Intermittent bursts of rain, triple what the forecast said. Cold. Doubled sweaters. Knitting to warm up my hands so I could knit.

I know, it’s not the two feet of snow that Michigan’s upper peninsula got, but this is the weirdest start to May ever.

It was a 15 grams of laceweight kind of a day. That’s (let’s see: 100g divided by 15=6.666 per, 875 yards divided by 6.666= 131.38 yards), so, yeah, 131 yards knitted on size 3.5 mm needles. So far.

Keep it raining and I might actually get this done!

I got the tracking number today.

Mulberry silk is slippery on the needles–that’s a given. Laceweight with silk in tiny stitches requires close attention. That’s a given. See yesterday’s post.

But there is definitely motivation now to get that project done and out of the way.

Silk/vicuna 90/10 yarn, 500g, was on sale at $115/free ship at the time. Never mind that it’s in laceweight. That gorgeous shiny blonde effect! (Which color, it turns out, is now sold out unless you buy the 100g cones at $28.76+ship. Which is still 1800 meters.)

I plan for some of it to end up plied with the cone of bison/silk that’s been sitting waiting for…that, as it turns out. Ron at Thebuffalowoolco.com had a Halloween offer a few years ago of $25 for a mystery grab bag when they were about to send their yarn dyeing business off to Stunning String and that’s what he sent me: an entire cone of a single ply of their Sexy line. Wow.

Except bison doesn’t shrink and vicuna seems to a lot. Unless that was the merino in the 98/2 from Colourmart. There may be some interesting effects here.

Raw vicuna fiber wholesales at up to $400/lb. I’ve seen the yarn in stores kept under lock and key at $200 an ounce.

So when this comes I’m either going to adore it when it’s all knitted up or I’m going to adore it the whole way through and I don’t quite know which yet. Even that 2% yarn was enough to show me that this was something the likes of which I had never encountered before–and I am quite looking forward to finding out what 10% vicuna is like. I am really glad I snagged the lighter color so I’ll be able to see what I’m doing, plus I just plain think it’s pretty.

Now I know why I’d been itching to make a wedding ring shawl. For who, I have no idea, but out of what, I do now.

Don’t mind me folks I’m just enabling here.

Vicuna and silk, you guys!

Come craft together, they said, whatever your project type. It’ll be fun!

It was, too.

But (bifocals notwithstanding) I knit with my glasses off to see up close but I left them on so I could lipread and found out that tiny stitches and slippery silk and having to count and not being able to entirely see what I’m doing while I’m paying attention to someone else…

meant I went home and slowly carefully painstakingly stitch by snaggy stitch ripped out every single thing I’d done there because there was just no rescuing being off by that much that far down and across–and boy did that yarn want to run.

But we had a good time. Next time I’ll bring something brainless and wool on size 7s.

We were celebrating three generations of birthdays together.

One way not to run out of yarn to work on is to bring lace weight.

I bought this at Stitches West 2019 from (this is as close as I can find to their bright and shiny 80/20 merino/silk lace weight in the Isabella colorway) Western Sky Knits in Montana.

I did a not quite the usual hat on the way to Seattle; out of sheer boredom, a few rows into the stockinette I found myself doodling k1, p9, then k3, p7, k5, p5, k7, p3, k9, p1 as I went round the rows. Then half a dozen or so plain stockinette again–and then I reversed the triangles, p1 then 3 then 5 then 7 then 9, and finished it plain from there.

I found myself laughing in surprise mid-flight: I had just knit Charlie Brown’s shirt.

Anyway, right before the trip I’d grabbed that Western Sky stuff that had been waiting so long and wound it up so it would be ready to go.

At one point there was a “whaddya you gonna do” shrug from Lillian’s mommy that her daughter adored unicorns. As three year olds do.

How could I knit anything else after that?

I was a few inches along when Mathias, busy with Legos with Grampa, looked over at my hands and said in wonderment, “That’s PRETTY, Grammy!”

I suddenly realized all he’d ever seen me do was practical hats. Travel knitting. I’ve made so many. They’ve gone to so many. And that white cashmere/silk afghan that I’d splurged on to make him as a baby that was now proudly on their couch–so soft, it’s nice, but it was white.

