Crohn’s flares: food becomes hard to digest and you don’t much want to eat anyway (so you try to at least make everything you do eat super-duper healthy.) Yeah, been through this before. And one of the things that happens is your muscle tone vanishes, just vanishes, faster than makes any sense.

Not this time. Not if I could do something about it, I told him last night: and so, treadmill, yes, and I was going to wind up yarn in the morning.

And that is how this 420 gram cone finally got turned into a hank. (Oops, broke a tie there. No, two. It is big.) It’s about two thousand yards and my niddy-noddy holds two at each go-round. Somehow, thankfully, it did not pop off the thing and fall into a million tangles on the floor. (You know, Alison, you really could break the yarn and make it into two or more if you weren’t trying so hard to prove you didn’t have to.)

It is scoured, as pre-shrunk as I could make it, and I may have to take a hair dryer to it. All the better to strengthen those arms with.

Those needles I freed up? They had a new project going on them and it probably would have been for the woman sitting behind me–if it had been finished.  I’d rather offer her a choice of more than one color if the one I’m presuming about is not ready to hand right over, so I didn’t say anything to her quite yet.

Three other cowls went to old friends who showed up in town for the weekend, while they were there and I could.  And you know what? It’s really hard to be mopey about what a bad night you had because of the stupid Crohn’s when friends are being totally joyful all around you like that. Hey you guys. That was great. Thank you so much.

I went right home and worked on that new project, picturing all the way the smiles on the friends who already got theirs. They were paying it forward and they didn’t even know it.

(I just moved it, here, let me straighten up those edges.)

It’s Aftober, named for my friend Afton who instigated the tradition of October being the month for finishing projects. For whatever reason. Be they new or long-dragging, pick it up, get it done, and now you have a reason to.

And that is how the black scarf got done. And today that’s why the teal silk project that had been carried around in my purse since July–well, I did about half of it today and got it over with. It had been dragging because I only bought the one skein at Stitches and I wanted it to be for me since I could not duplicate that yarn nor that color and it matches a lot of things I really like.

But I am not high on my knitting list right now.

But those needles it was dangling from… I wanted those back. And so I freed them of that soft single-ply bombyx and it is drying now. I didn’t spin it out in the washer because of that loose ply–it would fuzz out like crazy in the spinning and I prefer how it looks now, and thus I am moving it around every so often as the one part of the old drying quilt gets a little too damp.

Bombyx silk, i.e. from the silkworms that eat mulberry leaves rather than, say, oak (re tussah silk) has this distinctive smell to it when it’s wet. How much depends on how much of the siricin (silk gum) has been washed out.

It always takes me straight back to my mom’s kitchen and that little dark brown bottle way up high.

I remember asking Mom about it one day.

She told me that her mom had insisted on feeding her kids cod liver oil and had been adamant that Mom have some for her own kids.

Mom dutifully got that bottle and put it up there… Nothing else medicinal in that cabinet, just that. (Maybe where Gram would see it?) It had been there as long as I could remember, unmentioned and untouched as far as I knew.

Mom got it down and opened it up and let me take a whiff.

EWWWW!!!! Gram made you EAT that?!

Just a spoonful.

Mary Poppins and her spoonful of sugar wasn’t going to help that stuff one little one bit. Gag. I winced that Mom had had to go through that. It was clear she appreciated my horror.

You know how grandparents and kids traditionally team up against the parents? On this one, it was me and Mom together, absolutely. Mom chuckled and put it back up there where it could do no harm.

And no the silk doesn’t smell just like that, but there’s just a hint of reminder of it, somehow, to me, anyway.

Never mind that. Nice, soft wormspit around your neck. It’s what’s good for you.

The GI doctor could see me today or in ten days but not in between. I should have called Richard from work for a ride but it just didn’t feel imperative and I didn’t.

I spent too much of the night kicked awake, remembering all the times…hoping this would be nothing.

