Amazing how much stuff needing doing around the house gets done when the creative side of the brain needs to work something out on its own. How to get the yarn to look like…

The hard part was making myself sit down finally this evening with pen and paper to try to work out the details of what I was beginning to visualize, to actually start to do the hard work. And if you ever want an answer to a teenager whining about what their algebra is supposed to do with their future real life, send them over here to give me a refresher course to tutor us both–I could really use it right now.

As soon as I get off this blog I’m going to cast on and hope I got the first word problem right. Yes, it’s bedtime–but “Begin; the rest is easy” holds ever true. Even if it’s just one row. Start.

In the meantime, our neighbors have a compost box, *with earthworms and kitchen and garden scraps turning out good soil for their garden to grow more food with, with the remains becoming kitchen and garden scraps and good soil to grow more food with, repeat from *, just on the other side of the fence.

And today after the rain stopped, there was a black squirrel totally splayed out on the fenceline. Ahhhh…heat!

Immediately below him there was steam rising from where I knew that box was.  (I bet they get all the robins.) And that happy squirrel looked for all the world like a cat that has claimed the top of the radiator on a cold winter’s day.

I was curious to see how the lace pattern from Tara’s shawl would look in a hat. One skein of worsted baby alpaca, 3.5mm needles, there you go. (I’m told Martingale now sells a pdf of the book; Purlescence has physical copies and ships, and I’d be glad to sign one if you don’t mind waiting till I get to Knit Night on Thursdays.)

And on the wildlife front.

Young squirrels don’t have object constancy before maturity. I have thrown a nut into a large flower pot as they’ve watched and they were unable to figure out it was in there. Come Spring and a year old, though, they will.

A clearly new-around-here young gray spent a fair amount of time today trying to figure out how to reach a treat I’d made quite inaccessible; then, having spotted what he thought was a good idea, he explored how to get to the top of the barbecue grill. Which was not close.

It seemed to throw him that it didn’t feel like a tree. He wrapped a paw around the leg. Didn’t like it. Finally, after many tentative steps and much scouting around that took quite some time (can you climb up inside a closed plastic pipe? No you cannot), he managed that little bit of rocket science leap by leap to the shelf and then, standing at last on the cold metal at the top, king of the mountain, he turned his head this way and that, taking a good look around.

That huge sugarpine cone full of suet and seeds was still dangling above the porch. Getting higher up, though it might fulfill an inner squirrel imperative, hadn’t gotten him one inch closer after all. Dang. But… But…! He’d worked so hard for it!

But then…wait…how do you get out of here? He seemed to have forgotten how he got up in the first place. Down was not an option from that height. He studied how far away the olive tree was, the fiberglass ladder (he’d clearly already figured out you don’t want to leap onto that.)  It was leaning against a lopped-off trunk we’d left for the woodpeckers. And there, over there there was nothing but grass.

He was stumped.

And then I happened to open the sliding door. He panicked and took a massive leap to the tree trunk near that ladder–eight, quite possibly ten feet away. I was stunned. He was at the downward part of the arc by the time he landed and scrambled up, but he made it. Olympic Gold! The crowd goes wild!

The Washington Post declared it squirrel week, asking for photos; included in there is a black one with the outer rings of its ears and the bottom half of its face bright white, so odd that I had to look closer to make sure it was actually a squirrel. There are many reminders there of why these little animals are so funny to watch.

Took a nap today, puttered around the kitchen, walked into the family room at last to see, perched at most 15 feet away, a Cooper’s hawk–I think the female–looking at me in as much astonishment as I was looking at it: I didn’t expect *you* here! It considered my presence a moment and then in no particular hurry spread those beautiful 31″ wings wide, flared her long striped tail in the now-familiar circle, and she was off.

One of the first things Michelle asked when the kids got home last night was whether a certain package had arrived; it had. I picked it up to show her and said to Richard, “Looks familiar, doesn’t it?”

