That green and blue that slipped onto the other side of the back of the bag.

Mo-hair, Michelle remembered with a laugh from one teenage recipient asking me quizzically thirty years ago. MO-hair! Tell me, he demanded, What kinda animal is a MO!?

He was in foster care and admired Richard’s and my Kaffe Fassette coats of dozens of colors and in his enthusiasm ended up with a vest of his own from the leftovers.

I saw him recently and thanked him for changing my life: his reaction to what I’d made was what got me started on seeing how important it is to knit for others.

There might still be a few other skeins in there all these years later, here, let me see.

Backing up a bit: I was thinking some of the bins in the family closet had some empty space by now that could surely be put to use, but it’s really hard to wrangle them out of there and heavy lifting was out of the question.

A certain someone was happy to dive in there for me if I would go through them. It would make it easier to get at the puzzles and games, too.

Consolidation has begun.

Five games (how did we end up with three Balderdashes? Answer: because people kept gifting it to us) and a stack of puzzles that still had the original shrink wrap on them (no missing pieces on those!) all got claimed by friends today.

Some of the yarn… Showed its age. Not by its condition–I store wool well–but by the archeological dig of my knitting history as I went through stuff.

Thirty-five years ago really soft wool yarns were hard to find.

I remember the first time I found baby alpaca. The late Robin and Russ sold it in–I think it was 25 gram skeins. (Edit: 40g.) Today I re-found some of that, all dyed by me because at that time you could have it in brown or you could have light brown but I didn’t find white anywhere till later.

Back then, too many of the really fine-fibered alpacas were being turned into shearling rugs rather than sheared, while the farmers were paid by the pound for the wool, and spikier thicker fibers weighed more for less work.

But as the hand knitting market for the good stuff grew, the quality improved. I thought my discovery was so great then, and compared to the rest of the market it was. But (picking up skein after skein today) I’d hesitate to even grade it as baby alpaca now. It’s okay, it’s just not swoon-able.

So I’m stuck with the same problem I had the last time I did a major overhaul of that space: what do I do with these? I have them because I liked them but to actually sit down and knit I’m always going to reach for something that my hands love as much as my eyes do. The really good stuff is stored in the other room.

In particular (eyeing one bag of white loopy boucle and measuring it at 1.23 lb including its ziplock) what do you do with this (it came out of the alpaca bin but I’m sure it’s wool) that just isn’t getting any more enticing over time? How does one in good conscience keep the good stuff for oneself and fob the lesser off on someone else?

And yet, at the time I bought it, I was that someone else who was delighted to find a natural fiber yarn I could afford.

Oh, and, the seven ounces of aran weight purple-blue wool/angora. Who put meh wool with angora in 2002? Or: given that the words angora and mohair were at the time used interchangeably to describe mohair goats till the trade association came down on it to stop the confusion, is there actually any rabbit in there at all? And yet, it does have that softness mixed in. Hmm.

I’m not driving yet, re the post office, and Michelle’s flying home soon. Hmm.

Michelle looked around at all those bins and exclaimed, clearly trying to undercount it to be nice, You need to not buy any more yarn! And the stuff in the other room–you have enough for, for, like, two years!

We both heard Richard guffawing quietly in the other room. Oh honey.

The third and final peach tree is four rows into the untangle all five doubled strands stage. The peach is 50/50 cashmere/silk and sliiiiiiides right out. The grabby twisty overspun cashmere tree trunk, not so much.  Photo taken at the point where I only had those two left to extract from each other before the next go-round. It’s getting there!

We have an apparently fairly large mystery yardguest whose new digs were discovered today. I wondered whether I could borrow the neighbor’s dog to bark at it, since the thing probably moved in here to get away from it over there. Although, for the dog’s sake, maybe not: it reminded me of a friend’s tale of skunks having territorial fights under her living room to the point of soaking her rug above them with their spray. Let’s not.

The dirt got shoved back to where it had come from and a large object was placed on top of the hole to encourage the thing to move elsewhere.

Definitely needs a trail cam.

But meantime I got six rows of afghan done so far plus a new cowl cast on at the doctor’s waiting room that I continued on while waiting for his doctor across town, and the thing is 1400 stitches along already.

We don’t have collection plates nor fundraisers in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, he reminded us.

With the exception that the youth are allowed to have one activity every year to raise money for camp: locally, that’s at the church-owned campground up in the mountains that the kids put many volunteer hours into cleaning up after the CZU Complex fire burned the facilities down a few years ago. Most of those redwoods have begun to green out again, thank goodness.

They have really earned getting to go and to see the forest renew year by year after the devastation.

Last year there was a carwash.

Today was a party. Balloon animals for the little ones and showing them how to make them, cotton candy, come have fun.

