Andy’s Orchard.

The stone fruits were so delayed this year that I’ve learned I have to call ahead to see what they have; it was a long drive that one time for six peaches.

Today, for the first time all season, yes, I could come pick up a full box of Kit Donnells. Alright!

Trying not to be greedy but thinking of friends who know what those are, I asked after I got there if I could actually have two?

The clerk misheard me. He cheerfully brought out three, and all the sudden everybody on my list was going to be happy. Cool! The best week of the best peach!

As I passed the “New Homes Late 2023” sign alongside Andy’s farm, I thought for the millionth time, Hang in there, Andy, hang in there–we need you.

I hung a single hank of the red yarn out to hurry up and finish drying in the sun yesterday, mindful of the scrub jay years ago that had tried to abscond with an entire pound of blue baby alpaca, standing on it and yanking yanking yanking away while doing what birds do to lighten the load just before taking flight.

I washed it out immediately. It knitted up into a heathered effect that could never be reproduced. Well poop.

So. I wound the red hank. There was a knot, which was a disappointment, and I broke it there and started a second ball so that it wouldn’t catch me by surprise later mid-row.

The two balls turned out nearly exactly the same size. That knot did me a favor. Cool. I wanted to immediately start knitting.

But there were four balls plus a pull-through strand of green and I was just about to add seven of white and two balls of red into the chaos, and I made myself stop and take the time to wind those two reds into one ball together since I was going to be knitting them together anyway.

In the end I only had time to knit a single row on the afghan last night.

Also the most finagle-y one as I counted and counted again and again to make sure I was getting the intarsia set up right.

Yesterday at the dermatologist’s she really zapped a mole on my chest after I said there will be more heart monitors in my life and that thing’s in the way.

Today I was pushing myself: Colourmart got that replacement color to me super fast, I really want to be working on that afghan, I know it feels so great when I do, why am I letting myself be distracted away. I couldn’t for over a week and now I can. So go do.

I found my motivation–the sudden thought that, I am the only person who can do this. Meaning, with this specific love, intent, needle-to-yarn gauge, vision for it, sisterhood. I am the only person who can make what this is supposed to be and mean. My cousin-in-law’s abrupt passing last week reminded that we have no promises of extra time.

It is slow going now that I’m in an intense section again. My barn graph is twelve sets of five rows.

Six are now done. 10%. And it looks glorious already. I think I should add more flowers.

I did a double take: but those don’t exist yet! Right? Do they make prototypes that actually, y’know, go out on the road? Rather than just sitting there looking pretty (and immobile) in some showroom somewhere where they want to show it off?

I had to go home and search till I found one to be sure whose it was, and I found no pictures of a Tesla Cybertruck that had it painted in military camouflage colors. But that’s what it was. Not far from Google’s self-driving-vehicle headquarters. Do I detect a taunt?

It looked like nobody taller than a toddler in a carseat could possibly sit behind the driver of that thing. Elon will have to take a backseat.

While waiting for the red yarn to be absolutely dry before winding it up into balls, this happened.

Barbara Walker’s Paving Stones pattern, multiples of four stitches (+1, she says, but I was working in the round, so, not +1) so I used 72 and then decreased in nine sets across. Etc. Malabrigo Mecha, size 5 for the ribbing, 7 for the rest, and I have a person in mind for it but I’m going to offer it as one of several choices so they get what they actually want.

I wanted to make a brown hat. I was not able in four stores to find any of it in that color, in person nor online, but I had half an older skein left; this took it to the last couple of yards but it made it.

I did say to Richard when I was showing it off, If you put this on does it make you a bobblehead?

The other thought: since there are no cables sustaining the depth in the texture, when this pattern gets wet it deflates to flatness. In which case the hat will be polka dots. It’s a risk someone will have to take.

USPS this morning said Thursday, Royal Mail said the local office has it, and dang. Busted, I guess? They put it on the truck after all.

The mail came at 5:30: the red for the barn! There is thankfully no pink tinge this time–that’s just a pigment of the camera’s imagination.

I had ordered a large cone. They give you a discount if you click the box for not making them wind it off into smaller ones, and yet, I had said I was knitting it doubled–and they wound it off onto two because they could, so that I could knit it straight up as is if I wanted. It was a nice little surprise. Thank you, Colourmart.

(I wanted it wound off and scoured first, though. It preshrinks it a little and it makes it feel so much softer to work with.)

