I wanted to make major progress today, and found myself reaching for a green sweater this morning before I even made the connection.

It is always easier to get to work on knitting that doesn’t clash with your clothes, and better yet, when the work in your hands will look fabulous with what you’ve got on (even when it’s for somebody else), it’s hard to put it down. A dozen more grams and it’s done.

Oh, and the squirrels and that bag? They quit even sniffing at it. They ignored the nuts in it. Even after I put peanut butter in it. Too scary.

Wow, how do I get them to react to my birdfeeders that way?

I finally took the bag out of the tall flowerpot this morning and put it down across the yard, the mouth open towards where I could see from inside.

It took awhile–and then the bag was suddenly doing a vigorous funky chicken.  A gray was trying the flower pot tactic: if I push this around there must be nuts I can get at underneath. He nudged it. He charged it nose first. He tried to wrestle it out of the way. No dice. He left in disgust.

Hours more and the alpha squirrel approached the mouth of it. (He’s black with a touch of white below his eye, he’s easy to spot.) He stopped halfway across the yard and did an anxious paw up, nose straining forward, tail straining backwards then protectively over him, then he shifted to the other foot and did a little dance.

It didn’t bite him.

A little closer. A little more trepidation. Finally he stepped into the wet cold bag and then freaked as the paper gave way under him and the top of it came down at his head. (The gray had left the thing angled upwards.)

But having gone in once nothing was going to stop him now. None of the others ever did dare come in. Alpha ate at his leisure, then came back for more later when he got hungry again, dashing out to safety the moment the almond was claimed, not staying in there one squirrel breath longer than necessary each time.

Moms rule. I got a squirrel to take just one at a time.

I emptied a 20 lb bag of birdseed into the metal minican outside and closed it up. The raccoons have bashed the lid a good one but they haven’t beaten it yet.

Behind me was a two-foot-high big empty flower pot.

You know, we could have fun with this… I plunked the tall bag in the center. Yes it looked as odd as the squirrel that tried to bury half a paper cup to grow more whipped cream. Threw a few stale nuts inside it and a few in the pot outside the bag. I like to mess with their little minds.

I’ve done this before, actually, but this is a new crowd, staking their claims on my yard as the season demands of the young and as the old give way to Nature. We do have hawks…

It took the whole morning of sniffing and standing then shying away, all of them. They knew their favorite food was in there, and I got a lesson in the keenness of their sense of smell; I’d wondered. They demonstrated. Eventually, one got the courage to climb up and then held on tight by its back feet, trying fervently not to touch the bag, its nose disappearing into the abyss, then pulling itself back up the same way.

There you go. The nuts in the pot  were claimed.

As soon as one does something they all can. One came by a few minutes later that even got up the courage to stand on the lip of the pot to try to get a good pawhold on the top of that bag so it could jump in there, too.

Paper being what paper is, the squirrel found itself doing a wild grab in the air and twisting back to earth and that was that.  And when it clearly worked out badly for one none of them wanted to try. The almonds are still in there–no chew chew through train of thought has arrived at their stations yet.

…And I’m not writing about the knitting because I haven’t yet during what has been a very busy day here. Wait: let me just go do one row, again, to get me started…

Amazing how much stuff needing doing around the house gets done when the creative side of the brain needs to work something out on its own. How to get the yarn to look like…

The hard part was making myself sit down finally this evening with pen and paper to try to work out the details of what I was beginning to visualize, to actually start to do the hard work. And if you ever want an answer to a teenager whining about what their algebra is supposed to do with their future real life, send them over here to give me a refresher course to tutor us both–I could really use it right now.

As soon as I get off this blog I’m going to cast on and hope I got the first word problem right. Yes, it’s bedtime–but “Begin; the rest is easy” holds ever true. Even if it’s just one row. Start.

In the meantime, our neighbors have a compost box, *with earthworms and kitchen and garden scraps turning out good soil for their garden to grow more food with, with the remains becoming kitchen and garden scraps and good soil to grow more food with, repeat from *, just on the other side of the fence.