All these colors!

It is now officially child approved.

And by an older child: there was a sullen teenager in the airport waiting two hours for today’s flight, as did we, trying not to let on who his parents were. As teens do. I had my phone out and was reading the news (Fox fired Tucker Carlson today?!) so my hands would only have to knit for the length of the flight.

Once we were boarded, though, it was all rainbow knitting all the time.

Yonder teen passed us as he came on.

He saw what was in my hands. He stopped.

He looked at my knitting. He looked at me.

I looked back beaming my best grandmotherly-wisdom-love in his direction.

He went on his way with a noticeably lighter step.

I don’t know his details on why I suddenly felt considered an ally, whether the unexpected project simply gave us a moment to see each other and see good in each other and that was enough. Or if there was more to it for him.

All I know is, I’m so glad my hands were speaking in colors.

Huh. Where had I put that other pot? But I wasn’t really paying attention to that distraction, so, whatever.

Which is why it wasn’t till this morning that I discovered the Anya apricot pot knocked clear upside down, where it had to have been for two nights and a day by then. That was the newest, fastest growing, most promising seedling, too, I lamented at myself while scooping everything back together newly out of range of raccoons–or the garden hose as I’d reached towards the amaryllises under the awning; I probably did it myself. That’s what I get for having the thing up on something (to thwart rabbits) but not up enough.

It actually looked quite good: curved but not broken. Bright green and ready for some sun time again. I debated whether it needed to be kept shaded while it readjusted–but didn’t, and that may have been a mistake.

Tonight? It might make it but when the leaf edges shrivel like that, experience says that one’s a goner. If it were older, but it’s not.

I’ve got a few seeds left and it looks like I’m going to need them. I have friends hoping for their own Anya seedlings and I’m down to two clear successes out of sixteen by this point and two maybes.

Knit stuff: I did a fair bit of swatching, washing the swatches, hairdryering, measuring, deciding, and lots of wanting to just get on with it.

The combination of variegated blues in merino over here would be a ton of fun and I had it all planned out.

But then I swatched that 64/36 cashmere/cotton. There was just nothing like that softness. Exquisite. The bit of cotton meant the shrinkage was about 10%, all vertical. And given who it’s to be for? It totally wins. Yeah, more (and more and more) plain practical white again, but happy anticipation can make up for a lot.

That is seriously nice stuff.

This (scroll down a bit and click to the right to keep on going) is some serious and seriously fun crocheting, and it probably even pays the bills.

Meantime, today was the first of two days of the semi-annual World Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, with two more two hour sessions to come, Sunday at 9:00 and 1:00 Pacific time.

We were surprised and thrilled to hear a dear friend’s name called out and watched him and a few others come up to the stand in their new roles. He’d mentored one of my kids back in the day and had made all the difference in the world. Such a good man.

I laughed out loud when one fellow by the last name of Bragg said that when he spoke at his first Conference, he mentioned at the beginning of that talk that he’d been asked to speak on humility.

Whereupon his son immediately received a sardonic message from a friend: Really?

1. His co-worker was what? I blinked. She’s going skiing?! Did she check first? Road closures? They’re hand-shoveling out the buried chairs on the ski lifts.

2. Everybody’s trying to figure out how four goats came to be running around in traffic in San Francisco. The people who rent herds out for munching fire-prone hillsides have said nope, not theirs.

3. The silk tape cowl is finding out what size it wants to be when it dries. This is nearly the whole 150 grams’ worth: it’s big and it will likely stretch some from all the weight. Note to future self: I started with 70 stitches on size 9s and increased to 84. It was a quick knit, but also not because the yarn was a bit of a hassle.

Although, compared to some silks it was thankfully a lot less snaggy on the fingers and it offered a chance at easy retrieval at a dropped stitch if you were careful.

But what I like best about it is that it’s done. I’d been needing more of that.

Peregrines: today there were two. But they’re clearly not sure of each other yet. They weren’t fighting each other off the site, which is good, but neither were they best buddies–yet.

Meantime, and I hesitate to say this because it is by no means anywhere near a sure thing, there is a very small possibility that we might take a day trip to Stitches tomorrow. More likely not, so I’m trying not to get my hopes up.

