The phone rang seconds before I’d have been out the door to Andy’s Orchard and blew up my plans for celebrating having gotten the mammogram over with this morning.

A strange male voice barked, “Your appointment with Dr. H next week is cancelled!” He sounded almost–I dunno, accusatory?

“Oh okay” (me, wondering, Are you for real?)

“Do you want to come in at 1:00!”

Me, ever so mildly: “It’s 1:08.”

He backpedaled hard. “How fast can you get here.”

And suddenly I’m on for 2:00, with mixed emotions. Fun. Save me the last Kit Donnell peaches, Andy? If there still are any? I gave the last of mine to that potluck yesterday, where they were raved over.

When I showed up, there was a young man at the desk who, when I told him my name, got this terribly sheepish look and then relaxed and laughed a little because I did so he’s okay, really, it’s alright.

And so I went in for my annual no-current-cardiac-problems checkup.

The doctor, who is my age, explained the cancellation in the sparsest of words and strongest emotions: his mom… He had to go see her…

I told him, My dad, too–we answer every call now.

I described my reaction to that new carpeting at church: how it felt much more like when my blood pressure was tanking hard years ago, before he got that under control. But maybe it was just asthma?

Sounded more like the latter to him. But (and I’m writing it here so that I can find it later) he added after a moment’s thought: probably there wasn’t, but if there was any amyl nitrite in that installation it could mimic the chemically similar nitroglycerin in the bloodstream after you breathe it in.

Holy cow. I’d been given that one single time in the hospital and my reaction to it had triggered the alarms and sent people running to my room–yeah that was a fun day.

Or maybe I just needed to use the inhaler last Sunday. I did.

Did it work?

Who knows, yes?, but I was out of there.

But you know what? It just felt like a relief to know that whatever it is, he knows about it. It’s not all on me anymore.

And he knows I know about his mom now and that my heart goes with him and his family on their long flight home.

We were at a potluck supper with friends this evening and rather than hanging out for a long time at the end, my husband felt it was time to go. He waited patiently as I wrapped up a conversation. It was definitely early.

I might quietly have conveyed that I’d like to stay a bit longer but somehow I found myself feeling like yes, it’s time (while wondering at myself for that.) And so we thanked the hosts and headed out.

Which means we pulled into our driveway just as our elderly neighbor next door was in hers, needing help. I called out a cheerful hi–and found myself going over to her.

She was frustrated. She was at times fighting tears. I gave her a hug, while quietly wondering how long it had been since she’d had one.

Richard had headed inside so I texted him, Come. He came.

Her car window was stuck down. He got it up.

There was a tool she needed to fix a problem inside the house and he had that tool and went to go get it. He’s a geek–he’s got all kinds of little things like that. When he gave it to her, we both knew she might forget it and we might never see it again–and that that was fine. The message that it conveyed backed up our words that she could call us anytime and know that we were glad to help.

We also found out that her daughter across the country whom I’d been quietly messaging a few times to try to keep her updated about her mom as best I could has cancer.

Just like the mom had had–at the same time I was diagnosed with lupus. Twenty-nine years ago, and we were both still standing right there. That left room for a great deal of hope.

We told her we’d left that dinner early and that now we knew why.

Suddenly she needed a second hug and she got it.

Does anybody else do this?

I’m not one to cast on lots of projects at once. Yarn may be the boss of me but I don’t like it to nag; a hat in the purse and a kids-only-try-this-at-home project is all I want going.

And yet, when something the scope of that afghan is almost done, I scatter those last few days into winding and scouring coned yarn, admiring stuff in my stash for why I bought it in the first place, making no commitments but getting the most likely contenders that needed that bit of prep work in view and drying for the final winding, dreaming away at what they could be as I go and grateful for mill-end stores that help me afford my habit.

Pre-shrunk deep teal baby alpaca/wool and plum purple cashmere are drying as I type.

Thank you everybody for the wonderful words on my Anchorage afghan.

Went to Fillory to hang out and knit among friends for awhile and it suddenly hit me that wait–this thing is actually somehow almost done!

It’s taller than wide already. It’s certainly stretchy, but in its relaxed state it’s about 41″ wide, whereas I usually consider 45″ square to be the minimum for a receiving blanket.

I didn’t know when I started it small that I would be able to find more of not only that discontinued yarn but that dye lot–and I had no idea those little 50 gram balls would go as far as they have. But then, this is a much smaller blanket than the monster 1700g Rios one was. It’s for the baby to drag around behind her once she’s walking and to take everywhere she goes, and you don’t want big nor bulky for that.

