I thought I would show you why I bother to hank and scour coned yarns rather than knitting straight from the cone and washing the dried-hair-mousse-y mill oils out later.

Usually I buy 150 gram cones, and that’s what the start of the baby blanket used up. This one, though, was 1050 grams of a cotton and cashmere blend and without a swift (or maybe even with), there was no way I was going to be able to do all that in one go. My niddy-noddy cried uncle at 360 grams.

The resulting hank, scoured, blow-dried and wound back up, is on the left–while there are still 690 grams on the cone on the right. Nearly twice.

The ball is solid, other than that little belly button from my thumb while I was winding it. The cone is a goodly amount of cardboard-and-air. That picture is taken straight on, and if there’s any distortion it’s that it quite understates how much bigger the ball is in every dimension–maybe I should take a side view shot, too.

Between the soapy water that was hotter than I could touch (I used the bottom of the Seventh Generation bottle to push it down in the sink there, and after rinsing spun it out in the washing machine) and the blow-drying afterwards because there was so. much. yarn, I like to think that any shrinkage that was going to happen has happened. There will be no surprises when I’m done knitting this, nor, hopefully, to the recipients when they wash their blanket.

There’s also this one other big reason for doing that extra work: the yarn on the cone is, eh. But washed! It’s so baby soft. I get to experience what they will with it.

(Second picture, for scale: placed on a well-loved 8″ x 9.5″ Barbara Walker’s Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns.)

Dropped my glasses off the top of my head when I stood up to answer the phone and then I stepped on them.

It was bad. There was just no putting those back on. All I could do was wait for Richard to get home from work to drive me over to For Eyes.

A dozen feet away was close enough not to be too fuzzy when a Cooper’s hawk skidded to a stop on the concrete just on the other side of the glass door. It considered me a split second as a finch on its back flailed away wildly trying to right itself (its hard thwack on that window had snatched my attention) and he grabbed it and was off.

The younger employee went, “Wow, you really stepped on them,” and given their age (I’d reused the same lightweight metal frames through several prescription changes–I bought an extra pair eight years ago so I could) she was afraid she would break them; the more experienced middle-aged guy, the one I took a tumble in front of last week, was sure he could do it and she was sure he could if anybody could and handed them over.

At this point I’ve been in there enough times that they were not surprised to see me pull out the knitting project I started today (after I did indeed add a repeat to yesterday’s.)

He was glad to see me back and looking none the worse for that fall and made a point of getting those exactly right. He totally rescued me, and was very pleased to be able to make such a difference. I can see again. I can do things again. I have my life back.

They both adored the picture of Mathias in shades and even asked to see more pictures of the baby, and I thought, I really like you guys…!

(Yarn: two strands of a dusty purple-plum cashmere laceweight, a gift from Sherry in Idaho, and two strands of a brick red merino with a touch of sparkle to it, plied together on my spinning wheel.)

The last rays at sundown were coming through the window right on that drying merino/silk cowl (Scrumptious 4-ply yarn by Fyberspates), showing the radiant deep purple hiding in that dark navy. I ran for the camera, but in the steps it took me to go down the hall and back the light was gone.

You can almost see it.

The mango tree has sprouted like crazy just since two weeks ago.That top branch grew from ending at that last big green leaf to seven new branches popping out–and that’s just the one cluster. From this morning to this evening, it went from looking like a solid poof from inside the house to discernibly separate branches: they are stretching up and out at two to three inches a day.

All the flower stalks that had the tiniest suggestion of buds when we left town to help when Mathias was born–it got too cold for them while nobody was home to cover the tree at night and they gradually turned black, so I think there will be no crop this year. The rest of the tree is doing fine. And who knows, it might surprise me yet.

(Cute hat and matching socks–hey, they match the mango!– from longtime online knitting friend Susan Schutz.)

If I could get my phone to let me take another picture, I’d show you the half-done one I started this morning in navy 4-ply Scrumptious by Fyber Spates. Take this pattern, move the decreases to the centers of the diamonds, dark blue, there you go.