Two plus hours and a fast dinner later, I had all 2600+ meters hanked up, the mill oils washed out in hot water, and they’re hanging up to dry.

I can’t wait.

It’s been a long wait. Go Fani Willis!! It was a thrill to watch her giving her press conference, reminding a questioner that this is about following the law, not politics, the same as all her other thousands of cases.

Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia had been under a lot of pressure to fire her, and at one point he actually said he was going to–he just never said when, and it just somehow never happened, while she simply continued doing her job.

I’m sure he knew the Watergate phrase “Saturday night massacre” as well as anybody, when public servant after public servant resigned rather than fire that era’s Special Prosecutor. The guy who said sure, he would? Robert Bork, whom Reagan later failed at nominating to the Supreme Court. But I digress.

Had Kemp done so, the next Fulton County Attorney General could well have added his name to the list of co-conspirators, and why would he agree to be one more fall guy abused by the former president? He was on to him.

So. Nineteen co-conspirators. RICO charges. T*** instantly erupting in rage at a Black woman daring to hold him accountable, while trying to profit off that rage.

As one meme queries, Why is a billionaire asking you to give him your money?

A hundred sixty-one criminal acts.

Justice for election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter, who fled their homes at peril of their lives for telling the truth and refusing to cave.

By people who couldn’t bear that people who were Black had integrity when they themselves did not.

Go get’em, Fani. And thank you.

Sore throat yesterday morning, stayed home, missed a potluck last night, missed seeing friends at church: a throwback to the During times, made easier by Zoom church and the Zoom knitting group that offered actual human interaction, with a big thanks to all who participated there.

Got two hats started out of it: one that needed visual attention and one for the knit meeting that freed my eyes as friends encouraged my hands–egged them on, rather. A fish hat (child size in link) complete with bright stripes and tails and fin and (adult size) fish lips on your forehead?

Trying to remember who it was (probably Elizabeth Zimmerman?) who famously said, People will put anything on their heads.

Yes please!

Dandelion Chocolate in San Francisco is where we learned about Manoa Chocolate in Hawaii: they were cheering on their friends at the new start-up and highly recommending what they were creating and the cacao farms they were helping get established there.

Manoa was in my inbox this afternoon. Like Dandelion, they email quite sparingly so it is notable when they do.

I’ve never tried their mango chocolate bar–but I’m going to now, because they are donating 100% of its proceeds to Maui relief. 

I ordered a few other bars to help with their shipping costs, particularly given that it’s August–I know how careful they are with that process. I’ll also just mention that, as someone who likes dark chocolate, their chocolate hazelnut spread is better than anybody else’s anywhere–we have done side-by-side, spoon-by-spoon taste tests to verify that, with calories and much mother/daughter glee and laughter–and it is always asked for for Christmas now.

I don’t know if it’s the volcanic soil or what, and granted, I normally only order the plain bars without additions so that’s the context to take this from, but man, their chocolate. It is the best.

(I wonder if the mango powder came from Haydens. Our Pearl Harbor survivor friend Jean is from Hawaii and misses her perfect Hayden mangoes, which grew there. I’ll have to ask.)

I was going to go back there with him but when they called his name somehow I just didn’t. We had already discussed it and found neither of us particularly cared if I did or didn’t and I was in the middle of a row of a merino-silk that likes to drop and run like crazy. Eh. Have fun.

He came back from triage moments later and said, The nurse glared at me.

I finished row after row more, there were quite a few people in Urgent Care this afternoon, the wait was long, and then with my hands needing a break I finally opened the book I’d grabbed as backup when he had suddenly decided he needed to go in.

Whoever it was that recommended “The Fabric of Civilization: how textiles made the world,” by Virginia Postrel, thank you thank you thank you. Archaeology to history to genetics and written compellingly interestingly. I am learning so much.

They called him to the exam room and again I found myself staying where I was, while wondering why.

There was a young woman who was doing the same thing waiting for her friend; my guess is they were college roommates.

She worked up the courage and finally complimented me on my necklace. It was a sunflower gerdan from (are you surprised) Ukraine.

She was very happy at finding out where she could order one from and it was clear it was going to be very meaningful to her to do so. I adored her on the spot.

We chatted. She described herself as a writer. I told her I was one, too. Her: Cool! She started telling me about the fantasy fiction she likes to write.

