I was pruning a peach tree, making sure everything out there had enough water, planting my tomato seedlings at long last, amazed at how such small plants could have such a huge root system already–

–when I came inside a moment and Richard asked me if I still wanted to go?

Go to what?

He’d forgotten to tell me about the invite. I had no idea. Yes of course I wanted to go! Dinner suddenly became whatever could be ready in five minutes and then we were off to our friends’ for a house concert. I would have offered to bake a hazelnut torte or something had I known.

Beautiful vocals, beautiful instrumentals, getting to meet and appreciate the musicians and them getting to see their audience loving what they do, and Shadowlands’ CD tomorrow for Mother’s Day. Definitely the way to spend a Saturday evening.

Dirt still under the nails and all.

1. So then I tried spinning just the plum and the red sparkly today and got these 272 four-plied yards.

2. The tart cherries are trying to catch up to that color as fast as they can. You can tell which side the sun hits them on.

3. This video of Glenn Stewart rock-climbing city hall and banding baby peregrines.

4. It was the last Thursday night knit night at Purlescence: attendance has been low of late (all those political debates on Thursdays, I’d say) and they really did need the extra space for classes. So of course it was quite the turnout tonight. I’m so glad I got to go (thank you, Richard) especially given that I’m not driving yet.

5. Meantime, we got the very happiest of messages: Crystal, our seven-weeks-premature new grand-niece, after a month in the NICU was pronounced healthy and allowed to go home today. Her parents are ecstatic. We are, too.

The concussion: I was feeling pretty good yesterday, did a lot of plying, turned on the stereo and even sang along to Alison Kraus a bit as the wheel whirred. Not entirely resting but not pushing it, right? We went out to dinner to celebrate a birthday and on the way home I was saying, hey, a few more days like this and I’ll feel confidant enough to start driving again. (With him in the car the first few times as a backup.)

Uh, Houston, we have a negative on that trajectory.

The doctor on the phone today decided I didn’t seem to need imaging for a brain bleed but if things were in any way worse in the morning speak up (it was, and that’s exactly what I did today) and we’ll move that neurology appointment forward.

When she said rest for once it was easy to do. Stabs said my head really didn’t want me to turn it to the left. They did let up a lot as the day went on.

And so off and on across the afternoon I did manage to get one bobbin plied. One really pretty bobbin that just makes me happy to look at, some Zegna Baruffa Cashwool that I stumbled across while looking for something else and went, oh, that’s what that peachy-pink has been waiting for all along!

More of Sherry’s cashmere. Add spinning wheel and there you go.

I found this in a description of the production of that superfine wool: the pasture must be perfect and only calm sheepdogs need apply. There must be no stress on the Cashwool-worthy merinos.

Sounds good enough to me to pair with Sherry’s gift.

To be continued.

That makes 484 g, including ties, and 1358 yards of the dark/med/light, in merino-silk/cashmere/cashmere yarn. Writing it down so I can find it later for sure.

It looks like I spun a raccoon. Or a tabby cat.

And then I started in on a new batch: the same medium and light brown cashmeres and adding in a white strand for the third, plying it back on two strands of the light brown, of which I have much.

But that’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is that I went looking in my stash for a particular old cone to do that with but right there behind the door was one in the color I wanted marked Crudo.

Hey. That’s not merino, that’s cashmere, too. This spinning project just went up a notch.

The inside of the cone had the number of yards left scribbled on it to warn myself it wasn’t the full 150 g anymore–and it dawned on me when I had used that cone before.

Size two needles. Gossamer-fine Seafoam lace. It was for my kids’ old pediatrician, knitted after I’d stumbled across her husband’s obituary in the newspaper. It said he loved the beach…

A gasp, “I LOVE cashmere!”

And, best of all, that I had made it for her. She cherished it, which comforted me when I had come to try to comfort her.

That white cone definitely has memories. I need to do right by the rest of it.

So there were these two Boy Scout leaders striking up a conversation recently and getting to know each other at some Scout thing or other. One was Muslim and one was our Mormon bishop. Together they hatched an idea.

