My hands slipped and I accidentally pulled my tip out of at least a dozen stitches, and on those small needles it took me a moment to piece it back together. That Mooi tends towards the slippery side and the loops were not large.

I thought about knitting it on Benedryl. And my clumsiness. And tomorrow’s long drugged wait at the hospital.

So after a discussion with my daughter about my reluctance to have two competing projects at once, I started a second anyway, hoping it might perhaps even be finished by the time I leave Stanford tomorrow.

You know what that means: hunting down another ball of something, somewhere, to start with just in case I run out of my 3oo meters. (Right.)  You know how it goes–pack yarn first.  Needles? Oh, hey, they’ll have lots of those there.

Meantime, the Nuttall’s is letting me get a little closer.

Background shawl with thanks to Mary, who so earned it.

Every time I think I never have to take the squirrel-on-crack-effect prednisone steroid again in my life, they think up some new excuse. Short term but massive, they want now.

I argued with the nurse. *I’d had a doctor give me a bedside lecture last year that despite my reaction to topical iodine, iodine is an inert mineral that, he said, it is impossible to be allergic to. A medical myth.  The stuff they mix it with? Sure. Iodine? No.

And so (just like last year just the same) they want me to take Pred and Benedryl for a CT scan so I won’t react to this iodine I can’t be allergic to.

I got nowhere. The nurse who called me to tell me had no idea. This is just how we do it, sorry.

Yes, and walking around with 80/40 bp and the like is how I do it, do you know how I react to Benedryl? Is it in my records?  Do you really want to depress that?

You know?  I think I’ve been more stressed about this than I thought I was.

Just before my first Stanford stay last year, when I was too sick to sit up, much less knit, the community at Purlescence filled a large basket for me of newly-picked oranges from Jasmin‘s trees and yarn and handknits to cheer me on and to give me something to keep me looking forward.

One of those things was two skeins of Mooi from Nathania, Sandi, and Kaye–a blend with buffalo and cashmere that was probably one of if not the most expensive yarn in their shop. I was alive enough to realize and hang onto the idea of what a treasure they were offering me: in my intense pain and weakness, being able to anticipate specific moments of joy in an as-yet uncertain future.

How do you live up to that intensity when you’re puttering around happily back in normal life? It has been bothering me that I haven’t done that great gift justice. It kept waving other skeins ahead of it, going, no, no, you go on, wool, you’re fine, no problem.

It’s time.  I guess I can’t say I refuse to let this ongoing post-ops stuff buffalo me now.  This is lovely stuff, with a brightness to it that I didn’t see in the ball and didn’t expect as it weaves around my needles, and it didn’t even hit me till I started playing with it that those women had picked the color in their stock that matched my favorite teal-blue skirt they’d seen me in a million times.  Man am I slow on the uptake.

And now I can begin to really tell them thank you for that Mooi. At last.  It’s gorgeous stuff and it is a great comfort. Again. A CT scan? I was worried about a stinking *CT* scan, fer cryin’ out loud?! What was I *thinking*!

(Edited to add five weeks later: I talked to my radiologist brother-in-law, and he said that while one might not technically be allergic to iodine, it is very common for iodine to bind with various cells that one then makes antibodies against–causing a potentially dangerous and yes, allergic reaction.)

Michelle made a dessert with the neighbors’ plums and some star fruit for the occasion.

Meantime, we had one of those afternoons where looking for a tool that hadn’t been used in over a year led to closet cleaning and the non sequitor of this discovery from the early days of my spinning, just waiting to be uncrumpled and admired out of its bag.  Briefly.

I’d splurged on the 50/50 angora/merino fiber at the now-missed Straw Into Gold in Berkeley and had carefully spun up the most luxurious fiber I’d tried yet on my wheel, not knowing that Michelle would prove allergic to it and that I would later be getting angora out of my house.  This was for her big sister.

And it’s…pretty big.  Angora has no sproing to it.  It might fit one of my sons.   But I was looking at it, going, wow. I did spin that fine back then. And really evenly, too, even though I was a rank beginner. Not bad!

Then I took it back out of the breathing space and zipped it back up, a little wistfully.

Meantime, we have two juvenile falcons perched for the night at either end of the louver in view.  They don’t always now, but they did come back tonight.  Curious.  I was surprised by fireworks going off a few hours ago–maybe one of the towns was saving on overtime on traffic control?  Dunno, but I did get to see some of it from my street, crowd-free, once I looked to see what was going on.

