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!

After an antsy-busy week, I finally felt today like I could do some serious knitting time, relaxing and watching in delight as something new has been coming to be. You can visualize but you can’t know till it actually becomes real, and I have to tell you, yarns-in-waiting are nice but real is wonderful.

Someone, meantime, is looking just like the cheerful imp his daddy was. Is he offering his sock for that camera lens? Teasing? We don’t know anybody like that…! 

(Actually, handknit kneepads at this stage sounds like a good idea, come to think of it.)

It started with a blood draw.

My daughter Sam has ITP, idiopathic thrombocytopenia purpura: the autoimmune version of hemophilia. Catch a cold or even athlete’s foot, crash the platelets as the immune system fires up in scattershot mode. (If you follow that link, she was at 10; normal is 150-400.)

And so when she arrived at the university to begin her PhD program five years ago, she needed a doctor and she needed a blood test, fast.

She got sent to the lab. The phlebotomist chatted as she set her up, and on hearing why she was there, immediately told her exactly which doctor at that clinic she should see and why, in very specific terms that had to do with how his personality would react to her history as well as his particular medical skills. He would take good care of her in a way the others would not.

And so he has. That was the doctor who, when her chart came in, I believe before he’d even met her, declared she was to be his patient, period.

That was the doctor who, this past summer, ignored her protests of that spot on her arm having been biopsied five years earlier and having come up benign; he just didn’t like the looks of it. Her ITP had gotten her sent to him just two weeks previously as well as this time, and though they hadn’t even discussed the spot nor had she thought of it, he had, and he thought it looked different this time; he was going to biopsy it again.

She saw no reason to.

No, it just felt… Now. And so he did.

A particularly aggressive melanoma but caught at the very earliest stage. Early enough that she didn’t even have to go through radiation or chemo–though they did have to take four inches out of her arm and she will have to be screened every three months for recurrences from here on out.

Hey. Beats the alternative.

We were on the phone tonight, the three of us, and Sam rather apologized to me for something she’d done.

Then she gave me the context. She told us about that phlebotomist. She told us she’s been going to that specific one ever since that first time they met, that they’ve become almost like family to each other.

I had made Sam an ethereally fine wedding-ring shawl in the softest merino, and she confessed she’d tested it once just to be sure: yup, it really did go through her ring! It was wide and beautiful and lovely and she got many compliments on every one of the rare occasions when she dared take the fragile-looking cloud of lace out to wear.

The phlebotomist had mentioned to her recently that she was to attend a wedding in the family, and that she was to wear a bright orange dress that was just too much for her; she had been wondering how on earth to tone it down, but had no ideas and no time to shop.

Sam asked: would a wide, slightly offwhite lace shawl help? A rectangle. It was certainly formal enough for a wedding. (She did not remember till I said it on the phone that I had knitted it while we drove 13 hours and back to take her to her freshman year at BYU, finishing it after the trip. Stealth knitting, right in front of her–I’d made it to tuck away for her for someday.)

As she was admitting to me she’d offered up the loan of that shawl, hoping I wouldn’t mind, to whom and why, I exclaimed, “She saved your life!”

Steps into a future that neither knew then, but still.

Sam considered the thought and, a sense of awe in her voice, answered, Yes–yes, she did.

I mentioned someone who had wanted to clean white wool with bleach; Sam shuddered, No, no, you don’t do that!

Right. They hadn’t yet and it was okay, and I taught them in time about how bleach dissolves wool and what to use safely.

Sam: I don’t think this lady would…

Me, affirming: Probably not. But if she does, I will knit you a new one.

And she knew I was saying what she’d felt too, that this woman had earned everything we could give her without reservation and together, then, we freely offered her friend all of the love that is in that shawl.

I went on to offer to knit the woman her own, for that matter.

I could hear Sam’s grateful smile across the thousands of miles.

Bought some very good yarn Tuesday at Purlescence, finished an Ipod hat out of it today. Minimalist. Perfect. And then someone announced a dress-like-Steve-Jobs day in his memory for tomorrow, and St Croix, the Washington Post said, had sold out of his trademark mock turtle in black. Me, though, I’m Thinking Different.

