More Parker at the zoo photos.

First the knitting story, then the knitter story.

I have this silk shawl I’ve been working on. I’ve put a ton of time into it and it only needs a few more days. Note that the needles are 3.5mm, US4s–quite small.

And to accommodate that, I changed the neck a lot from some of my earlier work.

There was this nagging feeling that kept telling me, as it grew steadily, slowly longer, that, you know, you might want to doublecheck that beginning edge, because if the V-neck goes down to your belly button…

So any number of times, hampered by the length of the circ, I stretched and measured it every way I could think of–except one.

Today it finally got to me. I have often told people to rinse their lace still on the needles, let it dry overnight, and then it will show you how it will look when it grows up.

I didn’t want to wait that long, and for the length of the rows I was knitting it would have taken two circular needles to do it anyway.

So. I went hunting for another #4 and for needle stoppers. Found two; needed four; used rubber bands as a makeshift and hoped they would be wide enough. I knew there was a great risk of ruining days’ worth of work, especially given how loosely I knit–the stitches could slip right over those and off. Maybe. But I needed to know.

And so I knitted halfway across the next row and carefully to a point where there were no yarnovers, only smaller stitches, switched to the new circular, attached a needle stopper to the end of the first and continued on across while trying not to snag the silk with the stopper; then at the end of the row I added rubber bands and the other stopper, making both circs endless and hoping they would hold.

The moment of truth.

I carried it all carefully to the bathroom. Put the cone down. Wished for Richard to hold the two points at the center just to be sure–but he was napping.

Well, then. And I put that shawl carefully over my shoulders–great, I snagged it on my hair clip, I should have remembered to take that out first, but mercifully they came back apart without grief. The covered brown needle tip hung down on one side, the green the other.

And then I looked at the shawl itself shining back at me.

You know that feeling when it seems like you’re knitting the most glorious thing you ever knitted in your life?

And the shawl was perfect. Generously sized to fit others well, too.

Story of the day number two:

It was Easter Eve and everybody was doing last minute grocery shopping at the same time.

I was at Trader Joe’s, where the lines tend to be close together, and after I got checked out I said to the next clerk over, a tall young man, “Did you knit your hat?”

“YES!” he exclaimed in great delight that someone had noticed! It was plain stockinette in a heathered gray, the ends curling slightly, with three or four decrease lines at the top. (Being a lot shorter than he was, the number was a guess.)

The woman he was checking out said the yarn looked so soft. Notice: not hat. Yarn. And their conversation was off and running and I was out and away.

I was so glad I took the risk. The whole place got happy.

I wish a blessed Easter and Passover to all who observe them, and joy to all.

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a plane! It’s a bird!

A pair of double-crested cormorants, as far as my friend Sibley and I could make out. I can only wonder why they were flying away from the Bay. Taking a vacation to the ocean?

Got 3200 stitches knitted in silk while avoiding working on the taxes. Finally put down the knitting, picked up the TurboTax, and made good progress.

Blog time! (Escape!)

So, to cut to the chase: Parker, letting Disney know they’re down to 100 Dalmations now: one went Up!

Our grandson Parker and his cousin.

Lace:  I had eight going into a large almost-prime number, intending to fan out at the larger repeat but not too much of an increase, and after much scribbling and mathing and wondering if it could even be done, figured out how to get the two lace patterns to come out lined up just so with each other.

If only.

So I showed Richard what I’d done and why and how I’d made a visual representation of what I was doing and why it clearly should come out right–shouldn’t it?

He puzzled over it. I explained it again. He puzzled some more and finally offered that it seemed right to him; maybe it needed tweaking at the boundaries?

I laughed. A seamstress would have said selvedges. A knitter would say edges. A photographer would say frames. A carpenter would say corners. Someone remodeling their house would say there’s a beginning to it but there’s never ever an end. And someone like me who (due to a brain injury, I’ve tried for years, it just is what it is) struggles with knitting charts, can say this.

Spaces: the final frontier.

As I knit some ice rose dk silk from Colourmart (if they have any colors left at all on that page tomorrow. US postage is included.) Oh, and if you want some really nice shawl patterns, Purlescence has my book in stock. Just sayin’.

I made a mistake on this new pattern and I knew what I’d done. It was easy to fudge; the instructions I wrote were correct, it was just me that wasn’t. Just lift a strand between stitches and call it a yarnover and no one could ever tell–but the moment I made that decision rather than rip back, it wasn’t book knitting. Book knitting has to be done perfectly, checking every stitch and counting across on every row; this one’s the learning-as-I-go version, then.

