(Scarf adapted from the Wanda’s Flowers shawl. Chloe Sparkle, this is the leftover dyed-by-me baby alpaca from your shawl.)

Pride. I could have been knitting. But the pride got me.

I am not the handbag-for-every-outfit type. Buy one good practical plain leather purse, preferably one that won’t snag lacewear every which way, and wear it out.

Which I did. I mean, it’s really worn out and I should have replaced it about a year ago. It’s big, it’s comfy, anything you want you’ve got it right there with you and you could stuff almost a whole afghan project in the darn thing–t’ain’t dainty.

I do have a nice, small purse, and when I say small, it’s iffy whether the cellphone can squeeze in.   Maybe not so practical.

So guess which one went downtown with me this afternoon?

We haven’t gotten a utility bill since May.  I’ve called and been told, Oh, you’re all paid up.  But wait, tell me, how does that work exactly?…

So given what tomorrow is and wanting things squared away and done, I simply went down to City Hall to see the printout of the bill that never came and to get it taken care of once and for all.

There was no bill. Our solar installation coincided with their changing how they processed households with solar systems, and I ended up in an upstairs office while they tried to figure out how to get their computer to generate one. Ever.  Four people were trying to figure out for about an hour how to let me give them my money; it was pretty amusing.

Finally, they cried uncle.  Good thing I came near the end of the workday, I guess.  I gave them an estimated amount that was pure guesswork against the coming amount (electric, water, sewer, refuse, gas–the city owns them all, and we only opted out of the first) and they gave me a much-desired receipt.

I’d had a feeling to take my knitting; but…  I was simply going to walk up to the counter and hand them a payment and that was going to be that.  It didn’t occur to me to put my knitting bag in the car just in case, I mean, why would I?

I could have brought my jaded, faded, coming unsewn old purse and that scarf project would have been finished.

Although, then I would have been sitting there wishing ruefully I had thought to bring more knitting.

Okay, now, back to work.

(Elann.com Baby Silk, two skeins to finish, 5mm needles, Michelle shawl lace pattern, four repeats plus edging, not yet finished/not blocked. Another nurse scarf-to-be.)

Saturday, it did not look good, I admitted during my appointment today, giving the dermatologist details.

That concerned him.

But then, as he got a look at the site of the staph infection, it turned out it had gotten much better under there in the interim and I exclaimed my relief as he peeled back part of the bag. He looked in my eyes, knowing what I needed to know, and told me, his voice sharing his own relief, “I see nothing now that would give a surgeon pause before going ahead.”

Thank goodness.

A very small part of my brain that I’ve been squelching hard wants to pipe up with, No? Are you sure?  Could you, like, maybe, look harder?

My friend Cris asked me to post the pattern of the scarf I’d adapted from the Monterey shawl pattern, saying she’s more about the scarves, herself, and I promised I would.

Here’s what you do.  Start with one copy of “Wrapped in Comfort, Knitted Lace Shawls;” turn to page 44, the Monterey Bay Aquarium-inspired shawl.

Yarn: one skein Camelspin by Handmaiden.ca, 300m/100g,  in the bluegreen Topaz colorway; I had 36g left when I was done. (Cris was swooning, “What IS this?! This is SO soft!” Yes, it is, and shimmery, too, knitted up; it’s one of my favorite yarns.)

Needles: I used size 5mm, which in American sizes is an 8. Note that the seaweed pattern spreads out quite a bit less than the jellyfish, making for a warmer, denser area for the neck.

Cast on 39.

Row 1 and all wrong side rows except as noted in the jellyfish: purl.

Rows 2 and 6: as row 6 in the book.

Rows 4 and 8: as row 12 in the book.

row 10–as row 30 in the book, except: when there are three stitches on left needle near the end of the row, pick up the bar between the second and third stitches.  You now have four where there were three.  Use that new stitch while making your ssk that’s in the pattern directions, then knit the last two stitches.

Now that you have the right stitch count for the jellyfish, do four repeats of them in total, going along as written in the book. (The jellyfish are rows 30-37.)

