The beta went home tonight to the family that loves it best–and I will miss watching those beautiful blue-black fins and tail swishing through the water towards my hand as I drop a speck of fish food into its tank. It had a little rock cave to hide out in with a few aquatic plants attached but when I called softly to it it would come out of there and greet me.

Who knew such a tiny thing could be so charming?

Maybe they’ll go on vacation again sometime.

And then I finished knitting this. Maybe. I had been planning to add more to it–but I really like it as is, even with that edge not blocked yet.

Shepherd’s Worsted yarn from Lorna’s Laces. The colorway was a doodle, a one-off that was in a gift bag at a post-TNNA party held at Green Planet. The pattern was a doodle, too, five repeats of a short simple lace followed by ~6″ of stockinette and then decreasing and out.

That one’s done and drying and a new hat is on the needles, in the bright greens I got gifted with at Green Planet in January. Those colors just cry out for dragon spikes going over the top and claws over the ears but we’ll see.

Watering the tomatoes tonight, I stumbled across mama dove, papa dove, and a small baby peeking up from the nest, old enough for gray feathers and to watch me warily, its small tail slightly curled upwards against the wall. There might have been a second small head in there but I couldn’t get close enough to see for sure without disturbing them more than I was.

Carry on, then.

And then maybe I can get another repeat or two done before bed.

The phone camera stopped at one picture so this will have to do for now, I’m in too much of a hurry to fuss with electronics. The yarn is two plies of deepest brown lace weight plied with two plies of a thinner turquoise lace weight, another cashmere mill end. 

Got straight to work this morning with the intention of adding one last repeat.

But first, just to double-check, I weighed that ball again, and darn if it didn’t say 26 grams.

Okay, we’re done, that’s that.

It is now blocking on a twin bed, where it goes past the sides but comes shy of reaching end to end. I think the next one I make–I have a second monster cone waiting because the yarn is so very soft–I will make longer, but this one is very much okay.

(Note to self: needles US 8, aran weight cashmere/cotton.)

And then last night I cast on another cowl instead after realizing I needed a carry-around project.

I woke up this morning with the thought: today. Today I am going to finish that afghan. Two more repeats? Even three? I can do that.

Knit knit knit knit. First repeat finished by 10:30 a.m. Looking good but my hands need a break. 86 grams of yarn left.

Ice hands, wait an hour, knit another repeat–66 grams.

Ice hands, wait two hours, knit another repeat–46 grams. Looks like we have us a predictable pattern here.

My rule of thumb, staying on the safe side, is that the cast-off is going to take the equivalent of three regular rows’ worth of yarn. After a steady 2.5 grams per row, that means I need 7.5 g and the next repeat was going to end at 26. Six is not 7.5. I actually do have more of that yarn, just not prepped yet and the idea of making a join in that thick a yarn in the middle of the cast-off row, just, no, not if I can avoid it.

I iced my hands again and started in. It was pushing it a bit but I was going to keep that promise to myself.

Barbara Walker’s Fountain Lace logically ends a repeat after redoing the second row, and the purl row after that is when I’ve been measuring every time as my logical stopping point.

I knitted perhaps less loosely during that final repeat because part of me knew the afghan was long enough for me and for the wife but it might come up short for the husband’s toes (I haven’t actually met him, but it’s a safe bet he’s taller than my 5’5″) and I wanted it to work for everyone. I know it will lengthen the moment any water hits that lace, and I know I don’t know exactly how much, yet I love the slightly more three-dimensional look of it the way it is right now.

The final row 2, then purl row, and I weighed that ball one last time.

Twenty. Eight. Grams.

I guffawed and winced and stuffed the whole thing back into its ziplock and told it we were done. Done for the night, do you hear me. Done.

What would you do?

Even though it’s only half cotton, I find alternating days I work on that afghan a good idea for the sake of my hands. That yarn feels like the cashmere it halfway is, but my muscles know it doesn’t have a lot of give to it. (It will be just over 500g when I’m done. I was surprised it didn’t take more.)

Or that was my excuse today, anyway, when somehow this happened. (Wait–didn’t I…? Skims through blog and checks.) I did, I made one very much like this a month ago, although that was more a brick–with sparkles!–and this is more plum red and plain. Cashmere, though. (Their pop-up if you click on their picture is the most accurate color on my screen.)

I don’t think either recipient will mind the twinship.

(Runs and blocks cowl. It took 59g and I have 97g left.) Alright then, let me go try to get in a repeat on that afghan now.

