Michelle picked Natalie up from the hospital today. She’s out.  Yay!

Meantime, replacement to fix this broken dishwasher doorhandle: $23 plus shipping (they sent us the full assembly beyond this part; we were pleased).

Time to take the door apart, remove the broken piece,  replace it and put it all back together: under fifteen minutes. The new handle is better designed.

Time for the $133 electronic panel to arrive next: I’ll know after I place the order. So much for that. But it’ll be even faster to swap out, he says, and it’s quite satisfying to be doing it ourselves.  (We’ll reserve true elation for when the darn thing works.)

Meantime, it’s funny how having something you can’t fix right now makes it feel imperative to work on something you can make do absolutely whatsoever you say–or you will frog its little loops into oblivion, so there.  I am master of the yarniverse. I doodled with some silk/cashmere in a whole new tangent and really really like what it’s turning into, even if it doesn’t look like much yet.

Now, pardon me, our local parts place closed down. PartSelect here I come again. (And if you need a new silverware tray? You want Mending Shed for that.

Run, go, read Sheldon today. “But how do you make knitting sound kick-butt?”  Priceless! (Should we tell Mr. Kellett about walking knitters, and Stephanie Pearl-McPhee‘s story about knitting while ice skating and the six-year-old boy who careened off her acrylic into a pack of tween girls trying to look cool?)

I wonder how many people mentioned to the artist that the needles point the other way.  Point them upwards, add a little hand-dyed cashmere and silk, and I think we can answer the duck’s question!

She appeared to be his caretaker. Wife? And honey, she was pretty but she looked tired.

He was maybe in his 40’s, happy as a clam and very extroverted.  He greeted whoever moved and thereby caught his eye: How ya doin’!  He told the woman with him all about the fish in the wall aquarium they were looking at.  I don’t think I ever saw him sit. He was all about being up and lively and chattering away.

It was striking how she seemed patient but resigned. Not upset, more like a mom at the museum stuck with her small child in tow after the babysitter bailed. Because as the minutes went on, watching her watching him, I think I understood–when he turned and saw me looking his way as I reached into my knitting bag to pull another length of yarn, I got a happy, How ya doin’!  too: in the way of a small child, utterly harmless. I got an impression of lack of memory and of a soul distilled to its essence.  Its goodness.

I thought, if you’re going to have a brain injury, a cheerful one seems to me a very good one to have. But I did not ask.

They called his name and he went back for his scan alone while she got a few minutes to herself.

One of the nurses who popped out the door to call off names, the second time I saw her, took a moment to come over and comment on my knitting before disappearing again. Later, she came out again and talked a little more. She mentioned a local yarn store. When I said I’d heard Louise had had a stroke and had sold the shop, she brightened–so I did know the place!– and told me how sweet the new owner was. I confessed to not having been in in awhile; I tend to go to my favorite, Purlescence.

Which was a new one to her. I didn’t think (I was on Benedryl!) to give the context, in case she might be a longtime knitter like me, that it was in the former Carolea’s Knitsche. So I’m writing it here in case she sees this; I gave her my blog addy.

She said something tentatively that–I was sure I heard “Stitches” and it was! Oh yes, I know about Stitches, I signed books there! (Been going since Tess, the namesake of Tess Designer Yarns, was a preschooler, and she’s in her early 20’s now.)

You know what the result of all this is: I couldn’t put down my knitting. I had cast on and done maybe three rows before leaving home, and there I was growing it as fast as possible for showing off.  No reading my Newsweek for a hands break, no way.  Knit knit knit! On this cool idea I’d had a month earlier, when I’d bought the Camelspin at–of course–Purlescence.

I was trying to figure out the details of a new pattern for it while on Benedryl. Dumb, but that’s what motivated me so I did it.  I made it look terribly complicated, counting stitches, running my hands through my hair, tinking back stitch by stitch over and over, wondering why something so easy wasn’t intuitive–DUH! It’s the drug, stupid–making slow progress  anyway.

It’s not finished but it’s a goodly way along and I am very pleased. And very pleased to be nearly done. Post-Pred crash tomorrow and then that is that and it’s a race to see which is completed first.

One other thing: a couple came in and as the woman’s name was called, I looked up as she passed me and I smiled and wished her good luck.  She relaxed at that and smiled too for the first time.  A few minutes later, as she and her sweetheart were leaving, she turned before the doorway and called across the small waiting room to me, “Good luck to you too!”

