To explain. We had plane tickets already for my parents’ celebration when we got the word.

Turns out Southwest doesn’t fly into Fort Worth, and we’ve done the two and a half hour drive in from Love Field airport in rush hour before; no thank you.

And so we flew home, had thirteen hours overnight to launder, repack, sleep, and run right back to San Jose airport in the morning.

My husband’s mother is now under hospice care and his father just had surgery for the form of melanoma that you want to have, if you have to. It was time to come see them, too, and the cheapest tickets were the ones with that thirteen hour layover.

In a way, my losing that ziplock bag and the expectation along with it of surprising my sister-in-law with silk and her daughter with hat-ly warmth somehow became okay: because my shock and my loss, acknowledging freely that it was over minor stuff, quite honestly gave us an opening to come emotionally together over, this good woman who has taken such good care of her parents daily. Who needed someone to feel as she does about her own losses, far and beyond any stitches gone to the air.

I had wondered if she would like the blue I’d picked; instead, I have the memory to treasure forever of her exclaiming, on seeing the deep cream dk silk that the good folks at Colourmart surprised me with as a gift a few months ago, “Oh, that’s pretty!” It was gratifying to know I could do her some good in return for all that she’s given of herself. In retrospect, I think happy anticipation was the best idea.

I am so glad I put that cone in my bag!

And then I found the second Malabrigo hat–at some point somehow I had switched which ziplock bag it was in, and so one project out of the four was saved. And my niece exclaimed over it, too. Score

The new silk shawl is humming along nicely.

They’re gone!

The silk shawlette for my sister-in-law. The merino-silk and Malabrigo hats for my niece who’s dancing in the Nutcracker. Richard’s cellphone, too, although, that at least has a replacement showing up tomorrow (it was insured.).

They’re little things in the face of big things, and after a very small tear and catch in the throat at the loss, I pulled out the silk I’d somehow brought with me to see if my SIL would like it–which made no sense whatsoever when I was packing–and now we have something to look forward to together that we both know she’ll love.

I owed her a hostess gift. Now she’ll get to see me working on it for her.

Open house today for the new museum for Dad’s artwork.

Tomorrow the details. It’s way late here.

Cold climate. Warm hats. Hmm. The warmest one not given away yet will match some of what I packed to wear, at least. There’s one on the needles but I suddenly realized while knitting at Purlescence tonight that they’re on gold-plated needles that I’m not going to risk around airport security.

My sweetie and I got married when gold hit its then highest-ever, totally unheard-of price of something like $360 an ounce or so, and that’s just the metal in the wedding bands.

Richard and I were students.

Richard’s dad had always wanted to try this: he had a bad tooth, Richard had a bad tooth, and their gold fillings had fallen out multiple times. His dad had kept the gold. And so, he got our ring measurements and they melted them down for us: voila! A piece of themselves being put into our happily ever after.

To me it said I was marrying into a creative and kind family. I’ve always thought it was great.

Fast forward umpteen years. Michelle was in middle school. Someone put some knitting needles on the market that were gold plated, not brass like some of the later ones but gold, and I pointed them out to her and got her to buy me a pair of size 5s for Christmas.

It was totally a setup. I was so sure that gold at $360 was engraved in the back of his head.

Richard watched me open that package that morning, and in that moment Michelle and I both saw it in his face: *gold*? Needles?! Isn’t that taking this knitting obsession wayyy beyond redemption? He was in shock.

We died laughing and I promised him that they actually cost under $20 and less than my Holz and Stein rosewoods (which were still on the American market then, darnit, I miss those, but the folks at Dyakcraft do a superb job of making ones that I love everything about. They’re the perfect replacement.)

The gold is about half worn off the metal ones by now.  They’ve been put to good use. And they are staying home tomorrow for their own good.

It was a little after ten p.m. Richard’s back was bugging him; no problem, my turn then.

The light out that side burned out years ago and somehow we just never seem to remember to replace it–actually, we couldn’t now, not that obsolete type. Eh. I could barely tell where the dark plastic trashcan was to open the lid–okay, there, over you go.

I always have this guilty feeling that I must be clonking some poor raccoon in the head when I do that.