Yesterday’s silk came out such that when I tried this cowl on and looked at how it shimmered under the skylight, I instantly wanted to make more like that for more people and I do have more colors of that dk silk in my stash.

The Scrumptious was not one of them. But somehow this morning it wheedled its way onto my needles anyway and told me it wouldn’t take more than a day or two, promise! So I’m trying to hold it to that.

It made it up to me as I went along with it by reminding me how (name redacted)….wears navy a lot… And could use a hug right now.

And a superwash merino blend is likely to be a lot less stressful on a new mom than pure silk might be.

The picture’s the bright-light version of the colors, which are generally more subdued.

There was a baby shower tonight for someone who was a one-year-old with our then-one-year-old daughter when we moved here, and the best anniversary present my husband gave me was to urge me to go ahead to the party and enjoy.

I got there right at starting time–and there was Vivian and a chance to talk to her in an aside without its being in front of lots of other people and at a time when she was not having to deal with movers nor small children.

The blue I finished a week ago. The brick silk was an abandoned project that I hadn’t been able to make myself frog but at that gauge it just hadn’t been working as a rectangular scarf: the weight of it was going to pull and sag the stitches long over time the way loosely-spun loosely-knit silk can do and it had sat there hogging that pair of needles for a year.

Knowing she liked orange had gotten me to pick it up this morning, consider it sideways–hey! It does fit over the head when I pinch the edges together! (Barely.) I went to town with it, widening the pattern so it would go around the neck in layers just so. I am totally glad I saved that! (I did have to put a seam up the back.) UFOs can be great to have in a pinch, and she really liked it. She loved them all.

She laughed when I quoted her, “All the colors. Mostly orange. Blue is good.”

And then I told her this: I had bought that variegated Joseph’s Coat yarn from my old friend Lisa Souza maybe ten years ago and it had drifted to the far regions of my stash.

But somehow, and it was either Friday or Saturday, I had gone through bags and bags and found it and for no reason whatsoever I had pulled it out and put it front and center in the family room, so that when I got home from church Sunday after that conversation with her there it had been. Right. There. I hadn’t even known yet that she was moving away, much less what colors she liked. I had knitted it the rest of that day and all the next.

I found it intriguing how the yarn had split itself into three sections: the yarn was the same yard after yard but how it came out was not. “Kind of like raising children,” I said, and she laughed again.

She loved them all, but that one. That one spoke to her.

Her outfit looked like she had picked it out to match that cowl and she proudly wore her Lisa Souza the rest of the evening.

And then.

It was a large turnout: older women who’d known Kimber all her growing up (or almost, in my case), young women she’d grown up with, quite the reunion, and that end table in front of her was stacked pretty high. Which is good, given how many clothes babies go through every day.

Her sister had crocheted her a soft baby blanket and everybody oohed and aahed in appreciation.

More baby clothes… Towels, binkies, lots of pink in happy anticipation of her finally getting a girl on the third try…

Almost the last one. Kimber went to pull the envelope off so she could read it and tugged hard enough that some of the wrapping paper came off along with it.

She gasped and looked at me: that had to be from me! Right?!! She knew how big that package was, too. !!! She opened the card, took a deep breath to see the rest of what was inside while filling her mom in next to her (it was really loud in that house)…

and pulled out the baby blanket.

The machine washable and dry-able baby blanket in colors she loved so much. Colors that I had struggled to push myself through. Colors that were perfect for her.

One of the older women pulled me aside afterwards. She used to be a Knitter with a capital K but it’s been awhile.

That yellow, she said. In that pattern. It’s reminding me of–I don’t remember, but it’s reminding me of…(she shook her head) something!

It was absolutely compelling to her, and driving her crazy that she couldn’t remember what it was that had been.

It’ll come to you, I promised her. It’ll come.

I just bet you it’s that she knit somebody something once….

Blink. They’re what?! (I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, some other friends moved out of their rental house after the landlord doubled the rent, which had already been high, and it’s gone up that much again since.)

Vivian, I heard…?

“I don’t want to move again!” But yes, it looked like they were, and in the next week at that.

“But I haven’t knit for you yet!” As if that could keep them here. I don’t want them to leave.

