“I don’t have anything to write about.”

He considered that a moment, and then his face quite brightened at the morning’s memory: “You could write about the chocolate!”

Alright, then, and this was his Happy Valentine’s Day from me: Potomac Chocolate of Woodbridge, VA has only gotten better as its owner has gotten more experience–and that’s saying something. He’s added truffles to his cacao-and-sugar-only bars and they are the best I have ever tasted.

The best thing my sweetie got me was that he tested my two-year-old scooter batteries yesterday, found them dead dead dead beyond redemption (I didn’t use them for Stitches last year–I had the flu), made the trek to San Jose with me to the batteries place and got me set up with a new pair. The salesman laughed when I said what I really needed to do was ask the neighborhood kids to joyride the thing once a week or so to keep them rechargeable, since it’s the letting them just sit there that wears them down. But when I really need the scooter I really need the scooter.

Go Speed Racer–Stitches West here we come!

(Edited Monday to add a link to those chocolates. The truffles seem to be sold out–gee, can’t imagine why.)

I made a quick trip to the grocery store Saturday night. Oh my.

Only later did it hit me that that Trader Joe’s was in walking distance of a train station, that riders can transfer to the light rail that goes straight to Levi’s Stadium and that maybe that figured in…

Finger foods, desserts, hors d’ouvres, any kind of party food, things especially that didn’t need to be cooked–whole shelves and freezer spaces were picked utterly clean. It was amazing.

One woman with a very full cart told me she’d had to venture out into the crowds and traffic and she was making sure she wouldn’t have to again for awhile.

The police sent out a message today telling us not to go on the expressway and that it was closed past X for security reasons and really, you might just want to stay as far the heck away as you could, y’know?

Stitches West is at the Santa Clara Convention Center the second weekend from now and having missed it last year for the flu, I cannot WAIT to finally go again.

The Levi’s Stadium was built a few years ago just down the street (over the Convention Center’s objections) and the biggest parking lot serves both.

So, um, they don’t need to use that stadium for awhile now that football’s over, right?

You know how to get a lagging project almost finished? Have Holly come over. That black yarn in my purse didn’t stand a chance.

I can’t begin to tell you how delighted I am that she’s finally moved back not only to the States but to the Bay Area, even if at the other end of it from me–it’s doable. As proven.

And so we spent the afternoon here knitting and catching up on each other and baking lunch (because we could!) and having a grand time. I sent her off with lemons we picked together from the tree and she sent me off with a cone of baby alpaca from South America. Hardly a fair trade. But great fun.

In the last ten days I got to see so many family members I so rarely get to see. I saw old and very dear friends and at good times for those get-togethers to happen in terms of their own lives. I gained a son-in-law and a niece-in-law. My husband got to see his dad. I got some Purlescence time with old friends the day after I got home and finished my airplane project and I love how it looks and I wonder who it’s for. We celebrated a Californian friend’s birthday yesterday, grateful for all that has been and will be.

So I’ve been sitting here looking at this computer screen for awhile trying to figure out how to create a blog post out of all that overwhelming emotion, of feeling so blessed, so loved, so glad for the chance to love back and in person.

And then, (airfare and his time off work being a tad pricey and trying to tamp down the urge to book the next flight immediately), having been denied it by the flu last February, Stitches West is coming right up. There will be people there that I only ever get to see there and man, it’s been too long. I can’t wait.

I finally went to go buy a new niddy noddy. I didn’t call ahead; Purlescence sells weaving looms and spinning wheels and there’s no way they wouldn’t have them in stock.

Not only did they have a plain Ashford like my old unfinished-wood, no-frills broken one of that make but they had a Kromski.

I’ve never spun on a Kromski wheel but I’m marginally familiar with them. Of course they make niddy noddies. Even if I’ve never paid attention to the fact that they do. I mean, usually you buy one niddy noddy ever and then that’s it, you’re done, right? No point in shopping for more.

Unless you have to.They were so pretty that I almost didn’t let myself look at them–surely they were way out of my price range. Beautifully finished and turned wood, engineered to keep the yarn from slipping off the end you don’t want it to and to slip off the end you do want it to when you’re done. Nice.

Pamela saw that I loved it and steered me back to it: they were almost the same price. I was stunned. Both brands under $25. If I had known that I would have replaced my falling-apart one ages ago. (Counting on my fingers… It would be 22 years old this summer and I paid $20 way back then.)

Buying mill-end cones can get you great yarns at great prices but then you have to hank, scour the mill oils out, dry, and wind into a ball, a fair bit of extra work that’s already been done on yarns in your average shop. You can have your bargain but you have to work for it. Hanking is one of those things I just have to do sometimes.