And today after the rain stopped, there was a black squirrel totally splayed out on the fenceline. Ahhhh…heat!

Immediately below him there was steam rising from where I knew that box was.  (I bet they get all the robins.) And that happy squirrel looked for all the world like a cat that has claimed the top of the radiator on a cold winter’s day.

I was curious to see how the lace pattern from Tara’s shawl would look in a hat. One skein of worsted baby alpaca, 3.5mm needles, there you go. (I’m told Martingale now sells a pdf of the book; Purlescence has physical copies and ships, and I’d be glad to sign one if you don’t mind waiting till I get to Knit Night on Thursdays.)

And on the wildlife front.

Young squirrels don’t have object constancy before maturity. I have thrown a nut into a large flower pot as they’ve watched and they were unable to figure out it was in there. Come Spring and a year old, though, they will.

A clearly new-around-here young gray spent a fair amount of time today trying to figure out how to reach a treat I’d made quite inaccessible; then, having spotted what he thought was a good idea, he explored how to get to the top of the barbecue grill. Which was not close.

It seemed to throw him that it didn’t feel like a tree. He wrapped a paw around the leg. Didn’t like it. Finally, after many tentative steps and much scouting around that took quite some time (can you climb up inside a closed plastic pipe? No you cannot), he managed that little bit of rocket science leap by leap to the shelf and then, standing at last on the cold metal at the top, king of the mountain, he turned his head this way and that, taking a good look around.

That huge sugarpine cone full of suet and seeds was still dangling above the porch. Getting higher up, though it might fulfill an inner squirrel imperative, hadn’t gotten him one inch closer after all. Dang. But… But…! He’d worked so hard for it!

But then…wait…how do you get out of here? He seemed to have forgotten how he got up in the first place. Down was not an option from that height. He studied how far away the olive tree was, the fiberglass ladder (he’d clearly already figured out you don’t want to leap onto that.)  It was leaning against a lopped-off trunk we’d left for the woodpeckers. And there, over there there was nothing but grass.

He was stumped.

And then I happened to open the sliding door. He panicked and took a massive leap to the tree trunk near that ladder–eight, quite possibly ten feet away. I was stunned. He was at the downward part of the arc by the time he landed and scrambled up, but he made it. Olympic Gold! The crowd goes wild!

The Washington Post declared it squirrel week, asking for photos; included in there is a black one with the outer rings of its ears and the bottom half of its face bright white, so odd that I had to look closer to make sure it was actually a squirrel. There are many reminders there of why these little animals are so funny to watch.

The alarm rang at 4:28 this morning. There was a moment of mild panic when the printer refused to print her boarding pass.

Richard had the presence of mind at that hour to tell her she could present it on her new phone at the gate, getting it to come up for her so it would be ready.

Did you hear about the TSA recently confiscating someone’s cupcake because of the “gel-like substance” on top? Our citrus sponge cake went unadorned last night. I cut a big chunk at 4:45 to supplement her two-flight airline pretzel supply, ziplocked it, and off she went, returning to the land where water comes in white in the winter.

We were back from the airport while it was still the dark of the night and fell back into bed while we could.

Just for fun: the snowboarding bird. The size, beak and use of a tool look like the crow/jay family, but I’m not quite sure what it is. Anyone?

Don’t tell them the Iron Lady is a paper tiger…

I mentioned in the Fall having set a chair just forward of under the birdfeeder and discovering my wild guess was correct: the squirrels suddenly refused to take a long leap sideways at it to knock the seed out if they thought a competitor might be able to just reach right up there with a tiny leap and beat them to it.

And when they come at it from below, the cover shuts down fast over the portals.

Over several months, though, they eventually learned to jump a bit sideways from the top of the chairback to get a swing going to it; they might not profit, but the ones below looking up hopefully at the pinata certainly did.

So I experimented.

Newspapers to try to mess with their grip blew off or got ignored after a day or two. But then.

