I’d been kind of avoiding going back to the site of the skewering but it needed doing and not doing it was bothering me more. So.

I tried several methods and had to go back to the original. Next choice, while chain stitching those cross boards: a stitch too big or a stitch too small?

The white cashmere/cotton is the one that’s going to shrink the most, and the red part is certainly going to be stretched across whatever body will be under it, so clearly let’s go for too big, for now, even if it drives a part of my brain nuts.

After much experimenting, I finally ended up skewering the crosses downwards at the center, then finishing tacking down by skewering again with the other side of the yarn and working the two ends in underneath.

Given the old age of the building, having the doors a bit saggy for now works anyway, right?

Okay then. Barn doors: closed.

Alright, blue sky yarn, I’m ready for you. Royal Mail said yesterday that it has left the UK.

I don’t normally get that much done in a day, but then I didn’t get that much else done in the day. At all. Because I was doing this. The thing did speed up a whole lot when I was done with seven of the strands.

An oh by the way is that I read the Washington Post quoting a 114-year-old woman yesterday saying, Anything the Lord gave you, use it!

Yes, ma’am!

Thank you for all the great ideas. I knew it wasn’t hard but it just wasn’t coming to me. The two tall rectangles on the far left need those Xs, the middle one doesn’t, the big door on the right has just a few more rows to go and then it’s ready for its set of four and I plan to do them all at once.

Just let me straighten out that wonky window a bit.

The thought occurs to me: the real one would be 114 years old.

While waiting for the red yarn to be absolutely dry before winding it up into balls, this happened.

Barbara Walker’s Paving Stones pattern, multiples of four stitches (+1, she says, but I was working in the round, so, not +1) so I used 72 and then decreased in nine sets across. Etc. Malabrigo Mecha, size 5 for the ribbing, 7 for the rest, and I have a person in mind for it but I’m going to offer it as one of several choices so they get what they actually want.

I wanted to make a brown hat. I was not able in four stores to find any of it in that color, in person nor online, but I had half an older skein left; this took it to the last couple of yards but it made it.

I did say to Richard when I was showing it off, If you put this on does it make you a bobblehead?

The other thought: since there are no cables sustaining the depth in the texture, when this pattern gets wet it deflates to flatness. In which case the hat will be polka dots. It’s a risk someone will have to take.

USPS this morning said Thursday, Royal Mail said the local office has it, and dang. Busted, I guess? They put it on the truck after all.

The mail came at 5:30: the red for the barn! There is thankfully no pink tinge this time–that’s just a pigment of the camera’s imagination.

I had ordered a large cone. They give you a discount if you click the box for not making them wind it off into smaller ones, and yet, I had said I was knitting it doubled–and they wound it off onto two because they could, so that I could knit it straight up as is if I wanted. It was a nice little surprise. Thank you, Colourmart.

(I wanted it wound off and scoured first, though. It preshrinks it a little and it makes it feel so much softer to work with.)

Two plus hours and a fast dinner later, I had all 2600+ meters hanked up, the mill oils washed out in hot water, and they’re hanging up to dry.

I can’t wait.

Sore throat yesterday morning, stayed home, missed a potluck last night, missed seeing friends at church: a throwback to the During times, made easier by Zoom church and the Zoom knitting group that offered actual human interaction, with a big thanks to all who participated there.

Got two hats started out of it: one that needed visual attention and one for the knit meeting that freed my eyes as friends encouraged my hands–egged them on, rather. A fish hat (child size in link) complete with bright stripes and tails and fin and (adult size) fish lips on your forehead?

Trying to remember who it was (probably Elizabeth Zimmerman?) who famously said, People will put anything on their heads.

Yes please!

Just before the pandemic I think it was, someone pointed out a website in–I don’t remember if it was Australia or New Zealand, the former I think, of a startup that had gotten permission to raise what would otherwise be an exotic and potentially invasive species to harvest its fur by combing. To try to make cashmere just that old stuff by comparison.

Fox fur.