Meantime: fussy pattern, super-splitty fussy yarn. Bad combination, and I’m still dragging; I didn’t want to be bothered with it. I ripped and started over. Nice, plain purl rows–no purl two through back loops stuff. I didn’t want to be no stinkin’ fancy-pants designer tonight, I just wanted to knit.

And then I had to go off on a tangent and make it come out a new way anyway.  It’s coming along nicely now. I quite like it.

And on the total silliness side, courtesy of Kevin at Purlescence, I offer a picture of taking it easy on oneself, sipping honey and fresh-squeezed lemonade for the flu. Here you go.

Clearly, they put a small person in a much larger person’s sweater with the head out the neck, their legs out one arm,  hands out the other and the hemline opening carefully skootched under. I think. Don’t go racing to knit that; just go find someone much much bigger than you.

(Glancing sideways at the 6’8″er who doesn’t know I’m typing this. Heh.)

I did finally pick up yarn and needles and dive in today. I can’t tell you what a relief it felt. At last!

Let’s see if the software is in a good mood today: I rebooted, now trying again on the same process, same pictures–hey, there you go!

Meantime, I have some knitting needing doing. It takes such a long time–but then I remind myself that part of the inherent beauty of it is that it takes a lot of my time. And my love. It’s all about the love.

Running off to get right to it, then.

I counted fourteen mourning doves under the birdfeeder this evening, a huge number; usually there’s just a few. I wondered if I wasn’t the only one noticing.

Richard was home when together we looked up to see the hawk do a loop clear around the awning pole–and then he looped again!

Silly bird. Don’t you know that if you cast on with an e-wrap the length between loops gets longer and longer as you knit across the first row?

This morning:

Can you get in here right now to the lab and we’ll put a stat on it? And then appointment at 1:00.

Sure thing.

It didn’t really make sense to go home in between, turn around and come back, so I threw an extra 100g skein of yarn in my knitting bag just in case.

And so, after talking to various people on the phone all week, the GI doctor taking emergency calls today welcomed me in–with great apologies at the wait, and then another wait in the middle as she had to dash out to answer someone, but I told her, I’m just grateful you saw me, thank you!

But one of the first things she said when I got there was, Last time I saw you you were in the hospital!

And I said to her, Your baby’s three now?

She was very pleased that I remembered she had been pregnant. (Secret guilt here that I’d never knitted for her new little one.  I am going to make up for it now by knitting for her–not out of guilt but because I’ve always wanted to, and now I have an excuse again.)

We discussed. Not the stream of blood while changing the dressing but not gone either.  She tested: tender here and here, yes, but not really bad and I know really bad. Hmm. Tell you what, she said, I’ll put in a non-urgent request for a CT, and they’ll get you in in the next two weeks; if you don’t need it, cancel. If you need it a whole lot more than you do right now, call me and I’ll mark it urgent and they’ll get you right in.

I asked, and she said there was indeed a new med on the market since the Humira that might be a possibility if it turns out I need it.

There is?! YES!!! She told me the name and I said I’d go Google it; no, says she, I can get you more information than you can get by Googling, here, wait a second and I’ll go get it for you.

Came out of there with a plan and a knitting plan and happy anticipation at telling her thank you for the simple human comfort at being seen in all the ways I’d needed it. Life is good.

The lace hat I was already working on yesterday when Representative Cleaver was speaking is finished. The cabled hat that I dropped two stitches at the needle switch awhile ago is now finally ripped way back and restarted: he’s getting a cabled hat and it’s back to halfway done so far.

Had quite a few laughs at the typos in the closed captions during tonight’s convention. John Kerry, it claimed, said: “We do batter where we must, peace where we can.”

That was even better than the spoken “a man and a woman” scrolling across the screen as “a minimum bomb.”  Let’s all go have that proverbial Army-fundraiser bake sale! (As the cold-war saying goes, it’ll be a great day when the schools get all the funding they need and the Army has to hold a bake sale.) Batter up! Bring on their just desserts! Robert Fulghum once wrote about how great it would be if we could stop wars by dropping from the planes colored paper and crayons, a bit of childhood delight revisited to make friends with the enemy below. I guess he’s saying we could let people have the means to draw down the fighting.

Add in some carrot pecan cake and some chocolate chip cookies, too, and surely you can’t go wrong with that.