And a really really pretty learning-as-I-go shawl. But it’s only fair anyway; there’s no point in dangling a yarn that’s an industry remnant that may or may not be repeated (and I knew that from the start). Truth is, I was simply knitting this, for the moment, to make me happy, while wondering where it will end up.

Sea Silk next time. I have some waiting its turn.

Birds. Scene: suet cake in a green wire cage, hanging down in the middle of the patio where there’s nothing for a squirrel to jump from to get at it. A house finch pecking away at it–or trying to.

Except that finches have this profound need to be at the top and the top half of that cake was already gone. She’d landed at the bottom, where there was plenty, but climbed up to where there was none no matter how many times she jabbed her head hard in there as far as she could reach. She did it again and again, straining as if she could squeeze her shoulders inside the cage too.

Air headed.

Later, I had someone working in my yard today (that branch gouging the side of the house after the storms had to go) and I had to stop and go out and explain to him why I was looking out the window and laughing: not at him.

One of my fearless little chickadees had flown to that wire cage and then realized late that there was an intruder, it was big, and it was quite close. And coming closer. Bigfoot!

And so it froze. There was no escape without giving its position away. It froze so perfectly and for so very long that I wondered if it was okay–I’ve been watching my birds for three years and I’ve never seen that behavior before. I’ve assumed it, after they’ve scattered from a hawk and melted into the trees, but I’ve never seen it up close.

Having caught on too late to zoom towards safety, the little bird was playing possum; if it couldn’t get away, at least it could blend in and become one with half a suet cake, the top of its head bowed to it as if in reverence.

The man was delighted. Seldom does wildlife stick around to be admired when he’s at work. I loved that he loved that it did.

Found another Frazz comic that made me laugh. (Well, they all do, but hey. Birds.)

Saw something new today: a squirrel with its nose pressing hard against the wooden box, squeezing its pointy little face as far as it could go underneath, right next to one of the 2x2s the box is resting on (ie as far from me as it could get while trying this). Two inch space: the final frontier.

That’s where I occasionally toss food for my wrens when they’re being shut out by the bigger, more assertive birds: only the Bewick’s will dash into that tight, dark space, and even they have to duck their tails down. Not even the chickadees explore there. Perfect.

As I’ve mentioned before, northern California is the only area left where those wrens have a healthy population and I am determined to take good care of mine. They are the tiniest birds with the biggest burst of song, many songs.

That left black paw was just about to sweep and grab to try to finish the job. I’d seen dog fur already shaped into a circle vigorously disappearing under there before with a wren going at it; there might well be an active nest and I didn’t know how far back it was.

Ooh, tasty nestlings!

Boundaries clearly needed to be reestablished and my initial foot stomp and loud GIT! wasn’t going to cut it. Time to bring out the big guns.

I have a bright red shopping bag, about as tall as an inquisitive big Fox squirrel, with twine tied to its handle at one end, and I set it up coming in at the side of the glass door with the twine tied to a cardboard tube at my end for a nice handle. I put some beat up store-bought pie crust tins and random broken ceramic bits in it for a nice noisemaker effect and to keep it anchored in the breeze.

(I know. What would Scott say. I bought the pie crusts.)

The door was closed. I was inside, innocent as could be.  Waited.

Took awhile. A black one and a clearly pregnant gray (yeah, I saw what you two were doing the other day, so do we get to see speckled squirrels? Palominos? As close as I’ll get to my childhood wish for a pony.) They took turns on the patio for awhile, and finally both were there at once and it was getting a bit crowded under the feeder. So one sniffed, then took cautious, tentative steps where it knew that peanut-suet crumble was hiding….

BAM! That bag was outside right there close to them–it came flying and crashing and those two marauders nearly risked a sonic boom. Just missed crashing into each other, too.

If I had to spend all afternoon working out the math on a pattern I’d thought was already ready to go (well, it is now), a bit of squirrel fishing certainly brightened the day.

But I would love to be able to do what a member of the peregrine forum told me she does: she buys mealworms at Los Gatos Birdwatcher, then throws them in the air and the waiting phoebes see her and catch them! Wow.

And you know who the cleanup crew would be.  It’s only fair.

*Ping*

I heard the incoming email and put my knitting down to come to the computer, where there is a better view out the window, to see who’d written; breaks to rest the hands are always a good thing.

Which is the only reason I saw.

In mid-reply, typing away, something made me look to the left just in time. By size I’m guessing it was the male.