To which my daughter reminded me of a certain earlier Christmas where I’d told her of a favorite yarn, and a familiar-looking package had arrived: I opened it, I pulled out this lovely yarn, I knitted up half a ball’s worth of it and then suddenly realized, wait–I didn’t order this color, did I? (Checking name on box.) Oh my goodness.

And so I’d stuffed it needles and all back in the box, wrapped the box, and threw it under the tree tagged from Michelle to me. There. I wrapped it for you.

Needle deprivation. That’ll teach me.

Part One.

I had no idea what the place was going to be like or even quite where it was going to be. Which was okay, I was going to be the passenger.

My friend Nina was taking part in a small–very small, as it turned out–holiday craft fair in Sky Londa today, immediately down the hill from Alice’s Restaurant.

Phyl was sure it was going to be held indoors and safe for my lupus, and it’s always good to see Nina, so up twisty Highway 84 we went.

Well, there were doors, that much turned out to be true: a stand-alone room of a building with the doors wide open and most of the crafty goings-on out in the fresh air, with Christmas trees over to the side being picked out and bundled onto cars, attracting people driving by to or from the coast. Come.  You see all these trees all around? Bring one home with you, pine-sized. Buy a handknit woolly scarf while you choose in the chill.

The sky was a dense fog, the ear-popping elevation not limited to the tops of the redwoods. I had on two layers of sweaters, wool knee socks, and a good wool hat. Nina was cold in a down jacket and thick hat and I realized that my heating-impaired house had gotten me more used to colder weather than I’d realized. (One site says it was 46F there today, one, a bit more.)

Checking the blog, it was Wednesday that that skein of Malabrigo Rios jumped onto my needles for no reason I knew of and just absolutely demanded that I knit it into a hat, and fast. NOW. And there seemed to be only one stitch pattern for it. That was that.

It wasn’t for my Christmas knitting queue, either. Don’t ask me how I knew that, but it just felt obvious all of its own. Well, huh.

So it got made. I knit it into the pattern that surrounds this blog, except done with yarnovers to make fern lace. I ran the ends in to finish it this morning right before Phyllis came to pick me up; whoever it was going to be for wouldn’t mind if I wore it just this one day, would they?

Ferns grow freely among the redwoods, the fronds echoing the green needles above; the Azules colorway echoed the California coastal sky, bright blue and foggy mixed together. With a touch of green. The ferns.

There was a seat just behind the window next to the door. After admiring Nina’s knitting for sale and visiting with a few friends, (side note for them: my brother Bryan’s Jeppson Guitars is here) I sat down there, figuring the glass would give me a little bit of UV protection on one side at least, pulled some yarn out from my purse, and started another hat while listening to a singer with his guitar who was seated in that room too and whose sound had drawn me in there in the first place.

I tell you, he was good. I looked around for signs of CDs I could write a check for but saw none.

Another man had told me there would be four musicians together later, and I’m quite sorry to have missed that but I can only be outside so much. But while I could be there, the one playing then, I could have listened to forever.

Yarn winding in time around wood as he played helped keep me warm.

I (in my sun worries) thought we were there about an hour and a half; Phyllis later guessed about 45 minutes. Judging by rows finished, she’s probably right. She came to me to say she was done just as I was finishing up a needle; okay, cool–and just as the musician finished his song and said what he was going to be playing next.

He had a blue canister with the word TIPS painted prominently in bright yellow.

I was standing up to go but turned to him instead, glad that I could say something without interrupting–the timing had come out perfect. I said very briefly I had no cash with me (much though I wished) and major home repairs waiting. But this I could do: Malabrigo. Some of the finest wool in the world. I had just knitted this (and I took off my hat). I had made it up as I’d gone along, and it is a woman’s, but I was sure he could find someone to give it to; “I want to throw my hat in the ring” to thank him for his music, and with that I put it in his tip jar.

The new warmth in his smile was like no one else’s.