Let’s not. Let’s just really not. (Was it 17 projects, I think was the number, tumbling out of that grocery sack with a list of people I hadn’t found yet but I knew he could, and the surgeon exclaiming, I get to play Santa Claus?! He thought that was so cool.)

A week from Monday hopefully my good doctor and I will have a laugh and a phew! together and that will be that.

I know someone who loves someone who lost someone and I bet just about everybody else can say the same.

Clean, straighten, organize, laundry, clean sheets… When you can’t do anything you have to do something. One man. Nine rounds a second. Ten minutes.

Stanford Blood Center canceled a staff meeting and kept their doors open longer. Las Vegas didn’t need it from them yet but with over 500 people wounded it’s way too soon to tell. My thanks to all who have been the heroes–and Jimmy Kimmel is one.

I met one once…

After a good head start and then four two-hour sessions of Conference, this is where I am.

I didn’t get that last hat started before the last session began and so my attention wasn’t on it during the one part where it needed to be. Which is how I got to rip it all out after the first row four times. (Note to self: wait for the Tabby Choir to sing. With them, you already know the words.)

Hat number three doesn’t have a stem. Yet. I wanted the orange cast off this time before adding that.

A certain grandma looked at the calendar and guffawed at herself for having willed the visit with the grandkids to be weeks closer than in real life, so it looks like I’m going to put the add-ons on myself, ship’em off so they can have as much time as possible enjoying them, and let the kids negotiate where or if they want decorative parts changed or moved when we see them. And as for that third stem, I think I just didn’t want to do that really fiddly part while trying to listen to the speakers.

I am just a bit pumpkinned out for now. I’ll knit that last hat tomorrow.

A completely random delightful stumbling-across while reading something else: an instrument that is “a hybrid of elements from a harpsichord, an organ and a viola da gamba” –and, they missed this part, a spinning wheel. That is totally a single-treadle spinning wheel’s mechanism.

A Polish man studied Leonardo Da Vinci’s dream of a horsehair-stringed treadled keyboarded new thing and spent three years studying and trying and failing and succeeding and at last turning it into reality. And then he got to demonstrate what had never before been. It looks a little bit folksy and sounds a whole lot of gorgeous–wow did he succeed.

Have a little concert. I so hope he records albums on this.

I had a good, honest mechanic and his brother for twenty-eight years. Who just retired.

On a strong recommendation, I took the car to someone new today for routine maintenance, with a sudden low-pressure idiot light on a tire as extra incentive. I hadn’t particularly wanted to go there; I liked being able to walk from and to the garage and there was no way with this one. But I knew nothing about the folks who took over my old guy’s place–except that a big corporation wants to redevelop their site, the neighbors are fighting it, the city council looks like they’ll approve it, and the landlord is seeing the dollar signs. So they might not be there very long.

The guy asked me if I wanted a ride home or to stay in their waiting room, stocked with newspapers and the kinds of book you could pick up a great recipe from or browse through, thoughtfully chosen pick-up-put-downs of the kinds that you’d want in such a circumstance.

A ride home and then a return pick-up later? Wow. It would only be an hour, hour and a half? Hey. It was early morning, I had my hot cocoa in a thermos with me and my knitting in my purse–I was all set.

I glanced at the local daily and read up on city politics as my hands worked. The old mechanic had never had a place to wait in. This was great.

The guy stepped into the room and looked like he was about to ask me how I was doing when he saw the blue yarn and the needles. He got a wonderful smile on his face and asked if I were knitting a gift? He was highly pleased that yes, it was. One of his young employees stopped by what was also their break room and he too was delighted and asked me what I was making.

They got the car done in a bit under an hour and it was time to pay.

Wait, what?

(He wasn’t sure what the problem was.)

No seriously, seriously?!

Well, he joked, I could move the decimal over for you if you’d rather.

Since when does someone spend that much time on my car and only charge me $43? Last time I checked on the going rate on mechanics around here, and that was at least ten years ago, it was $60-70/hour.

And so now I have a new place to happily knit when I need to be there.

