Someday a great grandchild will ask, What did hitting the gas mean?

So. No, I don’t actually have more of that–I used the rest up on my brother’s afghan, which is fine, and when I restocked my Rios via a Littleknits sale, Solis was not, in fact, one of the colors I bought. That’s right, I was going to and they were out at the time.

The plan was to have the cliff in the forefront in an older, lighter, and more highly varied version of Solis, then use darker gradations as the next cliffs reach further back. That wasn’t working either: the skein for that first one wasn’t quite enough to finish the job and the ones in the store were too starkly off to plunk in the front. That colorway has evolved over the years into lots of dark green with some dark blue smoothed in–the flashes of light aqua and camouflage green are out of there. No medium green nor blue in the base color anymore.

I went looking.

I finally found someone on Ravelry who had nearly a half dozen skeins of the vintage of the one I was using listed under For sale or trade. The pictures were very promising, and I could be highly flexible. I’d stopped at a point that left some mixing of rows possible for blending.

I could make all the cliffs the same, or nearly. Fine by me.

She was happy to have someone who actually wanted them, but warned me about the shipping, following up with their postal chart to make sure I really wanted to go through with it.

You do what ya gotta do. I’m two dozen hours of work into this thing. Just don’t let any kangaroos stow away in there and we’re good.

Meantime, my project after the coastal one was going to be my brother’s Christmas afghan, monocolor per his request.

I’ve now finished the seed stitch edge and started in on the pattern. It breaks my rules to have two major projects at once but it breaks them worse not to be able to work on one. And monocolor is way easier to pick back up and continue on later than color work is.

So somebody on the other side of the world is taking the time to box, label, get to the post office, and see that part of her older stash off in order to rescue my project, and I am very very grateful.

Seven sons and a dad who could fix anything. One said, Dad never took the car to a mechanic and so now neither have I, and described starting out sitting on a chair handing tools over as directed, to actually helping his dad do the task, to, many years later, his dad sitting on a chair holding the tools and handing them over and doing the watching.

Their dad was a friend to every human being he ever laid eyes on. He told bad dad jokes to embarrass his kids, because that’s a dad’s job. To anybody. His ice breaker question was, What kind of music do you play?

George was an electrical engineer and a tinkerer. One of the sons called out my husband on the time he and his dad were shopping electronics parts and ran into him. We were all nerding out, he said.

When one kid described his dad taking the dashboard apart on his car to hunt down an electrical short and the adventure that took them on (they did get it fixed), I quietly laughed: my husband did the same thing back in the day, only in his case he couldn’t quite claim the same success. He got the turn signal working again–except that the inside lever and the outside signal were now switched, so you had to remember that signaling left was actually signaling right. He was not going to go through all that again just for that: up lever or down. You know, you do. Good times.

As a boy George started off with piano and quickly went to fiddle and guitar. Loved him some high brow, loved him some bluegrass. Went to every music festival he could. One of his kids described his own friends in high school going, What are you *listening* to! to then deciding, since he kept playing it, that they liked it.

That kid plays professionally now and he described meeting one of his bluegrass heroes.

The man looked at him and exclaimed, You’re George’s kid?!

He took off his battered hat, threw it into the dust, stomped it with his foot, picked it back up, put it on his head and said, Kid? You’re alright.

While the young man (with his own signature suede hat with a feather) watching this, thought, What just happened here??

George is the friend who’d been checked into the hospital just before Richard got checked out. In the months since, nobody was completely sure he was still in there very much but they all came to see him and they say the hearing is the thing that stays when all else goes.

So they played the music they’d jammed with their dad so many many times. They kept him and their mom company. They strummed those strings. They sang. They talked to him. They brought their kids.

One of them was singing to his dad and playing his own instrument when, he told us, I don’t know. Telepathy? He just felt like he needed to put it down and play his dad’s favorite guitar. So he did.

His dad’s breathing relaxed and slowed down. Slower. And then quietly, with love, he slipped away from them. He was just shy of 84.

Bad nighttime photo. Ten inches. Sixty-four rows, 20+ minutes per row, fourteen days… Pretty good progress.

The big projects always seem to get off to a slow start and gain steam steadily.

And yet this one. There isn’t much to see but every time I pick it up I think, Oh, I like this so much. The fact that the brightness of the poppies bleaches out the other colors to the camera’s eye made me laugh: just like in real life!

I had planned to use a more tamped-down shade and it just refused to go on the needle. They needed to be how they are.

You don’t have to make any color choices while knitting the seed stitch edge. So I kept going. I don’t love knitting purls into knits and knits into purls but I like how it looks so adding a bit more was a happy procrastination.

This evening I finally started into the colorwork on my Big Sur project.