I couldn’t wait to get to it. It was such a pleasure to hold and see that I actually looked forward to the task and enjoyed it, and that earned it its price tag right there.

To the Kromski family: well done, and thank you for this.

I picked Richard up a little early as the traffic time estimate climbed. Somehow, for all the craziness that is rush hour between San Francisco and south of there, we got to Afton and Neil’s hotel within a minute or so of what we’d planned on–how, I don’t know. I’d left home over an hour and a half earlier.

Our friends who scuba dive in Bali love this one Indonesian restaurant in the City and that sounded good to them. (And it was!)

I’ve known Afton via online knitting groups for at least 15 years, probably more like 20, but the only time I’d gotten to see her in person before was when I went to Stitches East ’08. I’d never met her husband nor she mine.

Stories were swapped and good food shared and a great time was had by all–and then Afton swiped the check rather than letting us pay our share. The little stinker. I got back at her, though: I reached into my purse and pulled out the edges of two cowls and of a ball of green yarn that was becoming a third one, without even saying what they are because color is everything: Choose one!

Ohmygoodness I didn’t bring anything for you!

You gave us dinner!

Well, okay, then. She debated, loved the green (and it matched her handknit sweater) but went for the navy Epiphany.

There’s no more of that yarn to be found, I told her–Cascade discontinued it after its second mill run. Royal baby alpaca, cashmere, silk. By way of saying, this really is a one-of-a-kind.

Looking on their website, they do seem to still have some inventory in an earthy–gold? How would you describe that one? (The dress is white and gold! No, blue! Never did get that argument–the dang thing was purple, or at least the cropped version I saw back then.)

Anyway. And then I handed her a skein of undyed light brown cashmere, the first yarn plied on my new electric spinning wheel. Just because I could. So there.

We had only just gotten started when we dropped them back off at their hotel. So glad for the time. So wishing there were more.

A panic and desperate escapes away from the bird feeder this afternoon.

Nope, that apparently didn’t work.

A little later… A panic and desperate escapes away from the birdfeeder, with one dove smacking its head on the window this time going the wrong way, then careening sideways to the elephant ear leaves and at last out of sight.

Nope, apparently that didn’t work.

The third go-round, probably the same dove smacked that window only this time there was the Cooper’s hawk hot on its tail, gray zooming after gray at a speed I didn’t know a dove could do, the immediate moment of capture hidden from me by a tree’s not-yet-fallen leaves. Now there’s a little adrenaline for you.

While I tinked back a bunch of purl two together through back loops and purl two (one of them a yarnover) together stitches, oh…so…slowly. Put this stitch back behind that one that got twisted in the tbl thing, fixed the dumb mistake, reworked what I’d undone and corrected the now-twisted yarnovers.

And then at last! Nailed it!

Last time I was at Purlescence I asked Kaye what was new and she showed me a suri alpaca/silk blend that looked like Kidsilk Haze, only softer. Cumulus by FyberSpates. Very nice stuff, and I love a good alpaca.

I picked out a vivid turquoise blue, telling her, Someone needs this color. I don’t know who, but it’s speaking to me: someone needs this.

That skein was the cowl I knit up during my eye doctor appointment last week. I brought it to knit night tonight to show off to Kaye (while wondering if I would find out where it was meant to go).

Cari came in and I headed over next to her to chat awhile and catch up.

She saw the cowl and exclaimed over the color as I handed it to her. I didn’t tell her, but I’d actually thought of her at first sight of the yarn but had dismissed the idea because I just didn’t think it was her color and then I’d totally forgotten about it .

But oh, it was. She held it against her neck (I didn’t know she’d been looking for something that wasn’t itchy.) Her eyes closed a moment in ooh…aah.

And then she tried to give it back to me.

Nothing doing.

“Nuh UH!” as she tried again.

An impish grin from me with a pleading, “Please?”

She crowed in delight, took off her scarf, put the cowl on and kept it there. She asked me, Where did you…? and then went over to grab a bunch more skeins to match.

And I confessed to her that that time I’d given her a cowl before? I’d made her one, but I’d hedged my bets on the color and had grabbed a second from my stash at the last second and she’d picked the second one and it wasn’t particularly soft and it had bugged me that I hadn’t given her a soft one. Now at last I had.

A few minutes later, I happened to pick up a Dream In Color skein, loved the color, and put it back. “I don’t need any more yarn.”

Next thing you know she was buying it. She was already knitting a hat in that exact same yarn, she just hadn’t brought that project tonight.

Alright, that removes temptation quite nicely, thanks, thought I as they rang her up.

And you know what happened next. My purse snaps rather than zippers shut. Yes she did. “Fair’s fair!”