Newsweek did a cover story on the Margaret Thatcher movie coming out; with their logo plastered in red across her forehead, Meryl Streep’s face covers the front page.

With her pearly whites showing in that smile. Prominently.

More than a week later, the little bushytails have finally decided it’s okay to jump to the seat again, but they absolutely will not look anywhere but down when they do. The cover is hanging down sideways by the spine, it has been rained on once, but it is still a human face and it is very clear they recognize that.

They will not rise up on their hind feet now on that seat: they will not expose their most tender parts to those teeth.

It has been 29 and 30F or so at night this past week and after one pipe-freezing incident we’ve been leaving the slowest little drip in the kitchen till we get up in the morning (with mental apologies to the Hetch Hetchy reservoir.)

A neighbor who is away saw our weather reports and sent out a request for help checking on a hose of theirs, mentioning vaguely about its being there for the raccoons; would we or whichever neighbor sees this first go check it out and turn it off for them just to be sure?

First, though, we got some Skype time with my in-laws and our older children who are visiting them, and of course Parker was clapping his hands back at the four of us here clapping and cheering him on. There is just nothing like seeing a baby happy to see us seeing him, and everybody else, too.

Which probably helped make it so that my husband was laughing when he stepped back in the door from the neighbors’ a few minutes later.

They have a koi pond. (Oh yeah, forgot about that.) There is, it turns out, a motion-sensored water sprayer to keep the raccoons from raiding their fish.

Iced at night or no, “It works,” pronounced Richard: he grinned as I typed back to the neighbors that, not to worry, the deed was done.

Took a nap today, puttered around the kitchen, walked into the family room at last to see, perched at most 15 feet away, a Cooper’s hawk–I think the female–looking at me in as much astonishment as I was looking at it: I didn’t expect *you* here! It considered my presence a moment and then in no particular hurry spread those beautiful 31″ wings wide, flared her long striped tail in the now-familiar circle, and she was off.

One of the first things Michelle asked when the kids got home last night was whether a certain package had arrived; it had. I picked it up to show her and said to Richard, “Looks familiar, doesn’t it?”

To which my daughter reminded me of a certain earlier Christmas where I’d told her of a favorite yarn, and a familiar-looking package had arrived: I opened it, I pulled out this lovely yarn, I knitted up half a ball’s worth of it and then suddenly realized, wait–I didn’t order this color, did I? (Checking name on box.) Oh my goodness.

And so I’d stuffed it needles and all back in the box, wrapped the box, and threw it under the tree tagged from Michelle to me. There. I wrapped it for you.

Needle deprivation. That’ll teach me.

Got up late. Looked out the window: a female Northern Flicker! The spots were hard to see in the shadows and I had to go check with a birding friend to be sure. I’ve only seen them a few times before. Picture a woodpecker that often doesn’t actually peck wood, rather, it likes to stride through the grass stabbing at insects on the ground, which is what this one was doing.

You have to love a bird that looks like it’s sporting a sock-monkey’s smile.

Got the last of the to-go presents wrapped. Richard mailed them. Collapsed and read cover-to-cover the book “Avian Architecture” that Richard-the-younger and Kim gave me for my birthday.  Way cool stuff in there; I could rattle on all day now about bird structures! Who knew a bird colony on a cliff could look like barnacles on a boat.

Lori Stotko, the hands specialist, had wanted me to test the new shaping for awhile.

“So how are you doing with the new splints?”

“Edward Shovelhands.”

She laughed. She tweaked them a bit more–curl that edge a tad, add velcro across this part of the fingers, there you go, good for happy knitting for another three or four years.

And on the wildlife front: I’ve been throwing  a few nuts out mornings and afternoons, far from the feeder, just a few but it seems to be enough to keep the squirrels docile around the birdfeeders. Not enough to hoard but enough for a few of them not to be hungry; seems to work.

The bluejays clearly have caught on. One saw me opening the door today and was just waiting for it. I closed the door and, swoop! Got it! Jab, jab, jab, jackhammering it steadily apart on the ground.

