Thank you, everybody. I was doing better today but was afraid to push it, so I waited: I had Knit Night coming up and I really wanted to be able to knit there but I also knew there would be a lot of knit/stop/laugh/knit/stop/swap stories going on at Purlescence to keep me from overdoing it–and it was so. It was the best way to ease into it. (Pass the icepacks.)

It was so good to be among knitters. Including one I haven’t seen in far too long–I didn’t even recognize Ava at first, visiting from out of state.  She, bless her, recognized me.

I am so glad I didn’t let a little lupus get in the way of my going!

You know those days when you do so many things so outside your normal routine that it feels like you’ve lived a week in the space of a waking?

One of those was that John and I, on a lark, drove up to Burlingame today. He drove; I wound a ball of Malabrigo Rios he’d picked out.

Okay, back up a little.

When I was ten and my family was doing that long drive circling the entire country with a little of Mexico (one afternoon) and Canada (several weeks) thrown in, Maryland to California and around and back that summer, one of the things we apparently did (I don’t remember it) was that we stopped in a Danish bakery in Racine, Wisconsin. (Mom and Dad, correct me if it goes further back than that.) Kringle? What’s that?  …OH!

The end result is that my folks have ordered kringle from that bakery every Christmas for four decades, through a change in generation and ownership quite awhile ago. The bakery does them in a racetrack oval, rather than the traditional pretzel-ish shape, and the things cover an entire cookie sheet: flaky dough rolled in butter to almost phyllo layers, filled with cooked-down fresh fruit or cinnamon pecan. It takes them three days to make them, and for many years you had to order by Halloween for the holiday season or you were plain out of luck.

We carried on the tradition here too about every other year or so, and a few years ago when we did, something was…different.  I checked the ingredients. When did they start cutting corners and putting in hydrogenated fat for part of the butter?

I googled for other bakers; Racine has become famous for kringles over the years.

I asked about the hydrogenated fat issue.

I struck out.

Kringles are a splurge in money and calories, and if they weren’t going to do it right, there was no point. Besides, Michelle can’t eat them anymore anyway.

But they are our tradition.  And Michelle’s not going to be home yet at my birthday.  So with rationalizations in hand, this year I went looking again.  One bakery in Illinois looked promising. One in Solvang quite surprised me–my friend John from Stitches and his wife own the Village Spinning and Weaving shop in Solvang in, judging by the pictures and the addresses, the same building! Small world.

And I found Copenhagen Bakery up in Burlingame, certainly within reach. Hey. Why not try it out?

And so John and I braved the rain and set out on an adventure. We did call ahead to make sure there would actually be one there.

They make the traditional pretzel shape, the traditional almond-paste filling. Only. (At least that they call by that name.)  I guess our fruit-filled oval ones were like chow mein in San Francisco: changed/reinvented by immigrants after they landed in the States. I explained to the woman at Copenhagen why we were experimenting and trying out their kringle and I asked if they put any hydrogenated fats in it?

She was horrified. No!

This evening, I finally closed the box to keep the three of us from finishing off the entire pastry in one day.

As for the yarn? John had said he needed me to go buy him a hat, and I was surprised and amused and countered that we had a ton of hats right here. Some Assembly Required. (An amused, *MOM*.) And so he chose the Azules colorway.

He didn’t really want me to post his picture with the hat in progress stuck on his head for measuring, four needle ends waving around his face.

But it is done. He has his hat. And we have a kringle source.

According to the post office, it was supposed to get there today. I have the tracking receipt around somewhere.

And here’s the other part of the story.  Last Christmas, I dragged my daughter into Purlescence and asked her advice on helping me pick out a yarn for an old friend whose wife I have yet to meet. Sam picked out a particular one that met the specs and that she thought would look good on anybody.

I knitted it up: after some thought, I used the Water Turtles pattern that I’d designed for my lifelong friend Karen. It just felt like the right one, even though it might have been cool to do one of the new ones? But, somehow, nah…

I finished it. It was time to tell the couple I’d made it for. And yet… Something felt not quite…  I didn’t know what.

