Last row of the repeat: I blacked that line out extra thoroughly when I got done.

As for the work, it will stretch and curve out as it comes to weigh more and once it hits water. Right now it’s either 7″ long or 9″ with a slight smoothing out or who in the world knows once I get done. But, bigger. Definitely bigger.

Had a brief scare where the upside down V in the chart suddenly looked like a right side up V to my brain and I wondered if I’d just done three+ days of work wrong by misreading it? Those are very very different instructions, decrease two vs increase one. But no, the stitch count was still 30 per repeat.

Don’t DO that to yourself! (I did get it right the first time, but by the time I figured that out I was going, well if I goofed it worked so I’m going to keep doing it that way.)

Knitting used to demonstrate physics and to work out things such as new plastic surgery techniques: here. (New York Times link.)

First, I want to thank those who tried to help me online.

A few days ago I spent an hour carefully knitting–and then ripping back, one loop at a time–a single row, the 279-stitch first pattern row of that baby afghan.

So I thought I’d ask Holly for advice, but we had so much to simply talk about and catch up on in each other’s lives that it just didn’t factor in. It frankly would have felt out of place to interrupt with something so mundane.

Plus I knew I had Friday afternoon as my backup plan. That’s when Carol and Krista would be at Green Planet Yarns/now called Fillory under the new owner. Surely, if anybody…

There was an open seat by Carol. I pulled out the yellow third Barbara Walker treasury and asked if I could ask for help. Sure! (I looked behind me: the little table where the old version of the shop had had a consultant whose time you paid for was gone. I’d never needed that but I would have been happy to on this.)

I told my friend, I have counted this every single way one could and it doesn’t work: you can’t knit a three by three cable with seven stitches!

The gleam in her eye–she knew what she was about to do and how it was about to feel for both of us.

But you can, she told me: you go back and forth past a center stitch.

I looked at the book. “How? You can’t have an odd number between.” I didn’t see anything other than a normal 3×3 crossing. Everything was symmetrical, there was no wobbling from an extra stitch nor from one side not being cabled when the other one was. “You do need that extra stitch further up in the pattern, but not at the bottom. Right? So the count should adjust for that, right?”

She wished for a cable needle. I reached into my purse for one. She took up my knitting and pointed at the book and showed and told:

“See that one square that’s outlined darker on the chart?” (It was at the sides, where the repeat began and ended.) “That’s the center stitch. It doesn’t move.

Now. You put four stitches on the cable needle and put it behind. Not three. You knit the next three stitches from the left needle, as one normally does; then you knit the first stitch on the LEFT side of the cable needle, then the other three right to left like normal. That one stitch stays at the center between the two sides that way.”

I had never heard of nor seen such a thing. Not that it was hard. It had simply never occurred to me.

“And it would make it so you have the right number of stitches for the lacework above that cable.”

“Right!”

Then she had me do it, too, while I only just managed not to grab it right out of her hands to instantly try it the nanosecond she was done explaining.

I felt a great kinship with my old friend Monica, the longtime knitter who almost yelled, That’s IT?!! when I showed her how to do a simple cable and how all cable work was a riff on that.

I had wanted to knit page 146 for–well, I’d had that book for twenty years. Only for the baby on the way had I finally wanted to enough. Only for her had I gotten to where I could, with Carol’s help. It was so easy. I had been so stumped.

“My granddaughter-on-the-way thanks you.”

“Your granddaughter-on-the-way is very welcome. It’s funny how we have gaps in our knowledge,” said Carol happily.

And then, with the help of a great teacher, suddenly we don’t. We don’t at all. We are all filled up and brimming over.

I haven’t mentioned the peregrine falcons all season and the San Jose ones are about to fledge.

Video taken today here, a few baby feathers hanging on as the eyases look over the edge and see some of the world outside their concrete outdoor hallway, with everything new.

Photos from when they were banded last week here. Two males, one female.

And the afghan? I started in on that pattern.

Goofed, tinked back all 279 stitches I’d just done, put the project back in its ziplock, and decided to let it breathe for a day. Discovered a ninth pomegranate on the tree.