What happened next I did not expect. There was a sudden three-way birdfight: swoops and jousting and chasing right through the smallest twigs through the trees, mine mine mine, continuing on out across the neighbor’s yard and then the next, swoop, swoop, (run!) go away, MINE, and just when I thought it was over there they were back again, swooping and flinching, chasing and fleeing. I definitely got my entertainment out of that walnut.

The squirrels, meantime, kept well out of sight till those big beaks were too.

A murder of crows not quite daring an attack but doing a slow dive down or rise up towards a larger hawk from above and below, the hawk not in a particular hurry to get away but neither willing to pick a fight. They all disappeared into some tall redwoods near Kepler’s Books as I watched at a red light.

Another hawk flew across the roadway about a mile further along, close enough to see feathers.

And then my own Cooper’s, looping through the foot of the L in the patio here this evening, blue in flight in the lowering sun. It was definitely an add-hawk committee day.

And to top it off I have concocted my first lined hat: it is blocking and I am dancingly pleased beyond all reason.

And the trip to Menlo Park that took me past Kepler’s? I got new handsplints. Better than pain meds, no side effects. They keep my fingers from curling at night, and the first set made for me at the start of my lupus years ago gave me back the use of my then-heavily-inflamed hands–to the point that I was actually able to take up knitting again, whereas I’d been eating with plastic utensils because I could not bear to lift a metal fork to my mouth for the weight of it. I had a child still in diapers. I don’t know how I did it. I only know I’m glad I did.

The splints last about four or five years. It suddenly occurs to me, having never had any option but white before, that “when I am old I shall wear purple” in my sleep. Line them with loose old cotton socks with the heel and toe cut out, and there you go. Usually they only go up to the middle joints of my fingers; with these longer-handed ones, we’re trying something new, and I report back to Lori Stotko, a physical therapist specializing in musicians’ issues in her day job, next week. We may yet shorten the tops.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve almost, almost asked my ward’s chat list if anyone had such socks with holes they were throwing away that I could put to good use.  Can you just picture the potential mountain of singletons…!

Meantime, this is Parker trying to take after me: I pulled the drawers out and climbed a dresser when I was just barely old enough to remember it.

I think he’s just trying to rummage up some old socks there for me. Go Parker!

Great, flying cranes nearby and overhead as we went into a restaurant for lunch. Wow.

And…nobody noticing. How could this be? I remarked on them to one of the family and she too thought it was cool they were there.

I wonder how much have I missed by not taking the time to just sit in Nature and take it all in.

It’s beautiful out there.

(Pardon me while I marvel at how much Parker has grown since last December. I know. They do that. Still.)

Saw a hawk. Then a second.

Now, typically a raptor in the sky will have its wings stretched wide, the very tips splayed a bit, floating high while they watch over their part of the planet, making it look like the easiest thing in the world–no flapflapflap here, that’s crow stuff.

This afternoon, though, we had a good stiff wind straight out of Alaska and plummeting temperatures to match. Brrr. There’d been a flurry of birds at my feeders this morning, clearly aware of what was coming, all trying to get a good meal fast before it got bad; then as Alaska came in, the feathers on one dove were blowing backwards and she was pushed nearly off her feet.

Needing to run to the post office, I sat at a long light. I looked up and watched the scene in the sky.

The hawks both had their wings wide, but then the wind turned sharp; as the trees danced, they didn’t retreat to the branches below but pulled their shoulders up and into a V and rocked sideways, rock, rock, rock like me without my balance trying to walk a tight straight line without my cane–a stagger effect going on there, definitely. The wind inhaled and counted to ten, wings soared wide for the ride, then, blow! Rock, rock, rock in that tight V again.

It suddenly hit me what they looked like: the surfers at the annual Mavericks competition, looking for the biggest waves to ride to shore, as if they were having the times of their lives.  And then it occurred to me that if these were young ones, (too far to tell), it was probably their first time experiencing real weather.

The currents events of the day. Rocky or smooth, it was all part of their territory.

