so proud and so sure this was so that it utterly ignored me as I opened the door and raised the supersoaker.

Can you just hear the screaming tantrum of THAT’S NOT FAIR!!! as it tore down that pole and across the yard and didn’t come back the rest of the evening? While another happily took its place and, with perfect black-glove manners, gleaned falling seeds from the birds above for as long as it wanted?

By the sweet challah pattern on thy brow shalt thou greet thy braid all the days of thy life.

I was looking at the spreadsheet this evening for Warm Hats Not Hot Heads and was dismayed to find that nobody had signed up for Jackie Speier.

Jackie Speier is a hero to me. Until her speech, I had no idea Congress was trying to criminalize a procedure that not only is used on abortions but also when a woman is miscarrying a long-wanted and hoped-for child, as happened in her case, in order to protect her health so that no infection or massive scarring sets in that would keep her from being able to conceive in the future.

Wait. You mean the–wait–I had a miscarriage at nearly four months! And they want doctors not to know how to take care of women who *want* to have their children?! Wherever one may stand on abortion, those complications are what mine told me were a possibility if things were left to fester unattended. My loved, wanted baby had already passed away out of this life, just not out of me.

Speier was shot and left for dead while trying to help rescue her boss’s constituents during the Jim Jones/Guyana massacre. And when she spoke up back when she was in the state legislature about just what these men here were talking about banning, medically, back then too, and what she had endured with the loss of a baby she and her husband had tried so hard to have, one responded with, “Jim Jones should have finished the job.”

Wow.

That, in the commission of a crime, would have qualified as an enhancement under the hate speech laws.

She did manage to get pregnant again; she was expecting when her husband was killed by a driver who had no brakes and thought he could make it to work anyway. She’s been raising her children as a widow. She has persevered.

Speier represents the folks in San Bruno and has been holding PG&E’s feet to the fire more than anyone else. When they say that no, they didn’t know there were any welding flaws in the pipeline that blew up–there were 150 just in that section–and then say with a straight face that there couldn’t possibly be any more anywhere, she tells them, I don’t believe you. Do the work you must do to make these lines safe. Lives are at stake.

That same pipeline runs about 500 feet or less from my house, between two gas stations. Go Jackie go.

If ever there was someone I wanted to stand with, hat in hand, pressing Congress for accountability for their words and respectfulness towards one another’s life experiences in all things, she wins.

I have a lovely, soft yarn that was bought at a store I think in her district. I’m knitting it for her as fast as I can.

Yesterday morning, dark o’clock:

Me: “So am I going on this trip by myself or are you coming with me?” (Sometimes my husband is difficult to wake up in the mornings. Sometimes, I am.)

Him: (leaping out of bed, suddenly awake at last.)

So we hit the road later than planned. Got to security, had the boarding passes, went to pull out my wallet and ID.

No wallet.

Me, wondering: so is he going to go on this trip by himself, or am I coming with him?

He spared me the sun exposure to run back to the car himself to see if it had fallen out of my purse there. That, and, I don’t run too fast and there truly was no time to spare. I plunked down, just out of the way of the people coming up the stairs there at San Jose’s new terminal as I searched again for the wallet I already knew wasn’t in there because I’d already taken nearly everything out of my purse and my knitting bag.

A clearly pregnant young woman was very sympathetic when I, feeling rather in the way, half-apologized: I was supposed to be going to see my first grandchild for the first time but…

Did she pray for me? I don’t know. I do know that my husband is not the go-to guy when you want a missing thing found.

He found it! (I wish I could somehow tell her to thank her for her kindness, whoever she was.)

The security guy saw him coming back and waved us to the front and got us immediately through his part. Thank you San Jose Airport security.

Remember how I say I don’t read knitting charts well with my head injury, that the x’s  just bounce around? Yeah, and so I headed us to the gate one shy of the one we were supposed to go to. Richard, stressed, read the leaving time there and the relative lack of people and pronounced, “It’s 8:40. We’ve missed our flight.”

I stared at him disbelieving and in my fatigue could only exclaim, in the protest of a small child, “Is not!”

Is not indeed. Next gate. We got there after the boarding line had formed but just before the fliers filed on. Too close, way too close. We are not morning people and it showed.