And so it sat there. This quite honestly frustrated me at times because I really did want to get going on what I thought I’d started, giving-wise. But it was stubborn and it just wouldn’t go. Huh.

Okay, then, whatever. And I started keeping my eyes open for just the right shade of green to somehow fix that one, since it had been green and so green it was going to be if that green somehow wasn’t it. Must be the green’s fault.

I did not find anything that felt like *it*.  Stumped. Totally. For months now.

I finally pulled that Water Turtles shawl out recently to look it over, wondering why I’d made it, then, and it hit me like a boat straying under the falls at Niagara: duh! Karen’s widowed sister-in-law! Karen’s pattern! It’s soft, it’s half silk, the color matches the Alaskan pines, and if ever someone needed a warm hug and best wishes–what took me so long! I checked with Karen first to make sure Sally would like that shade; she gave me an enthusiastic go-ahead.

Today it should have arrived.

And today, despite the fact that we don’t do Black Friday crowds in our family–well, but Purlescence is okay, right? The owners had been there since 6 am in their jammies.  I got there in the late afternoon.  Old friends were there in abundance, I got to play with someone’s baby–

–And I found the exact, the most perfect, the most wonderful shade of green that somehow felt like the one I’d been waiting for all this time. I’d never seen it before.  Bingo. There you go.

I ignored it. I avoided it. I went all over the store, Kaye helping, looking for that color in something else, knowing if it wasn’t soft enough I wouldn’t buy it, but looking.

There was no other.  It had me and it knew it. I bought one ball, 230 yards, one lacy scarf in Cashmere Superior (brushed cashmere blended with silk) coming up.

It’s the right project. It’s the right yarn.  I got the shawl to whom it was absolutely meant for all along–and I hadn’t even ever heard Sally’s name yet while I was buying her her yarn.

To everything turn, turn, turn.  Now the sense that I’d been waiting for all this time is finally here: I have the exact right yarn for the person I started it all out for and it will be in their hands on its own right day, whyever that may be that I cannot know.  Their turn is coming up.

They don’t even know they’ve been waiting. Yet.

I’m going to punt on the wordplay tonight (although, I might say that throwing out the department store ads that come with the paper like I just did before you even look at them is a Kohl-ectomy, and running them through the shredder will get you Kohl slaw) and go straight to the knitting: 15 rows today and I’m ready for the edging and into the final stretch.

6735 stitches.  And each one counts.

I cranked up the stereo to knit by and wondered when the mockingbird will be doing a Dan Fogelberg impersonation?

Earlier in the day, clearly the hawk dove in for his mourning meal. Michelle Millar writes that doves have a lot of dust in their feathers that they leave behind when they hit something.

It had imprinted on this house as its place of safety but discovered it to be a bit of a pane.

And yet I do think it had a ghost of a chance. I found no flurry of feathers. From all I can tell, it escaped the worst and it lived.

And the mockingbird de-clears the stained glass artist a one-hit wonder.

(Thirteen rows today, twenty-eight to go.)

YES!!

Boy, that was quick. The folks at Cottage Craft had me wait a bit while they dyed more, not having enough in the same lot, and then threw in an extra 20g as a thank you for my patience. I was surprised and very very delighted. I’d bought enough for one of my shawls (a few more skeins than shown) and now I have a little extra breathing room just in case.

Is it as soft as the stuff Rachel spun up for me? No, but hers was 100% qiviut from the raw fiber, painstakingly dehaired by hand. This is half merino.  Still. This is well carded, well spun, a fragile, fine fiber made as sturdy as one could ask it to be, and I wish I could reach out a skein to everybody through the screen and go oooh, feel this!

I do still have to go finish that baby alpaca project first, and it’s in laceweight so it’ll take me a good week or so.