Totally made my day. And you know? It was that cheerful man before, whom she’d arrived too late to see, who’d set the tone so that I felt comfortable speaking up like that.

Richard left work early to take me home. (To be fair to him, he’d offered to stay with me but hey, he works just up the street anyway.) There was a box waiting at our door.  Who…? The Sibley Guide to Birds and The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior, hardback, even, with love from Dad.

My folks had no idea I had been seriously coveting those very books. Those exact ones. I couldn’t justify them, I hadn’t bought them, and now here they are anyway.  Wow.

I tell you. I have the best parents ever. And they have perfect timing.  Speaking of which, and? My friend Debbie, who lives near where my Dad grew up, emailed me pictures yesterday of what she’d seen while birding over the weekend.

Dad? Pelicans in Nevada? You never told me that!

My hands slipped and I accidentally pulled my tip out of at least a dozen stitches, and on those small needles it took me a moment to piece it back together. That Mooi tends towards the slippery side and the loops were not large.

I thought about knitting it on Benedryl. And my clumsiness. And tomorrow’s long drugged wait at the hospital.

So after a discussion with my daughter about my reluctance to have two competing projects at once, I started a second anyway, hoping it might perhaps even be finished by the time I leave Stanford tomorrow.

You know what that means: hunting down another ball of something, somewhere, to start with just in case I run out of my 3oo meters. (Right.)  You know how it goes–pack yarn first.  Needles? Oh, hey, they’ll have lots of those there.

Meantime, the Nuttall’s is letting me get a little closer.

Background shawl with thanks to Mary, who so earned it.

Every time I think I never have to take the squirrel-on-crack-effect prednisone steroid again in my life, they think up some new excuse. Short term but massive, they want now.

I argued with the nurse. *I’d had a doctor give me a bedside lecture last year that despite my reaction to topical iodine, iodine is an inert mineral that, he said, it is impossible to be allergic to. A medical myth.  The stuff they mix it with? Sure. Iodine? No.

And so (just like last year just the same) they want me to take Pred and Benedryl for a CT scan so I won’t react to this iodine I can’t be allergic to.

I got nowhere. The nurse who called me to tell me had no idea. This is just how we do it, sorry.

Yes, and walking around with 80/40 bp and the like is how I do it, do you know how I react to Benedryl? Is it in my records?  Do you really want to depress that?

You know?  I think I’ve been more stressed about this than I thought I was.

Just before my first Stanford stay last year, when I was too sick to sit up, much less knit, the community at Purlescence filled a large basket for me of newly-picked oranges from Jasmin‘s trees and yarn and handknits to cheer me on and to give me something to keep me looking forward.

One of those things was two skeins of Mooi from Nathania, Sandi, and Kaye–a blend with buffalo and cashmere that was probably one of if not the most expensive yarn in their shop. I was alive enough to realize and hang onto the idea of what a treasure they were offering me: in my intense pain and weakness, being able to anticipate specific moments of joy in an as-yet uncertain future.

How do you live up to that intensity when you’re puttering around happily back in normal life? It has been bothering me that I haven’t done that great gift justice. It kept waving other skeins ahead of it, going, no, no, you go on, wool, you’re fine, no problem.

It’s time.  I guess I can’t say I refuse to let this ongoing post-ops stuff buffalo me now.  This is lovely stuff, with a brightness to it that I didn’t see in the ball and didn’t expect as it weaves around my needles, and it didn’t even hit me till I started playing with it that those women had picked the color in their stock that matched my favorite teal-blue skirt they’d seen me in a million times.  Man am I slow on the uptake.

And now I can begin to really tell them thank you for that Mooi. At last.  It’s gorgeous stuff and it is a great comfort. Again. A CT scan? I was worried about a stinking *CT* scan, fer cryin’ out loud?! What was I *thinking*!

(Edited to add five weeks later: I talked to my radiologist brother-in-law, and he said that while one might not technically be allergic to iodine, it is very common for iodine to bind with various cells that one then makes antibodies against–causing a potentially dangerous and yes, allergic reaction.)

Michelle made a dessert with the neighbors’ plums and some star fruit for the occasion.

Meantime, we had one of those afternoons where looking for a tool that hadn’t been used in over a year led to closet cleaning and the non sequitor of this discovery from the early days of my spinning, just waiting to be uncrumpled and admired out of its bag.  Briefly.

