My sweetie says it had no virus, and yet–well, it’s six, maybe seven years old–my PC crashed today. The kind of crash you wish you had everything backed up on the cloud.

Oh wait. I mostly do. I think. Um.

And then… He thought it a good day to update my very out of date laptop, just to make sure at least that stayed in good shape.

Not done.

Is it ready yet?

Oh, right, sorry, I’ll check it.

Is it ready yet?

Huh. No, it isn’t, should be. (He was working from home.)

Ten programs, it said it was plowing through. Which is why I didn’t have the laptop, either.

And so an amazing amount of knitting got done, and it felt wonderful. I had a project I’d started on on old bamboos that felt like fingernails and–wait, how are our kids going to know about chalkboards?–and I’d been avoiding it.

It is done. I sent a small thank you Up There: the computer made me do it. It’s beautiful. And now I don’t ever have to use those needles again.

I’m still holding out faint hope that the same won’t be true of the PC.

And I finally got my laptop back and it warned me I needed to update some things. I decided it could wait.

We need homemade bread if you’re going to make all this jam, Michelle told me.

She’s right. So we can say we’re on a roll.

Meantime, at an Iphone angle, a better shot of the doodle that is Parker’s sweater.

Made good progress on the Malabrigo I hadn’t expected to work on today, because I…

Took a good hard tumble this afternoon. Did a straight-forward splat on the carpet, bent my glasses, the item in my hands going flying ahead of me–

–and thought of my mom’s reaction.

My mother’s mother broke her hip when my mom was in college, and Mom, small-boned and thin, was always afraid of that happening to her. And so it was that one day, about 16 years ago, she was carrying one of my sister’s twin then-babies and found herself suddenly falling down the stairs she’d been heading down, her full focus on protecting that child from harm.

I can just picture him wanting to ask, Doozitagin? He was fine.

And Mom brushed herself off just jubilant: the baby was fine, and she hadn’t broken her hip! If it didn’t happen then it probably wasn’t ever going to–she was fine! Yay!

And at 81 now, she’s still fine.

I yelled for my Richard. He came.

My 6’8″ husband is incredibly tall when you’re looking up at him from the floor. He helped me up, I brushed myself off, whined a bit–sorry, Mom–and my balance seemed a little worse for the jolt. But hey.

Michelle told me, Mom, you need to sit down, put your feet up and KNIT!

Well, when you put it that way…

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee wrote a much calmer post about All That than I did. Good for her, and I’m grateful she did and for her example. (And thank you DebbieR for the heads-up).

And after some discussion around here, too, here are some more thoughts. The patterns that clearly mimic the Olympic logo? Infringe if they’re for sale, if they’re free, no, unless the things made from them are sold.

The USOC thinks the word ravelympics infringes too. Personally, I think it’s close but that it does not and that nobody’s going to confuse the two. The USOC’s letter was far from well thought out, though, and it just didn’t help their cause when, after having called ravelympics “denigrating,” they then apologized (though they did not retract the cease and desist) and added an offer to let (you know that’s a  non-knitter, right there) us knit for the athletes. Trying to make peace in the storm.

Wait, wait, guys: knitting usually takes mega-hours. You have to let people calm down first before you can just assume they want to give up their life’s time to you.

They handled it badly. So did I by letting it get under my skin so thoroughly. I apologize.

Meantime. Bryan left this morning. He’ll be home in New Jersey in time to see my oldest on her way during a move; he saved the last cookie for breakfast before his trip, grinning when I made sure he’d gotten it.

It was a small batch last night. I pureed about a half cup toasted hazelnuts with an egg and three packets of Splenda. Baked them as cookies that came out of the oven looking cake-like but quickly fell and looked cookie-ish again. Then I spread them with premium Bergenfield unsweetened chocolate, melted with packets of Splenda mixed in to his taste.

I saved them all for him. We like good stuff around here and that one he could eat.

All those good nutty chocolatey smells…

I just took a chocolate hazelnut torte out of the oven.

(Ed. to add: Channon got me thinking of when we went to hear Sally Rogers sing at the Folkway Inn in Peterborough, NH, ~26 years ago. I’ve hoped to live up to this song ever since.)

An aside first: Dale of Norway has been making licensed custom-designed sweaters for the Norwegian team for the Winter Olympics, specific to each set of games, since 1956.

Ravelry is a very popular Facebook equivalent for knitters and crocheters. One in three Americans knows how to knit. There are two million Rav users from all over the world.

And on that site there has been the Ravelympics: the idea of stretching one’s skills in such a way as to create something new and wonderful, starting at the opening of the Olympic games and ending when they do. It’s an inner challenge shared worldwide to do your best, to make something you might not have accomplished otherwise.

The US Olympic Committee has now sent a cease and desist order to Ravelry. The full text is here. “We believe using the name “Ravelympics” for a competition that involves an afghan marathon, scarf hockey and sweater triathlon, among others, tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games. In a sense, it is disrespectful to our country’s finest athletes and fails to recognize or appreciate their hard work.”

This lawyer is someone who has never spent a hundred hours turning string into gorgeousness. This is someone who has no idea that the spirit and intent of the thing was specifically to cheer the athletes on while watching them while knitting, creating worldwide community in the process.