It was like I’d thrown her a lifeline of something positive to hold onto in the stress of uprooting with kids and she answered with emotion, “I would LOVE to have something hand knit from you!”

“Alright, what colors. What are your favorite colors…”

“All of them!” and then, “Orange.”

Orange? Somehow that surprised me. Smiling ruefully, wryly, thinking about Green Planet Yarn’s being up for sale and my ever-diminishing chances to experience a yarn before I buy (and there was certainly no time to order any!) “There is not a plethora of orange in my stash.”

She laughed, and that felt good.

“What would match most of your clothes?” In case I could still make her happy with what I had at hand. “Blue, I have lots of blues.”

“Blue is good.”

And so I went home and searched through my stash, and almost immediately, because somehow just a couple of days ago I had inexplicably found it and put it Right There and then forgotten all about it, there was this baby alpaca “Joseph’s Coat” colorway from Lisa Souza‘s dyepots. All of them. Mostly orange. Blue is good. Well there you go.

And so this is what I spent most of the rest of the day on–that and our taking Michelle to the airport. What is fascinating to me is how it went from punctually-random intermixings of colors to growing stripes, definite stripes, when I changed the number of stitches on the needles. Curious. It will look like they all melted into each other at the top.

I have the plain light slightly-grayish-blue cashmere of two cowls ago as a backup, since that one didn’t go out yet and given that I am suddenly on such a tight time frame.

I finished typing the above, looked again, and finally figured it out: it looks like the pinwheel-on-a-stick toy of my youth that you blew on to make the colors twirl around to see if you could get it going fast enough to make them all run together. The center always did the most.

Showing off Andy’s Bing and Rainier cherries, before the sugar/flour/cinnamon/almond and top crust.

Meantime, this was some 50/50 merino/silk from Colourmart, and I knew from knitting my brother a hat out of it in double strands of navy that it was warm, soft, and well spun, I knew my hands loved the stuff, but all they had left was this faded dusty taupe/sage mix that did not do a thing for me. Cannot beat that closeout price, though– (150 g/$12 ppd) –all it needed was a little work.

Hank, scour the mill oils out in hot soapy water, overdye, rinse, then wind it up once it’s dry. Jacquard Acid Dye in (not a whole lot of) Bright Blue with just a touch of vinegar in the pot that helped the yarn take up the dye during the simmering.

It’s still got just a bit of earthy tone in some lighting from its ancestral color but I like it much better now.

The adult Cooper’s hawk stood on the telephone wires just past the fence line. An hour earlier right there at the awning it had flinched in flight at my standing up, both of us realizing a moment late that the other was there. I sat down again as it did an extra little half-loop in surprise before landing but then it took off over the house and away. (Sorry…)

This time I felt a bit watched, looked up, and held still, quietly loving it for being there where I could see it. What a beautiful bird. I blinked repeatedly so it wouldn’t consider me a predator nor threat.

Becoming confident over several minutes in its ownership of that piece of the sky, comfortable with me now, it reached down and preened an itchy feather from its chest, allowing itself to be briefly vulnerable in a way that conveyed that all was right in its world.

Meantime, I’d like to share this postcard. I left the receipt for the headband from Oomingmak with my daughter, so I’m not sure if the person who signed the letter was the artist who’d knitted it or someone at the co-op headquarters in Anchorage, but either way, I’m quite charmed.

She made the knitting personal, and that, not to mention the qiviut, is knitting at its best.

That early stage when a project feels like it’ll never get done. When I know I just have to do one more hour’s worth of work and then it’ll totally take off. (If I could see from here who it’s to be for I would have whizzed through so fast from the get-go.)

Meantime, I wonder this every spring: I know that growing young and lactating squirrels seek out sources of calcium then.

But why are they so fixated on eating this part of this broom that they will absolutely pulse with chewy fervor as if they were digging into hardpack clay to store a nut for the winter–even in the face of my opening the door and walking towards them? They make a break for it at the very last (like this one did), reluctant to let go and clearly not wanting some other squirrel to take their place on the comeback. They have even fought over access to it, and territorial squirrel fights, not chases but actual yin-and-yang-look rolling-hairball fights, are (at least in my observations) rare and leave the vanquished marked to its peers as such by a bitten-off ear tip.