Part two.

We were pulling out when I went, “The honey!”

“Oh, right,” answered Phyl, offering to let silly me pay her back later (I did) and she pulled off to the left to where someone was selling local honey across the side street.

He had blackberry! My favorite! I told the man I couldn’t go to the Kings Mountain Art Fair anymore where I used to buy it; too much sun time.

He asked if I were sensitive to the sun?

Turns out he and his doctor have discussed whether he had lupus on his arm. He seemed grateful to be able to say that to someone who knew what the word meant.

I explained there were two types, skin only and systemic. If he has it there, don’t let the word scare you.

He told me as we left, “You take care of yourself.”

“You too.” And I assured him that systemic notwithstanding, I’d had it twenty+ years; I’m doing fine.  He was visibly comforted.

Part three.

Costco run. I grabbed my piano hat on our way out the door. If I was able to stay warm enough on that mountain I didn’t need more than a hat thrown on down here too, right?

There was a woman in the store’s motorized wheelchair wearing a set-up that I recognized from when my son had knee surgery: her leg looked tinker-toyed. She was offered a sample of smoked salmon and wanted to buy some, but it turned out to be set on a shelf high above her head and the person giving the stuff out was too swamped with customers to notice.

But I did. “Do you want me to reach that for you?”

“Oh, yes, please! If you would.”

Now, I have spent my time needing that chair before. I know that people in wheelchairs like to browse too: like not just having help getting something down, but also like not being forced to buy it or stash it in the wrong place after looking it over simply because there is no physical way to get it back up high again, the helpful person by then long gone.

So I hung around the salmon a moment, just in case, thinking, browse away, hon.

She asked me if I were a pianist?

(I didn’t say, not like my concert-pianist grandmother nor my organ-performance-minor son, but) “Yes.”

She was too! She LOVED my hat! Wait–I’d *made* it?!

Hey (bring on the brag). I’d designed it.

I showed her the inside: how I’d wrapped the yarn across the backs of every single stitch so it wouldn’t have long lengths to snag on things. But that had made it so the black shows through the white keys a bit across the front, and for later hats, I’d gone with the long lengths. (The floats, to a knitter.)

I did offer to put the salmon back up if by chance she needed that. She loved that someone understood how it was to be seated.

However long later, Richard turned back to get one last thing for me and then we headed to the checkout. With him at the cart, he picked a line.

Which turned out to be next to that woman. Her young sons had joined her by then, one quite small, one maybe six or seven. I knew it couldn’t be easy to have Mom having a hard time getting around for awhile, especially if that’s a change.

I said a quick inner prayer, wondering. In response I felt this: could I re-create the hat? Sure, in a day, two, tops. Could I re-create this moment? Not on your life. And so while she was turned the other way I whipped my hat off my head, stepped over and tucked it into her cart just as she turned back.

She was stunned. “NO!” in disbelief. A delighted butbutbut.

May I?

She shook her head in how can I let you and joy and are you sure. Yes I’m sure.

She exclaimed some more and her older boy admired it and put it on his head. She told me he played violin.

“I don’t know how to knit a violin yet,” I laughed. (Thinking, but just wait…)

Her husband joined them right about then and the next thing I saw, all of them were laughing and happy, and then the older couple behind them in line were happy for them and admiring their hat and loving being at Costco right there right then.

I had been exposed to enough UV earlier to burn my cheeks and wonder what my T- (ed. to add, and B-) cells would do next. But as I once told my friend Scott, “Sometimes you just have to LIVE!”  I was hoping the Decembery conditions would be enough in my favor, but it was a risk and I knew it and I weighed it and I took it. Maybe, hopefully, I’ll be fine. Some things are worth what you pay for them. It was a day well spent.

But that very awareness pushed me to choose not to be selfish but to grab the moment given me to make that family happy.

As that musician had made me happy by the depth of that smile that had lit up his whole countenance. He, too, had played his part to help make it happen for them.