And from there on out it was all wonderful. I finished Kim’s soft Malabrigo hat in the air and she later pronounced the colorway perfect.  Our son picked us up in his in-laws’ car: his wife had needed a break from the snow and cold and some time to decompress at home, showing off the baby to her friends and family, and so they were blessing the baby in her parents’ ward.

To say we fell utterly in love at first sight, even more than we ever did before via pictures and Skype, would be a vast understatement that anyone who’s ever seen their own child or grandchild for the first time would understand instantly. Parker is perfect. And when he looked in our eyes, his new ones a little wobbly from each other, our hearts were claimed forever and we knew each other as if he had already been in our family always.

Soft words and gentle rocking when he was screaming tired, and he settled down in my arms and drifted, quieting, to sleep. Bliss.

His other grandmother fed us and the other relatives who came and the brunch was beautiful, delicious, and carefully done within the realm of my ability–I can see why our daughter-in-law is such a nice person–and then we were off to church for the baby blessing. Kim waited till Parker was about to be taken up to the stand before wrapping him up in that lace christening blanket I’d brought with me, just to make sure it was pristine in the moment it came for.

Babies being only human.

In some ways.

Kim and her whole family were very generous in letting us have cuddle time, and I remember as a new mom how hard it was not to snatch my baby back to hold mine to myself. She got to see how tenderly her father-in-law cradled and snuggled him, and I loved her observing and learning more about where her own husband had gotten his tender touch from.

After the blessing, with the rest of the service continuing on, my Richard held Parker for awhile and then offered me a turn. Kim’s mother’s close friend, sitting on the other side of me, clearly so ached to hold him too that I knew that as the visiting grandmother the highest gift I could offer her was some of my limited time with him–and that she knew it too, though the only words spoken were a, “Would you like to hold him?” and an “Oh of course!” whispered back with such intense wishing and gratitude.

And then I got to see how much this dear woman loved my grandson, very much as if he were her own.

What more could I ask for him to have in his life? My son married into a good family with good friends and we are fortunate to be gathered into their circle. Kim is just the best.

Her mom fed us dinner, too, we visited, we rocked Parker some more, and then we were back to the airport and on our way. I started a new hat…

I took no pictures. Our son has a better camera than mine and he took many and I am happy to wait to see them. But we will both carry forever the pictures in our minds of that beautiful, beautiful baby boy, surrounded on all sides, as were we, by love.

We walked back again down that long terminal. Exit: stage left. Back to our car in the night, and my door had been caught all day on something in Richard’s haste to get back to me. I wondered if the battery was dead or if the Prius was sufficiently protected from losing power that way. Were we going on this last leg of the trip with our car, or not?

It carried us on our way just fine.

I made it through the first meeting of church today. I had a plan.

It didn’t quite go that way.

I recently gave someone new there a baby alpaca lace scarf as a welcome; in conversation, I found out she had two daughters.

I asked a mutual acquaintance, since I’d never laid eyes on the kids, and he told me the teenager likes dark colors, the younger one, rainbow. Bright.

Sharp eye for a guy, I thought; I was impressed.

So the last pink sparkly cashmere hat was to go to the nine-year-old. As for her sister, I knew just the thing.

But this morning as I went to pull that waiting blue scarf for the teen out of its ziploc, something wouldn’t let me. It just wasn’t it. But I…! Nope.  Just wasn’t.

Huh. Okay, I’ve learned not to argue with that feeling, even if I wish it would explain itself. But then, what then?

Going through ziplocs, I found a baby alpaca lace scarf I couldn’t quite place. But it instantly felt right. Curious. I took it out, examining the pattern and the soft hand of it. Yes. Okay, then, and I put it with the hat and took them to church, touching both of them as little as possible and trying not to breathe on anybody.

That scarf was from yarn I’d hand-dyed awhile ago, as a matter of fact, it’s a remnant of one of the overdyed balls shown with the original light blue color at the center in my “Wrapped in Comfort” book.

I remembered later: I had taken it out several months ago, looked it over, and thought it would look great on someone Hispanic. I didn’t have anyone in mind but it became my carry-around project for those odd moments, eventually bugging me because it simply didn’t get finished but rather kept nagging me in my purse with no sense of accomplishment–because it had no intended recipient to motivate me.

So I finally simply sat myself down one day, probably around November, and spent hours on it till it was a length that pleased me. There. Done!

Now it just needed someone with coloring to match it.

And then I totally forgot it existed.

Yes, they’re Hispanic. Yes, the color would look perfect on any of them.

