A little more so-put-on-a-sweater-if-you’re-cold-in-here weather, a little more housework, a little more room readying.  (Don’t mind that Rooster Rock blocking the way on Sam’s floor.)

Looking forward to being able to pick up the kids at the airport next month with a little silliness for my 1111th post: picture from Icanhascheezburger.com but, as the one small person in a tall-person family, the scroll-over caption is totally mine.

The Rooster is rocking on. Slowly but surely, despite a day of a thousand distractions and things needing doing. And by the way, Mr. Stewart? Nice catch.  (Re that link: 1. Fox is unembarrassable. 2. Our President honoring our veterans. 3. The Muppets singing “Ode to Joy” in meep meeps, and a school in Massachusetts that has banned the nefarious word “meep.” Sometimes you can’t make this stuff up.)

Yeah, yeah, (just another shawl).

And it’s a pretty color, and yes, that Casbah is so soft, buuuut, really, it’s getting in the way of that Rooster Rock I want to dive into.

I remember reading a Jack London story I pulled out of the Cabin John Jr High library in 7th grade that really made no sense to me: two characters, one trying to re-create for his friend his memory of the most perfect drink ever.

London was an alcoholic, which I didn’t know then nor would I have known much about anyway, so it made no sense to me that the climax of the story was when they realized that the magic missing ingredient, the thing that had made the original drink what it had been, the thing so unknown but so sought after, was the addition of some–

–water.

To which my reaction was such a befuddled “Huh?” that I’ve never forgotten it.

So.

Here we have this lace addict.  Trying to re-create, more or less, the shawl she made for her friend Robin back home in Bethesda.

Here we have the lump I was left with when I was pretty much out of yarn, just 12 g left. And I couldn’t help but think, eh.

And then (after I took it off the uncovered futon, don’t worry) …I added water.

I can’t show you the recipe yet, but I tell you, the moment I stepped back and finally looked at that finished merino and cashmere lacework spread out felt absolutely magical.

Last night at Purlescence, I got to the end of a long row on the shawl I was working on and didn’t want to start another before quitting time; a good excuse to browse the shop a bit.

There was some Blue Moon Peru I’d seen before that I’d never really paid much attention to.  I was going to buy laceweight, and at 500 yards/8 oz, this was anything but.  Yeah, I did like that blues skein at the front, but that Rooster Rock–what was it about it?  It kept leaping into my hands–cautiously, because there were little things right there to snag that one skein in its spot if I weren’t careful.

Maybe being protective of the yarn contributed to the feeling. Dunno. Three times I picked it up, unsnagging it gently from the display case; twice I put it back.  That heavier stuff was just not what I had come for.  The blue one, I held it out in the light just once, eh, nah, even though I quite liked its denimness.  There–I put them both behind me and went and found the completely different yarn I thought I wanted, a buffalo blend in purple, around the corner. And that was that.

And yet.

I went back.

Huh.

I finally held one skein in each hand, the purple this and the Rooster Rock that. And thought, I quite like this (glancing at the left hand.)   And it’s in a color I love.  But *this* makes me feel deliciously, wonderfully happy (glancing at the Rooster Rock.)  I looked at the colors, trying to figure out how that could possibly be so.

It’s not the gauge I wanted to work with.  That bit of graygreen in one area I would never have chosen, although I like the rusts and the earthy purples.  It IS deliciously soft; but ohmygoodness, so was that buffalo, most emphatically.

All I know is, that skein has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with…I have not a clue who yet.  But it wanted to dance for joy in my hands in sheer anticipation, enough to part me from the price of it, and I thought of Marguerite’s cashmere.  (She is doing well now, thanks.)

And now I want to run go knit it up so I will be ready–again–to find out why at the right moment.

Just let me go quick finish up this last bit of Casbah Topaz first….

No ‘Net.

No Michelle’s Special hot cocoa.

I had to start moving all my yarn and knitting out of one of the kids’ bedrooms.  Okay, let that sink in a moment.  ALL. MY. YARN. and ALL. MY. PROJECTS of the last five years, the ziplocs growing steadily with the emptying nest (and perhaps a book or so might have played a part?)  There is new furniture going in that room being delivered Saturday and everything has to come out–and I can’t just toss it all in the other unused kid’s bedroom, because the same thing’s happening in there. Closets? (Have you SEEN my stash?!)

And Michelle is sick and wasn’t up to helping.