There is the translucent awning with the birdfeeder hanging from the wooden beams it rests on. We have seen a hawk from time to time doing a steep V-dive, appearing suddenly from above and then veering straight back up again for the chase as everybody panics. (And if it hears a window strike, I get treated to a super close-up.)

Today was a first: I saw the Cooper’s just as it came in from a low flight, trying to stay out of view, and pulling straight up at the last second to catch I think a dove on top of that awning. The doves like to walk all around up there and the smaller birds never seem to.

I went looking for a picture to describe it, and this one is the closest–only, picture the bird entirely upright mid-air and facing you. At fifteen feet away.

Last week I saw one way to the left, carefully half-hidden by a tree trunk and perched on the fence. I was curious to know if she was stalking an oblivious finch on the other side of the smaller feeder to my far right. Knowing how fast they move, I consciously blinked left then back to the right as fast as I could make my eyes go–and in that real time, she lifted her wings, spread her tail wide and was halfway across my backyard. They are that fast.

Now if I could only teach them to knit. You’d need rope to survive those claws… We could have a hammock fence to fence in a blink.

And guess who was there tonight.

That same couple–and their baby, whom I hadn’t seen since she was an infant, 11 months old now and almost walking; she and I played for quite awhile. Peek a boo! *giggle giggle giggle*

And Penny and her husband, too.

She had been diagnosed with lymphoma shortly after I knitted her that shawl, and it was a comfort through all those months of treatment and solitude as her chemo-battered immune system could tolerate no risks for months and months.

That yarn had known exactly whose it was from the get-go.

I showed her the project I was working on–and admitted that although it had absolutely demanded to be made, and I’d thought I’d known who it was for, the further along I got into it the less sure I was that that was where it was meant to be.

And so I have already decided what I really will make for the person I’d been aiming towards, while this? I don’t know. I just know I have to knit it. Monday, when I rescued its UFOness from oblivion, I actually only had the first four rows on the needles; now it’s halfway done.

She reached to touch the Findley yarn and exclaimed, Ooooh! As she did so, I suddenly knew: this was exactly the pattern I had knit for her.

Everything came together in good will from both of us in that moment towards whomever it holds in its future.

Monday, it was going to be a different pattern in the body but my counting was off, and so…

I told Penny in mock indignation, My knitting bosses me around! She guffawed–she knew. Hers does too.

I’m curious to see what will come next with this. I do know that yarn time is in its own variable universe.

If I’d counted right when I started my project, I wouldn’t have learned how to make the first lace pattern flow so beautifully into the unexpected new one nor would I be planning what comes after these two.

I should stumble more often. I am really really really pleased with how this is coming out–it was hard to put down.

As the afternoon wore on, to give my hands a break I was reading and then grumping over some news: Arizona’s House approved a bill that went below and beyond to actually allowing employers to demote or fire any employee who uses birth control even if it was paid for out of their own pocket. This sentence was removed from the old law: “A religious employer shall not discriminate against an employee who independently chooses to obtain insurance coverage or prescriptions for contraceptives from another source.”

Their Senate looks ready to pass it.

Wow.  Anyone who’s ever had a bad boss (I certainly have), raise your hand… I wonder how fast the Supreme Court would take that one on.

And so I turned on the stereo, looking for relief from all that.

Alison Kraus began singing a cappella.

A young dove flew in and settled in on the patio. Watching me. Learning a new song. Tilting her head up to pay particular attention when I sang too. She relaxed into her spot on the concrete and stayed there as long as the album played, the very model of being still within the world.

Acknowledging the gift, I turned back to that beautiful, radiant yarn and knit in increasingly happy anticipation of its arrival home.

You can’t divide 16 into 58 and 26 doesn’t play well with it either.

I did goofball math three months ago when I started this shawl, in trying to transcribe my scattered notes at the time.  I only caught it after working all day on it, all the while admiring the way the light catches and dances off the silk in the yarn.  It was seriously pretty and seriously soft.

It still is. No way was I going to rip it out.

It took some grumbling and a “what’s wrong?” from my sweetie and finally realizing there simply was no way and giving up. Redesign time!

And now the rest of it is going to be beautiful, too. Totally different from what I’d envisioned, but hey.

I promise not to say to the recipient, Oh, but it was really supposed to look like…

I wondered last night what was going to pop up next as I glazed the latest tortes.

And so, knowing none of that…

She sent me a note. She and her husband were throwing a party for their old friends to meet their daughter’s fiance, and I had just rsvp’d that we were looking forward to it.