Meantime, my friend Krys did a grocery run for us tonight.  We are quite grateful; Richard seems to be coming down with my germs.

p.s. and Karen? If you think you recognize that background, you do: that’s the dogwood quilt you helped tie for me around the time of our high school graduation.  Dogwood trees are rare out here but prized because, though the trees grow slowly, their blossoms last a very long time. The pink ones are, as they have always been, my favorite.

A few more thoughts on the cochlear implant.  I’ve lived through brain arguments. Once was when the brain was telling me up was in two different directions at once: the right one, noted visually and muscularly, and the other ever and forever to the left, falling. It KNEW, just KNEW… No you don’t know! Stop it!

After my car got smashed into ten years ago, I had to learn how to walk despite that inner screaming match. I still fall down when there’s too much or too unfamiliar visual stimulus throwing me off unless I can counter it with enough tactile feedback. Hence the cane. Sticks not groans will brake my bones.

And there was a short while there where I had to wear an old hearing aid and a new one with differing sound responses. It was hard not to feel irritable, sitting in church trying to listen to the speakers and music while finding my consciousness being jerked between one side incoming vs the other, unmatched and unmeshed.

So I have some background experience keeping me from rushing into the implant on one side thing. And yet… Writing yesterday’s post showed me I really have been needing to simply go ask more questions and stop hanging back from finding out more. And I need to try to find out during this open enrollment period whether it would be covered.  Some do some don’t.

I also realized, as I answered comments yesterday, that I will always be able to plug the hearing-aid side via wires I already own into an Ipod (note that I don’t quite own an Ipod yet, but that can be fixed) and listen to my music that way. It won’t be communal listening; my children will exclaim, No no that’s *quite* all right, Mom, do NOT worry about that!

Heh.

It’ll all work out.

Meantime. The feeders were deserted today. I didn’t see the hawks, although one had clearly taken prey from one of them before I got up. No sign of the neighbors’ cats. I knew the wildlife is aware of far more going on than I, but it was pretty quiet out there.

So I scattered a few nut pieces outside in the afternoon, bringing me Instant Black Squirrel at last. Just one.

I’ve noticed that if a squirrel pronounces all-ee all-ee in-come free, it’s safe, the birds follow immediately. And so it was. Instant flock.

I’ve wondered about that. Is it because squirrels have a sense of smell for an extra layer of warning, which birds, flying through the clear air, don’t really need and don’t have? Do the birds watch the squirrels for tail flicks? Clearly they do.  Michelle Millar in her “The Birds and Beasts Were There” is convinced that the birds who never returned to her after the great Coyote Fire in Santa Barbara had simply died in the night, asleep and unable to see or smell the oncoming disaster.

Don’t know. I do know, when I’m willing to share a few stale nuts with a squirrel, my birds come back to me.

Meantime, (I know, I’m meandering like bird hops here) I’m picking up steam and back to knitting again. I celebrated with baby alpaca, wanting to wrap this project up before my qiviut arrives.  Knitterly FYI: I bought a skein of their arctic blend, which I’m told will be back in stock in six weeks or so, and it passed my test: yes, it is totally de-haired and very soft, as anything with qiviut in it should be, and so I ordered the 50/50 to try that out too. If you hear a delighted squeal of YES! at the doorstep, that will be me with the box.

And I will crank the music up high and knit.

I’ve been hesitating for the last several hours to write this because it’s not about me and I don’t want to make it sound like it is.

This morning as I was deciding what to wear to church today, the thought came, wear a scarf. Not a shawl today.

And a few minutes later I found myself thinking, I need to knit me a pink scarf, while  envisioning some baby alpaca in my stash I might use for it. It would go with so many things.

Wait–say what? But I *have* a pink scarf. In that shade.  I kind of shook my head at the silliness of the thought.  I had knit it, not only out of baby alpaca, but out of a splurge of royal baby alpaca, Blue Sky Alpacas’ brand, the finest micron-count grade one can buy as far as I know and that my hands have ever felt. I’d knitted it up for my next book project and it was safely tucked away in wait.

