Thank you, everybody, for your thoughtful words.

To misquote Robert Frost wildly out of context, meantime, Ice (yesterday) was great and did suffice. I tested my hands today with a row, then another, then another, and after a day of it, hey, I had a hat!

It wasn’t till I was snapping its picture that it hit me. I’d been making the thing up as I went along, and the pattern is similar to the one I doodled with to create the first baby sweater I ever knitted for my first baby, 28 years ago. Great mind thinks alike.

Time to grab the needles to knit something for Parker next. I *so* can’t wait to see him and his proud parents.

I was going to do another hour of knitting on this and then show you how it was going to look with the braided cable turned brim-up; I’m delighted that my expectation on the cable/stitch ratio proved right.

But my lack of balance did one of its occasional zings and I’m icing my hand and that’s it for this evening.  I do really like how this hat is coming out.

Meantime, (you can ignore the pajama silliness right at the beginning) Jon Stewart did the best job I have seen anywhere of saying what I think should be said and heard and discussed widely in the aftermath of Saturday.  It is well thought out, kind, and straight from the heart.  I highly recommend it.

I had a certain feeling of being watched and looked up.

And there, ten feet away, perched on the back of the nearest outside chair on the patio, as close as he could possibly come, was a hawk. An adult Cooper’s, smaller than the one I’ve seen before, the markings slightly bluer on the head and redder in the brown, beautiful earthy tones–my guess is, the male of the local pair. I think I’ve only ever seen him from a distance before.

Eye to eye we stayed and very still.  I so wanted him not to fly away; let me take in every feather. I remember M. Leeb, my father’s artist friend, telling me when I was 16, Observe for ten minutes. Draw for one.

Would that I could.

After a few moments, he glanced to the side, keeping an eye on the business at hand but no, everyone was playing hide to his seek–and he was off between the trees and gone.

I sat there unable yet to move, not wanting it to be over.

On the knitting front: I have come to realize that I do not own a really warm hat (other than the by-now very ratty very bright red one my grandmother gave me on my 12th birthday) because I haven’t needed to.  I’m not off meeting Parker because I caught a cold–very slight, but a cold–and one does not bring germs to a preemie. I can’t go to the climate of cold yet–but I can knit about it.

So.

When I made the Coronet hat for Michelle, I found myself wanting to revamp the pattern. Plain stockinette above the brim? But that’s not as warm as cabled. Pick up 2/3 of the rows to make the new stitches? But, wait, cabling takes about 1/3 more stitches on average than plain, so, if I pick up every row and cable all over that should work, right?

Yes, I already see the problem: a cable of nine stitches across and the rows come in groups of eight. I’m working on it.

But what I wanted to show here was my answer to the Knitty instructions to kitchener the knit, purl, kniiiiiit, purl, knit stitches as you go across. It kept coming out reversed in the grafting for me. Bag that. I’m a lazy cuss.

So what I did was a three-needle bindoff: one row ready on one needle, the other on another, hold them together with the right sides together on the inside, and then I bound off. You take a third needle and go as if to knit into the first stitch in front and then keep pointing the tip on into the first stitch in the back; finish knitting the stitch. Repeat on the next, then slip the first stitch made over the second just like you would a normal bindoff. It will seem strange to have two stitches popping off each of the left needles as you go rather than one, and it may seem awkward as to which of the two needles to the left is doing the slipping over, but it’s all good and all quick. Not to mention easily undone if you change your mind about doing it that way.

What you see in my picture is how it looks before I’ve woven the ends in; I will use them to tighten up that line a bit. I used a spare length of yarn to bind off with, rather than my working yarn, for that reason (and the fact that my beginning strand was too short. Oops.)

It feels good to be creating.  Something warm, soft, pretty, useful, and brand new coming into the world in my hands.

Now all it’ll need is a wild feather in my cap. I have a black and white one on the mantle that the woodpecker once let go.

My hands needed interruptions and the day provided a few. But still. This is probably a record for me, sockknitting-wise. I can just see Gigi and Jasmin laughing at that not-yet-kitchenered toe; maybe I could trade them for a chocolate torte this time, what’s a little grafting among friends… (Nah, I can do it, it’s just seeing the fine dark stitches to weave in and out of them.)

My best pun of the day was over at Lene’s blog. After all, the snow shouldn’t fall till the trees are done coming home from their Autumn party. Having to make the snow melt off the sidewalk already… It was mapley wishful thinking on its Journey down to the ground that it could somehow hold winter off just a little longer with its bright yellows and reds, but as I told Lene, the trees sang, Don’t salt! De-leafing…

I felt a tug at my back at Purlescence (remember, they have book copies) and turned and laughed as someone said, “You know you’re in a yarn store when…”

I was wearing a storebought hoodie sweater with an unusual stitch pattern to it and the two knitters behind me were looking at the hood.  I took the thing off and handed it over to let them try to deconstruct it.