Knit my way past a roadblock in the pattern again after spending way too long looking at three different potential versions on the screen of where to go from here. Just. Go. Do. It. You can always rip back–one of the great gifts of knitting: there are no permanent mistakes unless you let them be.

I love how it’s coming out.

Meantime, one little boy at the end of the day Saturday who needed to show off his Halloween costume. You can be a super SUPER Ninja if you’re up high on your daddy’s shoulders.

A tired super super Ninja. Hudson had had a very energetic, busy day.

I debated the wisdom–no, actually, I thought it was an outright rather dumb idea–of taking fluffy blurry yarn to an eye doctor appointment. Those always take several hours so I knew I had to have something, and something smooth and plain on bigger needles than 4mm would have been better and I tried but in the end I just couldn’t make myself have another project going at once and so it talked its way into my knitting bag after all. Because it already had a few rows done.

It was a wispy brushed suri alpaca and silk that Fyberspates had given the perfect name of Cumulus to; a skein had grabbed me at Purlescence.

I’ve seen the retina specialist just a few times over the years, and yet he remembered me yesterday and particulars about me to my great surprise. I’d always thought he was a really nice guy; this time he just glowed.

He was also quite apologetic as he came in and I smiled, No, no, you’re fine!

Turns out he has decided to retire. He was taking his time seeing old friends, clearly, not knowing when he might get that chance again. I asked him what he would do in his retirement and he said he’d be continuing to guide residents at the medical school and to see his pediatric patients.

And I thought of all the preemies whose sight has been saved because of him, still getting to see him, and it made me so glad for him and them both. The new doctors coming up will be well served too with him still their mentor.

He was as thorough and careful as he was when my child was his young patient 22 years ago for a visit or two–and he’s the one who’d cleared his schedule despite his staff having told me no: when there was an emergency he was the one who’d taken over and made everything okay again.

He described my macula problem in detail. And then smiled and said he had that too. Way too early, no reason to risk surgery yet. Same with the cataracts, same with the corneas that will need transplanting some day. All in all, a little bit of aging but really, things do look good and should for some time.

He took great joy in that, and how could I not too?

He laughed at the end when I mentioned that somehow even blurry yarn had worked out there.

Another hour or so last night and again today and there you go, I did actually do most of it with my eyes dilated and now it’s done.

(Pattern: the lace pattern from my Water Turtles shawl in my book or, if you have the Barbara Walker treasury series (and really, if you knit, you should), it’s her Arrowhead Lace, used with permission. Knit between the asterisks, since the side edges don’t apply when you’re working in the round. I cast on multiples of ten till it went over my head easily and worked till I didn’t have enough yarn left to do another full repeat. I cast off very loosely to it would have lots of give. Not blocked yet. Cast off edge shown on bottom.)

Rain blessed rain, we were doing it Camelot style again: mostly in the middle of the night. It stopped, the sun broke through here and there as we got up and started the day, and then it started in again.

At one point the thunder and lightning were nearly simultaneous as we heard that huge BOOM. Richard was working from home rather than out driving in that and we held our breaths a moment.

The power held.

It came to .54″ here at the eye of the storm.

I was finding and getting rid of kinks from a pattern and feeling productive.

Finally, the sun was out but going down fast–and the Christmas lights weren’t coming on. Huh. It’s getting cold, they sure should be by now. I checked everything, and then with Richard searching for ideas I did again. Breakers were all good. Everything’s plugged in and set. Had a squirrel chewed through the cord under the tomato bush?

Did you check the box?

Of oh course! And so it was, his Rube Goldberg of a thermostat was somehow dead, why, we have no idea. So I bypassed it and simply plugged the lights directly into the orange cord and ta daah!

And… The Acurite was blinking. We changed the batteries and I cleaned off the mud outside and the surprising little bit that had somehow gotten inside, but the temperature sensor part, which I use to read the temp under the mango cover without having to go outside, was still dead.

Two sets of electronics knocked out by the rain. The sensor is designed to be outdoors but the instructions say not to leave it where it will get wet. Um. It’s never been a problem before.

It wasn’t going to do me any good inside, though, certainly, so since the station part wasn’t blinking anymore I might as well try. I stuck it back under the mango cover.

It came back to life! Within an hour, but not in the first five minutes, I know that. Maybe it had just needed to dry out? It’s clearly working fine now.

Maybe I should explain that the rain reader is a third gizmo around here… Who knew we would turn into such weather nerds?

(Oh and? Last week’s falls didn’t improve my balance and I fell out there again. Twice. Always did like splashing in mud puddles as a kid but somehow I missed those, just the cushy bushes.)

Rain, blessed rain this morning, 1.57″ at our house and over twice the forecast, an inch officially in the area overall.