But isn’t that like the chick hatching out of the egg? he asked me yesterday.

I dunno but I did it anyway, but no, I think it’s fine.

The one in the lower foreground? Half an initial leaf was caught on one side of the skin of the kernel, which hadn’t quite broken open all the way down as the seed had expanded, and half was caught tight wrapped into the opposite side, and it had stayed like that for two days. It needed to get up out of that inadvertent shade into the sunlight so it could grow.

So I got my smallest sewing needle and pierced that brown covering open, taking a tiny speck of greened kernel with it while setting it free. Oops.

Within an hour you could see that tiny hint of a plant recovering, and today it’s playing catch up to its week-old sibling.

And the one in the middle. The one that had sprouted into gale-force winds, noped out and turned brown and stopped growing? I called its bluff. It was still alive. And now (click to embiggen) it’s grown leaves and is coming around, too.  To life!

Three up, five to go from that batch.

Meantime, knitting happened. Bison/silk 50/50, bought from Ron and Theresa at thebuffalowoolco.com before they found themselves no longer a yarn dyeing company but a bison sock company.

Their best are the bison/silk ones.

Maps says three hours each way. Stitches West moved to Sacramento, I haven’t been in four years thanks to the pandemic (and to having had Covid during the 2020 one–Early Adopter status, it’s a Silicon Valley thing) and I badly want to see old friends I never get to see anywhere else. Even Mel and Kris are going to be there, and they’d thought they were done with making that drive from Oregon, but no, they’re coming.

So we talked about it. I told him, you know how utterly crashed I was coming home when it was twenty minutes away, I don’t know how I’d do three hours at the wheel afterwards much less driving that twice in a day. That’s also the weekend Michelle’s supposed to move.

But: I want to see my friends. (Thinking, I could even go and almost not buy any yarn because the first day is always such an intense overload and there wouldn’t be a second day.)

He totally grokked how important that was to me. But also to our daughter.

“Let’s think about that.”

Even if there were public transportation, it would involve some time spent out in the sun and I absolutely cannot take that risk at all.

Four Colourmart cones got wound up on the Kromski niddy-noddy for scouring today and it felt like quite the accomplishment. That green cashmere won’t be marinating in the stash very long.

The replacement box came 24 hours after the factory sent it out into the world and it arrived in perfect condition.

Dandelion had made a set number of these sets and then had had to come back and recreate just the one just for us and I don’t know how they did it, but they did it.

And let me tell you. It is so very very good. We managed to pace ourselves and save some for the next day or two, but it was hard.

From left to right: figs stuffed with spiced ganache and covered in chocolate. Truffles. Chocolate drag’ee peanuts. Coconut chocolate crisps. And yes, the peanut version of nutella came with its own little metal spoons for two. So perfect.

Thank you, L. and A.! And thank you, Dandelion!

The good part about mill ends is what you can get for the price. The bad part about mill ends is that you then have to make a decision: do you scour the coating out before or after you knit it? Wind off, use the hottest soapy water you can stand, hang to dry, wind it back up–it’s a lot less work to just sit down with the cone and go. But there’s a lot less pleasure in cashmere when it feels like dried hair mousse as it runs through your hands.

Or when you’re knitting in public and explaining that no, it really is going to feel like what it is when I’m done.

If you pre-wash, you pre-shrink. You also get rid of the graying effect and get to see what the actual color underneath is.

Which is why when I knit the second half of this cone it is definitely going to be pre-washed. This one so much deserved to be. What a difference.

The cowl is drying now, soft, enticing, a truer blue, and just so perfect. As it was going to be all along.

(Translation: Hey! You guys! This IS nice stuff! In real life–now!)

I couldn’t just sneak a new one for it because it had been worn too much for me to get away with that.

At eleven, he was bicycling over to my house during Christmas break to cover and uncover the baby mango tree night and morning while we were out of town. He protested that I was paying him too much (I wasn’t) and got one of the first mangoes ever to come off that tree.

Two years ago? I think? I knit him a hat, to his great delight, in the oft-repeated Malabrigo Mecha in Teal Feather, as soft a wool as you could ask for and washable.