As one knitter said, will Olympia, Washington get threatened next?

If it were the Ravelry Olympics, or even the Ravelympic Games, there would be a precedent, but this is extreme overreaching. They went combing through Rav, looking for examples: apparently every pattern that combines a set of three knitted rings and a set of two in the fabric, be it purl stitches or colorwork or lace, is also in violation and must be taken down. Calling Barbara Walker.

Post 530 (you have to be a member to see it) gives a great rebuttal to the committee’s lawyer.

Write. Twitter. Call. Protest. The addresses and numbers are in those links. We are being bullied by the clueless.

It took me three days to work up the courage to frog silk. Beautiful, shimmery, slippery silk–but that edging did not please me. I dampened the stitches around the needles, let it settle and dry, and then–left it there. Tried to drag myself back to taking the risk I knew I had to take. Didn’t want to. Considered tinking thousands upon thousands of stitches–reeeally didn’t want to.

This morning it was a relief to simply feel, okay, I was ready now. I laid it all out on the floor and took the needles out and hoped. Walked on my knees around the circle, carefully undoing stitch after stitch in row after row and then four more rows. Yes I dropped three stitches, yes, two of them ran. Two were yarnovers, no biggy. I caught them and I fixed them.

And at about 350 stitches into it, realized, no. I abandoned it again for most of the day.

This would not do. Tinked back. Knitted it up again with changes to the pattern and finally finally got it right.

It was imperative. You just don’t waste silk nor one’s skills nor pride on doing it halfway.

ps. Happy Father’s Day, Dad and Dad Hyde and Richard and Richard-the-younger!

It’s amazing how much knitting gets done when you pick it up in the morning and basically work all day with other stuff thrown in randomly but not too often, just enough so your hands get a break often enough. This is my fourth and best (yay!) and final (!) version of this pattern.

You over there–Hey. I hear you laughing.

It had been too long since we’d gotten together. And the Malabrigo Superfine Merino was a one-time run from the mill, delivered only to Imagiknit, and when it’s gone it’s going to be gone.

It is really hard for me to go to that store alone: parking is non-existent and the walk in the sun can be very long if there isn’t someone willing to drop me at the curb if need be and then take a hike. The fact that it’s down the block from a popular park in the City doesn’t help.

And so my old friend Nina, bless her, who loves to knit, too, threw an unexpected afternoon free at me and we  drove to San Francisco today. We actually got a spot within the block.

At Stitches West back in February, Antonio, one of the Malabrigo owners visiting the show from Uruguay, told me about that mill run and that the micron count was 14.5 (wow!) He fervently wished there were more of it, but there just wasn’t, and so…

…I went straight to the Imagiknit booth and talked to Allison about it. Went home and ordered that Solis colorway.  Gave up petting the thing and actually knit it up this past week: because I needed to work with it and I needed to know what it was like running between the fingers for hours before letting myself be tempted to buy more.

And the answer is? It is glorious.

So. The woman running the shop today was surprised when I told her the shawl I was wearing was one skein of that SFM; the stitches looked too thick to her to be that.

Bingo! She noticed! It’s 100g and 336 yards, but off the ball and onto the needles it somehow relaxes and widens out as if it were a worsted. It is airy and light and soft as fur and perfect. It’s still wool, which still has scales, but still!

There was one skein on their high wooden table of the stuff in a color that wasn’t on their website. It was the most perfect thing I could have asked for, so, that and two skeins of Malabrigo Sock came home with me.

A few minutes after I got home, it suddenly dawned on me that the Abril Sock I’d bought… Wait, let me get it knitted and done before I tell the story, but, it matched with something that has waited three years for me to finally get with it. Now I know.  Perfect. To be continued.

There was a two-cone large silk shawl I got most of the way through before our travels, and it was bothering me that I hadn’t finished it–so most of the last seven hours have been spent on those 3.5 mm needles and now it just needs to be cast off. The pattern is an experiment and I really want to see how it turns out.

I did take a break to run to Trader Joe’s to buy more hazelnuts…

(Ed. to add: finished the cast off, and going wow, this is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever knit. I am very pleased.)

The hawks haven’t (as far as I know) flown through any of the amaryllis stalks. Yet. The hummingbird did check them out but didn’t stay long.

The Malabrigo yarn in Solis: I finally finished it.

Oh wait, I realized, no I didn’t–those stretches of stockinette in the lace? The castoff curled there. Tink x 324, do k2tog, yo across and purl back and the only reason I didn’t do that in the first place is I didn’t think I had enough yarn. I did. Done! It is drying, and I can’t wait.

And that was going to be the whole post, till I went into the kitchen and saw the leftover toasted skinned hazelnuts in the fridge.

My usual peanut butter cookie recipe is one I discovered in an old hand-me-down cookbook given me in New Hampshire 25 years ago: one cup peanut butter, one cup sugar, one egg. (The Skippy type works best, the natural, not so much.) Great for celiacs. I do occasionally add a tbl of flour for a little bit of extra crispness at the edges, but it’s not necessary. 350, 8-10 min. That’s it.