Huh. Y’know, sheep are a little more docile towards that process–and feeding them–! I thought as I looked at their multiple-$k sweaters out of sheer curiosity because how could one not, I mean, would they go for fast-fashion styles or classic to wear a lifetime. Memory says classic.

I’d give you the link, too, but the company appears long gone as far as I can find. I’m guessing that exotic clothes to impress others had their market drop away while everybody was holed up alone and at home month after month after month after month after month.

And now a yarn store–in Ukraine!–is selling cones of merino/fox yarn. Mill end closeouts from that business seems a logical leap.

I have questions.

My daughter once had a cat that learned to leap at the closet door until it got the handle to turn so that it could get at and destroy her cashmere gloves, and did. Wool, no problem, but goats must die.

If one were to knit and wear something out of that fox fur, how would you ever walk past any dog? If you gifted someone something from it, surely you would have to forewarn them?

I’m picturing some of the early adopters patronizing that business while it lasted (maybe it’s actually still out there?) and wondering what experiences they had with them and and and. So many questions.

Like, who was the first person to stroke a fox and think there ought to be a yarn made out of that?

I would wonder if maybe the whole thing was an April Fool’s prank that someone forgot to take down on April 2.

Except that that yarn really is for sale.

The email from Cottage Yarns said that starting next week the shop will be closed for two weeks for their vacation.

I had been meaning for over a month to get up there to replenish my Mecha supply for Zoom hat knitting.

There was this persistent thought…and I wondered, Is this just me? Or should I? So I did what I do and said a prayer: if You want me to do this, then please make it so obvious that I will never question whether I got it right or not. Help it be unmistakeable. Either way, please bless my friends, separate from any of that–they’re such good people.

I pictured her needing to attend to customers with questions, and thought in no way do I want to do anything that would distract her from what she needs to do to earn a living (I know the rent there is crazy) and sometimes it gets pretty busy, especially right before a long break like that. I put it in G_d’s hands to handle the details and I would try to take my cues from that.

I got ready and headed on up there, hoping.

There was no other customer in there the whole time:

I walked in that door and Kathryn’s face lit up, delighted to see me, and then she immediately exclaimed over my gerdan. What was that? I told her how to spell it: like garden, only with the e and the a switched. Her husband wanted to know, How was it made?

Glass beads woven on a small loom. Made for me by a woman in Ukraine, where these are traditional.

They follow the news on Ukraine closely, they told me, and we talked about today’s developments. The listing warship that was towed away by the Russians after Ukraine’s successful drone.

Kathryn is far from the gushing type, but wow, that necklace: the flowers that looked so realistic, the wheat at the top, the sunflower at the bottom. So pretty. She just couldn’t get over it.

I showed her the picture of my sister’s afghan so far, and turns out they’d been watching the Little League games. They might even have seen Parker, and even the possibility delighted us all.

I waited till she’d rung up my yarn.

“I planned this,” I told her, pulling out the little box that the gerdan had come in inside the shipping box. I quickly took it off my neck and held it out to her along with its box. While she stood there speechless, I took out an identical box from the same artist, took out the big sunflower gerdan and put that one on me.

I have several, I told her, and every time I’m out and about it makes someone’s day to see me wearing one. Ukrainians know what it is and they feel the support it conveys. You see more people than I do. You can do more than I can alone. This was meant for you.

I told her that I had felt strongly to give one to a friend, a retired NASA rocket scientist I kid you not, and ordered this one made–but she had picked a different one. Which is fine. What I didn’t know was that she was teaching classes to help Ukrainian refugees assimilate and they took one look at her walking into class after that wearing a gerdan and they knew exactly what it was and what it meant and how much their teacher loved them, visibly loved them.

And yet I still I had this other one. I have always really liked it–but I had wondered who it was meant to be for, because it had always felt like it was waiting, somehow. And today I finally knew.

I knew it was just her colors.

What I didn’t know is that all her childhood she had declared that she was going to be a florist when she grew up. “And look at me,” she laughed, holding her arms up, taking in the sweep of the room, embracing it all: “I’m a yarn store owner!”