Meantime, the sock photo is overexposed and doesn’t do Dianne’s yarn justice at all. What might better is that Pamela came over to look at it more closely and then just stood there loving how it looked; after a moment of staring at it, she started telling me happy memories from when her kids were growing up that those colors, all those colors together, brought back for her. So perfect. Baking cookies and having the kids decorate them and kids, being kids, pouring all the colors they could into them, all the cheerful joys of blue red yellow pink green you name it.

She has a new grandson, born two days after mine.

She has a son in the service who just arrived home due to injuries.

Hey.  I bought two skeins for the yardage for a shawl, but somehow it demanded to become socks. So I only need the one I had with me.

To be continued.

Parker at two weeks and my beautiful daughter-in-law. I can’t wait to get to hold him too and to thank her and my son for him!

My husband’s almost-more-a-sister-than-an-aunt, who lives about 45 minutes away, happened to be in the area and called and stopped by today. She quilts and has been knitting lately for her young grandchildren, and I showed her the fine, soft, white Malabrigo Sock baby blanket and asked if she thought it was big enough?

Oh definitely!

So after she left I knitted for nearly another hour. I mean, if after all that work and after the blocking, if it came out too small to my own eyes–well, just better to add a little bit more.

I finally made myself cast off.   I ran the ends in to make it feel final.  There! Done! Stop! And it is blocking.

I think I’ll go looking for the very biggest, stretchiest hair elastic I can find and crochet all around it with the Malabrigo to make a slide to hold the blanket ends together: that way, Kim can wear the blanket as a thick, poofy, warm scarf if she wants to. Supersoft and machine washable and practical for a new mom.

And now back to the color that I escaped to from time to time. Back to the Creatively Dyed (can you believe I’m making) socks!

I’ve been telling myself you can’t have Second Sock Syndrome until you finish the first one, so I’d better get to it.

Ed. to add–top-down style, just got past the heel.

I checked the airport and flight info last night and we had more time than we thought–which is why I set my alarm for 5:00 am rather than, say, 4:30. Small favors.

Michelle was getting ready to go this morning and I sat down to peek at my comments while I waited.

And saw the one from Lorraine.

Now, my first reaction (note the sleep deprivation) was, how did spam get through?  But wait–I know that name. (Michelle, I thought towards her in the other room, take your time while I go check this out.) Looking in my inbox, yes, that was Lorraine from cottagecraftangora.com whom I’ve bought qiviut-blend yarn from. (That qiviut angora would take color really nicely and I only wish I could have angora in the house.)

We went off to the airport with me marveling out loud to my kids. John was driving; I simply was coming along to try to get every last minute out of our time together and to make sure there was no falling asleep at the wheel coming home. *Hugs* “Love you Mom!” “Love you ‘Shelle!” “Bye!”

We’re missing her keenly already.

With my focus on my kids while the two were home (John’s got a few more days), I’d totally forgotten: Lorraine had run a contest to name her handpaint 90/10 qiviut/merino, and I had spent a pleasant afternoon meandering around Google and Wikipedia and learning a whole lot about Arctic areas while trying to come up with something relevant to both the colors and the muskox. I’ve seen it snow on the Fourth of July in Banff, I’d read a little, (I loved the story of what the re-introduced buffalo did, thank you for the book, Scott!) I have a niece-in-law and cousin-in-law from Alaska, I knew enough to know I knew very little. Just enough that the contest was simply an  excuse now to go learn about a part of the world that intrigued me.

Pictures of a mountainside in bloom in the tundra: life being determined to celebrate itself in living color. No depth of cold could stop it.

A Canadian national park I’d never heard of.  The Arctic Cordillera Range, isn’t that a Spanish word? How did it get that, I wonder. (And if you search the word without the Arctic part, you find yourself over in the Phillippines.)

I was sure I’d disqualified myself by offering more than one potential name for some of the colorways as I tried to share briefly what I’d discovered, but it didn’t matter; it was surely such a nice yarn, someone else should get a chance to enjoy it. (I tried really really hard not to wish for it and to feel as generous as that sounds. I rather  failed.)  I could just picture someone doing all that work milling that fiber and then painting that yarn and then feeling stuck with having to take on names for her work that didn’t live up to what she was hoping for, so I was trying to stretch the range of possibilities. I told  her in my comment that since it’s her product, if she wanted to choose this name from this person and that from that, it seemed fair to me.

And then I promptly forgot all about it because I don’t win things nor did I deserve to.