Two weeks ago at church his mother asked me if I could repair it.

I’m guessing he didn’t want me to think he didn’t take good care of it. But it’s okay. Things happen.

Last week I showed them a bag I’d found of all the little balls of leftover Mecha in that color: I had saved them for future hat stripes but really just in case of an emergency like this. I asked them to help me find the best match because my cataracts mess with my perception of blues.

They decided the mom could do this and took the bag home, while I was left thinking, but I wasn’t trying to put that on you!

This morning the young man himself came over, pointed to the darkest mini ball in the center of the bag, and said decisively, We think that one.

The hat was back in the bag.

I was delighted–I’d really wanted to do that for them and had been a little sorry at the misunderstanding. I knew it would be a much easier task for me than her.

Got home from church, and thought, Do not get distracted. You know they’re waiting. You know he had to wait this extra week during a cold snap to get his clearly loved hat back–do it now.

So I sat down with it.

Oh. This wasn’t just the cast-on end working loose, now that I looked closely, that yarn was torn. (Their cat maybe?) This was going to be more than I thought. Okay, that and that are the torn ends and there, in between, it no longer has its cast-on-row stitch. Hmm.

The dad is the grandson of Ukrainian refugees. I told them later, The irony is that what I did is called the Russian join: I took the new yarn (leaving a dangly end) and ran it through the interior of the broken yarn to catch it and hold it in place.

(I didn’t bother them with the detail that the full term is the Russian spit-splice–they didn’t need that visual in his clothing.)

I reworked a few more stitches on the wrong side to try to really tack down those random fibers, and then I ran the two ends up the edges of the purls in the ribbing. I could do it pulled tight so that it looked good–tried it, went nope–or looser so it felt good. Definitely looser. As you can see, but won’t when he wears it with the brim down.

The kicker is that where the yarn had broken was in one of the lightest spots because the dye hadn’t fully penetrated the yarn. But I think, yes I do think, it came out quite okay.

I emailed the parents to ask when I should bring the hat by and my doorbell rang so fast before I even got around to looking up their phone numbers. Mom, dad, son: they all wanted to be there to see it come back to life.

I said to Eli as they leaving, Thank you: that hat is clearly well loved and worn and I never know if people actually use them. You made me so happy. Thank you!

It made his day and he walked down my walkway after his parents with the biggest smile on his face.

That, I tell you, is a young college-bound man who is knit-worthy. His parents raised him well.

(Sunflower rolling pin here. I much prefer their big size.)

There was some blue cashmere that has been in my stash with the start of some forgotten thing for several years now and today somehow finally felt was its day: I went to see what there was of it.

Not much. The cast on, enough stitches to connect the ends–and a merciless tangle of yarn and dropped stitches.

Nuts to that. I started over.

By the end of the new cast on I knew why the thing had never gotten anywhere: the raspy needle and that grabby yarn were the worst enemies. I didn’t want to knit even the first row till I’d found a different pair.

I found a very slick circular. Size 6.

Wait.

That was the one I’d finally finished yesterday’s project on, where the needle was too slippery for the very slippery yarn and so it had taken me forever to make myself get it done.

All I’d needed to do the whole time was swap the two out.

Switch, swatch, I was making a botch…

(Note to self: next time you fill ten pounds of flour into the container, don’t drop it. And if you do drop it, don’t aim it upwards at your cashmere sweater. And if you do, just hope the neighbors’ security camera didn’t record the pouffy cloud you shook off outside the front door. Also if anyone knows the best way to carefully clean the rest of the flour out without making glue please reassure me that I do, in fact, know how to hand wash sweaters.)

Man, it’s been cold. And so this finally got finished.

Camelspin yarn, 54 leftover grams from stash and done. Gorgeous to eyes and hands (when they’re not dropping slippery stitches.) It’s ~15″.

And how did I celebrate? By checking that Colourmart still had that 66/34 dk cashmere/cotton and ordering a discounted kilogram towards future baby blankets.

Because the long longed-for baby of friends of my daughter that I used up most of my cash/cotton for was announced today. It’s a girl. Name to be announced.

They finally got to have their daughter!