1. I thiiiink I started this when Maddy was a baby. She’s turning six in December. No pattern, just winging it. And I thiiiiink that I picked it up again when Lilly was on the way (or maybe that’s when I started it), finally a girl again after four grandsons. Whatever. I stumbled across it with the back done and the front only needing the top part and thought, that has lots of stretch–sure, it could still fit a fourteen month old, no problem.

And so last night I finished the knitting and did the sewing-up, which is my least favorite thing in all of knitting but I did it because this was my one chance ever to inflict it on a granddaughter.

And only then did I remember why it had been ditched. I thiiink. Tell me if I’m wrong.

I asked Michelle if her sister liked that color or was it too pinkish for her?

Uh…??

The one thing is that having started it however long ago, there is no matching that dye lot. (I even ordered a skein, it came, I laughed ruefully.) I might have enough left to pick up/cast off around the neck edge to smooth it a bit but maybe not, so I probably won’t bother to try unless you all go for the peer pressure remedy. Or I could add a contrasting edge everywhere.

But if nothing else, it’s easy to throw it in the dyepot with some blue if need be now that it’s finally actually done. I’ll ask.

2. Michelle headed back to her sister’s today, having finished the things she had to do down here, and the house is suddenly very very quiet again. It might take a little getting used to. We sent her off with fresh chocolate.

3. Then Richard did this. It was a work thing: share your pumpkin with the group! In preparation he’d bought a plug-in Flaming Lamp, ie, no candles to worry about, shown here on the jack o’lantern’s top. He set up his phone to show his masterpiece and there was at least one co-worker’s excited little kid in the background of the call bouncing up and down about it and theirs.

Coming in the room, I couldn’t get over how he’d just made the best one I’d ever seen him do. He told me there was this kit where you basically plaster a stencil over the thing, secure it with plastic wrap around the pumpkin, and carve what you see.

Oh.

Still!

4. Mathias, age three, whose aunt has a long long drive and has not yet arrived, yelling at the videoconference display while his mommy was working earlier today: “No! It’s my turn to talk!”

Soon, little guy, soon. Your favorite distraction is on the way.

(Ed. to add a later conversation: Wait–did you cut off the bottom not the top?

Him: Yes, the booklet says the pumpkins last longer that way.

Me: That actually makes sense, but who would have thought of it. )

I knitted a little of the plain and simple and quiet-colored hat–and then searched on Ravelry for Lucy Neatby after seeing an email from my friend Margo Lynn: color! Brightness! I bought two blanket designs, thinking, y’know, those might just be the right inspiration for the Next Big Thing. Mine wouldn’t be circular, and we don’t need the extra warmth in our climate of double knitting, but those are really cool.

She’s shutting down her business, although she will still be selling old and new patterns on Ravelry.

Meantime, locally, someone managed to snap a great picture of a young local intern at work: the computer was clearly a pain so he and his buddy got it shoved onto the floor, and can’t we all relate to that?

Falling through the ductwork seems not to have doused their curiosity. The little bank bandits are here, paw on mousepad. But they had their face masks on!

Grabbed some washable thick Mecha merino, started a hat, looked forward to the instant gratification, did the rows of ribbing for the brim–

–and had this moment of, is that all? No fish? No fancy? No fun? Just plain?

So I’m going to have to think of something, maybe a gansey stitch or something.

Or just spend a few hours knitting a plain hat so I can go on to the next thing in a more malleable gauge, but whatever, it’s all good.

An appraising look from my daughter: “That is an accident waiting to happen.”

So I handed her the camera and let her stand on the chair and lean over the thing to try to get an angle where the rectangle comes out a rectangle. I think she did a great job.

That light band across the bottom is where I started in on it again in April after two years on timeout. I didn’t realize that one ball was the wrong dyelot till at least a week’s worth of work later, and left it as maybe the octopus had just swept across there, or maybe it’s recovering from bottom trawling. Having spent so long trying to make myself get back to this, I knew that if I ripped out everything right then that I’d finally succeeded at getting myself to do that that would have been the end of it all.