She’d been watching me knit lace, and I told her I wrote a lace shawls book–but with a story to each. What inspired it, who it was for, with the point being to bless others with what we can do.

The most important one, I told her, was the story of right after 9/11: Joan Baez and her niece came to city hall for a multi-faith gathering; her niece sang. Speeches were made.

And at the end, they asked everybody to take the hands of those around them for a moment of silence. And then as they so felt moved, to speak into that silence.

A few words here and there as strangers held hands with their fellow man. Finally, one man said decisively, May America always be like this.

Amen, the crowd murmured, and with that we let each other go.

I told her, I made a circular shawl in remembrance: it looked like a paper cut-out of people holding hands.

And I told her she would make it with her writing. Her books would be published.

Because I knew in that moment that if a stranger who had actually been published believed in her, she could believe in her, and if she could believe in her she could do it.

Richard reappeared a few minutes later, and as we got in the car to leave I asked him at last, Why did the triage nurse glare at you?

Oh. She told me I should have come in much sooner. If the antibiotics don’t heal that wound right up to get right back in there.

Will do.

And then I told him about the up and coming writer. I wished I’d gotten her name so I could buy the first copy.

Just before the pandemic I think it was, someone pointed out a website in–I don’t remember if it was Australia or New Zealand, the former I think, of a startup that had gotten permission to raise what would otherwise be an exotic and potentially invasive species to harvest its fur by combing. To try to make cashmere just that old stuff by comparison.

Fox fur.

Huh. Y’know, sheep are a little more docile towards that process–and feeding them–! I thought as I looked at their multiple-$k sweaters out of sheer curiosity because how could one not, I mean, would they go for fast-fashion styles or classic to wear a lifetime. Memory says classic.

I’d give you the link, too, but the company appears long gone as far as I can find. I’m guessing that exotic clothes to impress others had their market drop away while everybody was holed up alone and at home month after month after month after month after month.

And now a yarn store–in Ukraine!–is selling cones of merino/fox yarn. Mill end closeouts from that business seems a logical leap.

I have questions.

My daughter once had a cat that learned to leap at the closet door until it got the handle to turn so that it could get at and destroy her cashmere gloves, and did. Wool, no problem, but goats must die.

If one were to knit and wear something out of that fox fur, how would you ever walk past any dog? If you gifted someone something from it, surely you would have to forewarn them?

I’m picturing some of the early adopters patronizing that business while it lasted (maybe it’s actually still out there?) and wondering what experiences they had with them and and and. So many questions.

Like, who was the first person to stroke a fox and think there ought to be a yarn made out of that?

I would wonder if maybe the whole thing was an April Fool’s prank that someone forgot to take down on April 2.

Except that that yarn really is for sale.

Yesterday, running an errand, I saw a very nice black car and suddenly found myself humming Joe Walsh’s “Life’s Been Good” that spoofs the rocker life. (Live version, slightly ad-libbed.)

And then the guy passed me just as I was humming, “My Maserati does 185, they took my license, now I don’t drive” –and it was! He was driving a Maserati!

I had to go home and look up the rest of the long-forgotten lyrics. Richard and I had a chuckle over the whole thing at dinnertime. And so the ear worm carried over into today, as they do.

If I had pulled out my planned red yarn any time in the last few weeks and held it against that green expanse of afghan, I would have realized how it turned pink against it and needed to be replaced before Kathryn left town, because she carries everything. But I didn’t, and so now I was going to Fillory Yarns (where they had just the right thing but not enough of it) and Uncommon Threads to see if I could fill the gap.

There’s this weird intersection that should have its own light where you have to turn a diagonal left to get onto the main road. GPS relentlessly tells you to turn a full left onto what is actually a long cul-de-sac and then come back out so that you’re pointing straight across to turn left rather than being at an angle they disapprove of. It’s wrong. You just ignore it.

In front of me at the stop was what had to be that same black Maserati, ready to do that funky diagonal turn.

And this time I pulled up behind him as I was actually already singing his song, and once again, that very line. Windows up, no worries.

He suddenly started up his car and escaped into the cul-de-sac while I just howled: I wasn’t THAT bad, dude!

(Red yarn: now on order. Colourmart. Cashmere. They checked the shade. That look like classic red barn to you? It does to me. Here’s hoping–and more waiting.)

So I knit a row separating the afghan onto two circular needles, half here, half there, so I could lay the whole thing out perfectly flat.

