Had  two boys about ten and eleven sit next to me on the plane. Nice kids. The one next to me went oh cool!  when I pointed out Lake Tahoe below us, and then the Great Salt Lake.

He swung his backpack on when we landed and never knew it smacked my face.

I couldn’t hear Mom very well when she greeted me–huh. I just changed that battery yesterday. We got in the car, my son John at the wheel, and I took it out. Weird–it looked scratched. I put a new one in. Dead. It now looked scratched. Repeat one last time.

Its broken. I’ve never had such a thing happen before.

It’s under warranty, but meantime I now know why I kept feeling I should take my old hearing aids on the trip. That made NO sense and I left them home.

But at least I have one ear.

I have a ton of ends to weave in and some blocking to do to make it look a bit more polished. It’s a good problem to (finally!) have. Car pattern by Lucinda Guy from her Handknits for Kids book.

Note that I am missing one green stitch on the back of the car from her pattern and it made it more VW Buggy-ish. I crocheted a steering wheel and the first tire wheel in orange so it would better match Parker’s sweater but found I didn’t care for the effect and I put them aside and let it stay simple.

More apple blossoms open today and more rain tomorrow–work fast, little honeybees. (Not complaining! More rain in this drought!)

I frogged five times on that first armhole, trying to get the number of white and blue stitches picked up to match, trying to get the look just right–y’know, there’s a *reason* designers deserve to get paid; other than the car, I was winging it.

I took a break from it after finally nailing the first one just so just in time to see the Cooper’s hawk catch a dove and fly to the fence with it and stop there a minute, the tail of its meal towards me rather than the face (thank you). He watched me a moment as I took in the relative sizes of the two birds and then he flew to where he would be less in view of the thieving crows (who steer clear of my yard thanks to him, but one does not risk food in the wild.) If he has nestlings this early in the season they were well fed today.

As were we. Richard and I went out for ice cream at Smitten.

A toddler, old enough to run but not quite old enough to talk yet, was dashing back and forth between his daddy and the person behind there making their ice cream, giggling adorably over and over at the occasional puffs of dry ice from behind the counter that he could just barely tiptoe up to see. One, two…happy anticipation…There it comes again! and he would run back to his daddy’s legs and giggle some more.

I quietly eyeballed the kid, having finished the last of that ribbing right before we’d gone out the door: yeah–I think this’ll fit Hudson okay. A little big but not too. I think. Thank you, little one.

Spent the day in the car and later working on one. I think I’ll duplicate-in those couple of stitches missing on the tailgate (charts…) when I tighten up those wheels.

Even with an official ground-ship label from the seller, you can’t send lithium-iron batteries back without the covers to all the connectors. And we’d lost one when we were opening the box up before we knew one of the batteries was a dud.

Last night Richard tossed out some ideas of where I might be able to replace the little thing. Wait–the Batteries Plus people ought to be the best bet, even if they’re a hike, but hey, said he. They’ll recycle the old batteries anyway so you might as well try there.

I went down there today and the guy smiled and said, You’ve been here before.

Yes, I smiled back.  Then when I pulled out of my pocket one of the covers that I still had and explained my dilemma, he and the younger guy chuckled, no biggy, the younger guy dove into a box right next to him and he pulled out two. I asked how much I owed them and they waved me away and said it wasn’t anything. “It’s $140 to me,” I told them gratefully; now I could return both.

When I got home I found he’d given me two sizes, and the first one I tried was close but it just wasn’t quite it. The second? Perfect. Covers went on, I taped them down for good measure like one site had said you had to do for safety, took the things in the original boxes within the box back to FedEx–and stumped the clerk.

My printout of the barcode for them to print out the shipping label wouldn’t scan. She didn’t know what to do. She was about to turn me away. I had one of those moments where I had the bright idea when I needed it rather than afterwards and I asked if I could forward Martin’s email to an email address for the store, and there was one and she scanned the thing from her own machine and that worked. No charge to me was very nice.

Assuming Starkpower finds no fault with our handling of the batteries–and they absolutely shouldn’t–we are finally finally done with that expensive chore. (Now to finish the taxes…)

Meantime, Purlescence last night thankfully had one last skein of the Cascade Longwood green that I used on Parker’s sweater and I could finally get going again on Hudson’s matching birthday sweater. I could have used the leftover orange from Parker’s digger for the car, and maybe should have, but as a Prius driver somehow going green seemed the way to go.