We all arrived of our own choices where we were supposed to be.

Medical week, round three: I had to go in for an ultrasound. You know, just to make sure I didn’t need an ultrasound.

Drink 40 oz and come in an hour later. Did. Used the facilities apparently a little too close to the time; came in, and–nope, you need to drink more and we’ll call for you in twenty minutes.

(Cool! More knitting time!)

So I’m sitting there in the waiting room and someone I hadn’t seen earlier who works there appears from around the corner and nods at me with a smile. I smile and nod back; doing 2×2 ribbing, I don’t have to look much at what’s in my hands, my eyes are free to notice what’s going on around me. I’m knitting a hat at the center of the Venn diagram of two circular needles, the tips not in use waggling a bit as I work. In retrospect it must have looked complicated.

It isn’t.

She disappears back into the hallway behind the door.

I apparently had been verified as friendly: and so, two minutes later, she reappears through the door with another woman who immediately sits down next to me (as the first stays standing, smiling and nodding some more) and tells me that they’d taken knitting classes together at such-and-such LYS in Los Gatos and they didn’t get it! Why does it do this when you do that, and, and… They were in agreement that they were both about to chuck it. They clearly were both also in agreement that they didn’t want to.

“If you do stockinette stitch for your scarf the edges will curl. If you do some knit/purl combination at the edges it’ll be okay.”

“That’s what the lady on the plane said!” she confirmed eagerly to the one standing.

Then she said something about practicing with garbage yarn–her phrase–and I told her, “If you knit garbage yarn you end up with garbage. And it’s not fun. I use really nice yarns and it makes me want to knit.” And here–I had her feel the baby alpaca in my hands.

Ooooh!

The standing one stayed shy and a little apart but the smile was getting bigger.

They had great enthusiasm, they loved being able to talk about it with no pressure of being in a yarn store where everybody else was better at it than they, and they just seemed to need to know that knitting really is something one can stay passionate about even if one has to start at it by being a beginner.

Is there anyone who was never a beginner?

Got another hat finished today, out of yarn that bossed me around and flew onto my needles whether I’d planned to use it next or not. And only just now writing this do I realize that that colorway and the pattern I chose for it looked rather like–wait for it–a bluejay’s feathers. I had one in the hands today and three in the bush yesterday.

Got a package: some raspberryish Sock Dream yarn I’d ordered. (Richard had looked at it online with me and had declared it nice and you know, your birthday’s coming up…) It was from Karin, my friend who drove from Albany NY to Vermont for us to finally get to meet in person while I was there three years ago. Tucked in the envelope was the total surprise of sparkly soft laceweight Wink in what else but Periwinkle from her Periwinkle Sheep shop with a Happy Birthday card. She remembered? She did that?!

Wow. Thank you, Karin! They are both so soft, and you know I’m a softness fanatic. And here she is, forced to deal with an injured back whether she has time to or not and yet thinking of how to make someone else’s day.

Totally made mine. So generous. Wow. I keep going and petting those yarns.  I hope to do her gift justice.

The third thing. I went back to the dermatologist today to check my scalp post-skin cancer; I’d had lupus lesions in reaction to the surgery and a reaction to the stitches themselves and she’d wanted a five-month follow-up.

She’s a young mom, and she was looking at the scar, which is indented into my skull in just exactly the spot that when I called it my fontanelle she had to stop a moment, she was laughing too hard.

And I have this weird piece of hanging skin at the very back of my head where the worst autoimmune grumbling had been; she declared it inflammatory tissue that, although it’s quite attached to me, won’t be forever; it just looks weird hanging there by a thin little bit.

I think I’ll name it Chad.  Poor little Chad has lesion-air’s disease. And now I could knit it a soft sparkly sweater in two stitches flat.