This one is to make the parents happy, and whether they use it for the baby is up to them but I decided I wanted it long enough to curl over the mom’s feet during 3 am feedings, if nothing else, and that as long as that giant ball kept going so would I.

Three repeats done today to bring it to twenty-two before I broke out the icepacks. Two more to go and then that’s all there is.

I like having less left to do tomorrow than what I did today.

(I think. Wait, did I weigh that ball one repeat ago or two?)

I had some figs that were turning that sweet shade of brown suggestive of summer sugar coming in…

…And then I didn’t. I saw a Bewick’s wren diving out of there and up again to the fence as I approached, and they’re my favorites, but hey, guys. Clearly they were not impressed by my strategically-placed leftover birdnetting bits and leaning broken netting cage (to thwart leaps from the fence, but squirrels aren’t supposed to like them anyway.)

I had this yellow mesh bag and stuck it over one of the bigger figs–and it has stayed put for weeks now. Hey!

So I ordered more. I didn’t need big ones, just big enough to slip over each fruit and tug a little on the strings. Green seemed good; it would help disguise the ripening, right? I’m told (is it true?) that birds tend not to figure out when the green varieties are sweetening up. Mine are the aptly-named Black Jacks, though, so no such luck on that account. So maybe buying green would have been better, but this is what I’ve got.

Pro tip: if you search for mesh bags, soon you get Amazon ads for, of course, mesh bags thrown at you. I’m on to them now: the price in those ads was $2.66+free shipping, whereas when I clicked through the various colors offered, the price was suddenly about three times that plus shipping, and when I went back to the white that it had started me at, it, too, was now at the much higher price. Stinkers. Or, to be more charitable, bistro mathematics (a la Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).

Note that now that I haven’t looked in awhile it’s down another 68c.

Anyway. So I went back to the window with the ad and clicked through again. There was the white again at $2.66 total. And here we are.

Oh, right, the purple cowl. And I went to grab it before church.

Something in me said and grab that pink pearl-yarn one, too.

?? Okay, so, I did, a little surprised. I’d forgotten even making it and here I was looking for it. I grabbed a back-up purple, too, but I didn’t think that one was quite it.

As church was letting out, I found a private moment and gave the friend who’d wanted purple her choice of the three; she picked the one she didn’t know I’d made specifically for her this past week and put it on instantly no matter the thickness in summertime and wore it proudly. Totally made my day.

Then I went looking for another friend. She was wearing a white dress and I was mentally going through my stash of white yarns when I finally caught up to her collecting her children.

“Are you allergic to any fibers?”

A surprised, “Am I what?”

“Are you allergic to anything? What’s your favorite color?” When she still looked like wait, this is completely out of left field, what?! I added, “I’m a knitter.” (Yeah, yeah, she knew that.)

She was startled and laughed and couldn’t believe I was asking her and shook her head no on the allergies thing and pronounced, “Pink!” And then went, “Well…” and tried to describe the kind of pink she really likes.

Reaching into my purse, pulling out just enough for her to see: “Like this shade?”

“YES!” And then she was instantly embarrassed because it wasn’t like she was trying to ask for the thing, while I was marveling at how it had just happened to be there. I told her, I didn’t know who I made it for but I knew I made it for someone and then it just sat there waiting for its moment and then this morning it demanded to come here with me. Well there you go.

It was beyond perfect as far as she was concerned, and I wondered why I hadn’t figured out sooner that she was the person for it.

But after a few hours’ reflection, I think it’s this. She had taught the lesson today and had told some stories on herself that she might have wondered if they would make anyone think less of her. I would be very surprised if anybody did–allowing ourselves to be vulnerable is the greatest act of faith in one’s listener one could ever offer them, and she’s a peach.

Today was the day that young mom needed that vote of confidence. And it was waiting for her before she said a word.

Happy Birthday to our friend Phyllis!

I loved listening to her explain to friends for whom English was not their first language and America was not their original country that Boston cream pie isn’t cream, and it isn’t pie, but it’s really good, though–here, have some! (Let me quietly disagree with Wikipedia and say I’ve never seen it served with anything other than pudding as a filling.)

There was a side conversation about, like, take the word nature, but if something is of nature it’s natch-eral not nature-al and how do you know that unless someone corrects you for doing it wrong. The other immigrants chuckled knowingly.

Phyl added whipped cream on top to make a more honest dessert out of that, um, pie.

Andy’s called me yesterday to let me know that if I still wanted a case of Baby Crawfords, they were in.

Hey! Twist my arm! But Richard had a doctor’s appointment and I didn’t have the car, so it had to wait till today.