But on impulse I pulled it out anyway. Wait–I never ran the second end in? (I always do the first going all the way across as I purl the first row; then it is not only done, there is matching spare yarn in the thing itself should the project ever need mending later.)

Well then. And I ran that remaining end through the cast-off row and put the scarf on. The shade of pink didn’t actually quite match what I had on but I persuaded myself that it was okay and wondered…? as we headed out the door to church. Curious. I promised myself to stay open to whatever might arise.

It was Fast Sunday (details here.)

And one of the people who got up was a man we’d never seen before. He said he and his wife were there on their way to LA. He talked about finding out he was quite possibly going blind, and as a graphic artist, this was a really really hard place to find himself in. (I thought, and for your wife. Very much so.) But after much prayer and working through all the emotions that come with such a situation, he had come to a place (and I imagine from my own experiences he was probably constantly having to work to stay in that place) where he could say, Thy will be done.

He knew God loved him and that was all that mattered.  Between them all, the details would work out somehow some way.

And as he spoke, I remembered a story from a book I had read long ago, written by a woman who raised angora rabbits for the handspinning and knitting communities, the title long forgotten to memory. (ed. to add: I *think* it was “Angora” by Erica Lynne.) She told of a young man who had come to her, hoping that she would make him a soft angora scarf for his grandmother: she was mostly deaf now and mostly blind and very old, but, he told her, and I will never forget the words, “She can still feel.”

Moved, the woman spun and knitted and made him that scarf, taking his love, adding her own, and making it tangible for a lovely old lady she had never met.

I sought out the man after the meeting was over. I told him about my grandmother being a concert pianist and having taught music at the University of Utah 90 years ago, and how she’d picked out my piano teacher–but that I had started going noticeably deaf by my teens.

“Aspirin,” I added. “I was allergic to aspirin.  It took them 17 years to figure it out.” (Actually, thinking later, more than that, I was 31 when a very astute ENT put all the clues together.)

“Aspirin!” he exclaimed.

I told him how much I appreciated his willingness to learn to trust that God knew what He was doing.

And then (trying not to blather) I tried to describe, in as few words as possible, what royal baby alpaca was. The softest of the softest of my favorite fiber to knit.

And then I got to see the love and warmth for her that came across his face as I told him it was for his wife.

That said it all. The impulse was true.

———

p.s. A note to that couple: if the color’s not quite what you want, let me know and I will gladly overdye it for you.

This was a test. This was only a test of the emergent-see-baby! Momcasting system. If this had been a true emergent-see-baby!… Hopefully, the little one will wait another two months before making an appearance.

I was off to San Diego this morning for a baby shower for my daughter-in-law, and home again tonight, and I can hardly believe it’s still the same day without a tessaract or two thrown in there.

There was a fellow knitter there who had knitted a couple of hats for the baby and wanted to know how I did the top of mine without the stitches getting too tight to work? Since mine had no seam.  So I tried to give her a good visualization of how to use two circular needles, curving away from each other and intersecting at the center, and how you are always working from one tip of needle A to the other tip of needle A, then switch to needle B at the intersection. I think she got it.

I had a really, really good time. My daughter describes Kim’s mom as one of the most gracious women she’s ever met, and I absolutely agree.  We are very fortunate to have all of them in our family circle.

My son picked me up at the airport and took me back again later, so I got a little one-on-one time with him–and he had to show me where he and Kim had bought me my Christmas yarn, so I actually even got in some local yarn store time: Needleworks, with a very gracious owner.

And a fabulous time was had by all. (I did it! And even though some of the set-up was outside, they quietly held it all inside with the sliding doors closed so it was completely safe for me re the lupus. Noticed and much appreciated.)

Do not forget my camera card do not forget my camera card do not forget my… As it sits in my computer for this post.

Peachy-pink Shepherd’s Choice, a skein I bought pre-Rios to try out; the folks at Purlescence told me it was their softest wool worsted.  Our niece and nephew are about to move to Boston from southern California, and I wanted to keep their newborn twin girls warm.