I woke up with tingly hands after all I said about that pearl yarn, which, I found out, does indeed get a bit splitty at k3tog. It is on hold for today; the larger and more comfortable size 5s came out, a little Malabrigo Rios, and a new project is whizzing by woolly well now.

And I got to go to the annual December Birthday Club potluck breakfast. A new baby was admired, his first-time mom consoled on his not-sleeping, he was cuddled and cheered and she melted at his tiny fussy face, as did we all. He tried to smile back at us, he really did, but it was such hard work when you’re so new.

On a whimsical note: I’ve read that if you ask Siri, the voice in the Iphone 4S, the meaning of life, she will answer with a question: Why are you asking this of an inanimate object?

I mentioned that to my husband, and his so-innocent-puzzled response was, Well, why didn’t they have her answer “42“?

(Okay, so I just googled, and apparently sometimes Siri does indeed say 42. Great engineers think alike.)

Oh, and Lene? If you haven’t seen it yet, I found a chair for you. And yes, I want one too.

A murder of crows not quite daring an attack but doing a slow dive down or rise up towards a larger hawk from above and below, the hawk not in a particular hurry to get away but neither willing to pick a fight. They all disappeared into some tall redwoods near Kepler’s Books as I watched at a red light.

Another hawk flew across the roadway about a mile further along, close enough to see feathers.

And then my own Cooper’s, looping through the foot of the L in the patio here this evening, blue in flight in the lowering sun. It was definitely an add-hawk committee day.

And to top it off I have concocted my first lined hat: it is blocking and I am dancingly pleased beyond all reason.

And the trip to Menlo Park that took me past Kepler’s? I got new handsplints. Better than pain meds, no side effects. They keep my fingers from curling at night, and the first set made for me at the start of my lupus years ago gave me back the use of my then-heavily-inflamed hands–to the point that I was actually able to take up knitting again, whereas I’d been eating with plastic utensils because I could not bear to lift a metal fork to my mouth for the weight of it. I had a child still in diapers. I don’t know how I did it. I only know I’m glad I did.

The splints last about four or five years. It suddenly occurs to me, having never had any option but white before, that “when I am old I shall wear purple” in my sleep. Line them with loose old cotton socks with the heel and toe cut out, and there you go. Usually they only go up to the middle joints of my fingers; with these longer-handed ones, we’re trying something new, and I report back to Lori Stotko, a physical therapist specializing in musicians’ issues in her day job, next week. We may yet shorten the tops.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve almost, almost asked my ward’s chat list if anyone had such socks with holes they were throwing away that I could put to good use.  Can you just picture the potential mountain of singletons…!

Meantime, this is Parker trying to take after me: I pulled the drawers out and climbed a dresser when I was just barely old enough to remember it.

I think he’s just trying to rummage up some old socks there for me. Go Parker!

Well, if you can’t fix the huge thing, at least not yet, fix the little things.

And so I’ve pushed myself past the will-this-work of a project idea and am into the oh, this does work, this is so cool! stage.

That and the house got cleaner today. Sometimes a vigorous tossing out helps with the stuff you can’t get rid of.

I hear space heaters are safer than they used to be… I also remember the day I was picking up my kids (there are no school buses here) when the firefighters at the station down the block from the elementary didn’t notice till the kids  knocked on their door at dismissal time to tell them the house immediately across the street from the station was definitely on fire. Yo?

A space heater had been left on.

So if we do get any, automatic shut-offs are an absolute. This is earthquake country.

(And all this time I’d thought the lack of sufficient heat was because PG&E had cut pressure to Line 132, the one that blew up in San Bruno and which runs very close to our house.)

Heard last Wednesday at baggage claim, a mother to her young son: “Our suitcases are fixin’ to come out.”

Culture shock, right there in plane sight.

We are home. Jet lagged and exhausted and so very glad we went. And hey, you know how to make major progress on a UFO? Put it in your carryon and sit in the bulkhead for your tall husband’s knees, where you can’t get at your bag except for the ziploc you grabbed out right before he put it overhead. And have that fasten seatbelts light mostly stay on.