Maybe I’ll add a sun?

Something nibbled on a one-inch peach, found it terrible, and went for a second. Time for the clamshells.

——–

I met her boss briefly a year ago. We had just flown back from my mother-in-law’s funeral and my daughter was on a two-day bereavement leave, but there was something she needed at her office and I drove down there with her–it was a time of needing to simply be together as a family as much as possible before ordinary life took over again. Such a strange thing that would feel like.

He came downstairs along with another co-worker and, as I quickly put my knitting aside and rose to my feet, they introduced themselves to me and warmly offered their condolences. I came away glad she worked for them.

Today  found me driving her back to that office: the boss was transferring to another country (home, for him) and there was to be a surprise going-away party for him and she didn’t quite feel up to that drive and back.

I said I would sit in the car and quietly knit for however long, no hurries. I cracked a back window–it’s the warmest day we’ve had in awhile–and she looked askance at that and said we can’t have you exposed to the sun like that. (Re the lupus.) Come on in the lobby. He won’t see you and he wouldn’t recognize you if he did.

Oh, ask I, intrigued, does he have face blindness? (Too? Like me?) But how many women does he know with gray hair and a cane and, this is the big one, *knitting*? There? I didn’t want to give away the surprise.

She wasn’t about to diagnose the guy but she assured me it would be fine and said he would never recognize nor even see me and so I cranked the window back up and found myself inside on a nice leather seat near the door where you could see people coming down the stairs or in the front door or out from the hallway off to the left–same chair as last time.

But I was prepared. I didn’t just have my knitting. I had my Time magazine. So I could go, y’know, incognito like that. Only, as I pulled it out of my purse, apparently I had just recycled this week’s (the truck came today, it’s gone) and kept last week’s because I have a great visual memory like that. Checking the cover? Oh. Darn. I flipped through a few pages, thought oh well, put it back and pulled out my knitting. A skein of Jacques Cousteau from Madeline Tosh, the one I bought at the MadTosh shop in Ft. Worth when we went to visit with my mother-in-law for the last time, actually; it was my souvenir skein from that trip.

Wait. I think that’s? But no, he didn’t look my way at all. Huh. The idea that I would recognize someone a year later after only seeing their face once was very highly unlikely anyway, so, okay, not.

Michelle showed up awhile later having clearly had a great time. And laughing, because….

…Hi, Michelle, I saw your mom downstairs!

He’d gone out the front doors for just a moment, forgotten his badge, had had to go to the security guy a few feet away from me and ask permission to go back in to work–the guy had chuckled and waved him on in, he was hardly a stranger–and there I was, right in my spot, I think with even the same color yarn as last time, knitting away.

Totally busted.

Every single day those peaches are bigger (she wrote, distracting herself from the yarn for a little while). There really were honeybees out and about in January. I planted those trees loving the idea of how much whole generations after me were going to be picking fruit off my trees, but I gotta say, though, the near-instant gratification part is pretty darn cool too.

Okay, back to the second edition of that shawl that was nice but never quite just how I wanted it. I’ve spent a chunk of the day going over the numbers and the stitches (rip. rip.) wondering who ever thought I was any kind of designer–while holding in mind Stephanie’s chapter about how the only way to be a writer is to sit oneself down and make yourself write. Just do it. And so I have been. (Thank you, Stephanie.)

I was wrong: the first peach tree has not two or three like I thought but 46 peaches visible now. Fourteen months old. They weren’t kidding when they said that variety was precocious and prolific.

One more story on Stephanie’s visit.

A few days before I saw her, there was a comment on her blog that someone should bring a pair of needles they didn’t care if they never saw again and some wool and cast on at her talk and pass it on down and up the rows in the audience, everybody adding a bit for a scarf for Stephanie.

I thought that was a great idea! But now, you know the chances of an actual scarf being done in that hour that she would be speaking were, well, what they were. Still: why not have fun with the idea.

I had a pair of plastic circs, about 5.5 or 6mm, given me by someone who once unloaded her old everything-knitting to get rid of it.