The rubber part of that push broom is looking pretty sad. So is that ear.

Pica? (Wikipedia entry.)

Richard’s sister’s daughter’s wedding was wonderful: the bride and groom were as happy as one could ever hope for and they are clearly a great match.

Turns out a lifelong friend who was more like family to the groom’s father was a second cousin of my dad’s, and there was this instant sense of belonging.

Photos: my father-in-law surrounded by all his great-grands (with two mothers holding them) except Mathias, who is too young to travel. (Maddy, Kim, Parker and Hudson are to his left.)

My Mom and Dad.

Two of my sisters have in the last year moved within an hour of the folks and we had mini reunions going on on my side as time allowed.

Nash got his stocking hand-delivered and I got to see how much it meant to him and to his mom, my cousin. To say he loved it does not begin to tell it. He just kind of glowed the whole time.

Every teenager needs someone who is not their parent who thinks the world of them–someone who doesn’t have to but just does. I remembered the people I owed much to from my own teens as we were winding through the hills towards their house.

And in between, our daily dose of baby pictures came in and got shared around.

We arrived home in the early afternoon and as I was trying to catch up on five days’ worth of email, there was a new one: after we’d left for the airport, Mom had taken a walk and had fallen, broken a tooth, loosened another and split her lip. Ouch!

Two random men in the right place happened to see her and rushed to her aid, and whoever they are they have my deep gratitude. And to Mom’s neighbor who took her in to be seen.

The note from Dad said that the urgent care folks had said Mom was not to smile nor laugh for a few days.

My mother. Not laughing. Not smiling. Good luck with that.

I was waiting at the doctor’s while he was back in there somewhere being seen. (He’s fine.)

A woman stopped right there on her way past, looking down at the work in my hands: “That’s beautiful!”

And then she had to know: “What is the, the,” (searching for the right word) “the string?”

Me: “The yarn is” (her: Yarn! Yes!) “a combination of bamboo and pearls,” and I described the process a little. I told her it was soft and it was warm, and she clearly wanted to so I urged her to go ahead and feel how soft it was.

Suddenly she was proudly showing me pictures of her daughter and her friend who (if I got it right) taught the kid how to crochet–and the mom loved seeing her daughter creating like that and wanted in on this and wanted to knit.

I told her there’s a learning curve at the beginning (so that she wouldn’t get discouraged at that point) but you get good fast and it’s worth sticking it out.

She very much agreed with that, swooning again over that bright white cowl. Where had I gotten that yarn? Cottage Yarns in South San Francisco. When I told her the yarn was not being made anymore and they had what was left, she had me type the shop’s name and city into her phone so she would have it right and be able to find them for sure. (English wasn’t her first language, but she was very good at it.)

Whether she actually ever learns to or not I don’t know, but I do know she wants to. And she got a whole lot closer to it today–and now she knows someone out there in the world is cheering her on.

(I did not show her grandbaby pictures. I was tempted.)

One badly posed Christmas stocking because hey, I finally ran all the ends in and at long last it really is done and the hour is too late to fuss with the camera to try to get a better one.

Re the back loop: I ended up picking up stitches and knitting it in stockinette stitch with a second strand woven across the back of every stitch all the way up for strength and reinforcement. It was a good move.

I’m glad I went to the post office first thing today, because the phone rang a little after noon. It was B. She didn’t quite want to ask outright, she didn’t want to put me on the spot, so I volunteered what she wanted to know: her box? I got it to the post office. It was on its way back to the company that had sent her the wrong thing. All taken care of.

She was so relieved–and so was I that I hadn’t put it off till later in the day. It felt good to hear her happy.

And then I went and spent the rest of the day doing all the errands and all the things till I was too wiped to do anything but sit there and knit the back loops on the back loop.

Not a fan of synthetics, and this one was washable wool, but still, maybe I should make a mothproof one next time? Since such things tend to have sugary food in them and then be stored for most of a year sight unseen. What do you think?

