Christmas eve breakfast arrived with a knock at the door: Krys had gone all out.

Christmas eve dinner was spent with more friends. They are taking good care of us.

I had a doctor’s appointment in the morning and we knew there would be more news–or not, really–later, we don’t know which yet. Starting this past Monday (yup, that week) it’s been that waiting time so familiar to many and they wanted more info. The machinery, it goes slowly.

Meantime, the back of Parker’s sweater, it is done, and on the front, his very most favorite type of truck.

With thanks to Robin, who snailmailed me her intarsia pattern after I couldn’t get the one I thought I wanted to print. I thought this one was too big–but my husband says the fact that it’s big and bold makes it all the more appealing to a boy.  That made me think a minute: I’ve never been one, so that was good to know, and you know what? Clearly, especially given the reaction of that kid yesterday, he’s right.

Wishing a happy and merry Christmas day for all and the peace of the season with your loved ones near and far.

Summer ten years ago, dear friends of ours were moving to another state and I didn’t get to do nor attend any proper goodbyes because I was in the hospital.

Their daughter Brynne, in middle school at the time, folded this beautiful little orange paper crane by way of a get-well card in the midst of their own upheaval of packing and change, preparing to leave her own friends behind as well as her parents’. Letting me know I was not forgotten at a time when that made all the difference.

I was very touched. I still have it–there it is.

One of those blink moments where you go, wait, how long, wow, it has been: a letter in the mail. It was Brynne and her fiance’s wedding announcement, set within a beautiful little paper doily folded just so.

Only, this time I can do something creative in return.

A whole lot of living packed into one day. You see that picture? It did not rain today.

Diana was my excuse to make split pea soup, thick in veggies and ham and warm goodness for lunch on a bitterly cold day. She came by with her square and to get the scarf, since the two squares that were to come to her place didn’t arrive in the mail till after she got home so we couldn’t put all three on together after all. It’s okay, she’s got them now and is sending the scarf right out to the next group of knitters in the morning.

We had a great time. We hadn’t seen each other in far too long. We vowed not to let that kind of time lapse happen again. She raved over the soup, over walking into the house with the smell of it cooking, over sharing a good meal with us (Richard’s on vacation.) For me it was a rare treat too because I can only eat small quantities of it at a time; it’s not a low-fiber food, and to have her enjoy it so much and to get to enjoy her so much added so much to my day.

Then she had an appointment at 2:00 and I had one to go visit Don.

Don gives his thanks for all the well wishes sent his way. He loves to tell a good story as much as the next blogger and was a little discouraged that it made him breathless for a moment to talk very long. Been there… I understand…but he did manage to tell me more about his beloved late Amalie. I hope I didn’t stay too long, but we were both very glad I’d come. And I gotta tell you, he looked a whole lot more chipper than his roommate. He’s trying to get it set up so that he can read his email where he’s staying. He’s a trooper.

Coming home, cleaning up a bit, I went outside a moment to toss something in the recycling bin–and did a doubletake. Wait–when did it rain? I know water pools on the flat part of the roof, but. Richard? Did a pipe burst? (It was 29, five degrees warmer than Anchorage, Alaska and on its way down when we went to bed last night. And yet we forgot to leave the kitchen tap dripping. You always, always…)

He groaned. He got up and went out there (brrr) and looked–and came back in and said, Call a plumber. Try Joe and see if he does that kind of work, but, call a plumber.

And of course it was 5:04, ie officially after hours now but oh well. We had a full-blown waterfall at the downspout.

Joe didn’t pick up right away, the next guy was swamped, the next guy was, too–but he threw me for a millisecond by saying something about our solar re those pipes.

I was delighted, and then so was he. This was a guy who came out for a job for me maybe as long as two years ago, where his equipment wasn’t quite long enough to help me so he refused to charge me for coming out. Even though he’d given me valuable, helpful information along the way. So I knitted a hat and mailed it off to the address I found for his business. He chuckled when I exclaimed that he remembered us just from seeing our phone number show up!? Cool.

And finally we got someone we’d never hired before but who–give him a minute to call right back–yes, he could come right out. (I could just picture him explaining to his kids that it would be bonus Christmas money if they didn’t mind his being late for dinner, and people needed his help.)

Yes please.

