At least I’m pretty sure it was.

I knit three hats and part of a cowl on that trip. Two hats had a spiral pattern, one was plain–but the yarn! Gorgeous. Mecha in Indonesia.

The wheelchair pusher and I were starting down the hallway to baggage and I exclaimed in delight, They’ve finally enclosed that!

A few yards later–Oh. No they haven’t.

Why they built that walkway with a chain link wall open to the nighttime temps I do not know. One thing I do know, that young woman got the prettiest hat of all because it was also the warmest.

The New York Times had an article on how to talk at Thanksgiving to people that you want to get to know better–basically, that you want to hear something positive from. Mercifully, it did not directly reference Nov. 5th.

One could ask things like, Who is someone you only ever saw once who made a difference?

It was a year ago, wasn’t it? We were flying into Seattle. The woman next to me was studying my hands as I knit, every motion–affirming when I caught her eye that she had long wanted to learn how.

She lived in San Diego. Her son, an adult now, lived in Seattle. She was so proud of him; she missed him so much.

She admitted late in the flight that he had offered to take her the next day to shop for a hat. It was going to be quite cold and she simply didn’t own one. She’d gotten the jacket in time at least.

Which matched the hat on my needles. I scrambled to finish it and work the ends in before we landed and I did it. I did it. They could enjoy their time together without having to work through crowds and cashiers and all that if they didn’t want to.

She is the one who made so much of a difference to me.

Every time I see the Mecha skeins in the store now, I think of her deep appreciation and want the next person to be that thrilled. With the colors, with the soft wool, with being thought of and found knitworthy.

I want to ask her if she ever took those knitting lessons, to revel in her successes. I hope that she gets to experience from someone else how she had blessed me.

A week ago, needing a new carry-around project now that the baby blanket was too big for that, what landed on my needles was yet another boring old plain washable wool Mecha hat. It’s like type O- blood: the universal donor.

I finished knitting it a few minutes ago and I’m about to start another. Even around here, a warm hat on a cold day can make all the difference to someone.

Maybe she’ll fly to see her son this year, too.

It was going to bug me till I did it, so I did it. I went to the cast-on row, picked up the first stitch, then the second, slipped the first over the second, pick up cast on cast off across, and so reinforced the beginning of the baby afghan.

Little hands do hard pulls. It needed to be ready.

A little potato chip knitting for the day. Arroyo yarn, a dk washable merino from Malabrigo, needles US 6. Started out as 10 st per repeat, now 11, may become 12 for the last third if I feel like it.

Had I stuck with the game of yarn chicken I would have come up short halfway through the last row with nothing for the cast off, unless I used that slightly mismatched third of a ball.

So instead I used the new skein for that very short bit, wondered how that last of the original ones had turned into Super Skein! Able to leap large gauges with a single bound! (almost)! and had a good laugh at myself.

And yeah the shading wanders around a bit; I figure that’s a plus when you’re trying to put an older baby to bed and they’re not falling immediately asleep. Gives them something interesting to look at quietly.

I’m really really happy with it.

If college students can pull all-nighters can knitters claim all-day-ers?

It wasn’t quite that, but close. It’s not finished, but close.

That inner debate as to whether it needed the seventh repeat? Looking at it almost done, I’d say it’s not even close. That one’s definitely a yes.

That was the question I wanted to ask.

So.

That third of a ball: in the sunlight, it just wasn’t enough of a match.

(Tap tap tap.) Yarn store number one in that color: zero inventory.

Yarn store number two: three skeins. It was a long way to go to check dye lots for that little of a chance.

Yarn store number three, and the one I’d most want to go to anyway even though it’s a trek. I knew I would have to call to find out, but Kathryn has a lovely deep voice that is easier to hear than most on the phone.

Rios in Ravelry Red? Wait just a minute while I go check. …Lots!

So I gathered up my project, my last skein attached, and headed to Cottage Yarns. Where they don’t have space for classes or gatherings because there’s just too much yarn to squeeze them in. Wasn’t it Mae West who said, “Too much of a good thing is wonderful”?

