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.)

I shocked Steve. I let them have it.

I went up to him afterwards to apologize for being so emotional, saying that I’d surprised myself– “But then, I realized, I WAS angry!”

He looked at me with this grateful smile on his face getting bigger and bigger and finally, looking in my eyes, said, “Wow. Of *all* the people… I would NEVER have taken you for such a tiger!” and he thanked me. “That was straight from the heart. You were great!”

Nearly five hours into the two hour meeting I had had to put down the knitting and just listen to them drone on and on and sent Richard a note and my Iphone autocorrected that phrase to “inane,” capturing it perfectly, and it was oh please, please let me have my needles back.

Backstory: as I’ve mentioned, we only have one car now because we spent near the equivalent of a small car on my new hearing aids. Which are fabulous. And so, when the Mountain View City Council scheduled their meeting that was essentially the redeveloper vs Milk Pail at 5:00-7:00, Stage II, Richard and I were stuck: it could go to any hour and I couldn’t strand him at work and he didn’t want to strand me from going and supporting Steve, the owner of Milk Pail, on behalf of both of us.

I almost rented a car.

He decided I really did need to go no matter what and made arrangements at work and simply called me at 3:45 to my surprise and said, I’m coming home now. You can go.

Last time I was in those council chambers, I sat there unable to decipher any of the proceedings in that room, even with what was then state-of-the-art aids, simply a mute presence in Steve’s support, so when he shook my hand before it started tonight and thanked me for coming and asked if I would speak, I said, no, no, I don’t think so.

I heard every word coming out of the councilmembers’ microphones. Who knew! Thank you Oticon! Everything, and so when they asked for public comment I leaped to my feet–yeah I had something to say, definitely. With the 1.15 million square feet the developer wants to build along SA Road, I said it was laughable that they claimed it would have zero impact on traffic on SA Road in the adjoining cities just a few blocks away (and near us).

I told of the community that Milk Pail creates, where rich and poor alike come to shop, where the poor can afford fresh veggies because Steve’s prices are so low. Because his costs are so low. He’s been there a long time. (I didn’t say the obvious, that it’s stupid to tell him to move his business–given Proposition 13 and the fact that he’s owned his land for 38 years, he would lose his low property tax edge entirely and the fact that he owns the place outright and would have to raise his prices. Come ON people. But yes, Council asked innocently why he didn’t just move. Duh.)

And then I got down to what I knew they knew: one small halal shop had refused to sell. So the developer had cut off their parking and starved them out and now owns what was their property. They’re trying to do the same thing to Steve. (And the Council itself had abrogated the existing longterm parking agreement that Steve had paid for and then they’d individually denied having voted for any such thing, till Steve showed them chapter and verse at an earlier meeting where they had. I did not bring that up.)

Having mentioned I lived in the town just over one, I told them, “I have shopped at Milk Pail for twenty-six years.” I cited the halal owners and told them “That is why my family and I have boycotted every business built in Stage I. My husband and four grown kids have not and will not step foot in the new Safeway; we used to shop at the old one on California Avenue” (now closed). “IF YOU SHAFT STEVE”–I looked around at them– “you are telling us You. No. Longer. Want. Our. Dollars. Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Safeway, Costco.

We have our own.”

And I sat down. (Thinking, well, except for the Costco, we’d have to go to Redwood City or Sunnyvale if we skip yours. Close enough.)

I didn’t even use up my allotted two minutes. I didn’t have to.

It was great seeing the developer’s head honcho getting defensive and angry in response to some of Council’s questions later.

But they were too divided, and could only decide not to decide yet. Steve’s not out of the woods yet. But with 200 emails pouring in from the community and a record turnout tonight for such a meeting, demanding that Milk Pail be saved, things may be looking up.

Maybe.

We have to keep up the pressure on the City.

I was sitting waiting for a prescription to be filled, my instructions a piece of typed paper on my knee that I checked from time to time, my cloudweight of lace in my hands. An elderly woman (Chinese?) was silently entertaining herself in her nearby seat by watching me knit. I rather wished I had spare yarn and needles there to offer to share with her.

I looked up from time to time and smiled and nodded hello; she smiled back. I held the glance for just a moment the next time, trying to give her permission to speak up if she wanted to.

She simply smiled back. I went on with what I was doing.

And then I went fishing through my purse, crossed out  the ( and the ) and the word twice and scribbled in what it should have read there, tweaking the pattern.

And suddenly noticed the woman was startled, staring, perhaps even a bit distressed.

Was it that I wrote on the page? That I was making it up as I was going along? (I partly was.) I wasn’t sticking to the script! I *wrote* over the instructions!

At that point I really would have loved to have had a conversation, to have found out where she was coming from, what stories were behind those eyes, what they had seen, but for whatever reason, be it language differences or simply the ongoing quiet, the words didn’t break through. Goodness, honey, I didn’t mean to bother… I mean… Too funny. Huh.

I smiled I hoped encouragingly and knitted on, and she settled back into watching me do so. We went back to as we were.

Then the pharmacist called my name, I tucked it all away, and that was that.