The Christmas stocking: a few more repeats and then the toes. The cable patterns are all variations of a simple 2×2 on the fourth row.

Um, when I decided how long to make it I didn’t really consider how much the heel would add to that. My cousin’s going to have to work hard to fill that thing. Raise the mantle, maybe?

It never occurred to me until today that the sewn, flat stockings my mother-in-law and I made my kids have the names facing outwards and the foot going sideways. Of course, because what else, but I was halfway through what you see of the foot here (which is resting sideways for the photo) when I realized that either half the name wasn’t going to show when you hang the thing, or if I center the hanging loop directly behind the name, the foot part is going to be sticking straight out into the room. Is that odd? Or just to my eyes used to one thing? Where would you put that loop?

Next is to pick up the stitches at the top and knit and then tack down a second layer of that ribbing above the name for strength, now that I can see that it needs it, along with making that future loop, wherever it will go.

After yesterday’s post, it feels good to be able to say, oh wow, look at that.

I’m suddenly realizing we haven’t touched the ladder since the Fuji apple was pruned in the winter.

I’d always been told mourning doves make the worst nests: as lazy as, drop two twigs and call it done, but this one went to a lot of effort to make the best I’ve ever seen one with. Maybe since it wasn’t in a tree or a bush it needed a bit of camouflage, I don’t know, or maybe it was the abundance of enticing material by the lacewood elm (which reaches to just to the right of this picture). After all, we knitters know that the way to get someone to stick with the process of learning how to do what we do is to share the best yarns for their hands to want to work with.

Not that I went close enough to try to get a good look at its details. She watches me when I go past and knows that I’ve noticed her now but she does not move. Nor do I stay in the way.

The answer to DebbieR’s question starts with, I had no idea that that cute little cabin that’s pictured in everything I ever saw having to do with the Oomingmak cooperative was actually smack dab in downtown Anchorage! We happened to drive past it after hours and I exclaimed and grabbed the phone and snapped its picture through the windshield (see yesterday’s post) from the passenger side.

Sam asked the next morning if I wanted to visit the place?

Heck yeah!

And so she and I went while Richard stayed home with the baby. It was just a quick little jaunt.

There was the back room in view, completely familiar to me from Donna Druchunas’s book and every article I’ve ever read about the place. There were hand knits on display and hat kits for sale and if I’d been really rich that baby-size handspun qiviut blanket that was just under $700 would have been Mathias’s. If only. Inexplicably I saw none of the traditional smoke rings they’re so famous for–cowls, as someone in the Lower 48 would call them, infinity scarves, in the finest, softest, warmest handspun lace.

I made great friends with my first surgeon eight years ago when she was trying to describe this beautiful little hand knit she’d bought from an Eskimo group while visiting Alaska and I’d asked, Was it qiviut? A smoke ring? She was astonished: “How did you know?!”

I’m a knitter! And I spin.

And I live in California. I knew, looking at their wares, that I in no way need the extreme warmth of the undercoat of the gentle musk ox. But my daughter, now! I told her I had long wanted to support the women who do that work, but online from afar and in the wrong climate I’d just never made that order.

But here we were. (And the prices were about what it would cost me to knit them myself, I said afterwards as we were going back to the car.)

She picked out a thick, wide intarsia headband knitted in two natural shades–two designs, actually, taking a minute to decide: “This one looks like poinsettias to me,” and almost got it but the other won out in the end. (The one I’d picked out as my favorite, and if I should have kept my mouth shut it’s too late now.)

I’m rather sorry I didn’t get its picture. Even better yet, on her.

They said if it ever needed repair to just bring the sales slip with it and they would do it.

I told her it was an early Happy Mother’s Day from me. I didn’t quite say out loud, you swaddle your baby in warmth and I’ll swaddle mine.

But I did want at least some little memento for me and they had these tiny bags of combed raw qiviut: $4 each and I got two.

Sam told me afterwards that one of her co-workers had a hat from Oomingmak but he cannot wear it indoors. It’s too hot.

I figure, in Alaska, that’s a good problem to have.