Wearing flowers so beautifully created? To support Ukraine and her people?

It meant the world to her to be able to. She had never known such a thing existed.

I told her I had promised Oleksandra that I would wear her sunflower gerdan in celebration the day Ukraine wins the war.

“I will wear mine, too,” Kathryn promised. She laughed again, adding that she would on her vacation, too! And a whole lot of other days! She loved it so much.

They’re going to visit the area where she grew up, near my oldest, and near one of their children.

I came away from that conversation thinking, and I bet you’re going to find the perfect place, buy it, be done with your unpleasant LYS landlord and move away and my favorite yarn store will be gone forever. I selfishly hope not.

But wherever they go, love will be there because that is who they are and what they do.

(Picture: wet and blocking in bright direct sunlight.)

Started this merino/silk laceweight in April, then the afghan project took over. It’s not abandoned, it’s bedside: I often, but not always, knit one row on it before calling it a night. Gradually that adds up even though it feels like it couldn’t possibly.

I took it with me to a routine doctor appointment today after a brief inner moment of should I take the afghan, vs are you out of your freaking mind, honey?

That good doctor talks to her patients and she listens to her patients and so she tends to be a bit behind and you know I know how to be glad of that extra time.

And as I worked I thought, Y’know? Feather and Fan? It’s the Chopsticks on the piano of lace knitting. Cliched, repetitive, tiresome, unimaginative, All That Lace Ever Is to the utter novice (meaning, once upon a time specifically me) –and yet. Hey, listen to those little kids play. Look at how that hand dyeing needed that particular pattern applied to it, it just did, no other one could have created an effect that matched the dye work like that. Anything else would just have chopped it all up. Rainbows are supposed to come arch shaped.

(Laying flat, it’s 67″. Maybe a few more. But it will stretch of its own weight when I pick it up after it dries, the silk in it will do that, so I’ll have to try it out first.)

Oh and? Thyroid, blood tests, blahblahblah but the thing I really wanted to know? While half-apologizing for wasting her time over what might not even exist?

When I took that hard fall in the garden May last year that knocked my teeth lose and my nose is still faintly red–she said I’m right, it did: the bone at the front of my chest where I bounced off of has piled on more bone there.

My body is trying to wrap me in bubble wrap. But it’s okay, we’re good.

Okay, so, what’s the next big carry-around project?

A friend dropped by and we spent a goodly amount of time catching up. It was great. She loved the afghan. Loved how much it matched the real-life version I was trying to picture with it.

At one point, she exclaimed, You should be knitting!

I laughed. I’m on an easier section right now, yes, but that means only six areas of color, five of them in balls and one that has to be pulled through, and to work on that and flip all the strands over from row to row while talking would be like trying to solve Rubik’s cubes while juggling them.

I was poking around my archives looking for recipes for blueberry+almond flour for a potluck tomorrow  and stumbled across this post. With also a picture of what was originally this yarn right after I’d overdyed a cone of it.

2017. Huh. That long. Merino/silk 50/50, $15/150g. I kept meaning to dye up the rest of that and kicking myself that it just wasn’t happening even though that first attempt had looked so pretty, and every time I thought okay this is silly I need to go do that, it just…there was this inexplicable reluctance.

Okay, then, tell me what you DO want to be when you grow up.

It finally did. I would never have bought that color purely for its own sake–but it was an exact match for the siding on my sister’s new house. The slightly ropey texture, knitted up, makes the light play off it as if the wood had weathered a bit over the last hundred-something years.

Perfect perfect perfect.

They somehow still have 48 cones. I had no idea. Hey, and you could overdye it, too!

Meantime, here’s the other side of the afghan. Since the lighter green is named Leaf Bud, and the realtor’s photos were taken at early springtime, a tree just leafing out seemed the thing.

At least, that’s the justification for how that particular doodle is coming out. Either that or I’d have to admit that some part of my brain started a California Coast Oak for my sister in New England.