But then no, I didn’t see them at church. So much for that.

I was fading and asked Richard to take me home. First, though, I saw the person who’d told me about their color preferences and handed him the ziploc, despite his hesitancy, saying, he would see the mom before I would, here, you take it.

As we were getting in the car, two more meetings yet to go inside, guess who walked past us on their way in.

I explained why I was leaving and told them what was waiting inside for them and who had them as the grins on all three of their faces got bigger and bigger.

I could just picture the moment inside right after that, the glow spilling over onto the person left holding the bag.  And probably anybody else around.

Sometimes the plans are bigger than mine.

An old friend whom I’ve known since college has of late been a visiting professor in a country not known for its journalistic openness.

And thus my stunned staring at his vacation abroad photos he recently posted after leaving there. Talk about spring break.  Duuuuude.

I didn’t say it, but someone else did, and he answered, yes, that was him and his wife on camels near the Pyramids. Last Friday.  They had no idea.

Wow.  We have it so easy in the US.

So.

I started a new soft wool hat tonight–it seems to be a trend–and looked again at the spreadsheet Ellen set up: even though constantly checking there is like watching stitches grow on sock-size needles, it’s–like watching stitches grow!  In qiviut! Cool! Forty-four hats this afternoon, 49 now as I type this with 2 extra at the bottom there–I cannot tell you how thrilling it is to see each new one show up. Thank you thank you everyone.

And there was one so far for an entire state, being offered up by a member of one particular Congressional district there in Arizona, for the one person in thoughts of whom all this began to come about:

For Gabrielle Giffords.

Blockage: clearingnowohthankgoodness. Cold: from me to Richard and back. It surprises me as if it were all something new–which is a good sign, I like being used to being well.

But I needed not to feel sorry for myself so I finished another hat (my Congressional hats being done.)  Then I made good headway on some lace in the Grape Hyacinth colorway from Abstract Fibers and found that just looking at it puts me in that familiar, magical place where I feel like I’ve never knit anything so pretty in my life. They do nice work.

Thank you Kim and Richard-the-younger for the Parker pictures. Stop the germs, we want to go hold him!

Does anyone else find themselves wishing they could knit hats for everybody in Egypt? I wish and hope the best for them and thank them for their peaceful efforts; they are representing themselves well to the world. I’m holding my breath and fervently hoping they’ll get to do so in their government too.

We are so blessed.

Here at home, there is now a Ravelry group at http://www.ravelry.com/groups/warm-hats-not-hot-heads for the campaign to knit hats for our Congresspeople and there will be a Facebook group soon.  If anyone feels so inclined, please, feel free, spread the word on your blog or your knitting group or wherever. If you knit a hat for your congressperson, please shoot an email to Ellen, here if you would; we’re hoping for Feb. 28th as a deadline to get them all shipped by, en masse would be great but if you want to sooner, more power to you. Sending it to your representative’s local office works well, in person even better; the whole idea is to make it feel as personal as possible to them.

Those who tell Ellen so she can put it on her spreadsheet, by whatever moniker you want for yourself there, will be the ones I’ll be able to know about for sure: because when this is all done, I told her that as my thank you I’d like to draw a name and send out an autographed copy of “Wrapped in Comfort: Knitted Lace Shawls” to that knitter, wishing I could do it for everybody. I know, I don’t need to bribe anybody, so many people are already simply diving in and doing this without feeling the need to tell about it, but I’d like to be able to do something by way of thanks to those who do.

Ellen and I talked on the phone tonight, and someone she knew had gone from, I could never knit for…!, to, I need to knit for them. Don’t I. Yes.

And so I told her the story of a nursing assistant in the hospital during my first severe Crohn’s flare in ’03 who was just an angry person, consistently and bewilderingly mean to her patients–just angry. I wondered why on earth, at that time of all times, I had to be stuck dealing with her. Her accent was thick, my brain equally so in my illness on top of my hearing loss; we were not a good match.

And then a few days into this I found myself wondering what it must be like to be her. Or what got her that way.  What is it like at home for her? Where is her family, what are they like?

That stopped me, and I said a prayer for her: not completely willingly, and apologizing to God for that, but this much at least I could try to do. Please bless her? (So I don’t have to?)

The next time she walked in my hospital room, though, what happened was definitely not sweetness and light: I beat her to it and immediately snapped at her. The one time she had done nothing to deserve it, I just didn’t want her in my room just then, I’d had enough.