I waited till the two newly-near-sisters were standing together with their folks when I pulled the hats out–and got to watch the girls’ eyes go big. I had apparently managed exactly what they’d hoped for (and no yellow!)  I told them if anything wasn’t perfect, please tell me and I’d be happy to make another because this was about having them love what they got.

They were very, very happy and grateful and there were hugs and you knew they now knew they had an adult who thought the world of them who didn’t have to. Because just because.

Beige cowl: that young mom was off on a trip with her mom but her husband was there with the (not quite a baby anymore) and a backpack and it definitely had room for cashmere to make his wife happy, and yes, she wore that shade all the time. He’d had no idea this was coming.

Later I saw one of the hat recipients trying hers on his toddler’s head and loving how cute she looked in it. (Maybe I have enough yarn left in that ball to… Maybe. I might not so I didn’t say anything.)

The bright blue: exactly went with the dress of a woman who recently moved here, doesn’t know many people yet, is tied down with a new baby and has a lot of changes and adjusting to do all at once. It was a treat to see her face and her husband’s completely light up–and they stayed that way.

The purple didn’t quite find its spot yet and came home for now, but two green ones left the purse and didn’t come back.

The reject yarn from my first attempt at ordering self-striping? One of the two skeins bit the dust after church, mostly because I wanted to keep up the momentum. Two feet to spare when I declared it good enough and done. It was literally an odd ball as far as my eyes were concerned but someone will love it.

And then I can tell those girls that having to re-order to get the colorway right worked out perfectly after all.

Wings all at once, a dove panicking in the wrong direction, and I looked up at the sounds in time to see the hawk doing a careful u-turn right at the window: he knew where that glass was.

But instead of further pursuit of whatever was surely flying wonky by then (I was surprised it could at all after that hard smack, and apparently so was he), he landed on the wooden box and turned to me at near eye level.

He seemed to need to know. To take the measure of just what this entity was on the other side of that window and what I might do or intend. I was big. Was this a problem.

I remembered my manners: I blinked. Exaggeratedly. More than once. Knowing that he could be entirely gone in the space of one long one.

Tomorrow is Equinox and territory must be held and held boldly. I’m pretty sure I saw him chasing a crow away over the neighbor’s yesterday, movement I looked up to almost too late to see.

This wasn’t my long-time Coopernicus visitor but it most likely was his son; raptors, like so many of us, prefer to nest around where they grew up if they can afford the price of the real estate. And so, as his father before him had done come equinox and solstice, he chose to people-watch a few minutes.

Was I a challenger? Was I a threat? Would I interfere with his meals?

The striped chest gave him away as being in his first year. Fast on the wing and short on experience. I smiled and radiated love the best I too-humanly could do, in awe that yet again, I had a wild Cooper’s hawk choosing to take the time to stand ten feet away from me and look me in the eye. (Blink. Mourning doves are universally compelled to blink back at you. A raptor holds you steady in its gaze.)

He craned his neck this way and that now: See anything land around here, lady? It hit, you know?

Yes it did and no, but given how hard it hit you will definitely be able to get it on the next fly-by. When you see a dove under the bird feeder walking backwards in circles repeatedly you know its brain is as good as mine and most likely how it got that way.

Ah, over by that tree! And he was off in a wingbeat.

His name. He needs a name. I’m quite sure this one was a male. Any suggestions?

Richard: “I didn’t know it bothered you that much.”

Me: “I didn’t know it did at all either–because I couldn’t do anything about it, so I didn’t let myself think about it.”

In the months after my 40th birthday, life gifted me with a mole on the side of my face. One takes new and uneven dark skin lesions to the doctor, and I did, and got told, welcome to getting older, honey. (Me: at 40?!) The guy was clearly amused that I would be worried about something so ordinary–whereas me, I was trying to take seriously all the advice I’d ever been given on the subject and felt a little put down. I knew I’d had a sunburn as a teen bad enough to bleed if you so much as touched me. Hello Swedish/British/Scottish ancestors, I got me some risk factors. So I came in.

So that was that.