I’d splurged on the 50/50 angora/merino fiber at the now-missed Straw Into Gold in Berkeley and had carefully spun up the most luxurious fiber I’d tried yet on my wheel, not knowing that Michelle would prove allergic to it and that I would later be getting angora out of my house.  This was for her big sister.

And it’s…pretty big.  Angora has no sproing to it.  It might fit one of my sons.   But I was looking at it, going, wow. I did spin that fine back then. And really evenly, too, even though I was a rank beginner. Not bad!

Then I took it back out of the breathing space and zipped it back up, a little wistfully.

Meantime, we have two juvenile falcons perched for the night at either end of the louver in view.  They don’t always now, but they did come back tonight.  Curious.  I was surprised by fireworks going off a few hours ago–maybe one of the towns was saving on overtime on traffic control?  Dunno, but I did get to see some of it from my street, crowd-free, once I looked to see what was going on.

Maybe the falcons were boomed out by the noise and headed for the familiarity of home.  It was good to see them.  Happy Fourth of July!

A constant reminder to myself: it doesn’t get finished if you don’t finish it. That half a cast-off row isn’t going to cut it.

Right, right. So there you go.

And while we’re talking about glorious deep rosy reds like that–a return doorbelling, plum jam, a surprised plum-tree-owning neighbor, a protest of “But you didn’t have to do that!”, a response of “But may I?” (And I explained that Michelle had wanted to learn how to make jam, so it was from both of us.)

And then I got invited out to their garden.  Squashes were picked and I was gifted right back again.

My kind of neighbor wars.

Oh, and–they showed me a large leaf, quite shredded; insects, I thought, and a bad case at that. Birds, they corrected me: they’d liked it for their nests. (They clearly thought that was pretty cool, actually.)

So THAT’S where they…! So we talked birds a moment, and when I described my Nuttall’s, they smiled, oh yes, they knew that one. It has really taken to my suet feeder–that’s today’s picture, and I’m hoping it’ll let me get closer and closer.

Meantime, my black squirrel climbed a tree and stared at my being somehow on the wrong side of the fence.  What are you doing over there?!

Speaking of squirrels–my tomato container got dug into, bad, and trying to figure out how to keep the bushy-taileds out, I hit upon this: I took the lid of a plastic spinach box, cut out to the center and wider there for the stem and pushed it down into the pot. Voila! Mulched, sort of, and squirrel free. (Picture taken after the digging and before the sweeping up the mess.)

One of the things about the pot is I can haul it inside when I’m not around to give those squirrels The Look. It is the funniest thing to see one of them stop dead in their tracks and even sometimes turn tail.  You don’t mess with the momma here. You can have sunflower gleanings, but the tomatoes, those are mine.

I’d share them with the neighbors when they ripen but they’ve got their own ahead of me.

Thank goodness for blogging, or I’d never have the sense to stop and give my hands a break.

I have a question to ask: has anyone seen any one seed sprout two sprouts before? (Don’t mind the toothpicks there; they kept collapsing anyway.)  I haven’t. I can’t see why plants can’t come up twins, I just never thought of it before.  It was a particularly large avocado pit, so I thought it had a good chance of growing–got that one right!

And finally, today, the woodpecker I’ve wanted to see close up discovered the hanging suet cake. A female Nuttall’s, I think it is: and it is gorgeous. Dressed to drill.

The robo-call reminder said, I thought, 12:30 and to be there a half hour early to check in with my insurance card, yadda yadda. I hit 4 for repeat this message. Heard it the same.

So I showed up at Stanford accordingly.  Got a confused receptionist, who finally found my name an hour down the list; she waved me away, clearly bothered for my sake that I’d wasted my time, and told me to come back later for my 1:30 appointment.

I stepped aside and did a quick loop around to the other side of the small waiting area, which put me in the hallway for maybe a dozen steps–that was away, right?  Sat down back in there with my shawl project, knitted till exactly 1:00, stood back up, smiled brightly at her and pronounced, “I’m here now.”

She cracked up.

I got an unexpected hour of knitting with absolutely no other demands possible on me. And this was a problem? But what was cool was, she totally got that after she saw what I was doing.

(Or should I call it the new nest.)  I have to admit it: I was disappointed this morning. No towhee this time. Fancy that.

On the other hand…

This, on size 4.5 needles and finer yarn than the original in the book,

finished becoming this.

I had plans for what I was going to knit next. Specific plans. Designed, written, ready to test knit.

Yeah well.