And that is why today we bought half a dozen Costco packs of toothbrushes and happened to walk in the door at our church at the same time as a Muslim man was walking in with a stack of toothpaste boxes.

A lot had been donated. People were really throwing their hearts into this.

Long rows of tables were set up with shampoo, deodorant, dental stuff, soap, kleenex, crayons, coloring books, etc: grab a bag, walk the lines and fill’er up. Boxes of diapers over here.

I would have brought finger puppets (some pictures here) had I thought of it and had I had enough.

Housing costs are so breathtakingly high here that we don’t have refugees resettling in the area so we were doing this for a homeless shelter. The big room was full of people, all of us wanting to come together to help our fellow man and to share the experience with others of faith that we’d like to get to know better. A side row of tables was full of snacks and cheerful people making sure there were more.

There is an old Mormon how-many-to-change-a-lightbulb joke. Three: one to change it and two to serve refreshments. I noted with a laugh that all the refreshments looked pretty healthy, lots of fresh fruit there. Actually, though, we do like our baked goods and desserts as much as anyone, just don’t tell.

One man had emigrated here as a child and had grown up in upstate New York and was thrilled when I told him I’d hiked Watkins Glen as a kid and loved the waterfalls. He said his kids didn’t understand this weird concept of shoveling snow and what it was like. At. All.

Yeah, ours neither, we laughed.

It was a chance to ask religious questions of each other, too, in a safe and welcoming place.

Our New Yorker friend wished they had a building such as ours to meet in and several people asked for a tour. Then several more, so Richard took a second group around to see, about the time the first circled back to the main room.

I can’t wait to do something like this again. And Jasmin, the New Yorker guy lived for a few years in your neck of the woods and thought he remembered, almost remembered, almost could place your family’s names. Abrara says hi.

A $12 mill-end merino cone arrived from Colourmart today and it sparked one of those sudden bursts of creativity: hey! Spinning on my wheel, not even really spinning, just plying, that would be a very gentle exercise for my stomach and back and arm muscles while not being enough to raise my blood pressure like the doctor wants me to avoid. It would be just enough to strengthen and not too much. Right?

I had to test this hypothesis.

Take three cones of cobweb/laceweight, two of cashmere, one an extra fine merino in a dark cordovan brown. Ply. Ply a second bobbin. Ply the two together with the wheel going the opposite direction to balance out the twist.

It. Was. So. Soft. as it ran through my fingers. Even with the mill oils not yet washed out, and that part surprised me, just SO soft. There are cashmeres and then there are cashmeres that just melt in your hands and that merino did nothing to take away from them.

Hot hot hot soapy water. Rinsing, same.

After looking at this last picture I had to go back to check, a little concerned, and hung the hank from my hands: did I ply it evenly? Did it hang straight down with no twisting?

It did. And I get to make quite a bit more of this before I empty those cones. It’s extra work but it’s extra nice stuff and it gives me more ways to use this time well.

That little stick of a columnar apple that I plunked a branch with a few flowers from another variety in water next to because it needed a pollinator and the other trees were on the far side of the house?

Fifteen baby apples I counted on that thing today, and the last buds at the bottom have only just opened. Clearly it worked. (Thank you bees.) If I thin them to one per cluster is that enough? There just isn’t much to the little yearling yet–but it definitely wants to be what it was planted for.

I discovered and ordered some of this today: sheep belly wool and back tags, the trash of a shearing, compressed into gardening wonderfulness: it aerates, it absorbs water and it releases it slowly while at the same time fertilizing. “Repeals snails and slugs” I assume meant repels them. Typed the woman who found a snail INSIDE A CLAMSHELL! ogling the peach at the upper end today. The peach lived, the snail died on the spot. How did it get IN there?! How do I not let that happen again?

So, sold. Price included shipping, though they didn’t say it would.

Meantime, our friend and second cousin Jim called to ask the great favor of my mending a favorite sweater of his, something I’ve done before.

What color? I asked, so that I could start digging for various navy yarns before he got here.

He admitted to being within a minute of the house.

Sure, c’mon by!