I was at the dermatologist’s this afternoon to get something else checked out. She always notes that one mole under the side of my glasses when she sees me and is always very reassuring, saying that age spots can change shape and size and it sounds bad but it’s not, you just have to keep an eye on them is all.

Today, though, she looked at it and considered it a good moment. “That’s bigger than it used to be.”

“Yes, quite a bit.” With a shape now as if Florida had shrunk in the wash like a cheap sock.

She considered, decided not to biopsy, but asked if I’d like it frozen off and just be done with it? I surprised myself by how vehemently I blurted out, “YES!!!”

Dang, should have done that ages ago. I’d somehow thought it was too big for freezing–but did I ask? No. Duh. Man does it feel good to have my own face back. Yes the process takes a few weeks to work but it already looks better.

And I’m thinking of the optician we saw (on Saturday for the Xth time, still trying to get those new glasses done right.) The one who asked me if I liked this pair here and I answered, “Yes; they accentuate my mole nicely.” He and his colleague next to him totally cracked up.

Now I can tell him they’d made it go poof! See? You go put those dermatologists right out of business!

(Except that then I wouldn’t be able to finish projects in their waiting rooms. Malabrigo Mechita, Whales Road, the second half of a skein drying now.)

Not to brag, but–yeah I am–you want to know how much of a sweetheart my guy is? We had, with the help of friends, devoured every last peach from Andy’s Orchard and I was going through a serious end-of-summer withdrawal on the things.

He drove me to Andy’s. It’s about an eighty-minute round trip. It was his first time there. I wasn’t even sure they still had any, but I knew they would have something good (and they did. Some plums came home too.) He can now vouch for their candied almonds, too.

And then just to make the day perfect, Sam told us the hats arrived today, and of course in September in Anchorage you definitely need a hat. Mathias took the gray cashmere one off his head, his daddy said, and just buried his face in it.

And then the chomp. As one does.

So I had this hank of yarn.

Actually, I had three, in two dye lots of Malabrigo’s Anniversario colorway, which I really really like. So this one skein that didn’t quite match the others decided it had waited long enough and it was tired of being just another pretty yarn–knit ME now, ME! It reminded me that it was Stitches yarn, and not only Stitches yarn but Imagiknit yarn and I adore Allison at Imagiknit and that made it all the more enticing.

But whatever. This. It was not what I had planned on but it was suddenly the boss of me.

I cast on and did the first repeat last night before bed because it’s always easier to keep going than to get started.

Now, I usually turn on some music to knit by because I’ve done so for enough years that it’s become Pavlovian: music. Knit. In time to the beat. To the point that I stop the sound if I want to rest my hands and go do something else for awhile.

The Anniversario was compelling to the point that I didn’t even go fishing through albums to see what to put on, I simply sat down and worked away at it.

Mid-afternoon I suddenly realized I’d been half-listening all along after all. Just one song. Over and over again in my head and waiting for me to notice. And in the moment I did I suddenly realized what it was and how very long it had been since I’d heard it.

From the musical that I saw in high school–in Ford Theater (yes that Ford theater: “But other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”) Scoring tickets for it was a big deal at the time and there was a group of us kids that went together.

Godspell. The song, beginning as a small voice barely discernible calling from afar, drawing nearer and nearer: “Pree-ee-ee-pare ye the way of the Lord.”

In that moment I knew for sure this one was not for me no matter how much I love it–and that felt wonderful.

Picture taken in the early afternoon, two-thirds of a cowl ago: and it is finished.

Started the first hat for the foster kid but the dense black was spun so differently from the blue that even though they were within 10% of each other yardage per grams-wise, in real life there was no way to have the number of stitches work: either the black would be too big for the kid’s head or the blue in the next stripe too small to squeeze into. I would have known this in a heartbeat had I seen them in person first. And this, kids, is why we support our local yarn shops (when we can get there. And it wasn’t Webs’ fault; I didn’t ask.)