(That mole on him I didn’t like? After all the times they said it was nothing, they finally tested it. Basal is the kind of cancer you want it to be. It’s gone now. Please get yours checked so you, too, can luck out like that.)

Andy’s let me make off with a case of half Lorings and half Kit Donnells too as long as I was there: I don’t run out of people who wish for his peaches like I don’t run out of people who want me to knit for them. I almost chose all Kit Donnells (seriously, Mom and Dad. If only I could bring you a taste-testing party.) But when there are my childhood’s Lorings one must buy at least a few and they are far from shabby.

The first one went to the guy who was panhandling at the end of a freeway offramp. The light did him the favor of being red (funny how that happens). I reached behind me, having no idea which box was closest, and motioned him over and handed him this enormous peach that was giving way slightly in my fingers from the weight of its own juice, telling him it had just come off a tree in Morgan Hill. (Found out later it was one of the Lorings.)

“Thank you. Thank you,” he said, and turned back to his post and sign and seat, devouring the thing, the pit showing top to bottom inside that beautiful ball in his hands as my light turned green.

And that. That was the best-tasting peach of all.

If you ever want your inbox to go weirdly silent for an entire day, offer a lot of very nice people something you only have one of. Niddy-noddy? Anybody? Drill a hole and reposition an arm? Use as is? Take one arm out, thread a string through the hole to suspend it by and hang cat toys from the bottom arm? Help me out here.

Meantime, I was discussing something with a friend the other day and she tried to describe her favorite shade of purple. She finally pulled out her phone, went to her alma mater’s site, and there it was in full and official color.

(Actually, I had something like that kicking around…) So today, it didn’t matter what I’d planned on, it leaped onto the needles.

Funny how that happens.

I’ve long debated saying anything because I just have the one to offer–but who would I ask? It has stumped me.

This is a niddy-noddy that I bought about twenty years ago via a tiny ad in a spinner’s magazine–I think, if memory serves, from the artist who made it but I have no idea now what their name was. I had a cheap unfinished Ashford one, which is fine, but I found myself wanting something pretty as well as functional.

Overall, it is 20″ long, with 18″ (a half yard, which makes sense) from arm to arm.

But for me it’s all wrong. The arms are at right angles to each other rather than perpendicular and to my arms that makes wrapping the yarn awkward. My Ashford eventually fell apart and I bought a Kromski  in mahogany finish and I love it. It’s a well-thought-out piece of equipment, designed to keep the yarn from slipping off the ends when you’re doing major fluffballs.

I only used this one all of once. It just doesn’t do the job well for me. Maybe it needs a taller person? (I’m 5’5″.) Or maybe just someone who didn’t start out using the perpendicular variety. Or–someone who isn’t such a klutz. Ding ding ding!

If you know someone whom you think should have this one, tell me why and I’ll mail it off to them. Rocking chair not included.

Being the political junkie that I am, I got some good knitting time in while watching the Senate vote 50-50 today with Pence tipping the scales. Watched John McCain give the speech of his life after casting the vote that utterly mocked everything he would say immediately thereafter. He could have put a stop to it all right there, and it would have been over for good just like the version in April was. This was a vote to allow the bill to continue to the floor, and he promised not to vote in the future for that bill as it now stands. (Knowing full well that after amendments and arguments it would not be as it now stands, for better but also for worse.)

But that is pure hubris anyway. He might be in the hospital then, he might not even be alive.

I don’t know how many people know that the current Republican bill, among its many other problems, would allow employer-based health insurance to reach in and deny coverage to the chronically ill—lupus is specifically targeted, hey, it was nice knowing you all–coverage that the employees are paying for out of their paychecks, and with the ACA gone we patients would be unable to buy any anywhere else, either.

But hey, I got a lot of blanket knitted!

I called McConnell’s office, got through on the first ring, and told whichever intern answered the phone that McConnell is only pushing on that bill because my uncle the late and generally-right-wing Senator Bob Bennett of Utah is dead. Because McConnell wouldn’t have been able to look Bob in the eye.

Bob was a Republican, but he also believed American businesses could not compete as long as their workers knew they were one medical crisis away from losing everything. He had lived through losing his job and his insurance when he’d had a young family to support. He knew.

So he wrote, with Ron Wyden, a Democrat, the first draft of a bill. Romneycare had worked in Massachusetts, so…

Seventeen repeats done, five or so to go.

I think. Since no water has touched that lace yet, it’s a guess how far it will stretch. It’s either 34″ long now (relaxed) or 43″, depending on whether or not you pull it to where you think it might go later.