What if…

So I buttered the cookie sheet. One cup hazelnuts into the Cuisinart. I let that run a long time, trying to get hazelnut butter, not meal, then added 2/3 c sugar, 1/4 c. cocoa, hmm… about 2 tbl butter, how ’bout a little more in there, possibly three, wasn’t measuring… 1 tbl flour just because, and 1 (extra large) egg. Trying to put teaspoonfuls of batter down, it was like sticky silly putty but soon settled down and behaved–ie, it held to itself rather than me after being on the cookie sheet a minute or so.

Which I figured out when I found some extra dark chocolate chips and pushed a half dozen into each cookie. Eight minutes at 350 again did the job, and there you go: the best cookie recipe I have ever come up with.

Toasting and skinning hazelnuts is a pain, but I totally just got over that.

(Ed. to add, if you prefer yours sweeter, go for the full cup of sugar.)

You know how to get me really knitting? Really burning through the stash?

Dangle a yarn in front of me that I really, really want, that I could tell you all the reasons why it would be just the most perfect yarn for so many potential recipients, and to seal it, make it something that’s a one-time thing only and at an unbeatable price…

…While knowing there’s just no justifying it till I make decent headway on what I’ve got. Lots of sand on that beach grabbing at my toes.

Well then. Dive in!

I woke up the other day to my Richard on the phone, talking to the nurse at 7-something o’clock. Where were those hearing aids? *fumble fumble drop* Wait-what? Ask her what the side effects are? What?

He did but didn’t get a real answer, because, as it turned out, she didn’t think there were any.

And so it was that today I got the latest and greatest to fight the bone damage from the useless steroids of my Crohn’s flare three years ago. I had to look it up: Prolia, ie denosumab, is indeed a monoclonal antibody as I thought it must be from the name. (Any drug name that ends in -mab.) And it’s less than two years past FDA approval–I lucked out.

On the last thing they tried, I was one of the unlucky hyper-reactives, sick for a week; six months later I went in for follow-up testing and got a note from the doctor: “I’ve never seen this, I’ve never even heard of this!” It had done diddlysquat. I asked him if it could be a new manifestation of autoimmunity? He said it was too soon to know.

This time, so far, so good, and he will absolutely not wait the standard time frame for follow-up testing.  Crossing my fingers. Having lost 29% bone mass in four years, and having had another year pass since then in which the loss continued at the same speed… (So yes, some of that pre-dated that particular flare.)

The Prolia works by blocking a protein that is a main instigator in shedding bone. Blessings on that doctor for fighting the insurance company while we were off having a good time for a few weeks. May the day come when providers can simply do the right thing because it’s the right thing and not have to go through all that.

Meantime, the bluejays went for the feeder twice in rapid succession while I was home (and got just as rapidly disabused of the idea) and were otherwise nowhere to be seen all day. Things are going back to normal.

And the yarn I grabbed on my way out the door to the clinic is, I’ve decided, not what I want to do next after all. Where are all my 7s…

(I’m putting in some old photos to show off some of my patterns.)

I was at the pharmacy today and admired–out loud–the beautiful handknit shawl in muted plums the woman next to me was wearing.  The yarn was clearly hand dyed, and I asked her, Madeline Tosh?

Another knitter! She was thrilled. We ended up sitting down together and talking lace shawls, parting reluctantly only because she had to leave for her doctor’s appointment.

And I now knew why I’d gone out the door wishing I were wearing some of my knitting, but the afternoon was a bit warm for it. But I tell you: she totally made my day.

And to add a total non sequitur that is close to my heart, remembering that opossum: please. Make sure you’re all the way awake before you try to chase marauding wildlife away from your birdfeeders.

Took it easy today. Didn’t go to a couple of places I’d planned on; I put my feet up and got some serious knitting done.

If I were making that silk shawl for me (um…)  it would just need casting off.

It keeps telling me it wants to be longer. I put it down and started on the next project while it argued, with me going, but then, who? I know that women who are larger than me need more length, but…

It needs to be longer. It’s been steadily louder as I’ve gotten towards this stopping point; clearly, I am not in charge here.

Well okay then. But for the pattern to look right I have 13 rows to go, then, and a full day’s worth of work.

And then it will be perfect!

A few more Parker pictures…

I finished the first cone of the dk Colourmart silk and got two stitches into the next row with the next and stopped. Tinked that little bit back and walked over to the kitchen scale, curious.

I had bought two 150 g cones. Now that I could measure one empty piece of cardboard, I could subtract that from the other to see how much yarn was actually on the second cone.

One hundred seventy grams. Thirty-six for the cone, 206g altogether. And I remember the other as having been 206 too before I started. That means I got 40g more than they charged me for. Someone else mentioned something about that on Ravelry, and the owner just smiled and said she liked happy customers.

They posted a lot of new colors today. Said the happy customer.

News flash: three peregrine falcon eyases hatched at San Jose City Hall’s 18th floor on Easter Sunday with the fourth trying as hard as it could to join them, a big hole visible at the top of its egg. By morning today it was being fed with its new siblings by mama Clara.

And a new season begins.