Meantime, the yarn I’d ordered for the other girl was felt to have more orange than was quite ideal (per the mom, after I asked her to be honest about it) and so I ordered her the Chroma from Knitpicks as you guys recommended. I want these kids to love what they get. I really do. And I can always use another ball of superwash merino around here.

And for the kid who wanted hers chunky, I went to Imagiknit, as one does, and ordered some Malabrigo Mecha, which is probably what I should have started with in the first place.

And now on a completely random note, I always wondered if a hawk would ever bother trying to catch a hummingbird, given how much work it would be to chase such a speedy little not quite amuse-bouche. The answer is pretty much not only no, but that hummingbirds seek out hawks’ nests to nest near themselves: because jays are big predators of hummingbird nests and Cooper’s hawks are big predators of jays. More details here.

I now understand better the photo Eric of the peregrine falcon group once gifted me with, showing a hummer buzzing near the matriarch Clara’s face while she looked on, bemused.

And in other wildlife news, we had a young squirrel on the fence today, staring: too young, apparently, to have ever seen water fall out of the sky before and he didn’t quite know what to make of this concept of randomly getting wet or what he was supposed to do about it.

I remember telling my kids when they were young that in my growing up, there were warm summer rains that would clean the air on a hot muggy day and cool things down a bit. But the rain itself. Rain was supposed to be warm and inviting in the heat of July or August.

I got scoffing disbelief in response. Mom. It does not rain in summer. Two, rain is always, always cold.

And yet today, at long last, we had a hot muggy summer day–and it rained. It wasn’t quite a warm rain but it was close enough to prove the possibility. Thunder and lightning, too (a little too close) and then the rain. We had a good old East-coast deluge, briefly, so much so that I even turned the computer off, wondering if the lights would go out. We have never had the lights go out in a storm in all our years here but you never know.

It let up. I turned the computer back on. So of course then it started again, hard.

And again, it let up and then started in again.

A fourth round pounded the roof after dinner.

For a grand total of (roll the drums) .1″.

Oh California. Thank you. You tried.

Another impromptu-on-Sunday story for you.

In the morning, I put the red cowl that a friend had requested in my purse. She’d seen it in progress and had been looking forward to it. It was an exact match to her favorite skirt.

And that was going to be it, given that I spent the week spinning for the most part and didn’t get much knitting done.

But. There was another one in a worsted-weight merino, a little thicker, superwash, thus nice and practical when you don’t know how it’ll be treated later, and also red. I’d made it awhile ago and had wondered who it was for and then had put it aside and forgotten all about it. It was just waiting, is all. My brain damage can’t walk around in that shade without worsening my balance but I still liked it enough to knit it. I figured it would tell me soon enough.

Somehow it was right there front and center when I went to pick up the other cowl and it leaped out of its ziploc: you need to take me, too!

Okay, I was game–and curious.

We have an elderly friend who spends half her year here and half her year near her daughter Marie near Seattle. She comes when she comes and goes when she goes and I never quite know when that’s going to be.

Marie had come with her mom to help get her settled back into her old house. And so they were both here.

Marie exclaimed over me, as glad to see a familiar old face as I was to see hers; I adore her mom and her mom raised great kids.

And in that moment I knew and I knew that that was my chance to give it to her in person: “Do you like red?”

Marie looked at me like, Wait… When you are the person asking that question… But why yes she did, she liked red! (And clearly she couldn’t wait to know what this was all about.)

I reached into my purse barely looking down and the worsted-weight one came right to hand. Which meant I didn’t have to apologize if she liked the slightly different shade of the other better; neither one of us had to know. Besides, Malabrigo makes nice wools. Really nice.

Up in the Pacific Northwest, she told me in delight as she patted its softness after putting it on, even in summer she often finds herself with something around her neck for that extra bit of warmth. She loved it. (And then given that it was a 90F day here, she took it back off for now. As one does.)

The kicker is that there was no sign of the friend the other cowl had been promised to, and I’m going to try to deliver it during the week. But what it did this morning was to help me see it wasn’t enough and that somehow I needed another red.

I just had to say yes so I could find out why. I can’t tell you how glad I am that I took both.