Very nice guy, very thorough as he checked for possible second leaks in the dark and the wet and the cold with his headlamp and flashlight. He mentioned that the people who had installed the water lines (this would be the same ones as did the heating work Joe just replaced) had not done a good job of it.

Were we surprised? Still, though, we’re the ones who forgot to let the tap drip during the freeze, so, hey.

And then I went off to Purlescence. Where I got to meet Carrie of Alpenglow Yarn, owner of a small mill. I loved that her Big Fat ball bands tell you the names of the individual alpacas, and Paul Cezanne and Mozart? My dad’s influence and my mom’s. Perfect.

And. Always another and. I finally remembered to run in the ends and drop off the long-awaiting hat at the Halos of Hope box for chemo caps for those in underserved areas. The yarn had come from a swap at the shop: freely given, freely given back.

The funky design? I could just picture a newly bald someone missing the familiar feel of the bounce of her ponytail at the back of her head, so I braided the last of the yarn in the ball, braided the braids, and ran the ends in by sewing the braids together for good measure.

Cezanne and Mozart will help me knit another soft warm hat.

I think, hopefully, tomorrow will be a day for simply putting my feet up, sitting still, eating a bit of leftover soup, catching my breath, needing no contractors however nice people they may be…and knitting. Got that big deadline coming up, y’know? *collapse*

It’s not my fault. Afton started it.

An online longtime mutual knitting friend of ours has been fighting all kinds of things, starting with cancer, and so Afton thought up the idea that we could knit her a scarf: she was knitting the first square and mailing it to me, I could send it on to the next person, and suddenly we had seventeen people signed up from all over the country and I think beyond. And then I think a few more chimed in. Cheering on commenced.

Having been the recipient of so much such knitting when I was the one in the hospital five years ago, it is deeply gratifying to see the responses–and to get to be a part of it.

Afghans take a lot of time to come together and we wanted as immediate a gratification as we could pull off and something that wouldn’t seem overwhelming against anybody’s holiday knitting queue.

I was waiting for the package to arrive so I could make my piece match Afton’s, but the mail didn’t get delivered when it was promised her it would and I had the weekend to wish not to add to the delay. So I simply sat down and made mine and waited.  The headlights on the postal truck finally showed just before six this evening.

My first thought, opening up the envelope was, well, you can tell which one of us lives in a warm climate: mine is merino and silk in a yarn that was a surprise gift from another member of the same group so it seemed perfect when I picked it out, but I have to admit I’d simply forgotten about actually cold weather; a little thinner, a little lace, a little Californian. Hers is good and solid and warm. And soft.

It’ll be fascinating to see how the whole thing looks in the end. Everybody please take a picture as it goes out your door to show once this is all done and in the recipient’s hands.

I have one cowl that I actually knitted for me, and as I put it on this morning I remembered her.

I had knitted it nice and dense and warm and soft to wear against the unaccustomed cold of snow and high elevations as we buried my mother-in-law in the Rocky Mountains ten months ago, a heathered dark charcoal for the occasion.

When I go off to church wearing one of my handknits, I like to prepare myself to be willing to give away whatever it might be in the service of anyone who might be in need of it, right then, on the spot.  You never know. Sometimes you get a chance to come back later with something knit just for that person you found or found something new about; sometimes you only get the one chance, and when the reason to give is that strong, I have never regretted it. It’s always been the right thing to do. I’m a knitter, I can make more, but I can’t make more moments. They come singly.

Wait–I like that last word with it. It fits both ways.

So it was with a little bit of hesitation that I reached for that cowl this morning. Nobody who would be there would remember my mother-in-law by it, but the reach of my knowledge is so failingly human. I put it in the hands of the Father.

But it was okay to just go ahead and wear it. And so I did, all through church and back home again.

And I thought of my mother-in-law again as I safely tucked it back away after we walked in the door.

Got a few left still…

I got a note from an old friend Saturday. Her twins wanted to learn how to knit. They had an adopted-grandma of a favorite neighbor who had offered to teach them, but my friend’s husband had recently been laid off and they were not spending an extra dime just now (I could relate); might I have any unloved, unwanted yarn? Or even needles?

I just might. Actually, not a whole lot of worsted weight, but some, definitely, and I went looking for it. While remembering the two big boxes I had sent off to a girls’ camp a few summers ago where quite a few young women learned how to knit, loving the wool and the mohair they got to play with. (One way to happily clear out that ’80’s not-kid mohair. They couldn’t believe I sent the real stuff. Everybody won.)