A qiviut scarf and 100 g of that yarn to make my own with, too. A shawl’s worth. I can’t believe I get to have Aulavik.

Lorraine says there will be more contests.

I figure the least I can do to tell her thank you is to point you all to where to enter her next one while saying that it was very, very generous of her.

And that Arctic Blend that just came back into stock? My needles can tell you you can get a surprisingly big lace scarf out of one little ten-dollar 2-ply skein, a nice shimmer to it to go with the softness and warmth.

My needles are going to dance in delight in the blooming tundra!

Take one baby blanket today. Edging? Yes.  Decide to add edging all around.

Take one baby blanket, start edging.

Take one baby blanket. Frog edging.

Take one baby blanket. Start edging.

Take one baby blanket to the couch, put it down, and go play three board games (two of them totally new to me) with the kids and one of their new-to-me friends and have a wonderful time.

It’s all good.

The Malabrigo hat for Michelle. Done.

The first of the old amaryllis bulbs  started sending up a bud right on Christmas day, Nature itself in celebration; it suddenly occurs to me I could hunt through old blog posts to find out what color it’s going to be.

Kim’s mom, with love, supplied us with new pictures of the baby.

We went to a party tonight where old friends were celebrating their daughter’s engagement to a really nice guy.

The piano is tuned.

Getting to see, through photos and videoconferencing so far, the grandson who quacks like a duck. (Heh.)

It’s all good.

December 2010: it was worth going through 2009 to get to it.

Merry Christmas and Happy Winterdance, everyone!

You knit a strip of braided cable to the length around your head, sew the ends, then pick up the stitches sideways and knit upwards from there. Pretty nifty idea. I was still at the long narrow strip and it looked like nothing that made sense.

The hubby mentioned last night that he thought a wrapped pattern printout and needles didn’t cut it, and so somehow I wasn’t working on the baby blanket today.

Nobody paid attention to what I was knitting. (Maybe studiously not paying attention to it.) Nobody was going to ask me–clearly, I had to take matters into my own hands:

“You know what I’m making?”

Just the one kid in the room and it’s not for him. He shakes his head no.

“An asparagus cozy.”

Blink.

“I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know!”

A little water, a little waiting. And now you can see the slight shimmer to the woolly Malabrigo Sock-y goodness, the depth of the pattern, and oh by the way you can pull it through my wedding ring–and it’s a blanket.

Or will be, in about a bajillion more knitting hours.  Carrying it to Nina’s annual Christmas party and showing it off to her was fun but doesn’t seem to have added any length to it by just admiring its lacy looks. (The chocolate torte that came too was nowhere to be found when it was time to come home again. I think it entered the nibs-less protection program. Or ran off with the ChocolateNess Monster.)

Right then. Back to work.

Tiny yarn, small needles, a large stitch count, and after all the knitting I did today, (which, granted, given the season and the children home, wasn’t what it might have been) it is measuring officially one inch shorter than this morning.

Sometimes, knitting acts like a cat.

A squirtgun effect will make it behave.  I will go rinse it and set it out still on the needles to dry, a quasi-block.  Let’s see if we can get Socks here to stretch its paws a bit.

———-

p.s.  For those who’ve known the Provo Tabernacle and haven’t heard yet.  I have fond memories from college of the incredible acoustics in that building: of being in the upper balcony facing the front and my neighbor’s adorable little elf of a four-year-old being so ready to be done with sitting quietly up there. (There was no air conditioning. Lots of people. Heat rises.)  She leaped to her feet in the middle of the meeting after one early speaker said the magic word Amen, exclaiming in a voice that carried around the entire interior, “We go now Daddy?!”

And now the building has left the elves.

First: there’s a local couple, Tuck and Patti–our family sat under the trees listening to them giving a free concert in front of City Hall once back when our kids were younger, their way, they said, of giving thanks to the community that had believed in them before they were successful.

There is nobody who plays guitar like Tuck. And Patti’s voice!

Being a dedicated Birkenstock wearer, I always got a kick out of her High Heeled Shoes blues song. And this, courtesy of my husband, is what made me think of it. Comfy looking, huh? Something to heel all that ails a body.

The other thing today:

I went to Purlescence to knit among friends, having missed them last night and being in terrible withdrawal. Not to mention, I couldn’t wait to make a delivery. Richard had helped put me up to it. (“I think they’re down that aisle, dear.” –Thanks!)

I walked in the door and handed a certain someone a wrapped present (oh good, she IS here).

She did this furtive quick glance to the sides, because clearly I was just handing one present only and only to her. She whispered, “Should I open it?”