And I had a ball of Malabrigo single-ply thickish yarn in a subdued apricot, not too thin like most of my stash, and hoped the color would do.

And so I cast on at Books Inc and started to launch into a short lace pattern–and immediately realized that not everybody knows what to do when last row’s yarnovers are coming at them and given the number of people there I didn’t want to hog the thing to do a multi-row repeat. So I backtracked and stuck with plain old stockinette and let others decide what they wanted to do on their own turns.

It went down our row, people getting into this idea with mostly grins, and then I tried to hand it to the people in the last row just behind us.

Now, I remember twenty-four years ago (my baby was two, and officially as of yesterday that made 26-2=24, so it’s easy to tell how long my return to knitting has been) I started knitting in public for the first time. I was very self-conscious about it, very sure that someone at some point was going to pounce and tell me no, no, you’re doing it all wrong, don’t you see you’re supposed to wrap it like this? Hold it this way!

Because I didn’t do it at all the way I was taught. My mom, I know now, knits Continental style and taught me thusly when I was ten. When I was sixteen, I wanted a sweater in one of her knitting magazines and she gave me the classic Mom’s line of, Go make it yourself. I wasn’t about to deliberately look incompetent by telling her I didn’t really quite remember how, though I did get her to refresh my memory re the cast-on part. Only because I had no choice but to admit to that. Mom was the only real knitter I knew.

Then I went into my room and hashed out how to work this. I remembered, as I looked at it, how the yarn was supposed to go around for a knit vs a purl. I knew you were supposed to run it between some (which?) fingers first. I grabbed the yarn for each stitch and got a feel for the thing at last and I was off and running: I made that cabled wool vest I wanted, then a wool Norwegian four-color intarsia sweater (Mom sewed in the inset front panel, bless her), all with my babysitting money, a vest in ribbing and stripes, an intarsia snowflake vest in the most gosh-awful acrylic in the horrifying shades of blue that were popular that year, a more sensible all-0ver cabled zippered white wool Vogue sweater. (Mom sewed in the zipper,  and again, bless her. I’m still grateful. And the zippers for the pockets. I was supposed to sew the fabric pockets in behind those afterwards. I still have the sweater. I still fit into that sweater. I still have never made those pockets, so those sideways zippers open to whatever I throw on that day.)

I drove some of my teachers crazy by knitting in their classrooms. My mom worked in the English department at my high school and if my teachers (Mme Whatzits in French I am looking at you) ever said anything to her she did not put a stop to it, though she did counsel me with a wry grin to sois sage.

So. I knitted, and I knitted at a good pace, but I knitted like nobody else I knew because it sure didn’t look like how Mom did it. And years later I still knew only a very few knitters and none of them lived near me now in California.

But when John was two was also when I was diagnosed with lupus and so I was in doctors’ offices a lot and I was knitting in public where there were a lot of people with nothing to do there but watch the one thing in the room that was moving (besides my kids). My fingers.

What changed everything was the woman with the British accent in the eye doctor’s waiting room who stared, and stared, and stared some more at my hands as I worked as I got more and more self-conscious in response, and finally she exclaimed, I wish I knit like that! That looks a lot easier on the hands!

That saved me then and forever after. She gave me a great gift and never knew it. Knit on!

So. Thursday night, there we were, adding rows to the apricot-scarf-wanna-be, and we handed it to the people in the back row behind us.

I had no idea we were going to be putting anyone on the spot. Several people there did not want their hands to be the ones to mess up that Malabrigo. They did not want to be seen struggling with it. There were all these people there wearing fancy handknits….

Everybody starts out a beginner and there could not have been a more encouraging place for a newbie. We said, it’s okay, this is only if you want to.

And I wished that that long-ago British woman–I was trying to *be* her–could step right up and tell them the beauty of the evening was way more than skein deep and adding on or not, they were there and that was the important thing.

I have no idea where that Malabrigo ended up after we left. We were near the end of the line when Stephanie was signing books but that still left a fair number of people. Did anyone cast it off? Did it join the squares she’s been collecting? Did she even see it?

Last I saw it at a distance someone had added maybe feather-and-fan, but whatever, a lace pattern that spread it out at the top like a tulip opening up in the spring.

—–

P.S. Happy Birthdays John and Kim!