It is 70/30 baby alpaca/mulberry silk. Super soft, not super practical, and yet it leaped onto my needles that first day and demanded to be for that granddaughter.

One friend held it today and swooned at the softness and totally made it feel like I’d gotten it just right–she had no way to know how much she was helping.

I debated out loud about adding an edging; the consensus was, it’s fine as is, especially for a drag-around lovie.

I’m still torn. Maybe add just at the sides rather than all the way around? Because small as it already is, it’s going to go through the hand wash cycle in their laundry.

Where the baby alpaca will want to shrink the fabric. Whereas the soft single-ply spinning means the 30% mulberry silk will make the yarn want to stretch out, most likely lengthwise. Plus there’s the lace parts, which will flatten out wider and who knows how that’ll come out.

The middle part is knitted mostly solid to give a sense of the immense height of the snowy Alaskan mountains above–but also for there to be no yarnover holes right where it’s most wrapped around that baby in that climate.

Really the only answer is to give it a quick rinse and blocking when the main part is done and see what size it is then and call it from there.

But I’m finally at the point where that is something I get to worry about now and it actually surprised me.

Somehow I am only at the start of the tenth ball and there were twenty-one. If disaster strikes and she needs a new lovie like the old lovie (good luck with that–this was seat-of-the-pants designing all the way) I’ll be able to make one. If I don’t add that edging.

Remind me if that does happen, that on that chart I (mostly) used for the moose, I added a stitch’s width to its muzzle because it looked too deer-like.

I’m pretty happy with this.

This. Is the bike of a lucky man. Friend of my husband’s.

Who somehow had the skill and sheer great fortune that when a car pulled directly in his path on the freeway and then braked, at a time when the motorcycle was doing 80, the rider managed to lay it down well enough so as to be able to walk away. The steel toes in his boots were worn completely off. He’s limping but apparently, nothing broken.

That gorgeous shade of red and black is parked for good where they towed it, because I don’t think it’s going anywhere again.

The crazy-artist side of me wants to ask, if you made that a colorway, if you tried to put a name to both the experience and those colors and encompassed it in stitches to try to make sense of it all–not that wool would stand up where steel did not–what would you call it?

I at long last got to the overpass (mannn…) and with hardly anybody moving had time to look down and see what turned out to be an upside-down sewage truck on both sides of the freeway, looking impaled by the divider.

I was sure that one was fatal.

Found out later, nobody was hurt. Not even the guy it hit while trying to avoid the one at fault. Yay safety regulations and sheer great luck.

I made it to Cottage Yarns and showed off the Rios afghan and bought my first Dos Tierras skeins in the most gorgeous Solis bluegreens.

I took the other freeway home. Clearly, quite a few other people had diverted, too. But hey, I got to see Katherine for the first time since May, and that was my biggest reason for going: keeping tabs on how my friends are doing. I’m glad I went.

Figs are supposed to be sweetest in the morning. Yeah yeah yeah whatever, I wanted a homegrown fig and I wanted that bit of affirmation of good things created and nurtured and forget the sewer truck effects and I wanted my fig now and I went out and picked a couple and shared with my sweetheart who enjoys them but doesn’t adore them quite like I do.

Well who knew. Figs like super-hot days. They’re their native territory. Could not have asked for better.

I have a bit of very pretty new yarn calling to me.

I need to finish that cream afghan.

Edited to add, I forgot to write what I sat down to say in the first place: I got a surprise in the mail. From Afton. Who’d just been to Peru. It was fingerpuppets she’d bought there. The most perfect souvenir–thank you, Afton!

Looking around as things ripen and beckon, I got it half-right last summer: I did need two layers of bird netting for the figs. One to go over the small tree, yes, but the closer-meshed one heaped at the base to keep smaller critters from being able to squeeze in and climb up from below.

The over-netting is held down by old oven racks, a heavy doormat, and reinforced by some flower pots in front of that mass of mesh.

Those flower pots got shoved aside last night. Skunk? Raccoon?

Every fig was still there. I had another perfect one this morning. Soon I’ll have enough at once that I’ll need to stuff them or wrap them and roast them and make a supper out of them and still we’ll have some to share. At last.

To quote Andy Mariani: August is the Sunday of summer.

Fresh figs: Nature’s fruit geodes.

Item 1. They replaced the carpeting at church last week. People were complaining about the smell. It was intense. (I did a mental grin upwards at the late Ski, who’d ordered the previous one ~25 years ago, thinking, at last they’d corrected his color choice. He was so proud of that mismatching green. Shhh.)

I spent much of the time holding very still with not one oxygen molecule to spare. Yow.

This week I was hoping the place would be aired out far better by now–but the answer was, um, some.