The grandson baby blanket is done. The sweater is done. The first hat is done. The unassembled bootie in the photo is now done. All the ends on everything are run in at long long last, the items are all wrapped, the cards are written and signed.

There. The camera card is in the camera is in the carry-on. And tomorrow I get to go deliver everything in person.

And darned if I can decide which knitting project in the queue to start on the flight. I know–it’s nice to have that level of problem.

My first pair of baby booties ever is done. They may fit the kid when he’s about two, the ends aren’t run in nor the buttons decided on, but there’s this tremendous sense of breaking past my inner barriers on knitting footwear: I did it! (If you need inspiration, look here at all these other Saartje’s. Talk about cute!)

Something caught my eye and I looked up.

Ah.  Playing field hawk-y today.  That’s why the yard’s been so empty. I thought of Smokey; nice touch, boss! It’s beautiful!

One small finch, maybe hungry enough to finally risk it for a late lunch, flitted alone onto the stained glass birdfeeder tucked far under the awning  into the porch where it’s a ten-foot-wide alcove, surrounded tightly by floor-to-ceiling glass on three sides. I was standing just inside, looking out.

That hawk watched it.

And I watched the hawk. I had never seen it go from perch to pursuit.

It spent about five minutes sizing me up, whether I would move, whether I was a threat; I was inside, yes, but visually between it and its prey.

I held still.

I kept waiting.

I finally cautiously reached for the camera. It was okay with that. I took the first shot. Okay. I opened the sliding door and hit the zoom button. Okay.

I closed the door quietly and waited.

The little house finch was on the far side from it, dipping deep into its sunflowers and could not see the hawk. The Cooper’s waited to see if it had been tipped off. No.

And then all at once, it spread its wings wide and I got to watch it do its own zooming in, a tight horseshoe manuever in that alcove, clearly aware of the walls of glass while focused on its prey. The finch, startled as this massive bird suddenly careened at it around the feeder, made a break for it and dashed for the treetops, the hawk gaining on it by sheer size of wingbeat as they were lost to view.

The birdfeeder swung wildly in their wake.

Coopers average a 31″ wingspan and their tails are long.  Watching that hawk do that maneuver in that small space at that speed right in front of me at eye level as I stood there a few feet away was something to remember forever. Wow.

That royal baby alpaca/cashmere/silk yarn last night was called Epiphany, and this morning I had one.

Trying to get ready for Knit Night yesterday, I was between projects and dithering what to do next so I grabbed a longtime UFO out of the back of the line-up, figuring that would make me at least make a little progress on it before I went back to the baby knitting. It was done to this point, right?

No. It was not. Okay, where, then… Okay, found my place.

Needed to switch it from a junk-drawer-reject timeout needle and onto my good Holz and Steins.  I found myself squinting, and another knitter laughed when I said I remembered now: I wasn’t going to work on this laceweight again till I had a new glasses prescription.

But I (deliberately) hadn’t brought anything else, so I quietly plugged away at it–when I wasn’t being distracted by those skeins. (Dudes! Purlescence totally scooped Webs!)

The upshot is that it hit me this morning that I hadn’t made progress for a *year* on that thing, though I very much wanted it done, for a reason I hadn’t been able to quite clearly see before. There were things I’d learned since I’d started it, small improvements that could be–I think… If I swatch…

So I spent the day ripping back to zero, redesigning it, trying it out, liking it immensely, rewriting, counting, redoing, proofreading, counting counting counting.

And as I worked, I had that Epiphany yarn over at the shop dangling as future reward for when I actually, finally finish this. I’m glad I didn’t buy any: when you don’t own it yet, it doesn’t own you yet, either: it can’t jump in line, it can’t hog the needles, it can’t thwart my intentions to persevere with the squinty laceweight, it just has to wait its turn. Anticipation is a happy thing–and great incentive is too.

And the new shawl design is very very good. I am very very pleased. That long timeout, along with an hour and a half of not being quite pleased with it but not putting it down, helped me see it all with a new eye.  Getting it exactly right was so worth the wait.