Then at nine pm we realized that the lights weren’t coming on on the mango tree and it turned out the outside GFI circuit must have been rained on. Reset. We’re going to have to watch that this winter.

But even without the lights, damp soil helps hold in the warmer temperature of the day far better than dry and that and the frost cover (carefully anchored with rocks at the ground, no gaps) were helping hold in the heat even when none was being added: by ten degrees’ difference from the outside air.

Meantime, I spent an hour and a half–just like I did on Saturday–knitting, ripping, knitting, ripping, doing the math, proving it by making those stitches–and ripping again. Dang. I inwardly warned said project that it was in danger of being Dorothy Parkered.

I guess I scared it. At long long last I saw the rookie error in my math (and I’d had the number right the fourth time, too, darnit, even if I’d had the why wrong) and I got it right. The pattern worked.

May I stop here and give a shout-out to Karida Collins at the Neighborhood Fiber Co. I was using her Penthouse silk, which is a 2-ply spun not too tightly; it’s very soft. There’s always a tradeoff between softness and durability: adding twist makes a stronger yarn but it also adds friction that translates to a rougher hand. I way overspun a bit of rabbit fluff once and made it feel like rough burlap just to prove it could be done.

And yet this luscious yarn totally held up to being ripped out I know six and I think seven times, six fairly long rows’ worth, again and again and again and throw in several more agains and it still looks good enough to photograph for publication.

It was so compelling to me to knit it exactly right. This one’s for the whole world. Karina’s gorgeous handiwork deserves that.

You slip the next (two, in this case) stitches coming at you onto a short double-pointed needle (aka a dpn, the light-colored one here) and stab it into the knitting, either in back or in front according to the pattern, to hold it out of the way. You knit the next ones on the regular needle, then bring that short needle back up and knit those delayed stitches. Voila: your cable.

When we moved to California it was several years before I knew anybody besides me who knit. It wasn’t till some time after that that I finally learned, after knitting since age ten, why those dpns were sold in sets of four or five.

To me they had always been, and had only been, cable needles. That was their name. I know because that’s what my mom called them. A memorable part of my childhood had involved watching her use them while knitting Aran sweaters for my dad and my next-older sister and an all-over-diamonds one for my grandfather.

On size 2 needles. In endless tiny hanks of tapestry yarn, because that was the only thing available back then if you wanted wool yarn at that fine a gauge. For her father, who treasured it the rest of his life.

Socks? They’re called dpns and they’re for knitting socks? Or even hats? On a kind of a scaffolding arrangement, and that’s why so many, and not because the manufacturers know you’re going to drop one somewhere down the cushions of the doctor’s waiting-area chair and never find it again and they’re just being helpful?

And none of the manufacturers even call them cable needles? Who knew?

Writing this down so I can figure out later when I did this.

Some time ago I knit a very soft hat out of Cascade Eco Duo, an undyed baby alpaca/merino blend.

I had gotten in the habit when I was so very ill of wearing a wool hat at night that someone had gifted me with, and I love her hat and her for it. I used it every night for about five years.

But the Eco Duo was quite a bit softer and I found my attempt to knit it for someone else completely failed–it became mine instead.

I packed it on a trip to a colder climate and that was that, I never saw it again. I’ve felt good about that. I had knitted it with the intention of giving it away, and someone out there who needs it against a harsher climate than mine has it, I’m sure, whoever they may be.

But when I got an email from Purlescence saying they were having a 40% off sale on that particular yarn this week that I knew was so soft and had no risk of crocking dye into my hair in my sleep if I sweat, I found myself jumping in the car and fondling skein after skein to determine the very softest, holding them up against my face because they’re going to spend a lot of time there. It’s still in the crazy-eighties by day but it’s getting pretty cool at night.

I bought two. One to knit up for me. One to give away.

I was looking for a particular Baby Alpaca Silk Petite from Lisa Souza in my stash….

And stumbled across a forgotten ziploc. A dk-weight silk shawl in a (sold out) color Colourmart2.com called Claireberry.

I had put this down to go knit for a nephew’s fiancee, and then another project for someone else, and then another one, and having been unsure how to finish this one I never quite had and then I’d simply forgotten it.

Pulling gently from neck edge to needle to see, it seemed pretty long as it was. Six long but simple rows and call it done, and that, my friends, is how you pull off a whole ‘nother lace shawl in just one day to try to impress your blog. It’s blocking and I’m waiting for it to hurry up and dry.

Last night’s shawl having nicely cleared the spot for it.

Where’s that BASP? I thought I knew right where…. Well, while I’m waiting on that I got a thousand-plus yards of Lisa’s silk wound up and five hundred of Karida’s super soft dk Penthouse. All ready to go in sweet touch-me perfection.

Cast on!