We had baked goods by volunteers. Those, you paid for, one of two prices: Original, and Generous, trying to meet everybody’s budgets. First claim first served.

And a silent auction: a picture of the thing offered and a sign-up sheet to put your bid on. Dog walking by one of the teens, water your plants while you’re away. Lessons in various languages. A tour of Filoli Gardens.

Sue likes to knit socks and offered to knit a pair to fit.

I offered a Malabrigo Mecha hat.

The dad of the now-grown Eli, who used to take care of my mango tree when we were away and who loves the teal hat I knit his son, took one look at the blue twin to it and made sure that that was going to be his and made my day.

Someone wrote down $10 for Sue’s socks and probably thought they were being generous for a pair of socks.

She was going to have to bid a whole lot higher than that if she wanted those. After the huge expenses of this past week I hadn’t been going to spend a dime but I knew she wasn’t offering even the price of the yarn (unless it was a really good sale and/or old stash.) But how would she know that.

How about a different number to look at. After that it’s up to her (and hey, I would dearly love a pair from Sue’s hands.)

I got pulled away to family errands before I found out if I’d won but I was assured I would be emailed and could take care of it then if I did.

To quote the good doctor (as in Suess), Who sees who sew whose new socks, sir? You see Sue sew Sue’s new socks, sir!

Sue’s note said pick your size and color. I think forest green sounds good.

First photo: yesterday, but I forgot to hit post.

Today:

 When you want a peach color and you have a peach yarn and you put it in in single stitches separated by those other colors and they flip it to pink just because they can.

The photos did a good job of capturing the change exactly.

Color peer pressure: I always expect it, and it always surprises me.

Two Tesla dealerships two cities apart. Organizers were hoping for 7000 people and to have an unbroken line from one car lot to the other.

The town paper counted: 20,000 to 22,000 came.

Overall, the protesters–just the ones in the US–were said to be 5.2 million, with people pouring out onto the streets in defense of democracy across Europe, too. (Update Monday: It was 13.12 million!)

The assassin in Minnesota was caught before he could carry out his written intention to kill more Democratic lawmakers across the Midwest.

While here in my tiny corner of the world I finished the brown hat, printed the pattern for a more involved one, realized it was a mismatch for color and weight vs what I have and debated how to take it from there while casting on not a single stitch for it. Yet.

One of the females jumped to the upper ledge, Chico, our little guy, did too for his first time, the mom decided to feed them there and when the food risked being gone the other two jumped up.

The eyases are at the stage where they grab the prey and try to run with it to feed themselves while playing keepaway from the others, but in that tight and new space they were a lot more meek about it. They let Hartley play the mom. Feed me!

Fledge watch officially starts tomorrow.

Chico ended his day by dropping down the back side of the nestbox onto a ledge where there is nowhere to go unless he flies at least a little bit. Coasting downwards is easy; gaining height (oops) almost never happens their first day of flight. Maybe he can flutter/jump straight up to get back into the runway area, maybe not. So we’ll see.

Meantime, in case you missed it (multiple people made sure I did not, which I very much appreciate–thank you!), there’s a young Cooper’s hawk in New Jersey that has learned to use a pedestrian crossing button for his breakfast take-out.

When it sees a pedestrian approaching a particular intersection and then pushing the button, starting sounds for the blind to know how long they’ve got, the hawk is in a tree at the far end of the block, ready for it.

It is rush hour. It only waits at rush hour and only on weekdays.

Once the cars line up along the entire block–it takes ten–the hawk comes zooming fast and low using them as a cover. When he gets to where there’s a flock across the street in someone’s front yard every morning, he turns 90 degrees at the exact right spot from where he can’t see them yet and they can’t see him and bam! He gets his meal.

His staking out got staked out by a biologist.

He doesn’t bother on weekends because there won’t be enough cars.

Here’s a picture of the scene.

(Edit: Wait. There was when I googled to find it again but the photos aren’t showing via my linking to it, at least on my computer. But there’s the rest of the info and you ought to be able to bring it up.)

We don’t do business anything on our Sabbath if we can at all avoid it, so talking about buying stuff feels a bit hypocritical.

Ain’t it great to be human. So here goes:

I posted to my knitting group recently about finding someone selling old-stock Holz and Stein needles and how good those are.

Tonight at our Zoom, one friend said she’d thought, sure, I can try a pair.

She was telling us, marveling, that these were the best needles she’d probably ever had!

She was asked what made them so, and she talked about the finish, the smoothness.

I thought, and the perfect join between the needle and cable, the perfect tip for all kinds of yarns, not too sharp, not too blunt. The sturdiness from the wood having been treated to withstand the stresses of being a musical instrument, and how cool that the leftovers got put to such a good use. You’re just beginning to find out. Have fun!