Size 4 and squinting at slippery silk laceweight on a turbulent flight, but knitting slowly and carefully and having only a few Oh NO! moments, I got eight rows  of 460 or so stitches done. (Nine?)

Late. G’night.

(Or almost. Waiting for the house to get above 57 first.)

I finished the hats in time. The girl one with the cabled brim and the alternating knit/purl sections for a slouch effect can be turned inside out and the brim folded up so that it can fit the baby as she grows, with the cable right-side-out either way.

I also gave the moms a package of mesh laundry bags in multiple sizes: I told them that once when we were at the baby stage, our washing machine totally backed up. Richard took it apart, and jammed down inside the hose were baby booties, nursing pads, all sorts of very small things that had flown out the top of the tub in the spin cycle, enough all at once this time to finally show why things were disappearing.  Zip them in those bags, though, and they’ll be safe.

Took me three stores to find those. OSH hardware saves the day!

For fun, by the way, if you haven’t seen it yet, don’t miss the tree that became the paper in a book that became a bonsai tree. Can’t you just picture Snoopy riding it like a surfboard? Cowabonzai!

That first one came out definitely a little big. The second one, a little small. The third one coming up–now, there’s your Goldilocks! With a cabled brim and slouch top-to-be.

Meantime, I’m a blue-haired old grammy. I think. Um.

I got up this morning wanting to finally tackle a dye job I’d been avoiding: a secondhand sweater I’d bought that, when it came, was not the soft green-gray I expected but rather was vivid, and I do mean vivid, fluorescent lemon/lime–but in cashmere.

Which is why I didn’t want to give it away but I sure didn’t want to accidentally wreck it.

I got up this morning and straightway filled the biggest dyepot with hot water and stirred in some teal. I’m in it now, keep going. Stir stir stir. Then I did something different: knowing the dye wouldn’t take up well if the water wasn’t simmering, I handwashed the sweater and then put it in there anyway. Worked the new color through and through and through with my hands. It changed just slightly, but for the most part resisted it at that temp. No big surprise.

All that you were ever taught (correctly) about water, temperature change and agitation being the combination that felts woolens? I did it anyway. No catchy scales on cashmere fibers, right? I squished it some more, and then took the pot to the stove. Turned it on.  Stirred like crazy, and about every ten seconds or so for a very long time I lifted it out with my dye spoon and then put it back down, careful to spread it out as it went back in: I had once had dye adhere in a pattern of dark wrinkles because I hadn’t wanted to risk the agitation. Agitate.

Pulling it out and in again like that cools down the water; it took an hour for it to finally get up to a simmer to start the half hour countdown.

I don’t do well standing on my feet. But. When I finally poured out that pot, my new soft green buttoned shirttailed collared cashmere shirt was absolutely, totally, everything I wanted. To dye for.

Perfect!

(Oh, yeah, except the buttonhole thread must have been polyester. I expected that. That’s why I didn’t make a radical change in the color; I have an accent effect rather than an accident.)

Oh, and the blue-haired grammy thing? I knew it was going to be hot work over the stove, November notwithstanding, so I waited to take my shower this morning till I’d finally finished the job. My hands were teal blue from working in that pot at the start, and washing them afterwards did not get it out. Oh well. It would probably take at least the day for it to be gone, two for the nailbeds.

I stepped out of the shower, happened to look at my hands–and then at my hair…

The Cat In The Hat Comes Back, version blue. Tell me if you spot it, okay?

I thought I had lost the battle of the sixes.

Who knew you could wear out knitting needles? But some previously well-polished rosewoods, a pair I’ve used a lot for I don’t know how many years, were doing the chalkboard screech thing: even if I couldn’t hear it, my hands sure could and it was awful.