In normal light it’s a much more subdued effect.

Anyway. I quite like it. (IDIDITIDIDITITSFINALLYFINISHED!)

Cuttlefish quickly take on the colors of whatever is below them.

So just for fun I made a point of wearing colors that matched the yarns I wanted to play with while knitting mine.

They have prominent W-shaped eyelid-looking things that tend to have a lighter layer above, so after nine attempts at graphing out how to do that I finally got one I was happy with. But I did not swatch it. Maybe I should have.

I guffawed when I stopped to take a good look after the last eye stitches were actually done.

And then I had to explain to my millennial daughter what I meant by Tammy Faye Bakker’s eyelashes. My husband chimed in with, “She made Dolly Parton look not made up.”

Meantime, the ballots are good (I added a note to yesterday’s post to make it easy for me to find in four years should I need to remember re the signature question–the answer I got may be specific to my county, though), the ballots are in, and I can’t tell you how good it feels that we have done our part to make our beloved country a better and more hopeful place.

Everybody in California gets mailed their ballots now as of this election. In our county, I think it’s our second time. 

My plan was to finish and show off the cuttlefish as well as the small blue jelly (which in this bad-lighting picture looks vaguely Star Wars-ish. Or like an enlarged dust mite.) I’m close, too, but then after dinner the daughter and husband pulled out the sample ballots, the phones, a laptop, and started going over the choices. With me running to the desktop in the other room from time to time.

For two hours. And this is with us having already individually read the state Voter’s Guide and various articles over time.

And then with a flourish, to make it official: the actual ballots.

No not that pen, I said, it smudges and we can’t.

Got it all done, signed the envelopes…

…And realized I’d given it my standard signature of name middle initial name.

The envelope said name name name.

Can I sign it both ways?

That got me a groan of, No! (Meaning, do NOT risk it!)

As Richard put it, you get to make someone’s day difficult tomorrow trying to talk to you on the phone while you find out if that’s how you’ve signed their book in the past. Left unspoken was, Or whether you have to wait till November 3 to hand it in in person covid or no covid so the envelope won’t matter. I said I could take it to the county office and ask for a new envelope and then hand it in right there–to be reminded that probably nobody would be there. Covid. Oh right.

So much for dropping them all off together at the official ballot box tonight. But they are filled out and they are ready and we are so ready.

——————–

Update Wednesday:

They looked it up for me. Name initial name is what’s on file for both of us, and they have both our signatures from way back when we registered to vote here in 1986 and our signatures from the most recent election, giving them both a range and any progression with age over time, and whether it was a full middle name or just the initial wouldn’t matter anyway, she said; what matters is that it looks like the same hand signed that new ballot.

We’re good.

A finished fish, and hopefully soon I’ll be able to add the picture in.

I’m definitely continuing on. I think the next one should be a cuttlefish. Cuttlefish are cool–they change colors to match whatever they want so I can make it whatever colors I want.

I’ve almost finished the angelfish after knitting like crazy on it for three days. Deadlines are a wonderful thing. Huge thanks to Afton for the annual Aftober race to finish something, anything, before the end of this month.

So if I end it after this fourteenth critter it’ll be maybe 70″ long.

My rule of thumb is that you make it to the height of the person, because it needs to be long enough to cover their feet and come up to their chin. Note that I am married to someone who is 80″ tall and after all this work it ought to fit him, too.

So far I’m planning on keeping this as my pandemic reminder project, to serve as a template for how to do each fish right the next time if nothing else in this time when we’ve had so much time together. And to remind myself that even when it takes twenty minutes just to get past the colorwork part of the triggerfish every single row, it does get done (and it did), just keep at it, keep going.

A trio of small jellyfish? Another octopus, only smaller than the monster at the bottom? Um? Anybody got a favorite fish to suggest? What should swim at the top?

Or I could just finish it off right there, do the final edging, call it done and be able to finish something else for Aftober, too. I’m so tempted.

Oh, and just for fun (and so I can find it again.) Man, that bass has a great voice.