The Washington Post has a squirrel columnist. It’s like finding another knitter in an unexpected place. And so now I know that the teenage squirrels are, at this time of year, out to find their own territories and challenge the old guard and that that’s why I’ve had so many new and smaller ones around lately. And these don’t like suet cake, thankyouverymuch. (Oh good!)

A few days ago I saw a big fat old gray one chase a young slender black one away and across the yard, up a tree six feet or so, and then the black one jumped to a nearby trunk and came down…

But the gray one, who’d raced notably slower than the other, was stopping to catch his breath.

The black one stopped and turned around and watched him. Meantime, another small black one took advantage of the whole scene by sneaking around both of them and going for the patio.

The next day: a smallish black one was nibbling peacefully away at what the birds toss down, minding its own business; had another started nibbling, he’d have shared, the young ones often do.

The big gray approached slowly, cautiously from behind, easing over to the side to stay out of the line of view, watching carefully, gets closer, closer, and then LEAPS onto the black one from behind to bite him! They instantly turned into a rolling, struggling, circular hamster ball with tail fluff coming from behind, totally out for blood, neither willing to give up. The gray’s got the weight but the black’s got the agility and speed.

Yin yang motif. How they roll in a circle like that just amazes me. But hey guys, I don’t want to see anyone hurt.

I opened the door and called out to them to stop, but I could have been a chickadee for all they cared. I threw a shoe halfway to them, careful not to have any chance of hitting them but trying to break it up. They could not have cared less, I was harmless and they knew it and the attacker and attacked weren’t and they knew it. It went on for what felt like a very long time.

The black one managed to grab the gray’s head face to face and grip it between his paws long enough to confirm for me where the tattered ears on the bigger ones come from.

They leaped in a blur up to a tall but empty flower pot, rolled in, continued with me trying to figure out by which tail tip showed when who was winning, and finally both leaped to the lip at once, apart. The gray stared away. The black one looked straight at me.

Having established himself, I think that’s the one that tried to take me on via the skylight later. I’ve wondered what my gray hair looks like to them.

They breathed hard a few moments, then reenacted the previous chase scene, except this time the young black squirrel was doing the chasing–and neither of them was moving very fast but rather clearly gingerly, and the gray was going to the right across the yard and away from the trees that offer a view of the patio. Vanquished. Away with the bully.

The gray came back today. Nothing around but the birds and me watching from inside, but it was clear he was scared. He approached slowly. Warily. He started to reach a paw to the patio–and pulled back, fast! Tried again. It took four times for him to work up the bravado to come onto the concrete and dare stand under that birdfeeder again.

Be careful whom you pick on.

(The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America includes, for good reason,  “…the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”)

It is blocking.

That sheared mink/cashmere yarn? I need to thank Kate in St. Louis: when she did a Traveling Woman shawlette in 12 hours, I assume the pattern name in reference to what Stephanie’s been doing, I thought–I can do that!

I figured, you get more done when you have a deadline and I really hoped to get two major projects done this week. Three, if you listen to the crazy.

So, yes, I did knit my shawlette in about 12 hours, most of them over two days–but not necessarily a day followed by the one that came right after it, and  I still need to cast on project#2.

But oh my goodness, if you can’t knit qiviut quite every day, this yarn will definitely do. You know how wools feel softer the moment they touch water, when you go to block them? This seemed to disappear altogether–just totally melted into my hands. Love love love it. And I cannot WAIT to see the look on…! My only problem is, I can’t put that look on every single person’s face. I so wish I could.

One stitch at a time. One person at a time. Deadlines, though: deadlines totally make the progress.

(And to the squirrel on my roof suddenly eye to eye when I looked up yesterday from the bathroom sink, a nut in its mouth, considering me and then abruptly deciding I was challenging him and leaping at my head, which only got him the invisible forcefield of the skylight and a bellyflop–keep that up and I will come after you with my hair brush. I will spin and knit you a little carry bag for those acorns, and you will say it’s shear luck we met.)