Soft grays, turquoise, I was told when I asked what Paige’s favorite colors were.

I found one single taupe-ish gray ball in my whole stash and it just didn’t seem the thing. But I happened to get an email from Cottage Yarns in South San Francisco: the store was bursting with yarn orders and everything was 20% off to try to help her clear out some space. I talked to Richard about it and then headed on up Saturday.

Kathryn has a lot of Malabrigo yarns and Malabrigo never goes on sale and, much though I don’t think of myself as the brand-conscious type, I adore anything they produce and the people who produce it: if it’s Malabrigo, it’s very soft, and I love that I’ve gotten to know the owners a bit at Stitches every year.

And Kathryn was right–when I pulled out bags of Silkpaca to try to see the colors of the ones stacked up behind them, they were packed in so tight it was hard to get them back in the cubby (and one doesn’t want to make a mess). Bags and bags and bags of woolly goodness everywhere–I tell you, if I ever have to be in a building in a major earthquake again I want it to be that one.

But there you go: I did, I found a soft gray in there, baby alpaca/silk laceweight, Polar Morn colorway, perfect. I didn’t find what I was looking for turquoise-wise, but one thing at a time. I have about 500 yards of a cobweb-fine bright turquoise cashmere/silk that needs to be double-stranded with something similar in color and softness that I was trying to match up; I’ll find it. (Or dye something from stash.) But let me get this soft gray done first.

I got to tell her how much Hayes’s mom had loved the blankie she’d helped come to be. (The green, that’s from her.) That alone was reason enough to make the drive up there; she was thrilled. And I love that she was cheering Hayes on after his rocky start to life.

And so with the silk/lycra project blocked and out of the way, and with me healthy now, I got started for my cousin-in-law.

Three hours nonstop of laceknitting creates so much fabric.

Three hours of nonstop laceknitting makes such a tiny thing.

Three hours nonstop of knitting lace by the second time around actually does begin to make a goodly bit of fabric. (Break out the icepacks.) I just had to remind myself it was one single stitch when I started yesterday.

Tomorrow I again get the privilege of doing something for Paige to cheer her on in her fight: knitting is a gift that gives both ways. I look forward to all the individual moments I will never know of when she will wrap warmth and love and comfort and color around her and know that she is not alone.

Cherry, cherry baby.

If you were writing a pattern, when specifying the yarn, about now’s when you would edit it to say not one but two…

Let’s see, twelve rows so far, 405 stitches each….

Not bad work for a day.

My friend Gracie Larsen, the founder of the Lacy Knitters Guild and to whom at least one of the Interweave lace books is dedicated, and a member of our local knitting group, talking to me about eight years ago: “Alison! How’s your book coming along?!”

“It isn’t.”

“Well, that’s no good!” and she asked me what the holdup was. Then she handed me the names, emails, and phone numbers of some of her dear friends to get the ball rolling again for me.

Including, among others: Meg Swansen.

Barbara Walker.

One of the things that had been stumping me was that I wanted to use some of Ms. Walker’s lace patterns within my shawls but I had not a clue how to reach her to ask, nor whether she was even still alive; my mother had bought her stitch treasuries around 1970, and I had no idea how old she’d been then. My father had spent ten years researching and writing a book when I was a kid that someone else later pirated a great deal of, so copyright issues have always been near and dear to my heart–I wasn’t going to just appropriate those stitches.

I had finished my shawls. They had sat there.

Meg was as gracious as anyone who’s ever interacted with her in any way would know she would be. Barbara was deeply gratified at having been asked; she told me she sees knits with patterns she knows she created pop up in various places with no credit given.

My son was living not far from Barbara at the time, as it turned out, and we swapped hurricane stories a bit. I tried not to take too much of her time but was and am very grateful for her generosity and her goodwill towards me personally and the whole of the knitting community.

My husband came home from work that day and I was still just too stunned, trying to take it all in, who I’d been talking to that morning–wow! Grace’s gesture had been the knitter’s equivalent of, here, go talk to my friend the President, here’s his private line! Like it was the most natural thing in the world. And once online or on the phone with them, they made it feel like it was indeed. (Terry Martin then at Martingale, too.) Good people.

Why I’m mentioning all this. Barbara Walker is having an auction, via Schoolhouse Press, Meg Swansen’s company, of things she has knitted. Things she photographed to go into those stitch treasuries. You just have to go have a look: if you’re a knitter, this is part of our history. Pretty cool stuff.

Blocked now. Done, in three days, and if I hurry I can finish three projects in under two weeks.

That is, I was thinking, if I knew what that third was actually going to be. I knew what I wanted to do: grandson stuff, Paige stuff, daughter stuff, but the germs were the issue. And so I went stash diving for inspiration.

Not that, I want something brighter, not that, it just doesn’t…too blah, not that….

Oooh, look, that cherry silk/lycra goes really well with that burgundy-red laceweight baby alpaca! Who knew! And the lycra will help anchor the silk in place and keep it from slipping out and away from the other yarn. (I’ve learned the hard way: pure, slippery-spun silk doubled with something else? Don’t.)