Thank you, everybody. I talked to Dharma Trading Co, purveyor of all things dyeing, and they cautioned that the chemicals that would reliably get the dye out would wreck the feel of the cashmere and, they said, miss the point of such a sweater. Their advice was wash, wash, wash, gently, and hope.

O—– said they were passing the word along and would get back to me shortly. Okay. Now that I’ve had a day to chill, reading all your notes, thank you, you really helped, even just by speaking up.

The best antidote, of course, was to finally run in the four yarn ends on a project I’d blocked–yup, dry now, it’s ready–go off to Target, buy envelopes and mailing tape, and then a little later, after checking my email for details, get out to the post office. One book (yeah, that book) sold (directly, thanks) and in the mail, and one…

And (whistle) typing that sentence is when it hits me that, oh. Right.  I forgot to photograph it. *Bad* knitblogger!

And there, in my own mailbox, was a gift of beautiful, beautiful shots of the coastline, taken by my childhood friend Scott, one of the B’s I drove to Pacific Grove to see. If I couldn’t stand in the sun admiring the surf and the fog and the steep hills rising from the water, he could and he did and he gave that tideline to me. Gorgeous. Well done, Scott, and such an antidote for petty disappointments. Such good timing!

And in the glow of that, I went off to Purlescence tonight and they had a new line in from Cascade: royal baby alpaca, which is the finest grade you can possibly buy and hard to find, mixed with cashmere and silk. Swoon.

I told Richard that when I got home.

“So how many skeins did you buy?”

I didn’t.

“You DIDN’T?!” He was genuinely stunned.

I couldn’t make up my mind. The deep blue or the wine-red: both colors were exactly my shades. I’ll have to come back.

Yeah, I think they’ll see me again. Happens.

One of the things about being around old friends you haven’t seen in a long time is that you get to learn more about them–and you also tend to learn more about yourself.

When I drove down to Pacific Grove three weeks ago, it was right at the beginning of cooler weather and I knew  Monterey Bay is always a tad chilly anyway; I put my favorite silk jacket (picture if you scroll down here, under Karin‘s yarn) over my blouse on my way out the door.

I have short arms. Sleeves tend to ride down partway over my hands if a blouse otherwise fits.  Get the petite size, it’ll be too short elsewhere; I just plain have short arms.

And as a knitter, that bugs me: the cuff edges bump against my knitting, they catch on my stitches, they catch at my project when I go to turn it around at the end of a row–and there’s also the problem that, as a sun-sensitive lupus patient, I’m supposed to wear finely-woven long sleeves all the time. They’re part of my cage.

I’ve gotten in the habit of folding the cuffs back. Poof, end of problem. And a little bit of defiance of disease.

Visiting with the B’s, one layer of cuffs I could ignore. Two, and when not yet used to cold-weather clothes for the season–I kept absent-mindedly trying to fold both layers back off my wrists, the heavy jacket ones flopping back down repeatedly.

Looking back, it probably looked pretty silly. Unhand me, you silk you!

I thought of that today in a cold house with two layers of long sleeves on again, bugging me, and just too cold to roll them up. I finally realized it was keeping me from finishing that sweater. Well then. I went and did my treadmill time, got warmed up, got the cuffs properly out of my way, and voila. One baby sweater.

Except the button. I need me a good, round, safe for little fingers, dragon-looking button to top it off.

I know, I know, pictures. When it’s not so late.

For the record: Mondays are being a Good Thing around here:

The Crohn’s Lite is much improved. The yank-ees, ditto.

The carry-around lace scarf project of three weeks actually got finished and is blocking.

I wanted to say the baby sweater is done, but it’s a dozen 99-stitch rows shy; the wrist is carping, there’s a tunnel ahead, and I’m stopping the train under icy conditions.

And for anyone who didn’t see the looks-real knit skeleton yet, it is really, really cool.  Very Deb-bone-air.  The artist’s site for it is here; scroll down to see the intense level of detail he put into it. Happy almost-Halloween!