It just totally made my day that she hadn’t simply blown money on a rather expensive pair on a retiree’s budget but that she had actually fallen in love with them the way I had mine, and I pictured the many many hours to come of her enjoying them because she knits even more than I do.

And she gives away more of her time and love that way than probably anyone I know.

She’s the perfect person for the perfect needles to have found their way to.

About 15″ so far. Side edges to be added at the end. I am still at times talking myself into that white–knowing that if it bugs me I can always cut it off at the row below the one I went to take off so that I have that last one holding stitches in place to tink backwards from. Knitting downwards from there, everything would be off by a half a stitch’s width, but since it would be ribbing anyway that shouldn’t matter.

I ripped out the original attempt at roots and over-compensated for those mistakes on the do-over, trying to make the lines of roots reaching over the Cabin John trail like I remember them, so I’ve started embroidering a few extra stitches here and there to make them match the heft of the tree. There will be more of that.

I need give that box turtle an eye.

I did four rows and then switched to starting a chemo cap for my cousin. It’ll be my carry-around project tomorrow.

Hey look! The computer found one of the photos from Mother’s Day!

Today I found a place that still had some Holz and Stein circular needles and crochet hooks in stock, the ones made from leftover wood from making musical instruments. How they had them I don’t know; the company quit exporting to America around 2000.

They are the best knitting needles I have ever used.

I had a pair that I had knit nearly every project in my book on. I had it in my bag when I went to a booksigning by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee in Santa Rosa, about a ninety-minute drive from here.

It vanished there. I still miss them. I can only hope that whoever found that circular either used them and loved them too or found someone who would appreciate what they had.

The only thing I’ve found that comes close–and they definitely come close–are the hand carved ones by Tom Diak in Vermont. After a hand injury sidelined him for awhile, he’s gone back to making interchangeables but not the plain circs I’ve bought in the past. I keep hoping. Full confession: I have never bought interchangeables, period. I once had a tip come unglued from a cheap needle with hundreds of lace stitches smushed together on it and the idea of the tips coming off, even deliberately, just gives me the heebie-jeebies.

This vendor had the size my current afghan is being worked on. It was slippery yarn on slippery needles, which got traded a few days ago for a dinged-up old wooden pair that just hasn’t been doing much for me  either. And now! Actual, sturdy, perfect-tipped, perfectly finished Holz and Steins! I can’t wait till they get here!

The price was about what I paid thirty years ago. Which was very expensive then but they were tools for a lifetime.

As long as they don’t hop out of your knitting bag at bookstores.

What Holz and Stein pairs I have now have been mostly knit-at-homes since then. Just because.

Do you have favorite needles? Am I being silly about interchangeables?

Slippery yarn on slippery needles: I ditched that circ at long last and was surprised at what a difference it made in how I feel about working on this. I’m not having to death-grip them every moment for fear of constantly losing stitches, like the 50 off one end while the other end dropped just a few.

My father grew up in Nevada. Ain’t a whole lot of freely growing lush green around there, and he took so much delight in what grew spontaneously in our yard in Maryland: *wild violets! The tiny wild strawberries, the buttercups, (hey, look! Science!) and under the tree canopy, the mountain laurel and the dogwoods. He played suburban dad with the lawnmower and the grass and all that but he and Mom taught us to love what was there. To blow on a dandelion seedhead and watch how it all floated on the breeze rather than freak out at the weed. To know a chickadee from a titmouse. To notice how the grackles were shimmery purple in the sunlight and black in the shade in disguise.

*That link is to an Etsy shop because all the good pictures I could find were from sites that were either telling you how to kill them off or else selling them.

It was a day of constantly running around getting lots of things done, and when it was time to sit down and figure out the specifics on the next stage of the afghan…

Let’s see, that motif would add up to 12″, do I really want that much space taken up for that, and where should I put the…

Nuts to this, and I picked up my carry-around cowl project and went to town on it. No counting, no decisions, just idiot-proof knitting that looks really pretty, it doesn’t have to be what I planned doing it just has to be done, go go go go go.

The green baby alpaca is here! No extra costs that I was told about.

Meantime, I…I… I’m torn somewhere between I have no words and I have lots of words but wow, if you ever wanted to find a fellow knitter in the wild and the KNITTER plates are already taken this is definitely the way to do it: this pattern on Etsy.

I’d just be afraid someone would rear-end me while staring at it. Don’t count the stitches, don’t count the! *Crunch*

Also: I skipped out on the whole Knitted Support Chicken fad but a pelican with fish in its beak? That pattern, I bought. My grandmother at 96 had a large glass candy bowl out next to her for my young kids when we visited; I can just see me in my easy chair at that great old age, pelican by my side offering finger puppets to one and all.