They had a full bag all ready for me when I got there. I explained that mine was a couple years old and I knew Malabrigo tends to shift the shades slightly from year to year so it was a bit of a long shot.

They were a bit too pink. Mine was more on the orange side.

How about this bag?

Oh, much closer, and I almost bought two of those but then Kathryn’s husband found three skeins that had found their way into a bag with another color altogether (so that they would stand out and could be found while staying mothproofed) and once again stepping out into the sunlight and back under the store lights for comparison, that was what I wanted.

Meantime, while I was focusing on that, the shop’s phone rang.

He went off to wind the two balls for me while she was answering the call, which didn’t take long.

They wanted to know, she told me, trying really hard not to laugh because everybody’s a beginner at the beginning and sometimes non-knitters buy presents. Did we have any red yarn?

Just, red yarn.

Why I usually do short repeats when my amount of yarn is limited, but I didn’t this time–I like that tree motif, I wasn’t ready to quit doing it. Besides, it’s a pun: red woods.

So I thought I’d run the math by him.

Me: See, I’ve used 33 g of the current 100 g and done 15 rows for it so that means I get 45 rows per skein. Maybe 46. It’s 38 rows per motif repeat. I have a full skein after this plus 33 g, left over from Ryan’s baby’s blanket, I started those 15 rows at four rows into leaf set #5, and I want seven sets of leaves. And I bought the yarn–how old is Margo now? Two and a half?–so matching that shade of Ravelry Red would be hard. Do I have enough to do that full last motif?

The resident computer scientist: Your what hurts? No seriously, you’re breaking my brain here. What?

Well, hey, I thought that was all pretty straightforward, but then knitting requires being good at math.

Heh.

Actually, I think that means I’d come up 5 g short plus the cast-off. Alright, let’s see how it blocks out to after the sixth set. Which I’m about to start. (And yes, the eye prefers odd numbers visually. Maybe shorter trees on top for the seventh?)

—

Edit: I just finished the fifth repeat plus a purl row and weighed the yarn: 175 g total left. If 100g=45 rows, then 175g=78.75 rows, two motifs are 38×2=76 rows, plus the castoff. And preferably a purl row beforehand. So: maybe?

I have not yet blocked the moose afghan. Yes a little water would make the lace trees (especially the smaller ones at the top) lie more perfectly flat, and it would also add a bit to the height of the blanket–but then spinning the water out in the washing machine would encourage little wool-hair-ends to fly free. Yes Rios fuzzes out a bit but not in pills thankfully, and being super wash treated it doesn’t shrink.

It’s just, I like the thing how it is.

And so I’ve procrastinated adding that water to the point that I don’t really think I have time to fully dry it if I do. And I’m not about to miss the chance to hand-deliver it.

I was musing, as the first skein ended at the second row of trees and I connected the next: this is the color of their car.

I figure when it’s the color they picked to present themselves to the world beyond their windshield, it’s a pretty safe bet they’ll like it.

And then I remember with bemusement the gold minivan of long ago that was the last one on the lot of that model on the last day of the year so the dealer was willing to cut the price to keep from having to pay inventory tax into the next year on it. It was okay enough; we took it. Remember when Chrysler minivans were infamous for bad transmissions? Maybe it wasn’t such a deal.

But a red electric car? That’s not a last-minute Iococaccamobile, that’s a point of pride in taking care of our children’s futures.

Let me speed this thing up a bit, shall I?

We have neighbors moving in next door in November. They have a baby.

The way to make proud parents of an eight month old feel welcome in the neighborhood where they know nobody, where they plan to raise their child–I checked. Yes I had enough of that Rios. Put aside the coral/fish for now, this is more important.

More trees, this time in Ravelry Red Rios. After all, you want to encourage the kid to join the knitting community when they get older, right?

And you want the parents to be able to throw that wool in the wash without worrying about what the neighbors will think.

Here you go.

It’s not yet blocked; the lace will relax and the trees open up the moment the water touches it and it will extend lengthwise somewhat. Right now I’m getting 59″ W x 64″ L.