Next: I was going to go straight to the seaweed pattern, but found that without the increase row like the shawl has, you’ll have a set of two trying to match up with a set of three.  It doesn’t work. I went back to doing as rows 2-8 above, which leaves no straight lines and no sense of anything being skewed. That’s the stitch I was using to convey a sense of water bubbles at the edge of the surf.

Then do the seaweed section, which is row 18 in the book. The first time, you’ll need to decrease one stitch to get it back down to a count of 39 to match the new pattern. I did this by ending the row with k2tog, k1; this made it so that the edge didn’t have a jog.

I did 55 repeats of the seaweed row.

Then I did rows 2-8 as noted above.

Then back to the jellyfish. Note that in the finished scarf the jellyfish will hang going in one direction on one side of the body as you wear the scarf and the other way on the other.  This is okay. Fishies swim. It’s one of their charms. Do four sets of jellyfish: don’t forget, for the first row of them, to increase one stitch as you did before near the end of the row.

Now go back and do rows 2-8 as above twice more.

Purl that last row, cast off, run the ends in, and enjoy.

One blocked Monterey scarf, here you go. The patterns didn’t line up together with the yoke-to-body increase row missing, so it took some playing with. I’ll post later how I did it.

Today, I had to drop some files off for the surgeon and found myself coming back via the main road into Stanford for the first time in months.

So.  Here‘s a link to an older picture to give you an idea of what the area has always looked like, give or take a few trimmed-off dead fronds; the view is an announcement that You Have Arrived  at Stanford University.

I didn’t have my camera this afternoon, and even if I had there was no place to pull over to use it.   But my stars!  The trees!

I thought, okay, I can see doing that. Maybe.  Under duress.  We used to have a date palm and one of our kids fell into it and had to go to the plastic surgeon’s–the fronds are as sharp as sewing-machine needles and the trunks are nothing you’d much want to touch either if you didn’t have to. Drunk students? Did someone sue the University?  Why did they do this?

Poodle cuts.  They gave the palm trees poodle cuts.  Shaved them smooth as can be all the way up and liposuctioned the trunks into rigid verticality, then turned the crowns into slicked poofs above, leaving the fronds at the top announcing, tadaaah! with their arms thrown out wide. Dig the new haircuts!

Poodle palms.  Huh.  There’s got to be a good reason, but I don’t know it yet.

This isn’t blocked yet, and the jellyfish will look more like themselves once it is. It is quite a bit longer than it seems here, with the seaweed section providing a more-solid and thereby warmer area for wrapping around the neck in the brisk Monterey Bay breezes.  This is the Monterey shawl lace patterns morphed into a scarf, knitted out of a skein of Camelspin, one of my favorite yarns; it’s softer than quite a few cashmeres and a good one for wearing against the neck.

And just for fun, a good demonstration of why my husband insists that if I indeed get a woodpecker feeder, I’m to keep it as far as I can from the house.  Someone was having problems with their telephone service.  One of the hubby’s co-workers showed him this:

Re last night’s post, I almost deleted the whole thing; everybody has billing bugs from time to time, and how boring is that?

But that second paragraph demanded to go up, somehow. I don’t know if it’s because I have a dear friend who was a battered wife for too many years (not anymore, thank goodness), but whoever it was for out there wherever you are, it was for you.  But then I felt I had to give enough context to explain where that one was coming from.

An oddball twist came with today’s mail, and for once I am totally on Blue Cross’s side: someone put in a claim (surely someone simply keyed the wrong code) of there having been cardiovascular surgery done on me two weeks ago. On a day I was quietly sitting at home going nowhere in particular.  And the charge for said supposed surgery?

Nineteen dollars.

Blue Cross demanded and got a $19 discount on that one and assured me there was no co-pay.  Um, yeah.  Ya think?

Meantime, the Monterey Sea Silk shawl, as soon as I rinsed it and laid it out and the lace patterns were settled into their proper places, had me going, And THAT’S why I knitted this! It felt like just one of the most gorgeous things I’d ever made, the way a finished project is supposed to feel like, and I wanted to dance on the spot.  It was late, I only rinsed it rather than a serious blocking, but still.

I’m following it up with a scarf out of topaz Camelspin using the same lace stitches  in a straight line rather than a circle, just to hedge my bets on which article of clothing the recipient might prefer. Either way, I’m quite happy with it.