I found Chris S’s link: it’s here. The penguin sweaters story has gone viral again, and no, they don’t need penguin sweaters–but a wildlife rescue center north of San Francisco could make good use of knitted baby bird nests.

I spent today laughing over a good book, mentally thanking Stephanie for every word and marveling over and over at the feeling like I had a double out there in the world.

We moved to California in March of ’87, coming from intense cold and old grayed snow everywhere (and 269 miles southeast of Montreal) to blooming and spring and as green as it gets here.  Paradise. I’ve told the story before of juicing up the oranges from the tree in our new backyard and everybody taking a swig together–

–not knowing what  a Meyer lemon was nor that as they get ripe, they round out and smell orangey. They’re less tart and have more complexity than the usual grocery-store Eureka lemon, but they are definitely lemons.

I figured it would be great to squeeze some in her tea back in her hotel room. While not wanting to impact her luggage overly.

So I picked just the one: a little roundish, a little bit of orange, a few leaves still attached. I told her I wanted her to have the full March-in-California experience in her brief fly-in-fly-out here. (I didn’t add, I so remember what March in New Hampshire was like.)

Stephanie was delighted.  She took a deep whiff and asked if it was an orange or a lemon?

(Boy did I know that question…) A meyer lemon from my tree, I said.  (I also gave her some dark chocolate-covered edemame for vegetarian munching on the run, but anyone anywhere could do that.)

I wanted to get a picture of the two of us but forgot to hand anyone my Iphone for it. Ah well. Next time. Keep writing, Stephanie, keep writing!

And thank you Joe and the girls for lending her to us. She is treasured.

The first peach of the season–there, right above the ladder as the camera aims. Then I looked closer and there were several more, like under that leaf to its right, which somehow only shows up if you click on the photo. I’ll see how they grow the first little bit and then thin them down to just one or two. I type that hoping the little tree can really do it in its second year. Squirrel-busting clamshells here we come!

Finished the Water Turtles-riff shawl I was working on, grateful I’d gotten that second Silkpaca skein yesterday–I did need it.  I was knitting it alongside a larger skein of the same 70/30 baby alpaca/silk blend from Alpenglow. To quote Kathryn at Cottage Yarns when she saw the two together, “Oh, that’s gorgeous!”

Okay, after ditching mid-row a vest I was wearing for one with buttons, I have a random question to throw out there: am I the only one? Or do you avoid wearing jackets or sweaters with zippers down the front while you knit so that you don’t catch the yarn on the teeth?

So how was your day? he asked.

Well, I finished the purple cowl I was working on on our trip down yesterday–I’d had about an inch on it before we left, it was about 2/3 done when we got home, and today I finished the knitting waiting at the lab;  I rinsed it and now it’s blocking.

“I never saw a purple cowl, I never hope to…” he teased me with an impish grin that finishing that line might get him in trouble and skipped over to, “But I can tell you anyhowl…”

Re the lab. I guess the hyper- and hypo- thyroid autoantibodies evened themselves out: my counts that they affect are back in the normal range. No surgery and no thyroid meds needed at this time.

California’s idea of winter snow… Those are strawberry fields, the white a plastic mulch lining the rows of plants.

Richard’s cousins were blessing their baby in church this morning and so we set the alarm and drove from cities to countryside, on past Monterey to Salinas, flatness giving way to steeply winding road then to towering eucalyptus forest swallowing all but the road immediately ahead then eventually to strawberry field after strawberry field in the clouds, the occasional, blessed rain opening up on us three times and three times we left it behind as we continued on, discovering places we had not gone before.

One cauliflower field was playing ball and looking ready to harvest, then quick! Back to the strawberries, for the most part. (My table pleads guilty to agreeing with that.)

It was Sunday and the fields were still, the machinery unmanned, not a farmhand in sight. A day of rest. And of thanking for and asking for more rain.

I got about 2/3 of a cowl knitted during the long drives. I had a shawl project going at home, but I have learned to stick to larger needles in a car so that the tips are less likely to get bounced out of an ongoing stitch.

The baby was beautiful (all that hair!), his two big sisters were happily distracted by young cousins to play with in the enclosed back yard, and it was a reunion of the families of his mother and father: like a wedding, only more relaxed and with time to really get to know each other better over lunch. People brought great food.