I found myself going, Oh, I remember that green! That’s a remnant from Morgan’s afghan! Onto the needle it went. The gray from the dolphin in the ocean afghan? It’s part of a boulder this time. This ocean begins in Blue Jean blue.

I have the perfect orange for poppy flowers but it’s less perfect when held against the others. If I could find a slightly more muted shade… But it should be okay. Probably. And so the lupines got their first row and the poppies had to wait.

I was going to add side borders afterwards, but since the right third of the design is still the Blue Jean blue, I without thinking continued seed stitching to match the depth of the bottom before switching to stockinette. Got at long last to the other side and went–

–oh wait.

If I add a border later it won’t match the other side that’s now going to be part of it all along. I’ve done that before with two contrasting extra balls to untangle every single row and swore I wouldn’t do that again. But I just halfway did it again, and it’ll look funny if one side is added and the other not, so, hey, what’s one more to juggle, and besides it looks nicer that way anyway (a theme emerges).

So I had to stop, wind the next ball of that color, and add it in.

I can’t wait to see what it all grows up to look like.

But I’m going to get that poppy color right before it can go in.

I was hoping to do the bottom edge today, but a cast-on and 1800 seed stitches later on US6, I’m not quite there. My hands are looking forward to resting in their lined splints tonight. But man it feels good to get this project going.

Meantime, someone was nosing around directly outside the door not ten feet away from me yesterday. The double pane window fades the gorgeous white speckles against the deep brown contrasting with its scarf of a neck ring. It looked at me: hey, lady, got any birdseed?

No.

There were a lot of new holes in the neighbor’s front yard in the last week and yesterday they didn’t seem to be there anymore and I guess the ground squirrel was looking for somewhere friendlier. I was surprised, because the one I’ve seen has always been exceptionally wary of me or any movement on my part but this one, for a brief moment, had to be talked into remembering that it must act like bigger things eat it.

I noted its retreat went straight out the gate towards our driveway.

Where a burrow has been right under the edge for awhile. I’m guessing the paving material above helps keep its favorite spot warmer at night. After all, these homes were originally built with radiant heating; gotta keep up that mid-century-modern vibe.

Edited to add: they swish their tails to confuse rattlesnakes as to what and where they are. Someone captured a video of one doing that–and throwing mulch at it! I’m guessing it must have been near the squirrel’s nestlings. No harm done to either in this video, and now I know what a rattlesnake’s rattle in action looks like.

Balls of yarn are sold ready to knit. Hanks of hand-dyed are prettier, often bigger, and give you a better view of what’s inside, and I imagine they sell better for that.

It was a wind five hanks day. Rios, Mecha. Soft wool. Lots of colors. No big decisions, no trying to draw the next big idea on paper, just go get yarn I like ready for when it will say that it’s needed, big project, little project, it’s all good.

Winding yarn is not my favorite task so when I actually feel like doing it I try to drop everything and get right to it.

Drying…

And some sorting and considering happened. Dragons only get to hoard gold–I’ve got all these other colors, too.

I do need to add some of the right greens before I start. Today was a five-errand day between us and I simply ran out of time to get to a LYS, and Friday is May Day, consumers’ one-day strike across the country. I believe in supporting local yarn stores, but any interaction with any big corporation including any credit card transaction is right out.

I think I can find something around here to do to hold me till Saturday.

While most of my attention today was on how I was going to turn wool into purple lupines and orange poppies and seaside cliffs, somehow this became this towards the end of the day and a Yarn Crawl ball of Rios is almost gone.

Colourmart sponsors a few contests a year on Ravelry using their yarns and I found that I had started my niece’s baby blanket the day after one of them had started. So on a whim I entered it.

I don’t need the prize yarn and other people do, so they need to win, not me.

But to do it I had to start a project page for it.

I’ve never had any projects listed there. I’ve never considered entering my stash (and still won’t.)

But I entered the one blanket, then, just the one, since I’d already signed up.

That…did something. I could line all the big projects up side by side visually to get a feel for what has been vs what should come next as I plan what to knit next for the grandkids.

Guess what I spent way too much time doing today. In the process, I ended up consulting the all-wise greek oracle of the ‘net and found out how to change the setting on my phone so it’s compatible and my photos will come through. And they did!

I think I entered maybe half the ones of the last few years. I do knit a lot of afghans, don’t I.

I like that they don’t get outgrown nor left behind at school.

(Morning update: there’s the photo.)

I haven’t done that in a long time: I was a third of the way through a cowl when I realized it had gone mobius on me–a good reminder that it’s not mindless knitting till you get past the first connecting stitch of that first row, and then again at that point on the second row just to be sure. After that you’re good.

Somehow I got through all these years of knitting without realizing that when you frog a mobius strip with that many rows, you can’t just put it down and pull–because if you do you will be suddenly tying a tight near-knot around some random spot on the circulars again and again. You have to take the ball of yarn through the center of the knitting as you go. Because of course you do.

