I need to get back to the knitting. Something about being away awhile makes tackling the house the most important thing, though, and the recycling bin is full again a day after pickup. Man, that felt good.

What felt less good is that the refrigerator was either slightly bounced open those five days or else the thing is dying after 25 years. Which it may well be. I moved both its settings to coldest and threw out a lot on Tuesday but today the cheese was green–and yet things at least seem cold enough now. (Do we trust those eggs?)

Wait–typing that it finally hit me: I have that infrared temp sensor! I got up and aimed for the back of the fridge as the door opened. 34.1, 40 at the front. Okay, I think we’re good, I just have to find and get rid of anything else that might have been damaged and just start over.

Meantime, the amaryllis-scape for the day. 

One may have noticed: I like amaryllises. I collect amaryllises of every kind. Pictures taken today.

Mine bloom year after year, sometimes skipping years but at this point I have so many bulbs that who would notice? Our climate isn’t warm enough to plant them in the ground so they stay in pots under the translucent patio awning, surrounded by the warmth of the house on two sides. They like shade. Warmth makes them happy. They like this spot.

Occasionally you lose one to age or winter temps or whatever. How to tell for sure: if you touch a dormant bulb and it crumples between your fingers into nothingness, it’s gone. If it holds solid at the center, no matter how many crisped outer layers there are, there’s still life in there–it just needs to be cared for and given a chance.

So this one bulb was shriveled and shrunken but just solid enough that it wasn’t tossed but it wasn’t coming out of dormancy either. Maybe it just really wanted any hint of winter to be over first. At some point on that crowded picnic table a thriving amaryllis got put on top of its pot and it was forgotten.

The turning of the season, the leakage from the one above being watered must have been enough. The fact that we were gone for five days means the changes snuck past unnoticed.

I caught a glimpse of red today at pot level and went, wait, what? I stepped outside and lifted off the one I hadn’t even noticed was sitting on top. When did I do that?

And there, underneath, was a stalk curling tightly around in a half circle against the inside rim of that lower pot with a big bright half-flower trying mightily to open up, resting on the edge. There was a leaf, too, one which had gotten no sun and yet was trying to grow out from underneath its burden.

This picture was taken ten hours’ worth of sunlight later: the stalk has risen mightily, the first blossom is fully open and the second is getting there and there is even already some green in that stalk and (you can’t see it) its leaf. Sky and light!

But before it was discovered, the only energy available to it to grow and thrive with came from what it had within it.

And in the end, that was enough to make the rest work out so that it could share what it was meant to be with the world.

Isn’t that just the most gorgeous shade of red?

It needed to be snugged up a bit on that velcro but I snapped the picture first: he was holding still and I figured, get’em while you can.

A toolkit for a little boy’s first birthday definitely made his daddy’s day and his. If you’re ever looking for well-designed, engaging, well-made washable fabric toys and books for little ones (the sea creatures is my favorite of the latter), I highly recommend that company’s.

My son-in-law said that the secured board across the fireplace instantly cured the kid of wanting to climb inside and splash in the ashes. Lost all interest. That’s okay, he can make messes in lots of other ways.

Like maybe take a cotton hammer to one of these cupcakes that our daughter made: not terribly sweet and oh so good. And I’m not usually much of a cupcake fan. Raspberries and lemon curd and mascarpone? Yes please. I begged the recipe and made a trip out tonight for the ingredients.

Five wonderful days.

Every one-year-old needs a picture of them in a high chair making a total mess of their cake. Mathias did not want to give up his carrot at first for this triangular stripey food his mommy had baked but with enough coaxing (here, she said, taste this) decided to humor her.

Oh wait. I think I like this. I do. (Ditches the carrot.)

Plus a random airport picture, just because I’d never seen a plane with a bumper sticker before.

If you put a handknit hat on Mathias’s head he will grab it, pull it hard sideways, and fling it with great force when it finally gives up and comes off.

If you put it not quite on but flat on top of his head and convince him it’s a new version of peekaboo, trying to get him to accept the idea of wearing something up there for even a moment (kid. You live in Alaska) he will giggle like crazy and only take it off and hold it in his lap waiting with a big grin for another round of the game.

Mathias picked up a Sandra Boynton board book and toddled awkwardly towards their big dog and plunked down with a thunk.

“She can’t read it to you,” his mommy laughed.

So he read it to the dog.  Even if he didn’t quite succeed at getting that thing open on the first few tries: he knew the words by heart. “Ah BAH. AH BAH. Ah bah bah  bah!”

Babies live life on speed dial: somehow Mathias turned one today.

I was looking at suitcases at Costco online, looking for a lightweight one, and it hit me–don’t take it for granted: I looked at the dimensions.

Height plus weight plus depth, add up those inches. If the number’s over 60, Alaska and apparently other airlines charge you an extra $75 each way. Which adds up fast to the new suitcase you’ll want after buying some of those.

Our old ones were fabric and they’d gotten to where they made our clean clothes arrive smelling like they were on the return trip.

So I’d opened them and put them out in the sun, since that’s the best disinfectant of all (and if it works, the easiest, right?)

I think it was a scrub jay. Nailed his but good. Yeah, it scrubbed clean, but he’ll never look at it quite the same way again.

Someone’s birthday bash was a ton of fun.

One friend happened to mention to me that her youngest had lost his finger puppet. Which kind of threw me: he’s six, and it’s been long enough since I gave him one that I didn’t even know he was old enough then to remember it, much less to treasure it all this time. Wow. Very cool.

Wanting to replace it to take some of the sting out of the loss, I asked her, What character was it?

She didn’t know.