As he started to approach the door I cautioned him to walk slowly: there were birds nesting in the azaleas, and sure enough, as he came four Bewick’s wrens dashed out to the tree overhanging the fence.

Usually it’s California Towhees in there in the spring. This year it’s my favorite wrens. Two pairs.

I didn’t want procrastination nor my lack of mobility to get in the way so we struck a deal: he was on his way by to run an errand? Cool, run the errand. Stop by here on your way back. Looking at the size of the hole, I added a warning, It’s going to show. He said that was fine, he just didn’t want the stitches to run.

I found just the right navy quickly after he left but the new stitches did show some. One could pretend the manufacturer goofed when it sewed the label on given where the hole had been.

He came back, thanked me, and I smiled, saying, glad to do it and glad I had just the yarn and hey, anytime.

Jim walked (carefully) back down the walkway–and suddenly I found myself calling after him, with a sudden catch in my throat I hadn’t expected nor wanted: Jim? Thank you. (I explained the sentence to couch rest and the concussion.) It felt wonderful to be able to do something for someone–I’d needed that. Thank you.

Doctor: Saturday a week ago? So we’re nine days out. Okay, you need to let your brain heal. No exercising. Be a slug. While the muscle mass diminishes (she shrugged regretfully). Wait on the driving till you feel better. Let’s see, what can you do while you’re lying around when you don’t want to lie around…

Me, helpfully: I could knit!

That got me questions about brainpower vs knitting and I said some knitting requires full attention and some is absolutely brainless (and my current project is in between. I left that detail out.)

Doctor: Definitely brainless. Rest it.

Me: (Crud.)

So yeah, it’s been like that and will continue like that for a little while. The motivation though is that after this, my seventh concussion, not to let how things are right now become the new normal.

Later… The mailman delivered a stack of catalogs and for no real reason I always feel like I have to at least leaf through them. Or in the case of some, a fast flipflipflipflipokaydonetoss.

This one page stopped me. Blink. I looked it up online to see if what was there matched. It did.

That model’s legs and my brain: they are both a little bit inside out. (Or at least till that company figures out what everybody’s looking at.)

Our grandson Hudson is three, and in honor of his birthday we got to Skype with him last night.

His cousin Hayes was there. A three-word update: he’s perfectly fine. And adorable. And kept coming up and looking right into the camera with a face that said, Wait. Those aren’t MY grandparents! I’ve seen these people before, what are they doing in that iPad?

Hudson was goofy and giggly and happy and suddenly grabbed that big one off the couch–pillow fight!

At us. Incoming! We ducked on our end (making sure to stay in camera view.) Hudson laughed that joyful laugh that little ones live for. Here it comes! We held up our hands in front of our faces with fingers stretched wide and ducked again. And again and again until it was time for dessert there at the other grandparents’ and it was time for them to go, all of us about falling on the floor laughing.

Best. Pillow. Fight. Ever!

My English Morello cherry at the end of last summer and in today’s rain. Compare to Wednesday’s photo. That’s not camera angles, it really has grown that much in three days.

All that and cherries, too.

Over at San Jose City Hall, the peregrine falcons had four eggs. Two hatched, and as nothing happened and nothing happened the parents started to push one and then the other remaining egg away.

And then pulled them back towards them after awhile.

And pushed again. One was a maybe? It just seemed that the two that were out were it.

Six days after the first hatching, one of those two semi-rejected eggs started showing a line of white (you can see it at the 2:20 mark)–and then poof, all at once (at about 4:38), there it is! Its siblings are older and more able to be aggressive at getting food from their parents but this one just might prove to be a survivor after all.

Pretty please with cherries on top.

Just out for a stroll on a beautiful day…

A squirrel cowered under the picnic table. I looked at it, back up to the fence, and decided to let nature take its dinner course and eased quietly away from the windows so as not to interfere.

Coopernicus swooped in to the top of that table among the amaryllis buds and blossoms–and with the hawk now out of its sight, the squirrel popped right out from the leg of a chair and back to sniffing for full seeds on the patio amongst the pecked-out hulls.