(Needle at left turned sideways in search of a 90 degree angle.)

There’s this cabled lace pattern I’ve always loved but it only came charted and my brain injury doesn’t do charts.

After twenty years of owning the Barbara Walker charted patterns book anyway (because: Barbara Walker), this time I wanted to make page 146 enough to confess my shortcomings to a group of knitters–who instantly came to my rescue.

I swatched it. What was my problem. (!!!) This is easy!!

Before I could get started, though, the baby afghan was going to need a border. Garter stitch would match some of the inward pattern–but garter stretches laterally and the cables were going to shrink the width every so many stitches and I could just see the rippling–the top and bottom would never lie flat. Ribbing might distort the edges the other way by pulling them in too much.

So I went for the tried and true, even if it is my least favorite to knit: 1×1 seed stitch. Twice the motions for the same length of fabric and hard on the wrists, but it makes for a perfect picture frame effect around just about anything. Even if it absolutely devours yardage. I bought the whole bag of ten Rios skeins but I may end up trying to match my Hollyhock dye lot.

Knitted stitches are wider than they are tall, so ten rows is not enough to match the ten side stitches that I’ve set the thing up for: I’m not done. My hands definitely are for the night, but, I’m finally getting started!

I’ve got it. I’ve got that Barbara Walker Lacy Cables pattern and for my granddaughter-on-the-way’s sake I’m finally going to do it.

With a little help from my friends, and I can’t thank you all enough.

Deb’s generous offer had me wondering: maybe that’s something we could do with this old leather-hinged kindling box we inherited? Make it an owl box? I don’t know enough to know if it would work; obviously, you’d need an entry hole the right size. Would the slats rule it out?

Meantime, this morning a ball of bright turquoise Rios threw itself at my hands and demanded to be knitted. Now. I have not a clue why, but I did. My yarn is the boss of me again, and it feels good that it is. 

So there was this burgundy-red soft Malabrigo Mecha hat, the carry-around project I’d cast on to have at the eye doctor’s last week so I could do simple knit stitches around and around by feel while my eyes were dilated.

Someone I know through Facebook posted a cri de couer last night while having a particularly hard time of it.

I immediately offered to finish knitting that hat expressly for her. I told her I wanted her to have a warm hug from me, that she mattered and was loved. I took a picture of it in its barely-begun glory, and then a second photo where I put it with three others (yay for all the recent hat-knitting time spent on airplanes) for comparison and asked her to pick her favorite.

Or to name any color and it would be hers.

She said it was one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for her. I wanted to weep and throw my arms around her from across the country.

There is no shame in depression–the truth is that it took great courage and strength to voice it so as not to be defeated by it.

I told her that years ago… That the gift that such an experience leaves us with is that it feels imperative to tell the next person that they are not alone. That they matter. That they are loved. I cannot say those words enough, I can only put them into wool.

I finished that hat this morning and went back to the computer at noon at last to sign in, having asked for her snail mail address. Wondering if she would allow me to have it. Holding my breath a little for her.

There it was.

She liked the hat in the upper left the best.

An hour later, she had its tracking number. Happy anticipation, I hoped: a gift in itself. Even if numbed right now, the memory won’t be.

And the burgundy-red hat waits its turn for its own recipient, ready.

 I so love this picture.

My daughter and her son at the Anchorage Museum, a place that preserves and offers the past, the present, and (with displays under construction and areas where we thought we knew what to expect cut off from our view) the future.

On a less philosophical note, they do still have the best qiviut I know, and this time I bought a skein. I was told they do ship.

If you knit an Alaskan toddler a hat, he’s going to want to put it on, and if he puts it on he’s going to want it to stay on. Malabrigo Mecha (from Cottage Yarns) is soft and warm and it feels good.

He doesn’t like the folded brim thing so much, though: it makes it harder to get the thing on and off on his own.