“Yes, sure, go ahead.” (Thinking, don’t you dare not, I’ve been in too giddy an anticipation for you not to.)

The tag read: Because sometimes, that’s just the way the cooking crumbles.

Huh?  She held it down out of sight of the others, carefully working at the paper,  trying to peer through the growing crack at the seam as she gently tugged, the wrapping finally coming off for her to see–and she screamed! Threw her chair back, leaping up, just screaming with laughter, holding it up and showing it to the others and exclaiming, “This is the. BEST. EVER!!!”

Last week, she’d told us all of going out to dinner with her husband and being given a dish with so much more food than she could eat and that was just totally inundated with bacon. Ooh, bacon! And there was so much!  She took the leftovers home.

She woke up in the morning looking forward to that bacon (you know? I never did hear what the rest of the dish was. I don’t think it mattered.) She got up in just so much anticipation of walking into that kitchen downstairs for the rest of it, but her husband, who had had to leave for work earlier than her, had eaten it.

All of it.  Gone.

She told us this last week with an I-know-this-is-silly look and tone of, this was almost grounds… (for pouting, yeah, that’s it. Pouting!)

The wrapping paper fell away.  And she saw: a giant Costco package of cooked crumbled bacon.

I told her as I was walking out the shop door later and she reached to give me another hug before I left, “Best. Response. EVER!!”

Nina and I braved the southbound traffic tonight and went to Green Planet in Campbell.

Going around the circle at their Knit Night, when it was my turn to show off my knitting, I had nothing except the project in my hands. The post office had beaten them all to it.

But boy, have I got a long way to go yet!

The postal service here has major problems, has for years.

And so it happened that I noticed that hey, it’s time to renew on my car but why didn’t the bill come? I called my mechanic, got the car smog-inspected today, then drove up to the DMV to walk it through in person, glad I’d remembered it was that time of year.

Where I got told the post office had returned my registration as undeliverable.

Like when they told my credit card company that I was addressee unknown despite our having lived in the same house over 20 years. (Yeah, that got me online fast.)

Or the times… Never mind. Pride and suppressed outrage are not a pretty combination.  Here we go again.

So I went looking for ways out of those emotions.  First, though, go do what needs to be done.

I pulled out my ball of yarn and empty needles to get started. I’d been expecting to plunk down on the floor, because I can’t do standing for long, but it turns out the DMV provides chairs now and gives you a number as you walk in the door; so much better now.  I caught the occasional eye looking at my growing stitches and smiled back across the rows of seats.

There was a young father with a small child and a one-year-old in his arms who was delightful, then tired, and then, finally, had just plain had enough of holding still in a strange place full of strange people.

A smiling snail to go over his finger would make a cute mascot for the place; there you go.

People behind them whom they didn’t even see lit up just like they did, glad for a dad and his boys: unexpected gifts of noticing are magical all around and their kindness made my day.

My turn at last.  The clerk, who had had to put up with endless fidgety people who wanted to be anywhere else and the endless mechanical voice summoning “J zero one nine, please come to window 8. J zero one nine” many times an hour eight hours a day day in day out, drowning out conversation, gave me a tired smile in the late afternoon and asked me briefly what I was knitting.  She was patient with my struggling hearing. I thanked her and for her help getting everything fixed.

Got my sticker. What a relief.  Coming home down the freeway, I wished the smog check had gotten finished earlier in the day and that the wait had been shorter in that line; I hit major rush hour, Christmas lights all lighting up red ahead in unison.

Forget it. I exited quite early, even though it meant doing 25 mph roads all the way across town. At least I’d be moving instead of just sitting there–I had done enough of that.

And so I found myself behind a car that had CAUTION CAUTION plastered across the back, a driving school sign on top. I was behind it for quite awhile. It must take nerves of steel to get in a car with an utter novice; at least, when I was teaching my kids to drive, they had already had two sessions with an instructor first.

I watched the driver overcorrect a bit trying to get safely past cars parked along the well-traveled road.

Finally, it widened to two lanes each way and I pulled up alongside at the long light. I thought about it. I waited for the green. I finally thought, oh, why not? Down went my window, and at the sound both the driver and her instructor turned. (His was open.)

I smiled and called over to her, “You’re doing great!”

She blushed and laughed, delighted and totally embarrassed, just as I knew she would be–I’ve been a teen and I’ve raised four of them–and the gruff-looking instructor actually smiled too. Well cool.

The light turned. She gave it a slow, cautious go.  On our way. And now that she wasn’t in front of me, I worked hard to stay at 25 and be a good example, because I knew she was watching me and I had darn well better! I was suddenly as self-conscious as a teenager with a strange adult in the car about trying to drive just right.

If only she knew so she could laugh at that too.