And–earlier at the church I saw–couldn’t be. Had to be. I called David? after him as he started to disappear down a hallway without having seen us, then I thought, no, of course, wrong brother. Roger!

He turned and was suddenly startled and we did a mutual What are YOU doing here?!

He lives there. He grew up in our neighborhood (ed. to clarify, here in California, after fielding emails Monday from my siblings of I don’t remember them…) We know his mom well, attended his dad’s funeral, he’s seen us during many a visit home over the years for his kids to see Grandma. We bought his classmate’s old house over on….

Small world.

Not too far at all. We can definitely do that again.

For those who haven’t heard, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee will be doing a booksigning at Books Inc in San Francisco next Thursday night.  I called ahead to reserve a copy of her latest book to make sure I’d get one; you never know when it comes to non-knitters running a knitters’ event.  Always fun to see their jaws drop at the turnout she gets. See you there!

Michelle had a long day today with three appointments in two cities, a bit much for her at this stage in her recovery from her accident and so I offered to drive.

After all the years I played taxi mom, it was in a way an odd thing to be back in that role, hair gray now, my daughter towering over me. But it meant I had a fair amount of time to sit and work on my current project that I so much want to get in the mail and on its way to the person who needs it.

So now it’s almost done–and then I’ll be able to dive into the new Stitches yarn my fingers are so antsy to get to.

I got off to a later start than I’d intended. Because I was walking down the hallway towards the front door when I looked up.

It’s been at least two years since I last got to see a pair of Cooper’s: the female picked herself up forty-five minutes after hitting the neighbor’s window, by his account, but she was never seen by any of us again.

Today, looking up through the skylight, to my very great surprise, there they were, two gorgeous raptors at the tipsy-top of the silk oak next door towering over that yard and ours, swaying in the flimsy uppermost branches, one flicking its tail for stability from time to time, the sun shining directly on their orange chests. King and Queen of the Mountain.

They were courting. Wow! I called to Richard to come see, too, and he came immediately, but before he could get there the two hawks dove thataway in perfect synchrony.

At Stitches: the brother-in-law of the Antonio I know introduced himself at the Malabrigo booth. He was thrilled with his new scarf and insisted I take some of a new test yarn they had.

He had no way to know that his apricot matched the color of the chests on those beautiful hawks just earlier. So perfect.

Allison at Imagiknit was wonderful as always. If you ever want to know what Malabrigo’s up to next, her store is their American flagship.

Susan at Abstract Fibers and I connected again today; I adore her and oh my, such beautiful dyework. She sent me off with some Valentine.

Kris and Mel and Ben and I chatted some more.

I went back to the Cephalopod booth, where I had almost…almost…and then stepped across into Karida’s space yesterday and away from her temptation, but I told the woman, “That skein haunted me all night. I had to come back and get it.”

She was amused and surprised and gratified. “It haunted you?”

“It haunted me,” this time picking it up with no intention of letting it go back on that wall. The Rainbow Gum Forest photo I’m seeing on her page doesn’t begin to do it justice (it’s the skein at the bottom of my picture), but I can only hope I will.

I bought some baby alpaca from Lisa Souza. I always do. I always will. With silk this time. I wanted so many of her yarns that it stumped me and I just bought the one in Joseph’s Coat.

Teresa Ruch had some tencel in the most intense, shiny shades of deep rose that was probably *the* most elegant skein I saw at all of Stitches. But laceweight tencel is not my thing. I had thought it was silk, and I put it back, quietly disappointed.

We talked a little, and I told her of a bamboo blend I had made into a shawl where the bamboo had been slippery–and it had quite easily snagged way out to                                                    here. And then some. (Like, a foot.) I can fix such things, but yow it was a bear and it had made me highly reluctant to try bamboo again. Granted, the openness of the lace had probably contributed to that, but…

She took that as a challenge: she showed me how hers was spun and why it thus wouldn’t be likely at all to do that. When I told her that I knew bamboo could be from the inner or outer part of the plant, that that affected softness greatly–and it’s never labeled as such and you have no way to know, she joined in with me on the last part of the sentence and affirmed as I ended with, unless you feel it in person.

Yes.

