Nina threw herself a birthday party and invited her friends. She told me to bring my knitting so she could work on hers. So I did.

I pulled mine out first, a white lace cowl in Malabrigo Rios at about the 2/3 mark, and then she showed off her much more elaborate project. Gorgeous. Another friend there was also a knitter. And one said with some regret that it had skipped a generation and she didn’t–but she took a picture of what I was working on to send to her (daughter I think? It was loud in there) because she so admired it.

Turns out she was the woman who had translated all those letters Nina had found in her mother’s closet that had been sent back and forth between relatives in concentration camps during the Holocaust.

Pattern repeat #12, done. (Checking the time) it really needs at least one more after that, all I can hope for is she doesn’t leave early. She and someone else got quite into a conversation–good, good, keep talking, guys.

Repeat #13 got done. That’s shorter than I normally  prefer but it was just long enough to look okay to my eyes. I cast off.

Sitting next to me looking the other way as they talked, she didn’t notice at all.

I retrieved my purse, where there’s always a yarn needle in the change pocket of the wallet. I sat down on the floor in the kitchen where I knew her view of me would be blocked and wove those ends in. I should have some folding scissors in there somewhere… No sign of them. I asked Nina. She got hers and snipped those two little umbilical cords to its beginnings off and the thing was born.

The interpreter of those letters was dumbfounded. And ecstatic.

I explained that its nubbly texture would disappear and the lace lie flat and stretch out the moment it touched water, it’s the nature of the thing.

Totally fine by her, and she put it on and hugged me.

She took it off again to stroke the softness of the Rios.

And at last she did leave a little early, like I’d had a feeling she might.

I was a little wistful that I didn’t have one to give to any of the other friends but they all said that for all those hours she’d put into doing that great gift for our Nina and her family she had earned every stitch of it. And she had.

Nina said as we were leaving, That was the right person for that. That was perfect.

Thumper’s Admonition, I’ve been reminding myself the last few days.

But oh man this is such a howler of a mansplainer.

A cotton and ramie sweater from the ’80’s is good quality because it doesn’t pill much.

I can’t think of any cotton sweater I’ve ever had pilling.

This wool sweater (picture on left) has been worn by two generations!

Yeah, your mom wore that till one of her kids put it through the wash and now the body’s shrunk with the arms gone gorilla by comparison and your little sister wears it now. AmIright? Wool sweaters and high belly button exposures don’t normally go in the same season.

Manufacturers wash sweaters again and again like distressed jeans to soften them but it makes them wear out faster!

What manufacturer? Where? Has anyone ever heard of that? Yes a few bespoke ones will wash the mill oils out of the animal fiber yarns so that the customer will get the full effect of the softness they’re paying for. That coating is for keeping stray fibers from blowing all over the mill, but it feels like dried hair mousse (or whatever they call glop-for-hair now) so that’s something you want them to do. Again, that’s to remove part of the manufacturing process from the natural fiber and I can assure him they only do it once.

Then he goes on to say that the older the wool sweater, the softer. See this old Norwegian one? It’s soft because it’s old.

Absolute horsefeathers. If we dig a wooly mammoth out of the permafrost we should be able to just about melt into its butteriness, right?

Age has nothing to do with it. You cannot make it softer by wearing it more.

Wool’s softness depends on the micron count of the fibers, with much varying between sheep breeds and on how tightly it’s spun. I once made a bit of angora rabbit feel like the roughest burlap on my wheel. Putting twist into fibers is how you make yarn in the first place: you add friction to hold them together. The more twist, the rougher feel but also the less pilling, the harder it will wear and the less soft it will be. It is a direct tradeoff that every cashmere manufacturer in particular has to make on how they want to present their wares to their customers. Longevity? Or immediate swooning at first touch? With good hand washing either one should be fine.

He mentions sending it to the dry cleaner to keep it clean. I have a number of $5-10 thrifted cashmere sweaters that came my way because someone did exactly that and lost what they’d paid all that money for.

Dry cleaning wrecks the softness of cashmere. A very careful hand washing restores it. Like magic. A second hand washing even more so. Water+temperature change+agitation=felting. That means use lukewarm water, NOT cold despite anything anyone ever told you. Lower it into the soapy, still water, let it soak, raise it back out, fill the sink with rinse water without letting the water pour over the sweater–that counts as agitation–and lower it back into the now-full sink again. Lukewarm lukewarm lukewarm, I can’t stress it enough. Roll it in a white towel to get the water out.