He did manage to snatch Grampa’s for trying on, pretending not to be seen by pulling it down over his eyes while running away peeking out trying to make sure where he was going. Chase me! runrunrunrunrunrunrunrunrunrunrun

The day he turned two (or was it the day after) he grabbed the remote and pushed buttons till he managed to turn the screen on and pick out Shaun the Sheep cartoons. All by himself.

That mantle shelf up high gets lots of good use. 

When my sister Anne was an art major, there was a semester where she had to choose one article and render it in many mediums. I remember the watercolor the best of all her lobsters.

With thanks to Margo Lynn for the heads-up, now someone has crocheted one: along with a knitted squid, shrimp, smelt, mussels, oysters, scallops, a beaded crab and a side of French fries wearing French berets and sporting the perfect little mustaches. Red i-cord for the tabasco sauce dribbling out. Atlas Obscura had fun with this one.

So I was talking to Ron and Theresa of the Buffalo Wool Co Saturday morning at Stitches and after asking if they liked it dark and getting an emphatic YES! offered them a bite of homemade chocolate; I’d brought a bar from the second-to-last batch that had been made from some particularly good nibs from Chocolate Alchemy.

I picked up some of their buffalo/silk yarn, telling them that that in teal was my happy place: ten years ago when I was so sick, waiting for a hospital room to open up at Stanford, the good people at Purlescence had filled a large basket with cards and get-wells. There were hand knit gloves and a hat, oranges from Jasmin’s tree, all kinds of good stuff.

Including two skeins of their buffalo yarn from the owners of that shop. The most expensive yarn they sold in a color I love.

I had to get better. I couldn’t let everybody down. I had to do their generosity justice.

For two years afterwards I wondered what could possibly be a good enough use of that yarn, while feeling I was letting them down by letting it just sit there.

Till the day one of the owners had her own medical scare and her survival was no sure thing. She pulled through, just like I did, but there was no question: those two skeins turned into a shawl and came right back to her and that was absolutely what they were meant to be.

Ten years later, Purlescence is closed and I bought more from Ron and Theresa directly.

I told one of their customers who was looking at their gloves that I had rummaged through my cavernous purse in the dark in Alaska and come up with one of their gloves (these) and one fingerless glove to scrape a deep layer of ice off the windshield with. One hand was just dying, the other–amazingly fine. It could do this for as long as I needed to, no rush. And I have Raynaud’s.

I came by their booth again later, when the crowds had thinned, and told them that now that my husband has worn their socks nothing else lives up to them; I couldn’t buy me their yarn and not him more socks, so… And while I was at it I handed Ron more of that chocolate for the both of them, saying, “We don’t have the tempering perfect yet but we’re learning with each new project. It’s a little like knitting that way.”

Ron’s appreciative response, “It’s got a good snap to it.”

And then he told me to my great surprise that he used to work as a chocolatier.

No wonder I hadn’t had to explain to him what a melanger was!

I gave him the rest of that chocolate for the both of them. Stitches was almost over for me and there was no point in not sharing it with people I knew would enjoy it. (Margo Lynn’s allergic.)

He refused to ring up the socks and stuffed them in my basket.

!!!… I protested, partly at myself, because I should have known better to wait till after…!

He basically said just try to stop me.

!!!

Goodbye with love to my Uncle Wally, who passed away quietly with his local children by his side Saturday at 95.

Welcome to this beautiful brand-new world with love to Annabeth Joan, born to my niece Maddy and her husband Devin this morning.

I have a mild case of face blindness and I only see them a few seconds a year. And kids change so much.

At Friday’s Stitches, there was some random mom and her young son, five, maybe even six years old, who was clearly trying to be on his best behavior but also was clearly bored with this whole yarn-everything-everywhere-ness.

So I did what I do and coming up from behind, caught her attention and offered her a finger puppet for her kiddo to help make wool his happy place, too, for a distraction. He was still young enough for these.

Caught off guard, she turned around to me and laughed in sudden delight and proclaimed, “He’s got a collection from you!”

My box is starting to get a bit low. I’ll need to order more soon.