And with that she decided she wanted me to be convinced enough that she pressed some of her 4 oz/227 yard hand-dyed turquoise in my hands, a lighter color than many of hers are, a bit of purple added in, a beautiful yarn, and asked me to try it out.

I so wasn’t expecting that. I certainly will.

Stitchsisterz had round balls of 100 g/400 yards of cashmere for $25 that was perfect as the carry-along strand to a likewise-fine baby alpaca/silk I’d wanted something to go with–and as I paid for it, the second woman in the booth scooped a copy of my book out of my basket and without even asking the price looked at the one printed on the cover and handed me $25 right back and would I sign it? Um, twist my arm? Thank you!

Jimmy Beans Wool was across from Lisa, and I wasn’t even going to dare look–but that one colorway of Madeline Tosh yarn required I go over there to see closer up. They told me that MadTosh had custom-created Technicolor Dreamcoat for them.

Twenty years ago I knitted a Kaffe Fassett coat in 68 colors that my husband called his Technicolor Dreamcoat. Or sometimes his Joseph’s Coat. Are we sensing a theme here?

I just got the one–really trying to be good this year, honest–and it was showing at the top of my bag as I sat in that chair as I wheeled around and I had random people asking me repeatedly, WHERE did you get that?! (Which also happened when the Valentine’s was at the top, and when the… It’s all good, all of it.)

I later said to Kris, “You can go to your local yarn shop and maybe find a yarn that almost, almost is exactly what you want. Then you come here once a year and you can find”–and we said it in unison in both word and arm-sweeping gesture, “EVERYTHING!”

Then as Richard and I were taking the scooter apart at the curb cut, some random woman in the deepening dusk saw by the last of the light and from the convention center the Wanda’s Flowers shawl I was wearing and exclaimed over it. Really exclaimed over it. Like, this was the thing she had been looking for all day type of exclaiming over it. Richard said, “Yeah, it’s one of her designs,” as he hoisted the scooter up and in, as I said, “Yeah, it’s Lisa Souza’s yarn” (thinking in the moment that that’s what was so pretty. I was wearing it in her Foxglove color, baby alpaca.)

The woman looked just speechless that we were leaving, and that shawl was going away, and she would never find it again, and and and, and I said, “It’s my last day, I’m not coming back,” (as I told Mel and Kris earlier, I’m too Mormon to shop on Sunday–they laughed) and I whipped out a copy of the book, read her nametag, confirmed the who to, signed it, and handed it over to her as she stood there stunned and speechless and happy and trying not to lose which page that shawl was on. I was pretty sure she’d be able to find it again.

And we rode off into the very last of the sunset.

Pictures after a little sleep.

Richard took a bit of time off work and got me to and from Stitches so I wouldn’t have to wrestle the chair. He’s my hero.

Reading Facebook posts later, it was amazing to me how many booths I’d entirely missed seeing and I am very glad I get to go back tomorrow. As Mel and Kris put it, This place is HUGE! (And Mel added, And there’s so. much. YARN! and I laughed.) I got to re-meet their son Ben, no longer the little kid from way back when but a gifted artist himself.

I got a few of their pieces, including replacing a honey pot my nephew broke (poor guy. He was upset, I wasn’t. Things happen.)  Some new bowls came home, too, and two mugs Nina had ordered. Beautiful, beautiful work.

I found the Buffalo Wool people to show them the cowl I’d made from their $10 don’t-buy-this-you’ll-be-sorry skein-rejects Halloween sale; I had been dying to know. So I asked Ron, Can you tell me which of your yarns this is? Because it doesn’t seem to be listed on your site.

He instantly knew: Moon. (I just looked it up on Ravelry: 25% bison down, 75% tencel.) It had been made for them at a mill on Prince Edward Island till the place shut down four years ago, and since then they’d moved all their milling to the US but that particular yarn hadn’t been made since then.

The mill on Prince Edward Island is gone?!

I told him that when my folks had retired and packed up their house after about 40 years there, Mom had come across a box in the basement and had wondered, Where on earth did this come from?

Oh I knew. I remembered it. I’d used some of it as a teenager. The mill at Prince Edward Island. Natural, light yellow, light orange, darker orange–I’d granny-squared a hat and scarf from it in junior high. (They were too scratchy to wear unless it was really really cold, but when it is, the scratchiness actually helps keep you warm. I learned something new.)