So many people to knit for in such a hurry. Go go go!

There’s the first Manos Silk scarf done, I did the second yesterday from the first of Kathy’s yarn (thank you Kathy!) and it’s now waiting to be blocked and the ends run in on both, and today, trying to choose which yarn to scarf down next… I instead tackled the longterm UFO that’s been off alone in a corner.  It simply declared it was its time now. I argued with it for about an hour and then caved.

I love Sea Silk. I love the Monterey pattern with its jellyfish and seaweed and the crash of the surf at the neckline, I really do.  And the idea of putting the two together, and in the Ocean colorway, was just so poetically perfect: actual seaweed turned into aquatic patterns in deep-sea blue, looking shimmery and gorgeous.  How can you get better than that?

So I went down a needle size to match the yarn and off I went.  But Sea Silk is very slippery and the Monterey is a complicated bear if you drop a stitch.  There’s a reason I rated it expert.  That wasn’t stopping me so much as wondering if the woman whom I don’t know that it’s going to will, you know, actually…like it…

I had rubber baby buggy bumpers on the needle tips every time I put it down when I started.  But that was a goodly while ago, months, and I don’t know quite where they are now.  I was afraid those stitches were threatening to be bungee jumpers every time I picked the project up.

So I avoided picking it up.

I found myself needing to finish up old tasks today.  It was time.  I got one and a half full pattern repeats done so far, and at that rate I’ll finish tomorrow afternoon, unless it declares it wants to be longer than I’m planning.

It’s already shown that it’s the one calling the shots.

The camera battery died, the post office was closing, so this photo will have to do for here.  I can’t go to Sock Summit, much though I wish I could, but my shawl will–if you go, say hi to Karin at the Periwinkle (my fingers want to type it as Peregrine) Sheep for me.  This is her soft sock yarn, knitted in the golden-eagle-wing-inspired Constance pattern,with the colorway coming together in a way that reminds me of Clara and her brood.

Speaking of which.  There is another nest right here in my own town, and as I was coming out of my doctor’s office this morning, what should I see but a gorgeous peregrine falcon soaring directly above me, coming closer in than I’d ever seen any before, not in the dim light of dusk but with the bright sunlight glowing off its feathers.  It was absolutely breathtaking.

And nobody else seemed to look up to notice it at all.  What they missed!

Knitpicks has “Wrapped in Comfort” on sale at $14.97 at the moment.  I’m not very good at pushing the commercial side of things, but I am pretty proud of that book, so I thought I’d mention. Thanks!

The answer to last night’s dilemma was obvious, once I thought of it: rubber needle tips.  Used’em today at the doctor’s office to keep from dropping stitches mid-row when they called my name. Worked like a charm.

The knitting itself, however, not so much: I had a whole lot more done than this earlier in the day. But there is one row in my Monterey pattern that starts with a yarnover, and I decided to knit in the front and back of the first stitch instead. (Note that I could have done an M1 after the first stitch instead if I wanted to substitute.)  And I went merrily on my way.

That back-and-forthing in the one stitch created a knot-like effect in the silk, much more so than it would have in a different yarn. I didn’t like it. I kept knitting. It bugged me. I finally sat myself down and went, look: if you don’t like it now, you’re really not going to like it when you’ve added 20+ hours onto this.  It will have this one tiny spot that you’ll feel like apologizing to the recipient over when it’s going to be a perfectly gorgeous project and they’ll never notice it. Still.  What if it felt uncomfortable on their neck just in that one tiny spot.  It’s much easier to change it now.

Which is how the afternoon’s work got frogged.

Which means it will be all the better when it’s finished. (And yes, I did the M1 this time. I’ll be keeping an eye on it as the rows add up again.)

Correction to the above: I didn’t twist the bar I picked up, as I think about it, so no technically it wasn’t an M1, it was more like picking up a phantom dropped yo: just a plain pick up the bar between stitches and knit it.

I think I see now why my rose-colored yarn had already gradually migrated over to my knitting perch and thus was near the front door when I had no shawl project and had to grab something, anything, on my way to taking Richard to the ER on Monday. I didn’t even see it till today, but then suddenly it was so obvious. The climbing roses along our front walkway.  The color. The pattern I decided on after we got there. Taking the safety of home with me and putting it forward into the unknown.