Maybe the falcons were boomed out by the noise and headed for the familiarity of home.  It was good to see them.  Happy Fourth of July!

A constant reminder to myself: it doesn’t get finished if you don’t finish it. That half a cast-off row isn’t going to cut it.

Right, right. So there you go.

And while we’re talking about glorious deep rosy reds like that–a return doorbelling, plum jam, a surprised plum-tree-owning neighbor, a protest of “But you didn’t have to do that!”, a response of “But may I?” (And I explained that Michelle had wanted to learn how to make jam, so it was from both of us.)

And then I got invited out to their garden.  Squashes were picked and I was gifted right back again.

My kind of neighbor wars.

Oh, and–they showed me a large leaf, quite shredded; insects, I thought, and a bad case at that. Birds, they corrected me: they’d liked it for their nests. (They clearly thought that was pretty cool, actually.)

So THAT’S where they…! So we talked birds a moment, and when I described my Nuttall’s, they smiled, oh yes, they knew that one. It has really taken to my suet feeder–that’s today’s picture, and I’m hoping it’ll let me get closer and closer.

Meantime, my black squirrel climbed a tree and stared at my being somehow on the wrong side of the fence.  What are you doing over there?!

Speaking of squirrels–my tomato container got dug into, bad, and trying to figure out how to keep the bushy-taileds out, I hit upon this: I took the lid of a plastic spinach box, cut out to the center and wider there for the stem and pushed it down into the pot. Voila! Mulched, sort of, and squirrel free. (Picture taken after the digging and before the sweeping up the mess.)

One of the things about the pot is I can haul it inside when I’m not around to give those squirrels The Look. It is the funniest thing to see one of them stop dead in their tracks and even sometimes turn tail.  You don’t mess with the momma here. You can have sunflower gleanings, but the tomatoes, those are mine.

I’d share them with the neighbors when they ripen but they’ve got their own ahead of me.

Thank goodness for blogging, or I’d never have the sense to stop and give my hands a break.

I have a question to ask: has anyone seen any one seed sprout two sprouts before? (Don’t mind the toothpicks there; they kept collapsing anyway.)  I haven’t. I can’t see why plants can’t come up twins, I just never thought of it before.  It was a particularly large avocado pit, so I thought it had a good chance of growing–got that one right!

And finally, today, the woodpecker I’ve wanted to see close up discovered the hanging suet cake. A female Nuttall’s, I think it is: and it is gorgeous. Dressed to drill.

The robo-call reminder said, I thought, 12:30 and to be there a half hour early to check in with my insurance card, yadda yadda. I hit 4 for repeat this message. Heard it the same.

So I showed up at Stanford accordingly.  Got a confused receptionist, who finally found my name an hour down the list; she waved me away, clearly bothered for my sake that I’d wasted my time, and told me to come back later for my 1:30 appointment.

I stepped aside and did a quick loop around to the other side of the small waiting area, which put me in the hallway for maybe a dozen steps–that was away, right?  Sat down back in there with my shawl project, knitted till exactly 1:00, stood back up, smiled brightly at her and pronounced, “I’m here now.”

She cracked up.

I got an unexpected hour of knitting with absolutely no other demands possible on me. And this was a problem? But what was cool was, she totally got that after she saw what I was doing.

(Or should I call it the new nest.)  I have to admit it: I was disappointed this morning. No towhee this time. Fancy that.

On the other hand…

This, on size 4.5 needles and finer yarn than the original in the book,

finished becoming this.

I had plans for what I was going to knit next. Specific plans. Designed, written, ready to test knit.

Yeah well.

My kids gave me some yarn for Mother’s Day that all the sudden leaped out at me yesterday like a four-year-old who just heard the words “ice cream.” It was Colourmart yarn, the 12/58 35/35/30 cashmere/silk/merino/790 yards in limestone, and I had at least already hanked and scoured it.  (Trust me: it is worth doing that extra work before knitting it. In oiled coned form, it is just not impressive to the hands nor the eyes, but the washed, sparkly-shiny-suddenly-soft yarn with the graying-effect oils gone, ohmygoodness yes.)

But it wasn’t even wound into a ball yet, and here it was jumping up and down at me like that. I was too tired to deal with it.  In self defense I pulled out a ball of something else, something else with cashmere in it, even–but no. THIS one.

Ooookaaaaaay. I dealt with it.

And this pattern. Nothing else would do but the Peace shawl from my book. (There’s a picture of it here.)  NOW!

