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.

Just thinking about Stitches West being in two weeks is a great way to get a lot of knitting done. And Mel and Kris will be there! I think this may be the first one where I will have knit every single yarn bought the previous year by the time the next one happens–one beautiful, soft skein of Neighborhood Fiber Company silk left to go, and believe me, it will not be a hardship to play with that one.

Thirty-three years, I think it’s been–that hat is OLD. That hat was knit before we were parents. That hat was knit in doubled worsted wool on straights and seamed (I had to look for it–I did a pretty good job, who knew.) Gauge swatch? What’s that? Decreases? That’s, like, knit two stitches at the same time, right? Circs? I’d never tried them.

And yet somehow I concocted this hat for my 6’8″ husband. It came out, um, even for him, a little big. As in he vanishes down to his shoulders if he puts it straight on.

I stumbled across it tonight and told him,  thinking out loud, You know–I could cut the top off, frog it back to where the ribbing starts, and we could have a thick warm cowl out of that thing.

He got this big goofy grin on his face and took it from my hands and pulled it down over his nose, a big poof in back.  “That’s MY hat!” he protested, and you could just make out the grin under the bottom of the wool. Did he want to model it, then? Nooooo, no he did not thankyouverymuch as he made silly half-faces at me.

Just in case there are any new knitters reading this: we all start out as beginners.

That thing makes for great peek-a-boo games with the grandsons.

The pistachio buffalo blend. The lace pattern is from the Tara’s Redwood Burl shawl in my book. I’m guessing it’s their Skies yarn, not currently in stock.

The red hat is one strand Malabrigo superfine Finito in the calm Cereza and one strand Malabrigo Silkpaca baby alpaca/silk in a brighter red to add sparkle and near-worstedness to the gauge. Amazingly soft, both, done here in the Water Turtles lace.

And… Okay, the backstory is that we’ve had problems with our mail delivery for years. There’s a new guy on the route and I have high hopes for him.

The doorbell rang at about 6:00 pm, the mailman with a package to be signed for for Richard.

I smiled at him, “Isn’t there a blue package for me?”

“No, no, just this.” (Oh wait! And he fumbled in his pouch.)

As he brought the familiar blue Colourmart funky-shaped plastic bag into sight, I exclaimed, “There it is!” He looked at it like how did that get in there? He turned it over to read the address while I noticed that the top of the bag had been slit wide open with the top of the cone of silk pleading, Save me AlisonKenobe, you’re my only hope!

The customs declaration said yarn and yarn indeed it was. I must be Alison. He relinquished custody and smiled and waved me good-day.

A lot of people would love this. Really love this. Somebody will.

They might not have Swedish ancestry.

You know how some yarns, when you go to block them, as soon as they hit that water the deeper color is just oh so perfect but you know the thing can’t stay wet all its life?

The lime buffalo blend from the Halloween factory-reject sale is finally a cowl. Knitted. Done. Out of my stash. I wondered if there weren’t a bit of mill oil (which feels like dried hair mousse) to it, left unwashed in the bin as an off skein–it felt like it as it ran through the needles, to my surprise. So I treated it like that when I got done: hot soapy water and lots of rinses.

The water went a pretty bright green at the initial bath and then stayed clear, thank goodness, I don’t have to worry that it might crock green onto some future recipient’s favorite white cashmere sweater in the rain or some such disaster.

But the soggy cowl looked like an avocado that had been cut up yesterday.  Somebody’s favorite color, was my mantra as I slogged through the knitting over the weekend, somebody’s favorite color. Doesn’t have to be mine. Buffalo is warm and it’s supposed to bloom and be soft and it will be once I wash it. (I’ve been hoping.)

Tomorrow I find out what it’s like in real life. Once it’s dry the color will perk right back up again.

And I immediately cast on in a red that made my eyes happy. My turn.

It rained! Two nights in a row! Not a lot of rain, but, actual water falling out of the sky!

I finally blocked the waiting Lisa Souza Tahitian Blue shawl.

It was one of those moments, picking the finished piece up this morning, looking it over, swirling it onto my shoulders, having not till that moment been exactly sure how it would come out, where you think, Wow. This is one of the prettiest things I have ever knitted. This is what I had hoped for. (Thank you, Lisa!)

And.

This evening, a single dove arrived and pecked quietly away alone on the deserted porch, and I looked at it and thought oh honey–you’re a sitting duck. Don’t you know that having no random helter-skelter in the way of the chase is exactly what a hawk wants?

But Coopernicus came in the long way across the yard and the dove happened to glance back over her shoulder just in time and somehow she beat him.