Then we got a message from another of our children and she is–well, let’s just say she’s sick, because she is, but she went for the drama. (No, we don’t know anybody like that.)

And I was thinking how very petty it was to be thinking, I’m not even getting my mug of Michelle’s Super Special Better Than Anything (except Coupa Cafe’s) Hot Cocoa nor even my emails nor online friends to escape to for a moment. I did knit. I knit a lot. While thinking, since it was going to be one of those days anyway, that you know, I really should put this down and work on that room more, tired or no tired, but if I’m going to be knitting anyway, I really should be working on such-and-such for so-and-so rather than insisting on finishing this.  I had to keep reminding myself to just *look* at the yarn in my hands: steadily, calmly, steadily, growing, becoming what it needs to be.

To let that be enough for this moment as I put my feet up.  Everything will be okay. And I knew that. (It’s not *that* dramatic.)

Well, obviously now, my ‘Net’s back up.  My sweet Michelle decided I needed the cheering-up of some of her world’s best soy- (but you can’t tell) -based intense hot cocoa, and nobody can make it like her, so she made me some after all. (I’d long since made my own, but hers is better.)  She’s such a sweetie.

Chocolate to the rescue.  Via the post office, too, when it opens tomorrow: closest thing to a hug and chicken soup I can send my vegetarian.

Lots of shorter private answers, time to write a public one.  The fingerpuppets: I originally discovered their existence at a booth at Stitches West, years ago, when I bought a little penguin and put it on the joystick of my electric chair that I use for long days out. I found it was at eye level to and made me instant friends with every little kid being dragged around by their moms, and I ended up going back and buying more.

I later googled, found my own bulk supplier, and ordered directly from Peru–but that website has since disappeared. (I’m sure there are others now.)

So these days I take the easy way out and order them via Ebay.  Here‘s one seller, 20 for $20, free shipping, or he’s also got 50 for $34. Or here, 50 wool ones for $38.99 including shipping.  Some sellers will let you specify what type you want–farm animals, llamas, fish, people–some won’t. If you don’t want Decembery-specific ones right now, do say so.

Although, remember my dad’s axiom and be careful how you state your preferences: people remember the negative item only out of the negative request. He once ordered me a birthday cake in “anything but chocolate” while making reservations for a surprise party, and all the restaurant remembered was that lovely word “chocolate.” I got THE most glorious, the most intensely chocolatey cake my 13-year-old self could possibly have hoped for. I was in heaven.

Dad, whose allergy to the stuff was why we didn’t have it around the house, was not amused. At the time.

Back to the puppets.  The last time I bought them, it was a seller in Peru for whom I was his fifth Ebay sale. Unfortunately, his second and third sales went to someone who didn’t understand that the guy was in a third world country and mail might occasionally go at llama pace down there; they negatively rated him over a three-week delivery time, and he disappeared shortly after. Which is a shame; $24 for 100 plus $12 shipping?  Well worth the wait; I keep hoping he’ll pop back up again somehow (or I could certainly try googling again).

At any of those prices, one of those finger puppets is a heck of a lot cheaper than, say, paying the $4 bridge toll over the San Francisco Bay for the guy driving behind you.

Which is great fun and highly recommended too.  Cheap thrills.  I love’em.

I didn’t think I was susceptible. I read Afton’s KnitTalk posts describing herself as a cheerleader, pompons pumping, pushing knitters to finish old projects by Halloween.

Don’t think so.  Pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain. You know the type: talks everybody else into doing the work while she teases her cat with *her* yarn.

And then Monday night I got to idly wondering if, y’know, maybe I could finish those Casbah socks before Thursday morning–that pair I started a month ago.  I would have to do nearly half the foot and the toe on #1 and do #2, start to finish. And graft! Half the stitch count of a quick shawl while having to use (oh joy) size 0 needles.

Yeah right. There’s a reason that pair’s colorway was called Glacier.

Um…yeah…  Afton found a way to bridge my dislike of knitting socks. Pier pressure. But before you start ribbing me about them, I kept them safe and simple–no cables. (That’s the Casbah and the Sea Silk leftovers side by side just for fun.)

Hey, Chris, Vachel hasn’t been knitting lately; should I sic Afton on him? He’s in an octopus costume this week, can he knit four times as fast?

I’m in good hands. I talked to my Dr. R today; I’m to call him again tomorrow. He’s keeping close tabs, and things have been improving somewhat.