The whole thing was a doodle of our childhoods for my brother. The pick-your-own farms we went to as kids. (I seriously considered how to knit strawberries into those furrowed rows but knew I didn’t have enough of that years-old lighter green to constantly be carrying it behind the berries, so I decided they weren’t ripe yet. Because I’m the knitter and I said so.)

There’s also a nod to Moose Mountain Provincial Park in Canada, where we were stuck for two weeks as we waited for a part for our camping trailer to be shipped in so it could be repaired so we could continue on our cross-countries trip the summer I was ten. I will never forget the sound our volleyball made when it landed in the grill. Hissssssss as it pancaked flat…. But what a glorious place to be marooned.

And the radio that was running a contest: winner would get a week’s vacation in Regina, Saskatchewan. Second place would get two weeks’ vacation in Regina, and my folks howled: just what were they trying to tell us about Regina?

That was the trip where my mom taught me how to knit to keep me too busy to fight with my little sister in the far back of the car. It didn’t entirely take immediately but I think we came out okay on that one.

Last week on my knitting group Zoom I asked opinions on chain-stitching a line of duplicate stitch to fill in the missing barn wall sides. Up or down?

A couple of heads turned aside just a moment to inwardly picture how they do theirs.

Down, said Kathy.

Up, said Kim definitively.

So after tonight’s Zoom I decided I wanted to be able to say the best thank you, which would mean to have actually done it and I hadn’t yet.

So.

Down was a definite no-go for me.

Up did it nicely.

Barn wall sides, done.

I kept going. Duplicate-stitch leaves on the middle flower that hadn’t quite come out right, ripped out and redone.

Yarn ends woven in, done.

“Created with pride by” tag added, done.

Wait. There was just one other thing. It hit me: that’s what it had been missing all along. I had to go find that color yarn again, all put away because I was supposedly done with it.

My husband would like you to know that since it came from the coat of a sheep my moose is now officially giving you the hairy eyeball.

(IT’S DONE!!! Pictures when I have decent daytime lighting for them.)

I thought last month that I’d bought enough, even though something nagged at me that it wouldn’t be.

It wasn’t quite.

But I didn’t want to infect them, either.

Today was so much better. I washed my hands and put on a mask to be on the safe side for them and went back to Uncommon Threads. Thirteen rows of seed stitch for the upper edge: I’d run out at four.

They were in the middle of a well-attended class with the owner and I got someone else to help me find my yarn; the previous time, Rios in Solis had been tucked away in a storage bin behind where one of the attendees was sitting and I would never have felt I had permission to just go open it/oh ‘scuse me/shove/just, no.

The employee went right to where it was hanging on the wall this time. Oh okay.

While it was being wound up I waited for what seemed a good moment and then asked the owner if I could show off?

Everybody loves a good project.

One woman asked if it was to be a wall hanging or an afghan?

I said, That depends on my brother and his cat.

Ohhh. Cats, she nodded. Yes.

I came away thinking, you know, I’d been wondering for awhile if I should ask him if I should add a doubled-over loop across the upper edge for him to slip a narrow rod through.

I’d also wondered how much the weight of all that wool might stretch the piece out if it were left hanging like that.

But what actually had stopped me was, as the children of an art dealer who’d helped keep the 600-year-old Aubusson tapestry weaving guild alive, we grew up with hand-dyed hand-spun hand-woven tapestries on the walls and my sweet little bit of knitting, I mean, come on….

But somehow that moment clarified it for me: sure I expect he wants his afghan to be an afghan, but why don’t I just ask him what he actually thinks? (Duh….)

I think I have enough yarn…. Actually, probably not. I think I’d have to loop back there.

(Detail near the top of the river from yesterday’s photo.)

I looked up the hotel confirmation email. I had one hour left to cancel or forfeit. It had to be done. Canceled.

I’ve been dragging my feet on the plane and the car rental. But when you’re waiting to see if the thermometer hits 102 to tell you to run for a strep test–although we’re not there yet–um.

You don’t get on a plane, expose a ton of people, and then bring that to your 93-year-old mom, you just don’t.

I did knit all but the last two stitches of a raptor at the tops of the trees and felt great about getting something useful done.