I had no intention whatsoever of knitting anything remotely brown, none. But the yarn cat’s-cradled me and ignored my protests–this was it.

Even said a little prayer as I sat down to swatch to test for best needle size, was this really what I was supposed to do next?

Blink. Okay, then. Just make sure to tell me the right place to send it when I’m done, okay? And germ-free?

I did redo the cast-off on yesterday’s. I blocked it. Now it is what it was meant to be: ready.

Susan at Abstract Fibers once gave me some Burnside Bridge colorway wool to play with, and I did; I liked it so much I bought some in Picasso, their baby alpaca, via Purlescence.

And that’s what I plowed halfway through today.

And in the middle of it I got the emails–I need to finish it and get it out of the way fast.

It happens to so many people. It’s so personal. My cousin Bruce’s wife Paige found the lump the mammogram reading had missed and had a double mastectomy yesterday. Three tumors, at least two lymph nodes look involved–and yet, I know someone else who came out of surgery with that kind of news where the pathology report a week later said one tumor only was malignant. And that friend is past the five-year mark now.

Eight to twelve months of treatment ahead.

And I am blinking, trying to figure out what the very softest yarn I own might be and what color it should be. And no, the above projects, nice as they are, aren’t it. Hmm.

The picture does not begin to do it justice, way too blue and too sedate–here, try theirs… (Running and Googling so I can link up.)

Well huh. I guess they don’t carry Gaia anymore. The grass colorway isn’t quite as deep but it’s the closest.

So what it is: I splurged on a single bright jewel-green 100g skein of shimmery worsted weight goodness at the Phydeaux Designs booth at Stitches West this past February: half silk, half Falkland Island wool. Which reminded me of our second apartment and our new and first baby and the Newsweek cover by the easy chair that read, The Empire strikes back.

Best-written headline of its day.

And then it bugged me that I didn’t know what to do with the yarn.

And then Sunday I did. My cowl is done–although, I’m thinking I need to undo that cast-off, it seems a little tight. (I didn’t break the last of the ball off yet.) Blocking would say yay or nay on whether it needs that, but I like the fabric as is so much that I didn’t block it tonight and just might not. (Or maybe that’s all inner code for, I’m done with it for the night don’t bug me.)

Let me see what the morning says.

New photos from the kids today. Nobody can get as big a grin from Hudson as Kim can.

Wound off a 150 gram cone of merino fine laceweight oh, ages ago, and dyed it purple.

It felted. Thousands and thousands of little tiny woolen velcro-y snag points and I should have expected that but but. I was hoping it wouldn’t be that bad; it was.

It went into the stash, where I pulled it out every now and then and admired the heathery color and always ended up putting it back.

Today it somehow finally jumped out at me and of all the things I could be doing, demanded to be wound up. Now. *Carefully. For two long what-was-I-thinking, wow-this-is-pretty-stuff hours. There was a little silk in it too, and the winding was bringing out the sheen.

Y’know though, thought I, for this amount of time I could drive up to Cottage Yarns, buy their Malabrigo baby alpaca/silk laceweight for ten-something a skein in that colour, bring it home, wind it up easily, and get a good start on the actual knitting.

And yet this was here. I mentally chucked it at Purlescence’s yarn swap tomorrow but it refused to go. I kept at it.

I finished the thing. (Almost. It snagged and broke in two places with maybe ten yards to go and I looked at that last little bit defying my good will and threw.it.in.the.trash. Yes I did.)

I spent the evening swatching ideas with something else altogether, determined to get a pattern past the almost-perfect and feeling a little stuck in Edison’s 99% perspiration mode. But I’m definitely closer.

We ate the second Fuji apple. It confirmed for me that the first one really was that good. Apples were not my most favorite fruit, but I’m rethinking that for the moment.

*When you wind wool by hand, always run it over one or more fingers holding the ball as you go so that it isn’t pulled taut. This keeps it from stretching out.

Having a hard time putting down the knitting for the friend’s daughter long enough to write. So let me distract you with a few more baby pictures. (TNNA is in San Diego next time? Hey!)

And thinking of little boys playing, if you didn’t see it yet? A ram very gently teaching a young bull how to go about this head-butting thing.

The bull is more the Ferdinand type, though. Peaceable.

Back to the Epiphany.

I know, I know, it’s name dropping, but this is just too fun not to share–for me it brings back so many happy memories with that good family, and I knew if I put it here I could find it again. My parents weren’t big picture takers and I had no idea this existed.

My brother Bryan says our Mom sent him this photo some time ago and before everyone else had heard of the guy, of his best friend from across the street just before the best friend moved away to South Carolina.

Stephen Colbert was four.

Meantime, I finished the Malabrigo Silkpaca shawl and have gone back to the Epiphany project after a week’s break to figure out how to redesign the part I didn’t like. Ripped relentlessly, thinking of how Stephanie says she’s never regretted frogging something that’s not working.

And now that I’ve seen how it could look because of how it did look but that came up short, (see? It wasn’t wasted time) I finally knew what to do to make it come out perfect. It feels so much better now. Full speed ahead!