My chocolate torte was such an institution in the ward, she pleaded, and her daughter and beloved both love chocolate; could she possibly persuade me to… She would cover the ingredients…

I wish I could have seen her face when she saw the reply: I already made it last night. It’s yours. Her how did you…!?? came across the electrons loud and clear.

When her husband dropped by for it, I apologized that I had glazed it on a paper plate rather than a more formal one; I hadn’t known. He just looked amazed.

And then, with so much success with that silk shawl yesterday, another abandoned one jumped into my hands tonight. White is beautiful, but it is boring to work with and this was laceweight (albeit on the heavy side) to boot, and so this one had been put aside for Christmas knitting deadlines and then forgotten.

I went to count stitches and to see where I’d left off. My hands exclaimed, Oh! THIS is why I bought this at Cottage Yarns!

I got several rows into it before it dawned on my slow brain that it was white and there was about to be a bride. Ding ding ding.

Let’s see if I can pull this one off.

With a half gallon of ultra-heavy cream to use up, chocolate tortes numbers five and six were baked, cooled, and glazed tonight.

I think the last of it will simply become chocolate sauce. Chop, dunk, heat, stir. Done. (You have to submerge every part of every piece of chocolate in the liquid before adding heat or it can seize into a hard lump that will never melt. Chocolate has the most interesting molecular properties.)

And I finished the silk shawl project that had dragged out for so long; it is nearly dry now. If I had had any idea–I know, I know, but if I really had, this would have been finished two years ago.

I love it when a project feels like it’s just the most beautiful thing you’ve ever knitted while you’re knitting it.

Afterwards will have to do for this time. Wow, though, it really is. And I love that two days after I picked up this long-abandoned project, I have a beautiful lace silk shawl ready to show off for it.

What’s your most promising UFO?

The shawl is almost finished, but I’ve decided to make the edging longer: not because I have to, but at long last because I want to. It’s going to be gorgeous.

The friend who has shown up at my door several times when I’ve been sick with a quart of mango juice from Trader Joe’s just because it’s my favorite, knowing it would cheer me up, sent out a note today: did anyone have crutches for her height?

We have some, but they’re my son’s and he’s 19″ taller than she is, so I couldn’t help her on that one. But anyone who’s sprained both ankles needs a little something to cheer her up.

What I really wanted to do was help watch her little kids who were running in and out of the house, but that whole sun thing…

I put the chocolate torte in her fridge so she wouldn’t have to get up.

And it was enough.

p.s. Happy Birthday to my daughter-in-law, Kim! And to my son John yesterday.

I needed accomplishment. I needed to finish something. And so I pulled it out and tried again, almost in spite of myself.

About two years ago, I started knitting a shawl out of hand-dyed raspberry ice (scroll down) laceweight silk, 100g 1100 yards–fine, slippery stuff and on size 4 needles. I’d been eyeing it for ages at Purlescence and at last it was mine.

But. I found it hard to see the stitches. I found it hard to hold onto the stitches. I found it easy to poke a stitch wrong blindly and find myself suddenly looking at two or three of them running down down down, (well not really that far, it just felt like it), wondering how on earth I managed to pull off that little stunt–I’m supposed to be good at this. It humbled me.

The other problem was, I found myself wishing I had used a different lace pattern here, or up here. But I was too into it to rip it–it was not particularly fun knitting and I didn’t want to have to do it twice.

I made another stab at it about a year ago. It’s shimmery and soft and beautiful, and it begged to be finished. I even got new eyeglasses.

It got set aside again.

I had a doctor’s appointment today. I knew that taking something that was that slippery and droppable with 457 stitches for waiting-room knitting was nuts. But I grabbed that ziploc out of its banishment anyway, and to my surprise the nurse exclaimed over it and then started reminiscing warmly over what I’d been working on the last time she’d seen me; it was a blanket, right?

(Darned if I remember, but I smiled in thanks.)

Yes, I did have to repair some stitches from my row being interrupted when she called me in. But she was so excited over it that how could I not be too?

I’m finally into the (just decided on) edging and I can count the rows to go. It’s going to be glorious in real actual life, it’s going to be done!

Suddenly the knitting isn’t boring anymore. Suddenly it’s hard to put down. That one compliment made all the difference–I’m so glad I took it along.

I can’t wait!

It was an odd little thing. I fairly often wear black skirts to church: not for any particular reason other than the laziness of knowing they go with everything and I can choose any top and shawl or scarf I feel like without stressing over it. They let the knitting stand out.