About ten years ago I was having a conversation online with Tina Newton of Blue Moon Fiber Arts. The knitters here may remember the story told by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee of the yarn dyer whose Sock Yarn of the Month Club got yanked without warning after 9/11 by its bank as being clearly a source of funding terrorists, because the idea that people would sign up to buy yarn! To knit…SOCKS!! was just too outlandish for comprehension. And so without asking the customers if they’d been cheated by her site nor letting her know that they were supposedly on to her, her bank abruptly yanked all funds paid for that club out of her account and refunded everybody so as to stop her diabolical plans in their tracks.

None of her customers had asked to be refunded. She certainly hadn’t planned for that to happen to her company’s finances.

Yeah that was fun.

Anyway, so that’s how I heard of Blue Moon, and at one point she had a colorway named Rock Creek. My husband grew up a block away from Rock Creek near the Maryland/DC line. So out of sheer curiosity I asked if there were any connection to the one there.

Tina laughed that there must be a Rock Creek in every state of the Union–but, yes.

Wait, so…

We ended up putting down the computers and talking on the phone. Turns out she and I had grown up a mile, maybe a mile and a half away from each other and almost certainly knew people in common and definitely places.

And about dead center between our homes and familiar to all was the old Magruder’s blacksmith shop, built by a man who died in 1751. (The real estate listing got the built date very wrong.) The family home was a much larger house up the hill. It was this tiny one where his slaves lived, climbing a ladder to the loft above for a bedroom, a sober reminder of the past. If you scroll down on the county’s historical register page about it, you can see where the road to the right used to be that they wanted to tear down that house for so they could widen it.

The outcry was such that they rerouted the road past the back of the property instead and dead-ended the original going up the hill from the house. (You scroll down to the very bottom of that link and you see the spot where my mom turning right at the bottom of the photo got hit head-on by a school bus that had lost its brakes and gone over the center to try to avoid cars waiting for the light. Mom was fine.)

Someone from my high school is into historical structures and posted those links on Facebook.

And I wanted to go, Mom! Dad! This says that place has a basement! I think that thrilled me to read because it meant the poor souls who had no choice but to live there a very long time ago had more space to themselves than I ever knew, and I’m grateful for that.

But all my life I’ve wanted to see the inside of that house. Now’s my chance. Just a plane ride away, right?

Edited to add, one of my friends back home found a video showing the inside!

I went looking for a box the right size and realized I might as well use the post office’s priority mail one; it’s usually cheaper anyway. I got something ready and packed for my niece as long as I was going there, set it down, went to address the next…

It hit me. Wait a minute. I’ve known my daughter’s friends for years–but it hadn’t occurred to me that I didn’t actually know their last name. They’d forever simply been B. & N. and since the baby blanket was going 1100+ miles away to a town they don’t normally live in, in the middle of nowhere, there had sure better be a last name on that box for that postmaster if I want that baby to get her blankie for sure.

It took a few hours for the text to get seen, but it was, and it was a relief when I got it–she wasn’t going to have to wait an extra day after all. And for the parents’ sakes: I’d so wanted the postmark to read today, the first day it could possibly have been. I wanted them to know all of us are there for them in their loss of his dad.

Got to the post office an hour before they closed.

And came out of there picturing that small face as she grabs her beloved blanket out of that box with all the exuberance of an 18-month-old, making the adults around her happy for her.

Hold on, little one, it’s coming!

I know she didn’t do it to be thanked but I’m going to out loud anyway.

A little Anniversario, she offered? I’m never going to use it.

If you’re sure? I’d love!

And so a box showed up today that was big enough that I thought it was something entirely different that I’d been waiting for (more on that to come.) There were three and one dyelot-wise skeins of that Rios colorway, the prettiest rendition of Solis ever, an experimental Malabrigo run in merino/cashmere picked up at Imagiknit, and another in baby merino, spun thick… Yarn, yarn, more really good yarns–that photo just shows the top layer.

Wholly cowed–can I even do justice to all this? So soft. So pretty. 

So blown away. Thank you, Anne!

(P.S. And then she told me not to knit it for her but for other people. She’s on to me.)