My kids gave me some yarn for Mother’s Day that all the sudden leaped out at me yesterday like a four-year-old who just heard the words “ice cream.” It was Colourmart yarn, the 12/58 35/35/30 cashmere/silk/merino/790 yards in limestone, and I had at least already hanked and scoured it.  (Trust me: it is worth doing that extra work before knitting it. In oiled coned form, it is just not impressive to the hands nor the eyes, but the washed, sparkly-shiny-suddenly-soft yarn with the graying-effect oils gone, ohmygoodness yes.)

But it wasn’t even wound into a ball yet, and here it was jumping up and down at me like that. I was too tired to deal with it.  In self defense I pulled out a ball of something else, something else with cashmere in it, even–but no. THIS one.

Ooookaaaaaay. I dealt with it.

And this pattern. Nothing else would do but the Peace shawl from my book. (There’s a picture of it here.)  NOW!

But I was working on…!

Okay, so here I am:  I’m working on this thing, it’s practically knitting itself, I have not a clue why it’s so important right now to be knitting this yarn in this pattern right at this time–

–all I know is, it is, and it has been making me terribly happy that I listened to it.

You know, we’ve had enough of these episodes for me to be all, okay, cool, so, what happens next?

As I type that, it hits me and I go and look: a combination of the lacy-looking flowers and the dove and that shadow that came out of my camera Tuesday–yes, of course I have to knit it.  Yes.

The rest will happen in whatever good time it should: as long as I’m prepared for it.

I’m on it.

Looking at the project I haven’t worked on today, and the one over there that got stopped and put aside for such a good, temporary reason (I promised myself), and the one I wish I could get going on over there, it hit me–I have startitis.

I never have startitis anymore.  As a point of pride.  One thing about writing a lace shawls knitting book and knitting every shawl multiple times before publication to check again and again that there were no errors to be inflicted on the innocent means that there was just no time nor room for startitis. None.  You start a project, you plow through it till it’s done and then you can go do the next one, and if it’s a project that’s not going to get done it’s not ever and it’s over.

And then there’s right now.  So many cool ideas want to jump onto the page and the needles all at once, to the point that they’re all getting in each other’s way.  Because–and this is the biggest thing, always was, always will be–I also have so many people that I want to knit for, so many good reasons to do so, and a stitch for you and a stitch for you and a stitch for you and a stitch for you gets nobody clothed.  Come to think of it, there are precious few people on this planet that don’t deserve something handknit with love just for them.

This is the point where I toss my yarn in God’s general direction and say, heck, I can’t figure it out.  You know the territory more than I do and I need a traffic signal at this intersection.

As for tonight, He laughs and says, It doesn’t matter whether it’s a green light or a red if you don’t turn the car on, dear.

(edited to add: I wrote the above, went well okay, then, and sat down with my baby alpaca scarf, just a little thing, and made some good progress after all. Is it the most perfect thing to work on right now? I don’t know. But it felt wonderful to get at it, it’ll finish quickly, and having something completed and available and DONE for whatever moment for whomever, ready to go–yes. Sometimes I need semi-instant gratification like that.)

Okay, got it that direction, I really like that. That one, not so much. Oh, epic fail!  Okay, let’s see, if we do one from that angle…

Let’s just say peregrines, which have been clocked at 241 miles an hour, can fly faster than I can design them in lace.

The peregrine fledge watch officially ends tomorrow and there’s a touch of empty nest syndrome already.

Meantime, at Green Planet Yarns, I found more of the Joseph Galler baby alpaca that I didn’t buy at Imagiknit and had regretted ever since: undyed brown plied around white, the colors of a young peregrine’s chest till their adult feathers grow in. (This is for their safety; it keeps strange adults from thinking they’re looking to take their territory while they meander around exploring their new world.)  This time I bought a skein.

When I saw it across the room last month, I almost didn’t bother to check it out: oh, yeah, that brand, they’re old-school alpaca, sharp guard hairs ruining the good stuff mixed in.

Yeah well. Shows you how long it had been since I’d seen or felt any.  What Peruvian Tweed is now is what I’d always wanted it to be, something you can put up against your face and still think it soft. (Note that I did that to pick out the softest skein, though, and there was a slight variance. Worth checking out in person if you can.)

I think I know what it wants to be–I had plans, all this time I wished I’d bought it earlier. But once I actually sat down with it, they just weren’t quite it.  I think I’ll have to give it a night’s rest and see what my brain comes up with by morning.