I used to knit only with straight needles.

There was the time I accidentally dropped one of those on a plane as it was ascending: it immediately rolled far, far behind my seat, somehow dodging feet and floor luggage and was never seen again. Oops.

I have this old ceramic spaghetti canister, a Costco freebie from about 15 years ago, its lid broken* and so repurposed as a container for old mostly-aluminum straights that have long gone unused–except for that big aqua one. It’s good for slicing open the wrapping on the suet birdfood from a distance without touching the eyeball-burner chili oil waiting to pounce from within.

Circular needles are good for putting the weight of the work in your lap as you progress rather than having to hold up everything with your arm and hand muscles. Straights are good for learning on.

And so I found three pairs of 5 to 5.5mm (US 8 and 9) in the canister.

And all of them insisted on coming out. And all refused to go back in.

Well huh. Well, maybe one of the twins will like the plastic ones better than the feel of the aluminums.

It wasn’t till I went to deliver two big ziploc bags of yarn, mostly worsted wool, all natural fibers, that I saw the reaction of not just the twins but their older sister. The younger girls are turning eight very soon and the older is in her early teens, the age where you can’t show enthusiasm, especially if it’s something your mom or baby sisters are interested in.

But I knew in that moment, looking at those older eyes fixed on those goodies, that clearly what we had here were three wanna-be knitters in front of me. Even if one of them hadn’t thought she would be.

And there were three pairs of needles. I had not even thought of her in terms of the knitting lessons. Well there you go.

I’ll let them work it out from here.

——

*When it sailed through the air and then shattered into lots of little pieces, was it being the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

There was warmth everywhere (except outside, where it was raining buckets).  It was beautiful.

Joe called.

It is quite safe to say they liked the cowl.

He has our undying gratitude forever, and his wife, too, for his descriptions of how she brings out the best in him; I have no doubt she thus played a part in how it all turned out.

I had knitted it in a motif and colors of the flames of small candles. May their light always so shine.

…And we have heat. For the first time all Fall, real heat. The fan kicked gently on, warmth wafting down, lovely, lovely.

And then the smoke alarm screamed bloody murder. DANGER! DANGER!

Okay, that’s pretty funny, actually. I hit the timer on the thing to quiet it while one of the helpers apologized that new furnaces often do set them off like that just right at first.

The alarm kept going, adamant. Huh. Oh–it only turns off for the kitchen sensor, not the others, Richard reminded me later. Oh okay.

I told the guy, reaching up to my ears, “Well, *I* can turn it off but I don’t know that that helps you any.” (Actually, I’m not sure he had any idea I wear hearing aids.) I opened the windows  and it went quickly silent. They had it on high to test it and between the competing air flows that furnace showed it was definitely up to anything going on outside.

One skein Finito superfine merino in Cereza paired with a few grams of black sparkly cashmere. One soft little cowl for Joe’s wife, worked on while he worked. If ever someone had earned a bit of warmth…

I’m remembering a reason to be glad the furnace is on the roof: when we were building our first house, I don’t know if it got encouragement from the crew that was perturbed that I’d pushed on them on their overdue project? “Will the house be done by Thanksgiving?”

They slowly turned in unison and stared me down.

Finally, “WHICH Thanksgiving, lady?”

I never smelled it before then, but somehow it got in there before we closed on the house the Tuesday before the Day of the Turkey.

For our first year, every time the blower kicked on, five or ten seconds later and there came our natural asthma treatment: skunked.

——

(Conversation just now: Me–Did you turn up the heat?

Him–Yes.

Me, disbelieving–Weren’t you warm enough?

Him–Yes, but I wanted to experience the heat.)

(Second picture does the color better. Richard went, Oh, that’s soft.)

Richard at 8:40 this morning: “They’re here.”

And so we rushed outside to capture video of the green crane for Parker; he would have been in heaven if he’d been able to watch it in person.

But it was brisk. The temperature dipped today, and inside, four layers and wooly knee socks and the space heater just weren’t quite enough; I debated pulling the other one into the room. I wrapped a warm scarf around, felt like a kid in a poofy snowsuit in New Hampshire, and tried not to let it get in the way of what I was knitting. Brrr.