One of these days I’ll learn that the picture looks better if I take my hand out of my pocket or over the shawl and then in the pocket, but vanity aside, here’s the finished baby alpaca shawl I was working on. It’s the Tara’s Redwood Burl pattern, though more in the color (it’s greener than this in real life) of a tiny redwood sapling’s baby needles.

Burls are like pearls to an oyster: something interesting and beautiful created by the living thing’s reaction to an irritant.  I’ve been fascinated by redwood trunk patterns ever since we moved to California, and that pattern was my second attempt at trying to capture the essence of some of them.

Just some background on how that redwood-colored shawl in “Wrapped” got its name.

Oh, and that’s the baby plum tree my kids gave me for Mother’s Day last year, growing like a weed.

(Ed. to add for those who asked: the doctor at the ER said the bloodwork was clean, which I interpret to mean that as for This Little Piggy, Richard Had None.  He’s feeling a fair bit better today; thank you for looking out for us, everybody.)

A quick trip to Costco, where we saw someone with a flower tucked into her hair.  Not only that: it was a zinnia.  There are those who will understand why I was thinking, how perfect is that?!

When we got up closer, I could tell it was silk.  That’s okay; not everyone has the real thing at hand, It needed to stay fresh looking through her whole shift at work, and her heart was definitely in the right place.

I wonder if she’s a knitter yet.  Heh.

Knitpicks.com is having a 40% off sale on books, and a certain title I might be fond of, “Wrapped in Comfort,” is $14.97 there through Feb. 13th.

On a more cheerful note: I woke up this morning from a dream of the church doors being flung open, a joyous crowd streaming out, and the narrator to the dream exclaiming, “Let’s celebrate!”

Heck yeah!

Yesterday was a little like this square: I was casting it off when the phone rang.  Later, I thought I was done with the thing, went to pick it up, and found out that when I’d gotten up, I not only hadn’t finished casting off, but I’d managed somehow to yank the needle out and it was frogging itself as I’d run for the phone.  I’m too deaf to hear the tinktinktink that had been going on behind me.

Oops.  so I had to reknit a bunch.  Eh.

And I’m sitting here this morning thinking, the trick is not to let the Crohn’s unravel me.  It’s just a few rows in my overall life.  So.

My son and his bride arrived from the airport Christmas night in time for dinner. Her family is having a big reunion tonight; quite a few of them live in this town.

I’d knitted a shawl for her grandmother, and I know I have a picture of it somewhere in my files, but I forgot to take another one just to make sure, so I can’t show it; I’ll ask the kids to snap me one.  She’s a tiny woman, so I knitted her the Constance shawl, which, when done up in fingering weight, is one of the smaller patterns in “Wrapped in Comfort.”

I learned something along the way of knitting hers and my sister’s Christmas present: I’d done them in one strand of laceweight baby alpaca or cashmere and one strand of Claudia’s silk.  Gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous effect, with the silk shimmering around the quieter fiber much more prominently than when they’re blended together into a single strand.  But–and this is the big but–if you snag the shawl, the slippery silk tends to pull out merrily while the baby alpaca stays obediently in its place.

It is much easier to work a strand back in that is in tandem with its knitted-along partner. This was a bear to fix–but it was doable and I did it and my sister’s was none the worse for it.

And so I was hesitant to send Kim’s grandmother’s offwhite shawl along, as if there were something wrong with it.  It was absolutely gorgeous, and I would have worn it myself–gingerly–in a heartbeat, but I didn’t; it was hers. I thought about knitting another one, but that didn’t feel right; the one I’d made for her couldn’t belong to anybody else.  It was hers!

So I sent it off with Kim to give Grandma with careful warnings and wondering nervousness as to whether it was good enough.

Silly me.  Her grandmother was ecstatic.  Yes, yes, she’d treat it carefully, okay, but WOW! LOOK at this!  Kim said Grandma had made everybody laugh when she exclaimed, “I have to buy a new dress to go with this!”

And I was worried?

(p.s. For a little holiday cheer, may I recommend Lawdog’s blog post here.  No, (looking at the first paragraph or two), I mean it!)