Or else he wasn’t really trying, as he curved around to land on that chair again. He exchanged glances with me, lifted one great foot then the other as he turned and then he took off towards the redwood at great speed.  He was dead serious about not being late for dinner tonight.

Y’know? I could get spoiled….

Thank you, everybody, I appreciate it; today was a relief after yesterday. I was pretty discouraged there.

Interesting political theater, meantime: watching Congresspeople before the State of the Union address.

One guy, clearly aware there was a camera pointed their way, was smiling quite jovially as Ted Cruz talked to him. Cruz, even seen mostly from the back, clearly was getting more and more intense, jabbing a finger hard in the air, lecturing, the camera lingering to capture the moment while the other guy (dunno who he was) was being easygoing in response.

John McCain was just in front of the two of them and smiling in bemusement at the harangue going on behind him and lifting but not quiiiite entirely rolling his eyes but oh so close as to call it. Then they all sat down for the address and as the camera panned back their way my impression that that had to have been Cruz was confirmed.

I didn’t knit as the President spoke because I was at that indecisive what-to-start-next stage and besides, I didn’t want to miss a word. This was the proverbial and actual Leader of the Free World and I wanted to hear what he had to say.

President Obama laid out the challenges before us, invited Congress to help him meet those challenges and then, acknowledging reality, laid out what he personally was going to do to move us forward. He basically asked them to work together, take the credit for it and run with it.

When my uncle was a freshman in the Senate, there was no one law and in many states, anybody–anybody–could access your medical records for the asking *except you*.  You were legally barred. My uncle’s proposal was for a Federal law saying that other than in specific psychiatric cases where there is clear cause to shield the record, all patients should be allowed to access their own and others would need to meet a standard to do so.

The members of his party were quite upset. This would be a Federal law on something the states should regulate. States’ rights!

Uncle Bob responded by saying Senator (I don’t remember who but a ranking Democrat) is against it.

Oh well in THAT case! And his fellow Republicans rallied behind it.

Then-President Clinton ran with it and took credit for it when he signed it and that’s fine, presidents always do get the blame and the credit, the point was to get it done. Probably nobody outside the family associates my uncle’s name with that law. He doesn’t mind a bit. It needed to happen.

Given today’s political realities, I think any member of Congress willing to buck the trend of intransigence and (just) do their (bleeping) jobs would get quite a bit of personal and political credit from a grateful country.

(I started a Malabrigo Mecha hat during the rebuttals. An easy decision.)

I took Michelle to a physical therapy appointment today. Her car is not finished being fixed even yet, and she herself is far from it, although there has been some progress and that is a very good thing. (The speeder was doing over a hundred, the second car saw what was coming and swerved into where Michelle was, Michelle did 360s at 65 mph and while doing so was hit head-on by one of those two as they flipped down the freeway, landing upside down. The driver of the second car is a survivor, too.)

I pulled out my knitting. It was going to be awhile.

An older woman arrived to check in. The room was spacious and grandly lit by two-story windows behind where I sat, the waiting room an atrium. It gave me a chance to observe quietly at a bit of a distance: I loved her long braid that she could almost sit on; my father’s mother’s hair was like that, I’m told. I loved the patience and the wisdom in her face–I wanted to be like that when I grew up, and I imagined her as being one of those argyle-sock knitters of the ’50’s who never stopped loving working with yarn. The ones the hippies learned from.

She glanced my way when she was done at the desk, started to sit down, and I looked up again with a smile as she gave it up and got back up and approached me, just too curious. What WAS I making? (She didn’t quite say, too big for a sleeve, too small for a sweater in the round unless it was baby size, too big even for a hat.)

A cowl, says I, popping it over my head to show her, suddenly glad that I’d used circs that were a bit big for the number of stitches I’d started with–couldn’t have given that little demo with a sixteen-incher, that’s for sure.

Ah yes, of course. And she told me of the senior knitting group she’d gotten started. Most there only wanted to do squares, she said wistfully for what they were missing out on, but, she smiled, you could do a lot with squares.

Yes! I mentioned the Linus Project blanket that had been gifted to my friend’s son after he fell 30 feet from a ski lift–he’s fine now, I hastened to add–and how gobsmacked I was that some knitter somewhere had knitted the very pattern and colorway that I had wanted to knit that family an afghan in. When they needed that comfort, it was there for them.

She took a long breath of deep satisfaction from that. Every stitch matters, she said.

Every stitch is love, I added.

Yes! said she.

And with that she sat down and picked up a magazine. (And I thought, ah, so you’ll be using the pool therapy. I wouldn’t risk  good wool anywhere near chlorine either, yes.)