Joe and crew kept going till close to sunset and I listened to them hammering away up there, hoping to finish the work tomorrow before it starts to rain. Now *that* would be cold. Our rain always comes packaged in northern ocean.

Just before they left, the mailman brought a completely unexpected padded envelope. I looked at it, puzzled, and it seemed to be something soft in there. Huh. I hadn’t ordered anything…

I looked at the return address and exclaimed softly, very pleased, Oh, Heather! Having no idea why it was there or what it was, but I did definitely have some idea of who she is. Yarn?

Heather is someone whom I’d emailed with for years before the day she, having finally made the trip north to Stitches, stood in front of me grinning and waiting for me to read the big name tag hanging at about her belly button. You know that moment when how you picture someone without even realizing you were doing so collides with the real-and-here and it’s really cool that they’re really here and you have to blink a moment to readjust the brain?

You’re HEATHER!

…Prefab yarn, hon. I cried in delight and took it out and wrapped it around my shoulders, marveling. At the gift. At the immediate difference it made. At the timing. Look at that! (Totally echoing our friend from Fiji yesterday.) I’m finally WARM!

It’s beautiful, beautiful, thank you, Heather B! I will try to live up to this wondrousness!

A good evening with friends, and at the end…Huh. I checked my purse.

I hadn’t put it in there.

We got home and I sent off a note to the owner of the restaurant, describing the handknit hat in detail, the cable around the brim with a seam at the back, the stitches going up from there with no seam. Saying that if someone found it and treasures it and that’s where it is to be now, I will be glad they have it–and yet. It is a twinge.

I don’t normally knit cotton because it hurts my hands to work with, but I had this time as a chemo cap for my late mother-in-law. It was such a plain yarn but it had come out so pretty–I had been surprised, and pleased for her sake. In the end, it had come back to me now, and I had kept it as a memento of her.

….And now I put it to God. There is something very freeing about that. He knows better than I where it could do the most good.

You’re knitting sparkles? That just seems so, so. He searched for the right word.

Are you worried about the visual intensity of the sparkles? I asked him. (Thinking of this from the car accident in ’00 that the neurologist said severed the connections between the visual and balance centers of the brain, causing brainwave spiking.)

No, he offered, it’s…not you. I mean, it’s like–acrylic!

I laughed. No, it’s cashmere, it feels like cashmere, (my 76T is 80%) although the strand is thin enough that I’m pairing it with other things, playing with color matchups. I figure the first project cost me about $2 worth of yardage (link goes to the mill ends of their mill ends) to add it in.

I’d wondered how I would like working with this stuff–it’s not shy, that’s for sure–and I put off trying it out for a long time; he’s right, it’s not my usual. But, but, I’m really liking it, actually. It surprised me too.

Small world moment of the day: when we moved here, the neighbors’ kids were all in college or their 20’s and we were the young family starting the neighborhood over.  And so it is that we knew the parents of a woman who grew up in the house two doors down who is now one of Sam’s co-workers in Alaska.

Sam and all our kids used to play with their cat. We brushed his fur once and I spun about an 18″ length out of it, plied it with silk, and knitted a 1×2″ rectangle hanging from round toothpicks with pearl beads glued to the ends to look as if it were still being knitted (it was bound off and the end glued into a little ball). I put a pin backing on it. The neighbor loved it and kept it on her fridge as a memento after that beloved orange Persian passed on.

Yeah. That neighbor.

Meantime, I was invited to something a year ago in December that I thought was going to be indoors and it was not, and I learned just how much warmth the generous cowl on my wooly sweater added when I needed it (said the woman who left her jacket home by mistake.) I’ve had a soft spot for a good cowl ever since.

I think I’ll leave the current project at one loop because it seems enough as it is. I think.  (I mean, qiviut.) But I’m curious: how do you like your cowls? One loop or two? Twisted or not? How long?

We have good friends who are about to move–a half hour north, not Far Far Away, but where we would no longer see them at church every week. It was their 25th anniversary.

And so today there was a grand bash: a renewal of their vows in the building they’d gotten married in, music, and  speeches by their kids including her older two the dad had taken in as his own.