Never mind that this means four tips to drop stitches off of when you go to pick it up again along with all the balls of yarn, and oh so carefully of course I did, but it had to be done.

I put two sheets of paper above it to represent the space the barn will take and to make sure the placement would be pleasing to the eye. Marked it with white yarn snips. Done. Man, I’ve been looking forward to this.

I pulled out the red.

I put it against that green, labeled Leaf Bud for that newness-of-Spring shade.

It was red anywhere else.

It was pink against that. But, but.

No. No can do.

I did have one single cone of a darker red that I’d bought on impulse at the end of a sale, and held that against the green. It was perfect. It was absolutely the one I should have been going with all along, but I didn’t even order it till the last night of the sale and one was all there was by then.

They even checked their shelves for me, but Colourmart is out. I’m not about to spend weeks on building that barn only to come out short and Cottage Yarns is closed for two weeks if I wanted to substitute in merino (which I’d rather not.)

The only thing I could do was put in an In Search Of query on Ravelry. But that would be asking people to give up the half-off new-stash cashmere they’d bought in probably just the last month, and I don’t see it happening. I don’t just need a cone, I’m knitting the dk doubled so I’d need at least two more and preferably three.

So I’m just going to have to figure out something else.

It felt weird not to be knitting it tonight.

I honked at some stupid driver doing some stupid distracted thing: didn’t they know that someone could get killed?!

Alison, I thought at myself. Cool it. It’s not their fault.

Got into Trader Joe’s for the errand I didn’t feel like running but at least at a time of day I thought wouldn’t be crowded.

It was, and the lines were notable.

And yet–the clerk who motioned me over when hers cleared out before the one next to her, whoever she was, acted like she’d been waiting all day to see me. Just the sweetest.

Just debating saying anything almost brought me to tears, and yet I wanted to convey how much that simple gift meant. How important it was.

At the last, as she handed me my receipt and asked if I needed any help out with that, I told her, Thank you. Thank you for the smile. I needed that, I needed to get out of my house and out of my head a minute.

My cousin’s husband was hit by a semi today.

If there hadn’t been a counter between us she would have thrown her arms around me on the spot.

I didn’t say, and he was on a motorcycle.

And the semi was pulling onto the road, distracted.

I’ve said quite a few prayers today for that driver, who has to live with that. I can’t imagine….

How soon it fades.

We were literally about one minute from walking out the door for church when my email pinged. I took a glance; what if someone needed a ride, right?

It was a, we know you’re all probably already on your way but please call those on your list and do not come! An accident just happened, the street is closed down, we have to leave room open for the first responders without all those cars arriving in the wrong block at the wrong moment and for the utility people too because the power pole got taken out and it’s not safe to hold church in the dark.

(Can you just picture the toddlers shrieking and giggling and scrambling away under someone else’s pew. It could be the greatest game ever of Catch Me If You Can.)

Well someone out there was having a truly bad day. They did find a way, though, to get a whole lot of people to pray for them without even being asked. I can only hope they turn out okay.

Another message, later in the morning: Power’s still out but the other ward (we share the building) has invited us to come meet on the lawn with them at noon. Mostly shade.

I’ve seen that shade. The sun, it moves right at you that time of day. No mic, no Zoom for captions, crowded.

He went, but for me there was no point and no doubt certain harm in the idea. Lupus, it doesn’t negotiate.

Just home.

Nobody around.

Nobody to catch up on the week with, no babies to get giggling, no shared community to start off the coming week with, just isolation. So I baked some pumpkin muffins. If I’d had sourdough starter at the ready (there’s some in the freezer somewhere) I probably would have made a batch of that, too; it’s been awhile since I’d even thought of it and I miss it.

It was like this every single day and every single week for all that time before the vaccines started to arrive? And we got through that? It surprised me that it surprised me that much.

Sometimes one remembers just how blessedly wonderful normal life is.

I can only pray that someone out there (I picture their car as a black Mustang, no good reason, I just do) gets to go back to theirs, too.

A couple of quotes I’ve stumbled across that I wanted to tuck away where I can find them later.

John F. Kennedy: Washington, DC is a city with Northern charm and Southern efficiency.

Harry S Truman: If you want to live like a Republican, you’ve got to vote for a Democrat.

And the old DC favorite whose origin I don’t know: The definition of a diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you look forward to the trip.

Anyone got a favorite?