And on the wildlife front.

Towhees jump forward, jump back, scratching back the leaves to look for grubs underneath: they look like they’re skipping an invisible jumprope. It charms me.

After the rain was gone and the sun was shining again a day or two ago, I glanced outside to see a cascade of water spraying sideways off the roof. Just in one spot. Wait–is someone sweeping up there? No, I knew Richard had already left for work, and besides, he would never go up there without a spotter watching the ladder.

It stopped.

There it was again.

It stopped.

There it was again.

I thought, if that’s a towhee scratching that’s one heck of a towhee! That’s a lot of water it’s moving!

I walked outside, seeing a shadow of wings through the translucent awning, and then there was no such cascade to be seen again. Huh.

Today maybe the responsible party showed itself? It came to the porch only for a moment, a California Thrasher.  Sibley: “They are difficult to find except when singing.” Oh well… But I got to see it!

Reading another site, it says they no longer breed on the Monterey Peninsula because of habitat fragmentation. Wow. The whole peninsula? And I got to see one here on our more heavily populated one?

Now I know why I threw some suet cake farther out than I usually do. It stabbed that long curved beak at it as fast as it could, looked at me with a stern that-will-not-do because I’d moved, raised its tail and fled. Had I blinked I’d have missed the whole thing.

I am definitely going to throw some peanut suet out in that spot again.

Yesterday’s yarn felt like work. I’ll get to it: but today is our Sabbath and it just didn’t feel right for the day. It needed to rest.

I went looking for whatever in the stash might strike me to make something to make someone happy–the people and the possibilities were endless, I dithered longer than I wanted to and finally decided that the only way to narrow it down was to start with my eyes. Go.

I had no idea what I was looking for, just a familiar sense that when I found it, I would know.

There–beneath several other ziplocs. A long-ignored goodly start to a shawl in some laceweight purple silk on 3.5mm needles (ouch). It wasn’t begun the way I would start it now; still, I’ve never frogged it, not after all the work that’s gone into it. There was a snag that needed to be fixed and there were circular needles that had totally kinked up in that small bag.

It just needed a little love.  I tugged around the snag a moment but shrugged, eh, later, it’ll be fine. I had no idea why, but this was it, this needed to be done, the sooner the better. I knitted a row, transferring it to new needles as I went down the  long row and weighing whether I still felt that way about it.

I did.

After a year in time-out? Why now?

I don’t know. But as I picked up that ziploc this afternoon and opened it to get a good look, all I can tell you is it felt wonderful that I had it in my hands again at last despite any arguments I could make against it. It was entirely a surprise–I have no idea what there is about it. Yet.

I’ve learned to take that feeling when it’s strong like that and just run with it as fast as I humanly can.  It’s humming along nicely.

Our ladder walked off on its own at some point in the past we know not of. I put out a plea and I do mean plea to our ward chat list; Glenn responded near-instantly. We ran very gratefully off with his ladder and Richard climbed up on our roof, relieved to finally be able to get at that furnace.

It’s working now.

My knitting, not so much. The poor guy spent several hours this evening (and that was only half of it) listening to me muttering under my breath from across the room, “But this makes no *sense*!” I counted, I recounted, I “dear could you SIXTY EIGHT SIXTY NINE SEVENTY oh sorry, dear” knitted, I frogged, I wondered who on earth ever thought I knew how to do this. A designer? Are you kidding me?

I could have fudged that one stitch there. I refuse to fudge. Ripped! I can now tell you that the new Findley yarn from Juniper Moon Farm is not only super soft and deliciously shiny, but it holds up to being frogged and reknitted five times–and it will be again if I have to to get this to come out as perfect as it deserves. I know exactly how I want this pattern to look. A bunch of silly string is not going to defeat me!

I guess we got our heat back…

(Hastening back to the computer to add, he was a total sweetheart about it and I was trying to be. All it needed was for me to stop fussing over it and go do my treadmill time to clear my head. That seems to have done it. Tomorrow I should be able to just sit down, relax totally, and knit.)