So with that I dug into my purse and, nudging the ziplocked knitting aside, started pulling a big bunch of them out. I had actually just restocked in there and they take so little room, and as puppet after puppet after puppet emerged she laughed in surprise. They made a colorful heap on the table.

She went home with her favorite two, and Richard’s friend from work whose wife couldn’t make it at the last minute was so charmed with the first one he picked out that we all told him he had to chose one for his wife, too; he went for a second handknit rubber ducky to match the first and tucked them away safely in his pocket, clearly looking forward to the moment.

The waiter at the restaurant watching all this then got surprised with a colorful parrot as we stood up to leave. The fact that he loved it made the night just that much better.

I couldn’t possibly knit fast enough to make something for every person who came to celebrate, but the good women of Peru could.

From this three years ago, a new whip trying to leaf out again after being stripped bare every night for two months by Japanese beetles, to now. It survived when I thought it might not and this year it is finally really showing us what it’s meant to be.

And just wait till those cherries start appearing!

Rereading that old post, though, I’m quite amazed that that tree is on a standard rootstock–I thought it was an ultradwarf like the sweet cherry. I mean, it certainly grows like one! Slowly. Huh. While the other one, which is a little older (but has to reach a little more for its sun), is at seven feet. Go figure.

The honeybees were happily and peaceably buzzing in the flowers. There’s at least one on the left in the close-up, down in the petals.

The story of the cowl.

I bought the yarn with a particular person in mind, knowing her favorite color, but as soon as I got going with it I knew the shade was off and it just wasn’t going to be it. And yet that yarn had practically thrown itself at me in the store just the same. What was I thinking?

Nothing for it but to keep on knitting till it’s done–there’s always a place for one of these, and if I hurry I can get it off the needles faster and get on to what I’d hoped for.

Done and blocked, it quietly made a case for itself: it was pretty. I’d almost missed that.

So this morning as I ran the ends in I found myself saying a little prayer: please, could You make it obvious whom to give this to? Like, really obvious so I don’t second-guess myself and wonder? Not that I’m in any way owed that, but I’d love to have the gratification of knowing it was worth it given that I kind of struggled not to be annoyed at it for making me wait for what I’d wanted to do.

Sitting in Sunday School, I spotted two new people across the room, one of whom had a face that was familiar to me from other contexts but I don’t know her; she was wearing a dress that matched that cowl. There was this little spark of happiness that exclaimed, Yes!

But she was deep in conversation with the other woman and in no way was I going to give offense by excluding her, so my attention moved on.

Sunday School ended, the Relief Society women’s meeting was about to begin–and that acquaintance stood, walked across the room, and sat down by me to talk to the next woman over for a minute.

Wow. That sure worked.

When their conversation was over, I asked her, “Are you allergic to wool?”

That was NOT a question she was expecting. “No–?”

“Is this a good color?”

She loved it. She was thrilled. Yes, and it matched her dress!

We asked each other our names. When I said mine, she did a double take and went, “Are you Michelle’s mom?!”

“Yes!”

She proceeded to tell me about things she’d done with my daughter, reminiscing fondly over her baking skills, telling me how much she and her friends had missed her and how they hoped she would move back.

Who doesn’t need to hear something like that about themselves? (I passed the good word on to her.) What mother doesn’t love hearing how much her child is loved?

Who knew how much that simple bit of knitting would come back to bless–us, too?

I really like Michelle’s friend. And she’s a knitter. What a way to start off knowing somebody!

Plums and peaches. It still amazes me, this whole concept of putting a dead-looking stick in the ground in the winter and a few years later having a nice-looking tree offering the best-tasting fruit.

Newly finished: a cowl in garnet Dona superwash extrafine merino that I expect will find its way home tomorrow. What I once did not know is, each little diamond contains the growth pattern of a pear tree.

Three amaryllises in bloom, five more coming up so far.

Done and drying: I do like that Anniversario colorway.

As the English Morello tree holds up a sign to the honeybee highway: Will Bloom For Cherries.

Did you use Turbo Tax? Go check right now to see if you got confirmation that your returns have been received by the state and feds. You have till midnight tonight.

I had a particular yarn errand in mind and found myself heading to Cottage Yarns today (So. Much. Malabrigo there!), where Kathryn’s husband and daughter were minding the shop. As they were winding my wool I found myself mentioning to him the phone call that had dragged on and on and on and had had us falling into bed at long last at 1 a.m.

He was suddenly very concerned. We compared notes. Had he gotten any confirmation of having filed? He didn’t think so. I told him we had only gotten confirmation from Turbo Tax that I’d paid the $25 to have the state return e-filed.

Yeah, I got that, he said. But he was suddenly pretty sure that that’s all he’d gotten, too.

I told him that it had bugged me till I’d finally decided I had to find out. The tech person we finally got connected to was overwhelmed, tired, and was chasing down every idea she could think of.

I saved him from the endless circular screens followed by nearly two hours on the phone that we’d had to go through to make sure we were doing the right thing. And it is this: check every email address and text message. Did you get those confirmations from the state and feds? No? Go submit those returns again. Right now. A known computer glitch somewhere between Turbo Tax and the IRS is why the deadline was extended to tonight, and clearly we tripped over it.

I have to admit it was highly gratifying to find that I was not the only one. I’d been told by them that I must just have missed clicking that submit button, when I knew I hadn’t. I’d seen that page before that congratulated me for being done.

He knew he’d done his right, too.

We got our confirmations today. But there is still no sign that we ever did it the first time.

I am so very glad that today I felt that it was imperative that I buy that particular shade of red Russ said his wife loves that I didn’t have in my stash–and that I felt I had to go to buy it from them.

Many happy returns of the day to all.