But I was working on…!

Okay, so here I am:  I’m working on this thing, it’s practically knitting itself, I have not a clue why it’s so important right now to be knitting this yarn in this pattern right at this time–

–all I know is, it is, and it has been making me terribly happy that I listened to it.

You know, we’ve had enough of these episodes for me to be all, okay, cool, so, what happens next?

As I type that, it hits me and I go and look: a combination of the lacy-looking flowers and the dove and that shadow that came out of my camera Tuesday–yes, of course I have to knit it.  Yes.

The rest will happen in whatever good time it should: as long as I’m prepared for it.

I’m on it.

Looking at the project I haven’t worked on today, and the one over there that got stopped and put aside for such a good, temporary reason (I promised myself), and the one I wish I could get going on over there, it hit me–I have startitis.

I never have startitis anymore.  As a point of pride.  One thing about writing a lace shawls knitting book and knitting every shawl multiple times before publication to check again and again that there were no errors to be inflicted on the innocent means that there was just no time nor room for startitis. None.  You start a project, you plow through it till it’s done and then you can go do the next one, and if it’s a project that’s not going to get done it’s not ever and it’s over.

And then there’s right now.  So many cool ideas want to jump onto the page and the needles all at once, to the point that they’re all getting in each other’s way.  Because–and this is the biggest thing, always was, always will be–I also have so many people that I want to knit for, so many good reasons to do so, and a stitch for you and a stitch for you and a stitch for you and a stitch for you gets nobody clothed.  Come to think of it, there are precious few people on this planet that don’t deserve something handknit with love just for them.

This is the point where I toss my yarn in God’s general direction and say, heck, I can’t figure it out.  You know the territory more than I do and I need a traffic signal at this intersection.

As for tonight, He laughs and says, It doesn’t matter whether it’s a green light or a red if you don’t turn the car on, dear.

(edited to add: I wrote the above, went well okay, then, and sat down with my baby alpaca scarf, just a little thing, and made some good progress after all. Is it the most perfect thing to work on right now? I don’t know. But it felt wonderful to get at it, it’ll finish quickly, and having something completed and available and DONE for whatever moment for whomever, ready to go–yes. Sometimes I need semi-instant gratification like that.)

Okay, got it that direction, I really like that. That one, not so much. Oh, epic fail!  Okay, let’s see, if we do one from that angle…

Let’s just say peregrines, which have been clocked at 241 miles an hour, can fly faster than I can design them in lace.

The peregrine fledge watch officially ends tomorrow and there’s a touch of empty nest syndrome already.

Meantime, at Green Planet Yarns, I found more of the Joseph Galler baby alpaca that I didn’t buy at Imagiknit and had regretted ever since: undyed brown plied around white, the colors of a young peregrine’s chest till their adult feathers grow in. (This is for their safety; it keeps strange adults from thinking they’re looking to take their territory while they meander around exploring their new world.)  This time I bought a skein.

When I saw it across the room last month, I almost didn’t bother to check it out: oh, yeah, that brand, they’re old-school alpaca, sharp guard hairs ruining the good stuff mixed in.

Yeah well. Shows you how long it had been since I’d seen or felt any.  What Peruvian Tweed is now is what I’d always wanted it to be, something you can put up against your face and still think it soft. (Note that I did that to pick out the softest skein, though, and there was a slight variance. Worth checking out in person if you can.)

I think I know what it wants to be–I had plans, all this time I wished I’d bought it earlier. But once I actually sat down with it, they just weren’t quite it.  I think I’ll have to give it a night’s rest and see what my brain comes up with by morning.

(It rained today and someone clearly got dumped on. Squirrels’ tails turn into mouse-laughingstocks when wet. This is after it was halfway dry again!)

Had a great idea. Found an old swatch.  Wait, that’s what I was going to–! And another.  Well now. Great mind thinks alike.

Some Grant Circle-colorway pink yarn had jumped out at me today, enough to get me to go look up the site of the lovely woman I bought it from at Stitches East a year and a half ago to make sure she was still around. Yes! Cool. (She will perhaps remember me as the woman who picked it up in my hands and guessed the base on the spot. I grinned, Hey, I’ve knitted a lot of lace.)

So many things I want to do, so many things in the queue.