After all the intense color overload of the last two days, something in me rebelled. I pulled out a crazy-busy paisley that I’d bought on sale on impulse in vibrant, autumny reds and golds. The loudest skirt I own. I rarely wear it.

I had a shawl knitted in Malabrigo’s Botticelli Red tucked away, unworn, waiting for me to finally declare that long-suffering second book project done. Just sitting in a bag. Well now come on. I’d been wishing I’d stuffed it in my tote and shown it off to the folks at Malabrigo, so today I wore it to church to quietly show it off there, at least.

And then here’s the killer: the other knitter in our ward sat down next to me and was exclaiming over this shawl she hadn’t seen before. I said something about Stitches–

–and she went, What’s that?

Oh. My. Goodness. Knitters, I have failed. I am so sorry. She knows now, and we are looking forward together to next year’s. Let the impatient anticipation commence.

(For those coming here for the first time, Purlescence has copies of my book at the cover price, plus I assume shipping and tax; you’d have to ask them the details. I come in Thursdays if you want yours signed.)

I was coming down Highway 101 just past NASA Ames on my way to Stitches when I saw it: kiting on the wind, unusually close to the ground and to the road so that I was able to make out actual details in that brief moment–an adult peregrine falcon. I tell you. The day would go well.

And overall yes it most definitely did.

I had several people who had offered to lift the scooter out of the car when I got there–but down is easy, right? I just went ahead and did it.

That got me my comeuppance: I had found what was as far as I saw the last spot and it was on level B at Santa Clara Convention Center, not far from the elevator.  I thought, score! I found one without having to ride a long way in in the sun from the Great America lot!

There was a step of goodly height surrounding that elevator. No curb cutouts. Nada. A flight of stairs was the other option (yeah that works, uh huh). Had I ridden around the garage to the next level, I knew there would be cars coming at me going from bright sun to dark shadows and possibly being unable to see something they would never expect down in the roadway. Not an option.

At that point I could have called for help, but I was outside. The sun time I had had to spend yesterday had already caused some lupus flare warnings; my choice was, back or heart. Or autonomic nervous system damage. No contest. I did it, but I paid for it.

Okay, enough of that, on with the Stitches report.

Antonio and the rest of the crew at Malabrigo loved the shawlette made from their Sock, loved the two-colorway lined hat, and I loved that they loved seeing a little of what they create becomes. They are such nice folks, and their yarns are so soft.

Susan and crew at Abstract Fibers loved the shawlette I’d made down to the last two yards of a skein of their Picasso baby alpaca. (I’m the daughter of an art dealer; I had to knit a yarn called Picasso.)

And I got to hug Dianne at Creatively Dyed.  Karen and Barbara at Royale Hare. And so many more.

And… A few years ago, I bought some silk from Lisa Souza in her Earth Birth colorway, (glancing at her site) Max looks like the right one. It was a Friday at Stitches; I took it home, knit straight till bedtime, rinsed it and laid it to dry having used up the whole thing and then I showed it off to her the next day. There you go–done! (There may have been some ego involved. Just a tad.)

So, yesterday I was remembering that story out loud to Lisa and Rod as I pounced on the perfect silk in the perfect color: Blackbewwie, a deep shade maroon with a bit of plum to it. 750 yards.

Today. I roll up to their booth. I reach into my tote bag. I pull out: the  Blackbewwie.

“It’s BEAUTIFUL, Alison!” Lisa exclaimed. (While her face went, Buh buh buh but *how*?!) She loved the pattern, she loved how it had come out, but, (holding this full circular shawl up, looking at it, looking at me)…!

Totally set her up. It was her Sock Merino and I’d bought it last year.

Heh.

I just happened to have someone else I needed to knit that color for now.

DebbieR, Carol, Katrina, Jasmin, and Kevin all offered to help get the scooter back in later; Kevin got to do the honors. We stepped off that elevator at level B–

–he could not believe it. He pointed out where a curb cut should have started from and tried to fathom how the center had been built with such a stupid mistake or how it could have been allowed to have been left that way. No handicapped slots there was not an excuse.

Preach it, brother.

Then he made it look absolutely effortless as he got that scooter down there and then lifted the whole thing back up into my car.

I spent careful, slow time on the treadmill that Ruth gave me, last night and again today; it helped my back more than anything else has. This cheers me greatly. It will be over soon.

Stitches for me was over far too soon. I have a whole collection of super heroes and I love them all.