(p.s. And maybe you’ve already seen this, but how many handknit lace fences are there out there? With thanks to Betsy Bowman for the heads-up.)

I got tired of the squirrel scrums. So I changed the birdseed to safflower a few weeks ago and the suet cakes to ones with chili peppers as the second ingredient.

This means the juncos and towhees only stop by when a little suet hits the ground, but it’s so much more peaceful out there. With the coming of fall and the need to fatten up, the bushytails have finally started coming by, but never more than one at a time, they don’t eat much when they do come, and they’re certainly not about to make any effort to get at the stuff. It’s like offering a kid boiled brussels sprouts.

This also means my supersoaker got shelved. I wonder if that’s why the Cooper’s hawk has come back.

I looked up this evening in time to see–wait, was he trying to land on the birdfeeder?!  Or did he just brush it while trying to flush out a potential finch on the other side that he couldn’t see through the seed (only, there wasn’t one).

Huh.

Then he flew to the barbecue grill and watched us for awhile and Richard got to see him too.  A bit late of a hunt; it was definitely dusk. Beautiful, beautiful bird. We communed, with his permission. And then he was off.

Meantime, in the political world, a cousin here said a cousin there was going to be speaking at the Republican convention–and so I sat with a project that had needed justthismuchmore for so long and finally finished it off while I listened. Okay, lady from Oklahoma, you forgot your ninth grade history, but whatever. The woman who yelled about too many regulations–she paused for applause and had to wait for it. Oh. Right. Clap. Not everybody did, and I wondered how many spills and polluting incidents had come to the audience’s minds: 14,000 people would not have gone to the hospital this month had the Chevron refinery that blew up in the East Bay here been better regulated. Fourteen. Thousand. It looks like it will be now.

About an hour into it, I went back and doublechecked the messages: oh. Today’s not the day. And then I looked at the list of speakers for the right day and did a doubletake–wait! That name from–! I *knitted* for her once!

If you see a red scarf…

Just found this chart with baby sweater measurements in detail. Thought I’d pass it on.

I called Trader Joe’s tonight, and their new batch of hazelnuts had finally, after weeks and weeks of waiting, gotten past FDA quarantine: yes, they were in.

Alright! And so my kitchen smells of toasted hazelnuts about to turn into homemade much-better-than-nutella, Michelle’s specialty.*

Meantime, going into the store ahead of me was a young mom with her curly-haired blonde daughter, about ten months old, absolutely adorable. She reminded me of Sam at that age–who, on being handed a helium balloon at a grocery store, spent the next week dropping things and pointing and staring at the fallen objects. DOWN! *That* one conformed to everything she’d learned so far in her life. Fall DOWN not up!

Walking in just behind them was a mid-20ish couple. They were very happy. They were clearly in love, clearly seeing their whole future together ahead–because they saw that baby in that cart at the same time and I saw both their faces light up instantly and then they turned to each other, sharing what to my eyes several steps away looked like happy anticipation.  There was so much joy in that moment.

Between the bananas and the fresh-cut flowers I suddenly found myself next to that cart and I smiled and waved hi at the little one from just enough distance. She smiled back. Her mom turned just then, saw, and prompted her little girl, Wave hi!

She waved hi with an even bigger grin. She knew she was in for a treat: seeing someone becoming even happier because of something she did.

My heart melted. Such a cute little girl. I bet she’s a future knitter, too.

And I went home, and, having finished the hat, cast on for a baby dress to match. Hopefully. I was glad I found that chart.

(Note that Ryan is allergic to corn and most powdered sugars have cornstarch, hence the side note below.)

*

Hey Mom:

I omit the oil, and reduce the sugar (remember we should have tapioca
starched powder sugar). depending on level of chocoate-y-ness, up the cocoa
to taste; not to exceed the amount of omitted sugar. I often omit the
vanilla as well.

http://www.latimes.com/features/la-fo-nutellarec11a-2009feb11,0,1158986.story

-Shelle

Carolyn is expecting.

Carolyn was due.

Carolyn is overdue, and any woman who’s ever been there is probably putting a hand on her own back in sympathy about now.

I have been trying to get myself to sit down and knit a hat for her son for about a month now. There was that wedding in the way, but after that I had no excuses. I saw her at church last week and thought, well, blew that chance of getting it to her before the delivery.