Huh.  Looking down at the cowl in my hands, so I had knitted PEI yarn again without even knowing it, and one would definitely be okay with this against your neck. That’s really cool!

Someone came in halfway into the conversation, and turns out she’s the one who’d dyed my skein. She too knew exactly what it was and when–and she was quick to tell me it’s not hard to overdye if you don’t like that shade of limegreen; I grinned and told her my website is named spindyeknit.

Ahhh… Okay!

But I dunno that I ever would. It has a history now and character. I’m quite delighted.

Someone said hi and with my face blindness that makes it difficult to recognize people I seldom see, I had not a clue and was very sorry that I disappointed her. She told me her name and my brain was pleading for context; she got away from me before I could make up for my lapse, and if she reads this, my apologies, and thank you very much for stopping to say hi.

Things quieted down in the late afternoon and I found myself in The Sassy Sheep booth with just the two women running it. I didn’t recognize them, and after 20-odd years of Stitches I do recognize the regulars; they told me that this was their first time here.

I said something to the effect of, it’s quite something, isn’t it? They exclaimed in unison, “Yes!”

It’s our Disney World.

We swapped stories, connecting knitting experiences to places and times in our lives, when suddenly a skein of yarn was being stuffed in my basket from behind: Twinkle, a merino/silk/sparkly stellina blend in the deep, deep greens and turquoises and deep blues and glittering ice of Glacier Bay as the dyer told me of what an incredible experience it had been to get to go there and see that place:  she urged me, “Go. Play!”

Oh wow! Oh you bet. Thank you!

I took the copy of my book back out of my basket that she’d been admiring earlier and, pulling out a pen, asked her her name.

(Both of them gave me their cards and I will edit their names into the post tomorrow–it’s in the basket and the basket is in the car for the night and I am pulling a blank. It’s been a great but long day.)

Oh and. I was looking for Karida Collins of The Neighborhood Fiber Co, whose colorways are named after areas back home, and went for her silk in particular: it is exactly the weight I want, it is exactly the softness I want. The colors are glorious, and it is exactly perfect.

So I was puzzling: this or that or that one? I really like this one, although do I need another bluegreen–although it is different from…

And as I mulled it over I happened to turn the tag on that bluegreen over.

Sold! Oh honey, that was so coming home with me.

The name of the colorway? Families of ours, are you reading this? Rock Creek Park. Richard grew up a short walk down the hill to Rock Creek Park. I have to knit this. I can only hope to make it as perfect as Karida did.

The first Babcock peach blossom, opened today as expected, and the other two peach trees. All in a year’s growth.

I finished the aqua silk shawl, I finished the aqua silk shawl! With about two yards left on the cone while the last pattern repeat was over 5000 stitches. So close. I would have liked to have done at least an extra row knit plain at the bottom but I just didn’t dare chance it. Good thing I stopped.

And…I came into Purlescence late tonight.

I had made a blueberry cake (with a little fresh-squeezed Meyer lemon added) for Valentine’s breakfast tomorrow, and I’d been waiting for it to be done before I could go.

I pulled it out of the oven with one hand with a toothpick in the other to test it–and that’s when I found out the oven mitt I’d grabbed had a spot where the insulation had worn through, and in my sudden scramble to get Don and Cliff’s pan to the stove fast before I burned my hand any further, I tripped over my own foot.

Now, it’s a running joke here as to which of us is the klutzier, but I think I took the cake on this one. I called out to Richard to come and see, because it was funny if nothing else: a third had landed in a clean saute pan on the stove, safe! Some of course had landed on the stove, but most stayed more or less inside the pan, even if not quite arranged the same way.

Four cups was a lot of blueberries–it was supposed to be three. I goofed.

He came around the corner in a hurry, wanting to help–just as I, while trying to finally put that cake pan the rest of the way carefully down, managed to flip the handle on the saute pan, blueberry shrapnel suddenly firing right at him.

He said something about how he could only make it worse and backed out of there fast.

Tomorrow we shall beat a tasty re-treat on this thing.

I know the old name for these cakes was blueberry buckle but I don’t think that’s what they intended.