With his tail and wings tucked in behind him that Cooper’s hawk didn’t look much bigger than that squirrel. I know he sometimes goes after them. But no–I guess squab was on the menu again tonight, not ribs, and after a full minute’s consideration the hawk turned for something on the wing, and away.

The first weekend in April is the Mormon Church’s semi-annual conference time, two two-hour sessions Saturday and Sunday each, streamed live.

Two cowls.

Started the second this morning and was very nearly done with my ball of yarn when I looked down and realized at long last why it had been acting so odd in my hands: I had knitted it in a mobius strip. And not noticed. Which is fine if that’s what you’re going for, and fine even if it’s not, but to not even register that that’s what was going on–well, a, they were good talks, and b, yeah, the head smack thing. There is a little bit of concussion relapse going on after all.

But the talks! One man with a British accent, Patrick Kearon, spoke this afternoon of talking to Syrian refugees who had made that horrendous trip in those rubber boats, of what it was like to try to meet their needs and be physically present as a witness to their suffering. He declared he wasn’t speaking to the politics of what was going on, he simply wanted to speak of the individuals he’d met. He spoke of the children. He said some of these people might someday be our doctors, teachers, nurses, engineers–as some of them already were.

Re their plight, “This experience will not define them. But our response will define us.”

President Uchtdorf, who was conducting the meeting, was fighting tears as he stood afterwards and his voice choked and we knew his family had been refugees too. They had escaped East Germany with their lives, barely, his parents at separate times so as to try to avoid suspicion immediately before the wall had been built.

In an earlier session, he had described watching the lightning that came from the sky during the war that had fascinated him as a small child. A picture of Dresden flashed on the screen: a thousand years it had taken to make what it had been–and then it was gone (crumbled stones at the foot of what had once been. Breathtaking, heartbreaking.)

And then.

That beautiful old church had stood for so long.

Another photo. They decided to reclaim all its old stones that could be and now there are dark gray polka-dotting squares scattered in the lighter new stone walls as a memorial to what had been and a declaration of renewal. A new landmark church. An Easter setting in its own right.

Today’s refugees are between the rocks and the new place.

Merino from the gifted Karin of Periwinkle Sheep.

Impromptu stitch holder to remember where the round starts courtesy of my hair.

I was sweeping safflower seed hulls around and out from under the bird feeder in the dark tonight and of course I smacked my head hard into the thing and thought, well now that was bright, wasn’t it. Like I could hardly have guessed it was there.

This time I didn’t have to fight to keep breathing, so I think no concussion. (Looking at that old day-after post, I guess I should add, So far.) My sweet husband asked me a few times if we needed to go to the doctor, because, yeah.

So far I think we’re okay. Even if the idea of a seventh concussion does–well, since I didn’t quite recover entirely from the last one, it does give one pause.

Woke up to the thermometer reading 38 degrees out there this morning, even colder than yesterday. We’re definitely doing the March is going out like a lion thing, and it looks like another two-frost-covers night tonight.

On the other hand, it’s been great for wearing warm handknits.

Part of a baby dress in soft Malabrigo wool is blocking, just to see how big that lace would grow to before I continue any further: I want to get the proportions right and I’m totally winging it.

I would think red would attract attention where you really wouldn’t want it.

On the other hand, those petal pieces would be soft and thicker and maybe stronger than a lot of types of leaves. Definitely gentler to the touch than the coir bits the Bewick’s wren has been wrestling off the seed pots. Maybe they’re at different stages of construction?

At first she just flew to the stalk several times throughout the day. Almost, almost–not ready. She really got going when the threesome of amaryllis buds turned red at the top of that stalk. I marveled that they could support the chickadee’s weight and when the first two flowers finally started to open today, I thought, that’s it, she can’t possibly perch on that. A single curving petal?

Try to stop me!

(No, no, enjoy!)

She was tearing off bigger pieces at the top now. Some of my friend Kathy’s dog’s fur from last year sat below, waiting to be claimed, but this tiny chestnut-backed, the smallest of all the chickadee types, wanted her babies cushioned by my favorite flowers. I tried quite a few times to photograph her at it but she’s not one to sit around and wait for me. There are nestlings to get ready for!