And she, instead of yelling back or defending herself, suddenly looked deeply sad. She spun on her heel and was gone.

I felt TERRIBLE. That was so not what I had prayed for, my stars!

The next time she walked in the room it was by coincidence a step behind when her boss did, a nurse who was one of my favorites, and I grabbed my chance: I said to the woman, in front of her boss, “Thank you.”

(Say what?! on her face.)

“You came in here and I snapped your head off and you were kind to me. I did not deserve that. Thank you.” Because I knew that for her, that was the best she could have done and she did it.

After she left I said to her boss, “I’m so glad I got to say that to her in front of you.”

And the boss, a dear woman, answered with a glance to the door to make sure we were alone, “Me too!”

That nursing assistant completely changed. The next time she came in I honestly didn’t recognize her, her face was so different. She looked radiant! She had finally seen herself through someone else’s eyes in a better light.

I later knitted a lace stole in the boss’s favorite color and several more things for quite a few more people there; and I knitted a hat in case I might see that nursing assistant, whose name I never did know–she’d tended to keep her badge turned over, I always guessed so that people wouldn’t be able to complain about her by name.

I didn’t see her but she saw me down the hall when I came back for that visit. She ran down the hall and she *threw* her arms around me with great emotion. She had no idea yet about the hat. No language barriers. Friends, in the deepest sense of the word; she wept, and I knew then that what I had done had meant everything to her.

I said to Ellen, Now, can you imagine if I had NOT made her anything while I was handing out my handknits? Thank heavens I did. Thank heavens I knit that hat.

Ellen said, “It made all the difference to you, too, then, didn’t it?”

Oh you bet. Oh, honey. It was one of the most important things I ever made.

If I type fast enough I might be able to get back to the needles in time to finish that third, last, pink sparkly cashmere hat tonight. The yarn is almost gone and the rows are almost done.

A house finch (ironic, that), was probably artfully isolated from its flock and was fleeing the Cooper’s hawk at full speed when it hit the window.  Boom! It died instantly.

I turned at the sound, one I rarely hear anymore, but my motion startled the hawk out of its lunch and I caught just a glimpse of the banded tail as it went off through the merest opening in the trees. Mad flying skillz: I haz them.

Oh well, it won’t have to expend much energy to retrieve its meal at the pick-up window, I thought.

Says me. The squirrel didn’t get the memo. I saw it dashing up my tree with its fast food carry-out a few minutes later, running as fast as it could as far as it could to get away from anything that might steal its happy meal with the prize inside.

Yes, they do eat birds, it’s the catching them that’s why you just don’t see it. It continued far, far down the telephone wire as I watched, outraged, thinking, you don’t even live here and you steal my birds’ food? I mourned the little red finch.

That did it. I fled. If I’m getting ticked off at the wildlife for being what they are it’s time to put me around people and friends and take a deep breath from everything that has nothing to do with squirrels or birds–Purlescence, here I come.

What a relief.  I plunked down on the floor there, trying to keep out of the stream of sunlight from the door, grabbed the yarn Kaye and Sandi had gifted me with on Thursday, and cast on.

Pamela’s granddaughter, age 3, smiled at me and waved hi shyly. Totally charmed me.

It felt like a long time since I’d knit a lace shawl. It felt so good. Something familiar, something new. Kidsilk Night–never worked with it before–with Alpaca Fino, slightly lighter, making the silk look even shinier, the combination Sandi’s idea. I’m not a glitter person but this project could change my mind.

The yoke is finished now and it’s one of those moments where you look at your knitting and think wow, have I ever made anything this pretty before?

And here’s the funny thing: it’s gray, smog gray.  It’s not my color.  And yet. There have been a few times when I’ve knitted something whose color I normally didn’t like but that I knew that the person it was for did, that while I knitted it with them in my mind, wrapping wool around wood for them personally with each stitch, it was the most beautiful thing in the world to me then. And to them, too, when they got it.

But did I want to knit up the leftover yarn afterwards, all that oh-so-beautiful yarn I’d been loving?

Nope. No real appeal. Totally gone from me the moment the project was given away, back to just not my color. But for the time that it needed to be, it was the best one in the world to my eyes and in my hands.

As this is. I can’t wait.

(Ed. to add by the light of the morning: it’s dove gray, the color of the bird of peace.)