The college-age-and-above children showed a video of their oldest sister as a young kid reenacting her mommy’s then-recent wedding, complete with the dress and veil that their mother was again wearing today. Here Comes The Bride played. I don’t know who the little boy she’d roped into joining her was, but in the footage they stood before the child playing officiator and then the taller bride grabbed the littler groom and swept him off his feet, their backs now to the camera as she play-reenacted, as best as one could tell from that angle, The Kiss photograph where the kissee is swept nearly horizontal mid-air by the sailor celebrating the War being over.

Then she pretended to belt him forward across the room like Popeye on a good dose of spinach, the both of them wildly hamming it up, and dusted off her hands in triumph. The audience was laughing to tears across the chapel.

We all adjourned from there to their soon-to-be-sold house. A chocolate torte may have been among the desserts. (Adding the link to make it easier for some people who were there to find the recipe.) My daughter’s surgeon from high school, who turned out to be their neighbor, made a point of finding me and telling me how good it was.

But the best part by far, of course, was the joy of the bride and groom and their family.

Good times.

And, on a totally side note, as we were out the door to go, the mail had just come and there was my much-anticipated package. I was dying to know what would be inside.

Here’s what The Buffalo Wool Company‘s email ad said on October 30:

“Seeing as you are a BWC VIP, you are getting a heads up and a early peek at what has been our most unusual promotion of the year.    I don’t know if you should be grateful or annoyed 🙂  You might be better off spending your hard earned $$ on candy and tequila.

Yes this is our annual Trick or Treat offering, and once more, I highly recommend you skip this and go find some good skein of sheep stuff, or goat hair. There is a slim chance you will actually get anything useful here, most likely you will get a tangled mess that someone found under the packing table.

You might get a skein or two of Heaven, Sexy, or even Strange Twist, but most likely you will get a random odd lot, bad dye job, or knotted slub of mess.   All year long we toss anything we don’t feel right selling for top dollar into a bucket, and around now we pull out those buckets, toss a few skeins of top quality yarn in to appease our consciences, and offer a shred of hope.

This is how we clean out the office and pay for the company Christmas party.  🙂

There are 400 skeins of Buffalo Wool Co. yarn, 260 of which are truly our seconds and mistakes, we have added a bunch of “Half-Tracks”, “Tracks”, “Sexy”, “Heaven”, “Strange Twist”, and two Skeins of “Buffalo Gold”  So, you have almost 60/40 odds of getting crap.

This is the one thing every year that our “satisfaction guarantee” doesn’t apply too, you get what you get, we have warned you.  There are no returns, and we pretty much guarantee you won’t like what you get.  Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Ron Miskin
The Buffalo Wool Co.”

I guffawed reading that and then had to explain to Richard what was so funny. He, quizzical: “You’re going to DO that?” Heck yeah!

I got a color I would never have ordered but that I’m very glad to have on hand to knit for someone else or maybe even me. Some little kid–or maybe it was a who let the cat in, but they’d clearly played with the winder because the yarn meandered this way and back thataway in little helter-skelter of apparently criss-crossed loops at the top of the hank at random. It took me awhile to untangle it into a nice tidy ball.

But for ten bucks? For buffalo yarn? For this nice stuff? Hey.

Shame that invitation said No Gifts. But then, my knitting beat them to it by a few years.

I had 150 inches of the Malabrigo laceweight left when I finished casting off. It was enough. The City Council cowl, it is done.

In real life, the Whale’s Road Malabrigo on top is a bit grayer and the cobweb cashmere is that bright if not more so. I swatched them together a few days ago, thinking at first, nahhh, but as they came together it was clear the combination improved the both of them. Warm and so soft; I’m quite pleased.

On a cold day it will be the blue brrrr’d of happiness for someone.

We Skyped with the San Diego kids last night: Richard-the-younger was going dressed up as an NFL ref. Parker was going to be a football player, his mom cheerleading him on.

And Hudson, sweet child, was to be the stuffing in a then-limp fuzzy fleecy football they held up to the camera.

A side note: I had to go to the doctor today to get the wax out of my ears that had been stopping up my hearing aids. Lots of it.

The male nurse asked me what I was knitting as I put it away.

It took half a heartbeat to realize that no way was I going to take his time to explain what a cowl was. I simply said, A scarf, and hoped he didn’t notice it was pretty darn short for that and I was almost out of yarn.

(Two hours left of) Happy Halloween!

Edited to add tonight’s newly-arrived photo, and wondering if the football survived the diapers. Cousins! (Wow what a difference three months make. Hudson, left, here, Hayes on the right.)