Nina’s birthday party. She loved her new silk cowl. We met new and old friends, had a great time…

And coming up our front walkway, Richard heard the beeping of the freezer alarm I made from a Heathkit kit for a college class my senior year at BYU.

Actually, he reminds me, ours was the second one I made, the class assignment one I gave to my folks. Oh right. It had seemed like a good thing to have, and all these years later ours is still working and I imagine theirs is too. He dashed into the garage from the house. (Hey, nobody uses garages to put cars in in California.)

Six hours bounced wide open.

But it actually didn’t appear too terrible. The chicken is now thawing the rest of the way in the fridge and the other things towards the front were berries and the like that could refreeze safely.

But Nina loved her cowl. Which balanced things nicely.

(I forgot to ask if I could take her picture. I didn’t get one at all. I was having too much fun talking with her and her mom.)

When we kids were young and our family traveled all around the country one summer with a camping van, I remember how fascinated we were by the vastness of the western sky, how bright the stars. How many! (And how strange it was to see multiple lightning strikes going on way over thataway in the middle of the desert in New Mexico. Lightning. With no rain. The sky playing solitaire.)

My younger brother eventually enlisted Dad’s help and built himself a telescope, a pretty big one, too, and I remember him showing me part of the sky through it and what that was and that was–and me being a teensy bit jealous that my little brother knew more and cared more about it than I did. Loving what you’re learning is a powerful thing. That’s one of the pulls of knitting, too–you can never learn it all, it keeps you going.

I was remembering all that fondly tonight as I looked at the shawls, just gobsmacked, wondering how she kept so many minute details so perfect, verified too by a delighted astronomy enthusiast who happened to be there tonight.

Audry Nicklin and her mom were at Purlescence with copies of Audry’s book and her knitting spread out across a table. The secret garden socks are worth the price alone. (But I had to let it pass for now–still catching up after those house repairs.)

What is on Ravelry but not in the book, though, were the two bright blue Madeline Tosh-yarn shawls. (And one in gray, knitted a second time.) Celestarium and Southern Skies: the night sky as seen from the northern and the southern hemispheres, with yarnovers and bright silver beads marking the stars making up the constellations. There’s Orion. Tauris. Polaris at the center here, working outward to… Wow. Just, wow!

Audry will be at Stitches Friday Feb 21st at Purlescence’s booth. Go, go see those shawls if you get a chance. And Audry, too; she’s a peach.

Feathers fluffed against the chill, relaxed.

Yet again debating whether to say anything quite yet. It was December 16th that I was given the first heads-up that something was off–but possibly not much. You’d better go. (Make up your mind.)

I waited this afternoon for the time to hurry up and finally finally get here, trying to knit my way to calm, finding the last hours to be the longest.

I glanced up and to my surprise, there just outside was Coopernicus perched on the big pot my extra-dwarf cherry tree is planted in, facing me.

I finished a 400+ stitch row, a small bright growing bird’s nest in my hands in the cheering color (thank you Lisa Souza) of a bright summer sky, and looked up again.

There he remained, steady and firm, watching over me. It was very moving. He didn’t mind my taking his picture, whereas in years earlier he would have objected to a black object being raised near my head and pointing at him. I moved around the room, trying to get past the effects of the double-paned glass. His face turned to follow my gaze.

I smiled and went back to my project, determined to make visible progress.

Another row. More photos.

Another row. And at that I let him be. I emailed a friend to say how grateful I was that he’d been there easily an hour now in raptor attentiveness–and hitting send, I looked up, and at the suddenly empty space wished I’d seen him go but was glad for what was.

And with that I went off to meet the doctor who did a bone marrow biopsy on my daughter ten or twelve years ago.

He asked after her. He was thrilled at being handed that printout of her dissertation. I was thrilled at seeing the Johns Hopkins plaque on his wall–how perfect was that?

He was a dear. Did this have anything to do with the Graves’ diagnosis last week, I asked him? No. But so this is probably nothing, right?

He looked me steadily and gently with a long-practiced eye at this sort of thing and answered, We do not know that yet.

More tests were done. Another will have to be done at the hospital. And soon we will have answers.

And then, coming out of there, I ran into a favorite teacher all my kids had in high school and seeing each other in that department, there was no need to dance around reality. I was in the testing phase. She, not so much. It was a relief to her to be able to ask after each of my kids, to celebrate with me where they’ve gone on in their lives since she’s seen them, to hear me brag to the nurse who showed to take her back to her appointment that my kids got to have her as their teacher. Just the best.