Although one could also put wrapped candies in there for the future great-grands, most definitely.

That’s what Gram did. There were several pounds’ worth in there. While my mom and I were trying to discretely nudge the kids to just take one (they were 5, 7, 9, and 11), Gram got a twinkle in her eye: she ignored us, looked straight at the kids, and said, Have some more!

They each picked and unwrapped and ate a second piece.

Have some more!

(Glances our way from the older two, like, uh, are we allowed?)

Have some more!

There was no hurry, they were being on their best behavior, they took turns.

Have some more!

She got them going to where they ran out of pocket space and were stuffing them, in one case, down his socks, desperately hoping Mom and Grammy (us two generations in between) were somehow, uh, not noticing, while Gram was managing not to laugh. She got all the way to her last, Have some more! when finally there were no more left to have. And she was quite fine with that.

We were walking to the car afterwards when the seven year old burst into tears.

What’s wrong!? Didn’t you have fun?

I DID! But I feel like I’m never going to see her again!

I gave her the biggest hug, suddenly wanting to burst into unexpected tears myself.

It was true. Gram quietly slipped away a few months later, a flight away from us. I figured out that what she had been doing, having lost her own mother as a young child, was making it so that her great grandchildren would remember her and how she had been on their side.

And they do.

So here’s my question: if you order yarn from a country (Britain) that’s had a 10% tariff slapped on them but I think that tariff has come and gone but it looks like it’s back, and the company didn’t add it to the bill, is everything peachy fine? Did Colourmart absorb the cost? Does it get stamped due on arrival? How does this work if the tariff gets re-slapped while it’s in transit? I see references to manufacturing there being under what we were supposed to learn was a terrible idea via the Great Depression, but retail sales, it seems unclear. It’s yarn, not a car.

It seems to be taking longer than usual to get here.

How do you run a mail-order business when your fixed costs are someone’s bouncy laser light on the wall that a cat is frantically clawing at?

Meantime, I finally got going again on that afghan start that I’d mostly ripped out and I’m past where I was and let me just lecture my future knitting self right here that yes it was absolutely worth the do-over. Much better.

But it will need more of that green shortly. I know Colourmart is trying.

There were five two-hour sessions of the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints this past weekend, all of them watched from home.

Which means I could knit.

And boy did I have something I wanted to knit. I’d spent all week sure I had a particular yarn but completely unable to find it, not in the place it was supposed to be and not in the places it wasn’t supposed to be and I just couldn’t knit anything else till I’d gotten it out of my head and made real on my needles. Which wasn’t happening.

Till Friday night. At which point the little hide-and-seeker jumped out yelling PEEKABOO! It had fallen behind. I cast on and did the first row to get the chore part of it done so that in the morning it would just be the good part.

Because.

Sunday a week ago, they’d decided at church that with new people moving in, people needed to get to know each other. So they’d set up chairs in circles of about a dozen and handed everybody a sheet of paper with a list of questions to ask each other. There were two sets.

I groaned to myself because this is the kind of thing where it’s all white noise to me. Lots of people in the room talking at once means that the weak-to-me higher pitches of the consonants are obliterated by the decibel level of the rest.

Hmm. How’s that battery…not too bad… I pulled up the app on my phone and asked Haylee next to me if she’d be willing and explained how to use it: for it to pick up what you say, it can do it in this noisy environment but you have to put it right to your face and you have to keep this button pressed while you talk.

I didn’t say, and if you let go of the button and then push it again it erases everything.

I had become a tad reluctant to ask people to use it. They don’t get it. They let go of the button. They hold the phone at the distance they want to. It stares back at them with its initial little prompt unchanged and then they think it doesn’t work.

Haylee, whom I barely know, immediately grokked the whole thing–and not only how to use the app but how the situation was for me. She not only used it to help me hear her, she used it to tell me what everybody else in the group was saying, repeating softly rightupclosetoit.

I took careful note of the colors in the pattern on her skirt. I knew I had that in Rios. I had just finished the afghan and I couldn’t wait to do this next.

Five days. But finally I found it.

So: Conference. (Which had given me a week’s grace period on this.) GO!

I cast off during the last session.

Even the ends are run in now.

Note to myself, and anyone else potentially following this later should know that I am an exceedingly loose knitter: 90 st, US 6, two half-repeats of 10-stitch fern lace, then an M1 in the single stitch dividing them, two more half-repeats, another M1 and then continue from there. Probably should have done it again and taken it from 1 to 4, but it was all a doodle anyway. Maybe next time. I just didn’t want to make it floppy-wide at the bottom, but I don’t think I needed to worry.

It sits in ever-larger folds down the front, not too tight at the bottom nor too loose at the top and I really really like how it came out. I cannot wait to surprise her with it.