Carolyn, don’t look. (I’m only posting this because I don’t think she ever does.)

The lower windows needed to be wider than the door–but only by a stitch’s worth to look right unless I were to do it in a gauge of sock weight or lighter and let me tell you that ain’t happening in my lifetime. Besides, the point of an afghan is to keep you warm.

Except that what that did was leave me a stitch short for the three windows directly above of identical size exactly over the lower three, and I’d love to know if the builder centered the actual house exactly so. But he could work in infinitely incremental amounts and I can’t.

So the second level middle window is off by a stitch but knitting is not a stable solid surface and you’d never notice and who cares.

Oh.

Suddenly now I kinda do.

Do you see it?

How many times did I count the black stitches marching towards the center there from both sides and not catch this till it was right there being obvious: that nearly finished attic window is not going to be centered. Four black stitches left on this side, five on that on the needles, and it was always going to be like that, I just didn’t see it coming.

It is what it is.

I need to tighten up the back of the two-color K1P1 on the latticework below the right patio so it looks neater.

While my brain yells, Squirrel! Literally. Because there is a tree and I have some cobweb weight, bison/silk so it won’t shrink, in the exact shade of an Eastern Gray. Curling stockinette for the tail flipping you off for messing with its acorns, fine stitches to sew it on to make the toenails. Or something. (Would size 0 lace needles do it for the body. Let me think about it. We are talking dollhouse size so this is in no way a promise, just conjecture. But then this entire thing is by the seat of my pants.)

I’m actually (the mind boggles after two months of work) going to finish the house part tomorrow.

It will honor those cultures that feel that only the Divine can create perfection.

You know, I could stick a tree branch across the top of that window and attic…

Nah….

(I posted a picture, briefly, of my afghan for my Zoom knitting group.)

Scene: dinner. Yonder columnar green apple out the window.

Me: I haven’t knit anything yet today. I got pulled away by a brown skein I had to wind that had felted in the scouring and was super-snaggy (just that one color, what was up with that) and it took me a long time. But I promised myself I would knit four rows a day on that thing and I need to get to it. At a minimum, of course, but four. I have to.

Him: You have to? Or you want to?

Me, looking at him: Yes.

So he asked it again.

I counted the amount of time out loud vs size of the project.

He still wanted to know, the little stinker: did I actually *have* to?

I grinned. Well. I’m going to call it a yes. So there.

Now let me just go do that fourth one. I had to stop to wind and scour another 150 grams of the black just now because to my surprise the first was running out. I must be getting something done here somehow after all.

Last night a certain someone couldn’t find his yogurt.

I found it, I told him, It was right behind–

— (oh wait look those are the cherries I picked a week ago and forgot about. Oh look they’re still perfectly good. Cool!)

I had been wishing for one more bite of that pie without depriving my wintertime freezer stash.

I didn’t mention it. I simply got up a bit early this morning, pitted the two and a half pounds, scant but they would do; and there was this bit of leftover crust in the fridge from making those two-person minis the other day.

Which is how there was a sour cherry pie coming out of the oven this morning before the certain someone was even up, and boy was he surprised.

Could he have ice cream with his?

He could.

Meantime, five more long rows done so far today. It’s knitting, but (looking at the back here) it’s almost equally weaving.

Let’s see, if I do this on the right side row then this strand is going to end up here when I need it over there so is it worth carrying over or do I break off a new strand and oh wait over there too and it all looks like a game of fifty-two pickup anyway, and I’m not just talking about the bajillion loose strands on the back.

Richard didn’t really know why he should be excited that the top of the railing row was finished, but he was happy for me.

I stopped a minute ago, some time later, and set it out and looked at it.

It does. It really does. Those wretched steps whose rows I ripped out again and again, they actually do look like what I was trying to do, and with what I’ve done today you can actually see that it’s actually going to look like the picture that it was supposed to.

I wish I could show you yet–but just let me say what a huge relief that is, and what a huge incentive to keep going. Nothing propels success like success.