She got a break from it all in those moments. And I knew the words to come for me might be much gentler than the ones familiar to her by now. But we shall see.

The after picture, then the before one again–just amazing.

The guy pushed the button, that home page popped up for him, then he turned it around to where I could see it to show me the work his hands had done today. He clearly had been looking forward to seeing the look on my face and it is safe to say he was not disappointed.

My knitting, meantime, had been stumbling for a few days over a puzzlement in a pattern I’d been creating.

After dropping the Ipad off for repairs, I went to deliver a project a half hour north I’d done in superfine Malabrigo Finito. I’d been waiting for Kathryn‘s vacation to be over; I knew there had been two funerals in her family since Thanksgiving, and making her something as soft as possible from yarn from her shop had felt absolutely compelling. And now after all that happened in our own family in the past month, finally I could get it to her!

She was disbelieving. Thrilled. She’d even put on an outfit this morning that totally matched it, and I went home and dove right into the next project. That’s all it took. After a good start on that I put it down, eyed the problematic piece, finally knew what it needed and got on with it. Kathryn did me a great favor that she had no way to know about.

The new project will be the carry-around mindless one that I knew I was going to be needing tomorrow and had been trying to push myself to begin. And now I have–with more Finito she gifted me right back with. It makes me happy to look at.

I waited for the call.

It took two and a half hours and the going rate of $129.95 plus tax for the parts. My sweetie was ecstatic to see how perfect his Ipad looked again so fast.

And we are good to go.

I’ve only ever seen her a few times. Her mother is a member of our church and so today she wheeled her in.

I was surprised to see a touch of gray in the daughter’s hair. It happens, though, doesn’t it.

We threw our arms around each other, the daughter and I. Neither of us asked the other anything like, now what is your name again? I held the mother’s hand a moment; she was lucid, which has not always been so, radiant, even.

It isn’t easy to be responsible for a parent, and from a young age at that, no matter how sweet the personality of both (and they are.)

And I found myself deeply glad I had done that knitting years ago: to do my small part in caring, too, to try to let the daughter know forever that she was not alone.

—————

On a separate note: Bashie just passed away at 98, it was announced today. The woman whose father was a rider for the Pony Express after Abraham Lincoln asked Brigham Young for riders and the last, as far as we know, surviving child of a Civil War soldier.

He remembered! The old miscommunication.

He was reading a good book and I was trying to redesign a pattern that had been almost good enough for way too long–Christmas knitting was over, it was time to get down to work.

At one point I announced into the quiet, just to get it out of my system, that I had just been counting stitches (and ripping) for an hour.  And then I got right back to it, glad to finally be on my way with the thing.

Till I got to–oooh. Oh that doesn’t work, does it, I mean you could, and I did last time, but, why? No way. The only thing to do was to go back almost to the beginning, and so I ripped and ripped yet again, the fifth time now, my determination to have that soft, gorgeous Tahitian Blue come out perfect being my one solace in all this.

And as the long waves of phone-corded baby alpaca/silk piled right back up in my lap my sweetie looked up from his page.

“But aren’t you using Frog Free yarn?”

Thank you all for the support; I’d been putting off saying anything but I really did want to be able to go back and remember when the Graves’ was diagnosed. Hey, if it distracts my immune system away from other stuff while being so treatable, good.

Meantime, we had someone drop by today and when he rang the doorbell, I asked the guy, You want to see something?

And so he stepped inside and followed to where I was pointing and there was the hawk on a post, framed by the sky, and I got to see the moment of wonder in his face.

He left and Coopernicus finished his meal–then flew not away but closer, landing at a nearby spot on the fence, shaking out his feathers a bit against the cold and basking in the last of the sun.

Then to the other side of the window, right there. I didn’t get anything done for a little while but just sat and enjoyed being with that beautiful bird. I had moved something out onto the patio and he had to explore every inch around it, gauging distances, hiding places. Hopping up on the metal seed can at the last and simply people watching me back.

I later came across some long-stashed possum/merino yarn I’d had no idea was still kicking around–thought I’d given that away. And yet, at last, it was just the thing: I’d wanted something with no dyes to crock that I could put on my hair when damp, having lost my white one, so when Richard asked what I wanted to do for New Year’s, feeling a bit under the weather, I answered simply, Knit a hat.

And so I did.

And without realizing it till I finished, I knitted the stripes in the tail and the beat of the wings.

A Happy New Year to you and may all of 2014 be a blessing.

(Oh, and, my New Year’s resolution? To finally get around to correcting that time stamp re Daylight Savings. The night is young.)