Meantime, my Mother’s Day present finally snuck past that rude, belching lout of a volcano and jumped across the Pond today and eagerly rang my doorbell.  Cashmere/silk/merino (watch the yardage carefully on those, they sell a lot of yarn that is great for practicing plying on a spinning wheel) in the limestone colorway, which as far as I can tell is undyed or close to it; the grayishness in their original picture showed the mill oils more than anything and it pretty much washes out. I have some leftover from a previous project and took the picture with that ball on top vs the oiled cone as it arrived.

My daughters bought me the new stuff.  Coooooool.  This knitting thing–I think they’re on to me.

So it is now hanked, scoured, and I am impatient.  I’ll just go knit up this little bit of pink while it dries, oh, you know, about 900 yards’ worth or so…

You know, before I launch into finally doing that edging, I ought to go doublecheck that first shawl I knitted from this pattern idea just to make sure it’s exactly what I want…

Oh.

Huh.  Well, count that one a redesign for that bottom part.  Better I decide now, at least.  I remember now, I kind of squeezed the rows on that first one, writing down as I went what I was doing, because I never did find its last ball of yarn so I only had so much yardage–not a problem on the second shawl.  I made sure of that.

I never do this, but by golly I am so tired of wanting to get to the next project that I’m going to just go launch into it before I go to bed.  I mean, this is really pretty yarn but I am just so ready to look at other colors. (My get-well afghans have tons of colors, and hey, they certainly worked.  You all don’t know how grateful I am every day for those.)

And yes, that’s my Dancing Queen bud on its second day.  When it wants to come to be, it makes it happen!

Oh–wait…  Okay.  I’ll swatch.

It *is* nice, when I think about it, to be able to re-write the endings any way we want at any time when it comes to knitting. Just like you all helped re-write mine.

I’ve been hoping that that evidence of a successful hunt yesterday morning (hit it, little Garfunkel: Lalalalaaala lalaaala. Feelin’ gravy) wasn’t the vivid-headed parakeet that had spent most of the previous two days here and that you could spot easily in the trees–but it has not been seen since.   Although the hawk or a cat are the more likely cause, squirrels do eat eggs and small or baby birds in the spring when they need protein and their caches of nuts are rotting or sprouting.

What did I tell that flighty little thing?  Never harass an animal that would eat you or you risk a coo d’etat.

Random other item: I don’t know if this link will still be valid by morning, but as the daughter of a modern art dealer, let me say, there are easier ways to diss the artists of the last 100 years or so and this was not one of them. One might say the UPS driver was making a special delivery of performance art to the Hirschhorn.  And it was a bust.

Last year, my friend Nancy gave me an amaryllis plant that had been given to her as a bulb kit but that had never bloomed for her; she thought maybe I could get it to this year. It’s gorgeous, Nancy, thank you, and I’d give it back now if you hadn’t moved away.

The parakeet came back to feed many times today.  I wonder, if I were to put a bird cage with an open door out there, whether it would climb right in and make itself at home–but I’m perfectly happy watching it being perfectly happy.

And yet.  Not so much when it hit the window flying in a panic along with the finch flock–going not quite in the same direction as the others, being not quite one of them. It seemed okay afterwards, but it sure sharpened the caged life vs. longer life question about it for me. I tell you–personally, I’ve gone for longer and found it’s okay for it to be that way.

This picture is for Rachel: I’ve started in on the Malabrigo Silky she wound up for me.

Meantime, I got the perfect Mother’s Day present from my daughter-in-law and older son: “Outwitting Squirrels.” Okay, you already know it’s going to be good!  And then the author quotes the owners of bird stores in Cabin John and Potomac, Maryland–I bet his kids went to the same schools I did.  The guy had great fun writing this.

My favorite part? His tale of a woman in Massachusetts who found some old LPs in her attic. She strung them on a rope separated by knots with her birdfeeder below: no squirrel could climb that stair-eo.

Then she got to watch them trying to jump down onto the top LP to hang downwards towards the feeder.  Here came the first: it got spun off into the snow.  Hey…! Cool! Do it again!

She described it as a line at Disneyland, waiting their turn. No food but almost as good.

I mentioned it to Richard and his reaction was, “Like the buffalo.”

Wait, the what?

And then he reminded me.  After the musk ox got reintroduced to Alaska, the buffalo did.  “Where the deer and the antelope play” had nothing on these guys.

Okay, so if I ever seriously think about parakeet cages I’m going to have to provide it a lot of toys. They’re members of the parrot family and can talk; I wonder if I could teach it to knit.  Or at least recite my line-by-line lace instructions so I don’t lose my place.