Meantime, a photo from last year’s trip East: this is the first time in three years we haven’t made it back to Maryland in the fall, so I dug out some pictures for a little visual Canal hiking.  (Hey, Karen!) I spent a fair amount of time tweaking pattern ideas and debating yarns today, then I walked away to do brainless housework in order to give my subconscious some time to sift through things.

Back to work.  Who knew that cleaning lint filters and folding towels were good for designing C&O Canal towpath patterns in lace?

It’s an easy lace shawl pattern, good for beginners. And no, sorry, can’t show it yet. I haven’t finished showing it to me yet; I thought I had, but on this second go-round with it, I find myself with Bartholomew Cubbins‘ Hats Syndrome: it wants to be a variant all its own from the one I made before (and the one before that and the one before that and the one before that, and…)

So do I end it with something difficult for a new knitter to pull off? (It would always be only-optional anyway.)  You know–something edgy?

The good news is, the shawl came out worth every second of the ripping back and of the not knowing; I am very, very happy with it. It’s hard to believe I got that kind of length and width out of 82g worth of laceweight. (Anybody need a little extra white Fino for theirs?…)

The bad part, of course, is that I can’t show it yet.  All in good time.

And now that the lacy days of summer are over, I went looking for what to do next. After all, what’s the worsted thing that could happen, right?

I had a project in mind, and found, as I looked through my stash today, that I’ve been knitting so much lace for so long that I hadn’t noticed I was virtually out of any heavier weights.  It’s not that the wool had DK’d… It just got a little loopy.

Shepherd’s Wool puts out a new-to-me merino so soft one could go in-skein, and Purlescence tonight helped get me all wound up about it.

Nice stuff.  I am going to have a ball with it.

He came home from work tonight, looked at the work in my hands as I was finally casting off, and proclaimed, “A cloud!” Have I mentioned I love that man?

Over dinner last night, I had explained to Richard why I had knit a few scarves while having a shawl in progress, something I normally avoid: I’d had a new design idea, had tried it out, and…

…Ripped it out, he added helpfully.

Yup. Back to the yoke. (Swatch? When you’re so sure it’ll be perfect?)

So when the scarves were done, there was nothing for it but to dive back into that shawl with a new new idea (Swatch? What is this word, swatch?) and simply see, again, how it  would work out.  I threw in yet another tangent as I went along, writing down each change exactly so, hoping not to be drawing thick black lines through those instructions later.

In the blob, it looks good this time.

Blocked?

Amazing how I managed to finally get those two scarves blocked tonight, isn’t it!

So I needed to knit me up some autumn.  Calm burgundy over there…no. Didn’t want a leaves-turning-brown effect, I wanted bright red maples and blue blue skies! With a little bit of climbing blooming Californian bougainvillea thrown in–I love those flowers.

Looking around, I found some of Lisa Souza’s Mardi Gras merino kicking around and my Fibersphere to keep the yarn from running around, and hamster-balling it, I was off and away.

How to get back into the knitting:  (note that these are platters that are too big to go into my cabinets as you try to gauge the size of this project so far.)

1. Have a flu shot. (Note to self: you wear a bag now. Have the shot on the right arm. Ignore them when they ask if you’re right handed.  The cane’s on the left anyway, and you gotta have somewhere you can roll over to in your sleep. Get a clue.)

2. Have a day that requires getting up early.

3. Be engrossed in two really good books you can’t put down, while being tired enough and slightly achy from the shot that holding your arms up for hours, well, it just isn’t the day. Nor is the next.

4. Be so knit-deprived you can’t stand it, and the moment it’s a new day, you wake up feeling fine, the books are already read and that yarn’s still waiting, you get through twelve 400-stitch rows of Fino laceweight right then and there.  And the day’s not over.

The books were very worth the time spent, but there’s something to be said for the motivating effects of you-can’t-have-it-yet.

I wrapped up the one scarf in a doctor’s waiting room yesterday after it got as long as it reasonably could, and, needing something to do, cast on a second to match, risking the dreaded SSS with my sock yarn: Second Scarf Syndrome.

Heh. You can change the project, but you can’t change the essential qualities of a yarn.

Lots of bird puns waiting for more over at Lene‘s Sept 21 post.  I particularly like Karin‘s–I wish I’d thought of that!