You can spin it out in the washer *if* the water won’t spray on it, but the force of the twirl will encourage any fiber ends to fluff out of the yarn. A friend of mine who went with the washer kind of half-bemoaned that her cashmere looked like angora rabbit now and to her eye less professional wear when she wanted to be taken seriously as a lawyer.

Etc. Most of you all know all that, I know.

He recommends merino or (blink) shetland wool as a substitute for cashmere if you want something soft.

Now, historically one of the reasons for raising Shetlands was the variability within individual fleeces and their dual coat, rare in domesticated sheep. The neck hair was for the finest, softest fit-for-a-queen (literally, historically) lace shawl that you could pull through a wedding ring with the fiber as fine as 10 microns, and I’m sure that’s where the notion that shetland is soft comes from. Cashmere is under 19 microns, often 12-15. The rest of the Shetland is in the mid-20’s on up to as much as 35.

That scratchiness and the guard hairs help keep you warm when it’s really really cold. I never knew that scratchy wool was a plus till I lived in New Hampshire, but one -27F day taught me things I’d never known. Anything to keep your blood flowing near the surface. So go stab your skin a little.

I moved to California instead.

Anyway, so you have a male writer quoting a male blogger and trying to explain how to pick out a quality sweater, and his editor was surely male, too.

Because it clearly never occurred to them to run his piece past Robin Givhan there. Who wrote about fashion and style so well that she got promoted to more general commentary. She might be able to tell them something about choosing clothes well.

But she is female. And she is black.

And so the guy wrote this absolutely ridiculous piece full of misinformation that he was sure was true because what could she or any other woman who’s ever bought a sweater ever have told him?

And they not only put it on the front page, they put it in their Optimist newsletter to get it a bigger audience.

At that point it was, I’m sorry, Thumper. But I’m sure you understand.

The microphone wasn’t working and I couldn’t hear a thing and the Zoom seemed to be turned off during the second meeting because the mic wasn’t working and there was a borrowed temporary setup and the program’s attempts at captions earlier had been utter gobbledygook.

I got pulled away a moment and on coming back in at the rear found myself sitting in the way back so as not to interrupt.

Not at first, but eventually, I pulled out my carry-around project and hoped I wouldn’t bother anybody but there was no reason to waste the time and just sit there. I don’t usually knit in church. I knit in church.  Just not the main meeting.

Later I put in my two rows on the afghan and then played with colors to see what should come next. The sun sneaked off with their intensities though and I put the project on hold till it brings them back tomorrow and apologizes for the theft. Sunsets are like that. You’ve got to watch them.

I did my knitting group Zoom with my carry-around project in hand till my wrists needed a rest.

I sat at my computer awhile thinking, but nothing happened today. I didn’t do anything.

And half a merino cowl sitting there eyed me with a wry, And what am I? Chopped sliver?

It had such a pull on me and I tried to figure out why. Yes it had the curved shape I prefer: for twenty years now I’ve used a shepherd’s crook-style cane and twirled it like a cheerleader with a baton to shift it onto my arm when I need my hands free; it’s just an extension of my body by now. Plain, practical–and the wood was starting to crack at the curve right where the weight of my hand goes.

So I ordered a pretty one. I love it. But you can’t twirl it, you have to hold it, and I find it easy to accidentally drop. (Not a friendly-looking move.) Reluctantly I find I save it for church. As I said to Richard today, Sometimes you find what you need by buying the wrong thing first. (Although I do not regret that one, even if it’s unwieldy when you’re not actually walking.)

So yeah, this one was cool and it reminded me of the Monterey Bay Aquarium and it had a long enough of a curve–hopefully–not to fall off my arm doing cool cheerleader moves.

But since its artist was in Ukraine there was no way to try it out without paying for it.

There was a video on one of the listings of the guy whittling away at the wood to create his designs: the (sold out for now) Great Blue whale at the crest of a wave. There’s a shark with teeth, a more simply carved killer whale.

Or a gentle blue dolphin.