Hey, who doesn’t want to practice juggling?

There’s a photo in the ether but it hasn’t landed yet.

After ten years of trying there was some serious celebrating to do. Saturday morning was the baby shower. Lots of friends, lots of good food, lots of baby gifts.

I found myself sitting next to a woman who introduced herself as the other grandma and she was delighted when I said, You’re S.’s mom!

Yes!

I knew that meant she had flown in for this. This is to be her first grandchild. So excited.

The friend handing the mother-to-be the presents picked mine up almost at the end.

G. opened the card and read who it was from and instantly realized why the wrapping paper was the size and squishiness it was. Her eyes went huge and straight over to mine, as if to ask, Is it?! Is it!?! while absolutely bursting with love.

My eyes loved her right back and I gave her a little nod. Yes!

Her mom’s a knitter. Her sister’s a knitter. She knows.

She leaped to her feet with the Rios baby blanket held nose to knees, wanting everyone to be as thrilled as she was. “It’s so soft!”

Fillory Yarns in San Jose had held a sale-by-mail during Covid lockdown. I knew that yarn would be *the* yarn for–something, that it would tell me what, when. And it did. It instantly did when my friend told me her daughter was expecting and that it was a girl. Even for Rios it was particularly soft. And washable. And a color she wears a lot. That yarn.

I said to the other grandma, I’ve known G. since she was born. When she was three she told us she was going to grow up and marry our John, six months older, and I wanted to hold her to it, but, no (said with a grin.)

Given that her son is the one who did marry her, it took her a split second and then she laughed and laughed at how we were rivals in mother-in-lawing and she’d won.

She was so grateful over that baby blanket.

It and the shower were a message that in this town where she didn’t know anyone except immediate family, she belongs, too.

Great times.

How often, when you ask a man what his wife’s favorite color is, can he tell you right away without squirming because he feels like he should be able to tell you but he suddenly realizes he has no idea.

But he did know, with certainty. Cool. I went stash diving and–oh, yes, that one exactly.

So. Doctor’s waiting room for a routine check. I pulled out the just-begun carry-around project and marveled at how finely spun baby alpaca yarn can be as jumpy on the needles as a happy toddler in an ice cream shop, especially old stash from when some mills were new at working with the stuff. But it makes such a soft fabric. (Why did I put needles that big in the bag? Stuck with them now.)

A woman was checking in and as she walked past me, she stopped and introduced herself as a fellow knitter.

Cool! Loved her scarf! I asked her about how she’d gotten started.

Her mom and grandmother were knitters; How about you?

I told her my family had traveled coast to coast and back when I was a kid and my mom had taught me how to knit to keep me from killing my little sister in the back seat. She laughed and asked if it had worked and I said yes, while thinking in my mom’s direction, I think so–I don’t remember any arguments after that. Mom, if you want to chime in?

I told her, Six kids and a camping trailer and she winced a little and yeah I don’t know how my folks did it either but they did it. Mom was knitting my sister an Aran sweater I seriously coveted so I wanted to learn to make my own.

We didn’t have a lot of time to delve in deep but we both would have loved to and I told her the name of my blog. So to her, if you’re reading this, welcome! And hi!

Love for love.

The next door neighbor showed up offering oranges from her tree.

She found herself going home with a baby blanket.

Meantime, the mystery at Grand Central Station is solved. NYC now knows where the five foot heart balloon on the ceiling came from: the elderly couple and their daughter were heading to a Valentine’s party and lots of random people wanted to play with it. Cute video.

Atelier Yarn Marin, a week ago, my last Yarn Crawl purchase: I found a pair of 40″ Lantern Moon ebony circs in US 5 and told them happily, This is exactly the size and brand I’ve been looking for.

Nina mentioned afterwards that she did not prefer the metal cord they’ve changed to; she liked the old nylon one better. I didn’t have much of an opinion other than that I liked the look of the nylon better. And true, I do not want my needles to flash light and distract from the working yarn.

So where I’m going with this is: I found that I did in fact have an old pair of size 5 (3.75mm) 40″ ones–in that brand and with the nylon cord, no less. So I started the new project on those.

You know that twitchy scritch scritch sensation with each stitch on wooden needles that haven’t aged well? You won’t get that with the pressure-treated Holz and Steins of long ago but they’ve been out of the American market for twenty+ years. On the third row of this I couldn’t wait to get to the end so I could switch to the new pair. Thank goodness for that new pair.

Even the ever so slightly rounder tip shaping was better for the splittable yarn at hand.

I have completely cured myself of wondering why I spent the equivalent of a skein of good yarn on a pair I didn’t need. Now it’s, Man am I glad I bought those!