Over here, there were some not-yet-swept-up sunflower hulls mixed with a few fallen seeds scattered around the base of the wooden pole this morning. I watched a gray squirrel go through all kinds of weird contortions trying to reach around cautiously, carefully to sniff out the good ones while trying really really hard not to appear to come near that dangerous thing. Pre-seed-ents had been set, after all.

Or pre-seed-dense, in its case.  I watched it for awhile, much amused, when suddenly it completely lost its head and leaped.  All that food up there!

Instantly the door flew open–caught!

Train them in the way they should go.  It *knew*.  I didn’t have to make a sound.  It scrammed all the harder in its guilt, twitching its tail hard from the top of a tree, staring at me. Do not stop, do not pass go, do not collect 200 calories.

I’m suddenly remembering my kids growing up, when they didn’t get their way, wailing, “You’re MEAN!” And I would grin back at them, “Yup. Rean, motten and nasty too.”   How do you argue with a mom who’s chuckling and refusing to give in to pole-emics? They tried, but it was all bluster from there from them and they and I knew it.

Meantime, Michelle and I went off to Los Gatos for birdseed today (no hulls, that was a one-time hardware-store mistake), and a raptor–a large hawk or peregrine, I couldn’t quite make out–soared over us on the freeway as she drove. I wonder, do I just see them now? Did I miss out on so much for so long? I know the populations have been recovering the last few years…  Wow. It was glorious, wide wings highlighted against the sunshine, riding on the breeze.

Fill that feeder!

It was going to be a long wait. Michelle was very apologetic about having scheduled an appointment over here during my appointment with the dentist over there;  I thought, are you kidding?  How long have you been the daughter of a knitter?  No, I don’t mind, not one bit–guilt-free knitting time? Peachy-fine.

So I grabbed the shawl project du jour and threw it in my knitting bag.

But.

No. I’m not going to!

But there was that bluegreen Purl Up and Dye project from Purlescence…

Now, Kaye gave me that skein she and Nathania had dyed out of the generosity of her heart only a week or so before I had this knitting epiphany hit me of wait, I knit socks?! And that yarn, ahead of its time, emphatically wanted to be socks.

No. That’s just not what my needles do, do you hear me, yarn? I cast on this scarf instead.

Every single time I picked it up to work on it, the silly thing whined at me, But I want to be *socks*! You NEED me as socks! Rip it, c’mon, you can do it, one good frog session and you’ll have just the right colors and just enough synthetic with your merino not to wear holes in the heels and you know you’ll feel like royalty and you’ll finally have some that would go with your teal skirts and it’ll be such a big deal and and and.

For the last time, I. Do. Not. Knit. Socks! This is going to be for somebody else anyway, and you know I’m too greedy (or afraid they won’t fit) to give away socks.  I knit to give, not to keep.  Be still.

So you know how that came out; after that surprise Sock Summit package arrived, I started knitting socks after all, and that bluegreen was sitting there torn between feeling jilted and exulting in, I told you so!  So now are you going to frog me, are you are you huh huh?

Hush child.

Now, I tend to do one project till it’s done these days, a discipline I learned in knitting for my shawls book, but this scarf timed out into being the homework project with a deadline a long way off that you don’t want to work on and you have plenty of time to work on and no you’re not going to pull a 2 am-er on it at the last second, the semester doesn’t end for months and the teacher will never know you crammed, she’ll think it’s your best work and not only that she’ll tell the whole class she wishes everybody else prepared like that in advance!

Wait–that was Richard’s high school oral book report on a book he didn’t know he was supposed to have read, never mind.

I explained to the dentist’s hygienist that I was simply going to have to wait awhile after my appointment to be picked up; sure, no problem.  She sent me out into the waiting room with toothbrush and fresh floss, armed to the teeth.

The wait began. I reached for my baby alpaca–and you know what came out of that bag instead.  Hmmph.  I was knit amused.

And then it became a race: can I get this finished before Michelle shows up? So I don’t ever have to listen to its socky attitude again?

And the answer, now, is, unblocked, 44″. Stretched out, mmm, ’bout 57. So close.

Nathania took a picture of it in progress the other day so she and Kaye could recreate that colorway.  And if that doesn’t placate it, one more half hour and it’ll be cast off and that’s the ends of that.

If only I knew who this was going to be for!  After all, the best way to get kids to stop whining about something they want is to get them looking forward to something else.

Someone is going to absolutely love this colorway and the generosity by which this yarn came to me.  I know I do.