I didn’t *need* this. Although, for the price, I could get another cheap rustic crooked crook probably from China just like the old. Meh.

I debated for a week before finally caving.

It wasn’t till ten days later after checking the tracking many a time that I realized why it had been so compelling.

That was three days after I had finally started working on the abandoned afghan again. The indecipherable red blob whose chart and plans were long gone had by then morphed into a fish I really liked, the whole thing finally taking on life and becoming delightful to my hands and eyes. I had needed that for so long.

It was the cane that did it. And I hadn’t even laid eyes on it in person yet. Maestro Syvatoslav Lashkiv’s art had at long last offered the spark to revive my own. Since I began it several years ago I’ve thought this afghan would need a dolphin near the top of the water, like the previously knit ocean, because, well, I like dolphins.

I kind of held my breath hoping the cane would live up to my hopes, too.

It came today. The blues swirl down its back like light on the movement of the waves. Like the ocean itself laid out before the eyes of all those grieving homeowners in LA: the Pacific is still there for them. The tides, the sounds, the water, stillness and motion all in one.

It always will be.

Unasked for but included was an unobtrusive arm band to attach if I wanted to, or not, so that this cane will never have to be dropped. But the choice is left up to me.

Octopuses: how the oceans doodle fireworks displays.

Two rows a day, I promised myself. About 45 minutes each. That’s all you have to do. And I have. A right-side row then a wrong-side row so that you’re ready to see it clearly on the right side again the next day and to plan any new colors or motifs from there.

It surprises me how much shows up below my needles when I just keep doing my one small part for the day. I have finished two fish.

I also know that the further along it gets, the more I see how it’s coming out, the more I’ll be able to see how I want the rest of it to come out and the more I’ll be working on it. So it’s okay to be slow in the initial discovery process.

(Photo: about a third of them.)

There’s a big zipped storage bag that’s been moved around again and again these last four years. It had the leftover yarn from the original ocean afghan. It had the added deep royal skeins for the background of the coral reef one. It had the leftovers of any Malabrigo Rios seen coming or going since those were started.

Some of it had become a tangled mess.

Today was suddenly somehow the day to just go deal with it.

Every ball that needed it is now rewound. Every tangle is banished. Every yarn is ziplocked away squished in with its nearest peers and only then put back into that big bag. I know now what I have, I know for sure what I don’t have, I know none of them have room to run around and cause problems again inside those, and I know how to find exactly the color I want amongst the dozens of others. Greens here, blues here, purples…

And it all started with wanting a close but different shade for the next section of coral. All the times I’d gone through that bag, I stared in amazement, I had not seen that one; how could it be so.

Then a sense of determination: so what else was hiding in there?

And now they’re not.

Cottage Yarns (they have more Malabrigo than anyone I know) is a few miles down the freeway from San Francisco Airport. I dropped Michelle off and then went to go make up for the fact that I ran out of Mecha yarn for Zoom mindless hat knitting at Thanksgiving and had not been up to making the drive in all that time. I could now.

Three future hats came home with me. I resisted so much temptation. But that Mecha is part of my usual Sunday evening Zoom knitting group: I can read the captions and be part of the discussion and knit at the same time.

I glanced at my email after I got home and there was the tail-end of a discussion that had started New Year’s Eve’s Eve, fellow knitters promising not to buy any more yarn for the rest of the year because they had enough in their stash. Then today, someone so proud that she hadn’t bought any yarn this entire year so far! (Keep the joke running!)

I laughed–and then suddenly went, wait a minute. I did!

And then was surprised that that surprised me.

And yet. It wasn’t online nor impersonal clicks. Face time with friends you know and love and want to support doesn’t count towards one’s skein count. Right?

There will be more knitting time after her plane leaves tomorrow, but that doesn’t make it any easier to see her go.

She was describing the weather she’s returning to and I grinned, Yeah, when we were heading back to Logan Airport from our house hunting trip out here and the pilot announced what the temp was in Boston, I muttered under my breath, Turn that plane around!

She laughed. Brrr. She was totally with me on that one.

Happy New Year!

Begin as you mean to go on, I told myself.

For so long I really didn’t want to do this but I really wanted it done. Now I was actually starting to want to work on it. That made the turn of the year a great reason to dive in.