Testing testing 1, 2, 3. Let’s try again on that Picasso triggerfish picture. I really want to show it off.

(Update Saturday: here you go!)

In the home stretch, with no more decisions to be made on which color going which direction where, I just have to follow the existing lines….

And you know what? It feels way easier to do something once it’s already done.

(Yeah I should have changed back to the green above/behind the eye sooner but I missed it. We’ll call it artistic license.)

The photo I’m working from is here, and with Picasso in its name, what else could an art dealer’s daughter possibly knit?

The knitting: the cowl didn’t get any further along today because the afghan did, now that the logjam’s been broken through. Man it felt good.

The blog: I got another auto-update notice and checked. Nope. Still no photo function. Sorry, hopefully soon?

The history, from Michael Beschloss:

“On a cold night, seeing a Secret Service agent outside Oval Office, John F Kennedy asked him inside but was told he couldn’t.

Kennedy brought out two cups of hot chocolate, which they both drank in the cold—years later, the weeping agent said, “That’s the kind of President I’ve been serving.”

Propped my feet up, pushed my back against the back of the futon for support, and started knitting for the first time in nearly a week and was surprised at the intensity of the relief in those stitches.

Just a cowl. Anything heavier is unthinkable at the moment, but green silk with tiny clear glass beads would do. It had been cast on and a row or two done to get it started and then, being too yellow a green for my eyes, it had gone nowhere with the afghan nagging to be worked on. This was to have been a small carry-around for my purse.

Which would have been great if I were going anywhere.

But someone would love it–and I didn’t have to wind any yarn up to get it going again nor did I have to do that first fiddly little bit on the circs.

I thought I would do a row or two. I did a lot more than that before I finally had to put it down for sheer fatigue, but man did it feel good to be knitting again. To be creating, to be anticipating that someone out there was going to absolutely love this after it’s done, when I can go, Okay, now. Tell me who. Surprise me.

Afton mentioned Aftober, the race to pick up and get to the end of some unfinished project by the end of October, and suddenly I have incentive to knit not just another hat (there’ve been two of late) but that endless intarsia afghan.

I needed that incentive. Alright, then! Thank you, Afton!

(Maybe the still slightly broken blog will let me post celebratory pictures by then.)

So many things to catch up on that I’ve been trying to figure out where to start.

And then I discover it’s not letting me add pictures now.

The next fish just needs that little bit of yellow wool that I never got around to buying, because I don’t, but I will.

Last Wednesday you couldn’t tell where the sun even was, and we’re far better off now, but still, the figs have been refusing to really sweeten in the heavily filtered sunlight; they ripen and split open and I pick them early in the morning but they’re not what they would normally be nor are they going to be.

A squirrel got to one–I opened the bathroom window and scared him into dropping it and running so he was totally busted–and then the half a fig lay there on the ground, untouched, for two days. Finally something sampled the edge. Nope. Left it there.

The day after that it finally disappeared so I guess something got hungry enough but in the meantime no other fig was touched because man, if they all tasted like that one why let those clamshells snap against one’s prying paws.

It amused me.

This morning I picked two that were split badly, curling in pieces from the bottoms up; I figured this was as sweet as they were ever going to be.

Not much. All the color and fully formed, though, so they were, y’know, healthy. After I washed the ashes that had gotten into those clamshells away.

The air quality index is 40 points better now than this morning, meaning it was unhealthy rather than dangerous to water my squash plants this evening.

I’m going to wait till we have brighter sunshine for a few days before I harvest that first one, and then, if need be, I’m going to sweeten the heck out of it and enjoy it because we’ve been waiting for it for so many months. Honey, brown sugar, or maple–it’s all good.

The wrasse of Khan.

A soft answer turneth away wrasse.

I’ll wrassel you for it.

Wrasseberry jam.

The neighbors with their bees and fish pond: they thought they had hives, but it’s just a wrasse.

Those don’t do it for you? I’ll have to wrasse-sort to something else. Just let me finish that last row first.