But I knew that there would be a happy announcement made–and there had been none yet.

I got a note from her: her mother was in town to help and she was a knitter and wanted to know where the best yarn shops around might be?

Deadlines cure procrastinations. This morning I pulled another Malabrigo Rios out of my stash: superwash merino for a tired mom about to have a toddler and a newborn. Forty stitches, a few rows, a checking of size on the Bev’s Country Cottage site, a total rip, a start over, 50 stitches, size US 5 needles of 1×1 ribbing, and looking at how long that was taking me, I ditched the idea of ribbing all the way up. I switched to US 8s because rib stitches come out bigger than stockinette ones (and stockinette knits up at twice the speed) and zoomed through a plain swath that showed off the colorway. Five spirals of decreases and a little pigtail of crocheted chain stitch at the end.

Got it done in time. Just barely. And it was so cute–what had taken me so long to discover what that yarn could be?

Went off to church, where I connected with Carolyn, met her sister and her mom, and apologized: This was all my fault. The baby had been waiting for me to finish his hat. Now at last he can come.

They cracked up. They loved it. Her mom exclaimed over the knitting and tweaked the little pigtail–bouncy bounce! Carolyn waved it at her husband, going, Now we can finally have the baby!

Her mom mentioned in an aside to me that she wasn’t going any distances right now, yarnstorewise. I told her I had stash I’d be happy to share. There’s no way a new grandma who knits is going without yarn to shower the little ones with, not around me she’s not.

(Edited later to add) because how could I not: my niece Emily just had her baby. And this is what she just told me on FB:

So, aunt Alison, I don’t know if Eric posted this or not, but we named our baby Eden Alison, the Alison after you. I have always admired the positive outlook you have on life, and hope to emulate that.

Gobsmacked does not begin to tell it. I read that and exclaimed Oh WOW!!! so out loud that I had to immediately explain to Richard, sitting next to me, why. Wow. Hope y’all don’t mind my bragging here. Welcome to the world, Eden Alison!

I’ve got me more knitting to catch up on!

One of the Stanford satellite clinics has a grand piano in the lobby–actually, two clinics do that I know of, but anyway, most of the times I’ve been to the one, there’s been someone playing.

And the guy’s good. Really good. No sheet music, any style you want, any age any tune, he’s got it. I have no idea if he’s a young doctor on break (dresses in a suit, no white coat) or how he came to be there, but he’s a master musician.

And here’s the thing: it’s like Joshua Bell in the subway station.

Okay, wait–I just went looking for the video of that to give you the link, and on impulse decided to click on the snopes article verifying it. Not only did it happen, but it tells that the same experiment had been tried 77 years earlier–by a man playing the exact same Stradivarius. Who played two of the exact same pieces during the same amount of time. While also having been put up to it as a social experiment by a metro newspaper, in a subway station, at rush hour.

Who knew.  Bell didn’t. Wow.

The Stanford pianist chatted a bit with me between songs once about music, but other than that I haven’t interrupted him. He always has a smile, always nods in acknowledgement of those going by whether they notice it or not, always lights up when someone stops a moment rather than just passing through to one of the hallways spoking off.

And yet. I’ve seen people sitting on the couches curving in the inner and outer sides of a circle there, some clearly listening to him but almost as if they were hiding it, some reading, all but one that I’ve ever seen turned away so as not to be facing him. Trying not to invade his space, perhaps.

And nobody. Not one. Ever clapped.

Until I did.

The guy looked surprised, abashed, and very very gratified. And then another patient joined in.

I have no idea if I’ll ever see him again. I do know I’ve seen him playing there three times now: clearly he enjoys being able to give of himself like that, always choosing music that lifts the heart, music to do good by every person coming in in need of healing–including, each in their own way, the medical staff.

I went stash diving today. Part of me is second-guessing myself, wondering if the Zarzamora colorway in Malabrigo Rios really is just the one, but it’s very soft and it’s the one I’ve got out of all the stash I looked at that seemed the most right. I will finish this hat, then, and if it doesn’t feel perfect, I’ll make another.

But I just didn’t want to wait. Some projects need to be pounced on the moment they come up; I really like how this is coming out and I really like the thought of being able to give a little art back.

Hoping he’s there next time… I have an errand to run past there before then. I can pop in and try.

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.