I untangled all the balls and finally actually didn’t just stare at the thing but did that first row on the resumption of the coral reef afghan for New Year’s Eve, and then again today. Forty-five minutes a row. Five rows to the inch.

If only I hadn’t lost all my sketches and early chart-outs. If only I could see the end from here it would never have been left waiting like that.

But–I’m beginning to. Just a little bit, but the surprising thing about doing that one first row was that the two areas where I had no idea what I’d been doing several years ago or how those blobs were supposed to make sense, suddenly I did. Glad I hadn’t ripped it back. All I had to do was go at it and wherever it was in my brain knew. It just knew.

Pick a skein, any skein. Rios? Great. Start the ribbing.

Get bored. Doodle.

Try to figure out where the doodle wants to go from there because it’s kinda floating around untethered up there.

Look at the thing awhile, consider that today is the rare matchup of both Christmas Eve and the eve of the first night of Hanukkah, and realize you could do this many rows straight up from this point and then put a couple of knit stitches upwards at the tops. It would turn them into what some people would instantly recognize as dreidels and others would have no idea. Thank you to my childhood friend Wendy, now fighting pancreatic cancer, for teaching me as a kid how to play dreidel.

(Examine front side and back, reversing vs not reversing it.)

Almost do it.

Consider that you don’t want the hat to only be worn eight days a year. Skip the tops. It’ll be our secret–but I could, now, next time.

Continue on.

Wishing a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, blessed season of the solstice and every joy and celebration to all. May there be peacemaking on earth.

And then the yarn laughed.

I’d forgotten how much mulberry silk lace weight likes to jump off the needles, and ended up removing 30 stitches from the cast-on; don’t need that extra repeat across, nope nope nope. I know that as soon as I get enough rows done the weight will help stabilize the work. To a point. It’s never going to weigh much at all.

This looks to be both easy and elegant–and something I’ve never knitted before, and I want to. Magic Waves, with an extra stitch each side for stability.

It’s a gorgeous yarn. It’s a lace weight with so much softness but significant strength, so one could trust it not to fall apart after all the work that would have to go into it. It was a splurge a couple years ago, but then, 500g of laceweight will go a very long way.

It’s what I want to knit next. It’s been a long time since I’ve knit a wedding-ring shawl (ie one that can be pulled through one.)

I thought I had just the pattern, but it feels like no that’s not quite it. Nothing with this can be ordinary.

It’s 90% mulberry silk, perfectly spun, with 10% vicuna, a shimmery light-blonde of a yarn. Cashmere has nothing on this.

From what I’ve read, Peru decided the way to recover that never-domesticated endangered species was to return to the traditional ways: to place ownership of the wild herds in the hands of the local villagers. Which would also give them jobs. The chacu returned, the rounding up into corrals with shearing and releasing along with the incentive to protect theirs from poachers while being allowed to sell a fiber that my LYS once sold under lock and key at $300/ounce once it got off the CITES list and could be legally sold–if sourced from Peru….

And I somehow snagged this Italian leftover mill-end designer cone of the stuff. Yes they stretched it out with the much less expensive silk. For me, that only makes it better.

My fingers don’t like knitting on size twos anymore. That’s okay. They can take their time. A lot of time.

Maybe I’ll incorporate that Dayflowers lace sequence into it after all; it was always a favorite. But it won’t just be that.

Open to suggestions here.

Past midnight. Made it home. Even though the Uber driver as he pulled out of the airport explained that the reason I couldn’t find my seatbelt was that there wasn’t one.

Holy cow.

It had not occurred to me that this was a thing you could buy (thank you random Etsy prompts): cane socks. Or, how to be a walking yarnbombing project.

Meantime, I stumbled across Gene Weingarten’s essay on Katherine Graham, who was the owner of the Washington Post for years; her children sold it to Bezos long after her death, after he promised them he would not interfere with the paper.

The second half of the piece is about Bezos’s refusal to let the editorial department publish their endorsement of Harris, old and regretted news at this point.

But the first half. I had not known–or possibly had long forgotten–that when faced with the lawyers saying which of the staff would go to jail if the Post published the Pentagon Papers, Graham said then send them to my house. Make me personally responsible for exposing what they’re doing, not you.

I read that and thought, integrity and courage. The one word repeats the other.