I thought of the days when I had my kids go down the slide on the swingset (that swingset, we moved it here with us), sitting on a sheet of wax paper, just like my mom used to make us do, so although there wasn’t a problem here of dripping tree sap or raccoon paw prints, I got up, went in the kitchen, tore off a piece, and gave it a try. Metal, wood, it’s all a surface issue, right?

It wasn’t perfect but it did help some. I went back to doodling with my yarn. We’ll call it a draw.

Parker’s getting ready to walk. Not quite there yet, but working on it. The next couple of pictures were of his small cousin trying to encourage him up and him going plop, but those came out blurry–moving too fast.

I’m reminded of a time I was in a store with my hands full, trying to keep my then-three-under-five entertained and obedient while trying to browse: get in get out be done.

The store actually had a small children’s alcove with toys and a TV; I don’t even remember what kind of store it was (fabric, probably? I think so.) But I do remember that alcove and my gratitude at the thoughtfulness behind it.

The cartoon that was on was almost over at the point that I finished my purchase and said, It’s time to go, kids; Sam did the typical whine of, Can’t we watch the rest of our show?

I considered that very briefly and, unable to see any reasonable reason why not, answered, Sure. And I sat down on the floor so we could all watch it together.

An older woman took all that in and pulled me aside when it was over and told me that she had never thought of reacting that way back when her grown kids were little, and she regretted it so much that she hadn’t given them a moment to have their own time like that, to show them that they mattered, too. She was proud of me.

When you are a mother of small children out in public, unexpected words of praise make all the difference, every time, and the moment is never forgotten.

As soon as it was clear to him that we were headed to the door, my son Richard, Parker’s daddy, happily took off like a shot to get there first: it’s always fun to beat slow old Mommy.

Another older woman stopped him mid-dash and scolded him soundly: “Little boy, you don’t run like that in my store! WALK!”

I looked at her, astonished–this is the woman who put out the toys and entertainment?

All I could do was tell the truth. “He doesn’t know how to walk. He only runs.”

The gift that that second woman gave me was the story of her words to tell to young moms now, who worry when they see me unsteady on a cane when their little ones are being perfectly normal little people. And occasionally, I have been known to sit down on the floor and hand them my lightweight sassafras-wood cane for them to run explore with. Shepherd’s crook. Little Bo Peep.

Ya gotta start’em on the sheep thing early.

With a cute Parker picture thrown in for fun.

Four hours of knitting today and my daughter’s phlebotomist‘s cashmere is done. I can’t wait for her to get it! It was a doodle as I went along, which means it got ripped back a few times, but worth every stitch and re-stitch–I am very pleased with it.

Which means that, switching to larger needles and different yarn to go easy on my hands, knowing just who I wanted the next one to be for, I cast on another one right away: so, let’s see, how would this pattern come out if I tried it this way…

Meantime, the female Cooper’s hawk put in an appearance. She watched me watching her for quite some time, gorgeous, and I was glad I hadn’t missed the moment–but then clearly she decided, enough of that; she did a strong hop to a higher branch where she would be out of my line of sight.

It’s a smart bird that can tell I can’t see her when she can still see part of me, but those Cooper’s are amazing. I will never forget the time her mate was walking around the patio, looking for the finch he knew he’d heard hit the window but not finding it.

He looked at me, he looked at where I was pointing at the backside of a box blocking his view, he turned and hopped towards me and around the box, and there you go, dinner is served! ‘Kthanksbye!

But I thwarted his more antsy mate today, getting down on the floor so I could see further up with the awning less in the way now.

Well all right then. She stayed put while keeping note of a family of crows flying in single file two backyards away; one crow is no match for a big hawk, but. I noted that they stayed just outside, as far as I can tell, her defended territory.

Then finally she saw what she wanted, and clearly, it was on the roof: she swooped silently down so as not to tip off the prey, then, tilting around in a tight circle that reminded this new grandma of a little kid playing airplane, swooped back up again and shot across the roof and out of sight.

Till next time!