I got the doors propped open with a flower pot on one side and a chair on the other before the meeting, but during it found myself having to put my head between my knees. Hey I did better than this last week, what’s up with this. I made a break for it and went for that chair. Yes it was near noon on a summer day and in the sun, but you worry about paying for it re the lupus tomorrow after you make it through today–can’t get to the one without the other.

Jenni saw me and immediately followed me out and stayed by me and asked if I was okay. I searched through my purse I should have used last week but before that hadn’t had to use in years, even if I’ve periodically replaced it at expiration.

I found my inhaler. It helped. Not as much as I wanted, but it helped.

Item 2. I had to go back in to the one of the less aired-out parts to retrieve the Trader Joe’s chocolate goodies from the mother’s nursing lounge at the end.

A young mom was in there: Oh, are you the one that brings those? Thank you so much!

Me: Yes, it is the most fun job–and I take requests.

Her: You always bring my favorites!

I left with a big grin on my face.

Item 3. The upshot: the realization that there was no excuse not to ask. I needed to send out a message to both wards that use that building to make sure there are no serious peanut allergies in either one before I bring TJ’s chocolate peanut butter cups in there. Whether I ever know about it or not, I do not want to leave some poor kid fighting to breathe.

I’ve only brought them a few times but I never should have without making sure first. Checking with the leaders like I did was not enough.

So now I’ve asked.

Hey, Mom, wanna go to Andy’s Orchard with my friend and me?

YES!

I sat in the back as they caught up in the front seat (her dear friend just moved here a week ago) and just about finished the back of the baby sweater a mile from home.

Kit Donnells are some of the best peaches out there–and one of Andy’s creations.

On a total non sequitur, I was mentioning to Holly a few minutes ago about a message Richard got in the early days of DARPAnet, the precursor to the internet.

So I had to go find it: the fractured fairy tale Ladle Rat Rotten Hut. Enjoy.

Today was a day spent knowing I’ll feel better tomorrow–I’m already starting to–and that it was worth it.

Went to pick up a prescription and there was a banner above the pharmacy window: Vaccinations.

So I asked, not quite daring to actually hope: did this mean they finally had Shingrix in stock?

They did! As of today they had the latest flu shot, too!

This early?!

Yup!

Note that we have a baby in the family scheduled to be delivered weeks short of full term.

I did ask if I would need a booster later if I got the flu one now and was assured by the pharmacist that no, it would be effective for the whole year.

So I filled out the paperwork, waited while they did the insurance company thing, and knitted, glad for the small project in the purse given that I had expected none of this.

Just before the pharmacist gave me a shot in each shoulder she happened to mention that that was their last dose of Shingrix.

I had been trying to get one for over a year. I’ve heard so many friends tell horror stories of what their shingles was like: intense, unrelenting pain for six months, one whose husband went blind in one eye, another who was hit with it twice.

After all that time spent fervently hoping I not get it while waiting for the vaccine to finally be available, and then the extra of being able to go through airport crowds and not have to worry about bringing the grandchildren the flu, to which I am highly susceptible–I tell you, I walked out of there so very very happy that after I got home I even told every single spammer on the phone, warmly, to have a nice day, even though the ringing has been relentless of late. The ones that were actual human beings I decided needed a little humanity shown them, because how often do they get that.

Now we just have to find one of those doses for my husband. I don’t know if all the CVSs received stock or just the local one. Sorry I hogged it, dear.

The antlers aren’t quite *that* big–the fabric needs smoothing out.

Added two rows’ uplift on the wings vs the swatch (cue the “uh, I meant to do that”) and decided to keep it.

Am debating adding an edging afterwards to make sure the thing can shrink all it wants and still be useful. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done that if I do but it’ll be the first time (remembering a certain unforgettable ruffly edge that with all its extra stitches took forever to do–but the kid liked it) that I’ll have done it like I want it to come out.

One hopes.

Pick up three of every five up the sides this time. Right?

Our cherry season is over, so these weren’t local but when I saw them at Costco I fell for them.

Funny how you can tell yourself in the grocery store that it doesn’t really take that much time to make a fresh cherry pie when you really want one.

It does.

I overfilled the 10″ pan, wanting to use all three pounds and be done with them because (after tasting one) this was the best they could ever aspire to be. I pinched those edges shut, but the pie wasn’t having it. Five minutes before the buzzer went off (I’d set it at maximum time because of the size of the thing) the kitchen was suddenly smoking up big time, and I mean billowing.

I yanked the oven door open, fully expecting flames (nope, just a gray cloud and an escaped cherry and juices sizzling on the floor of it), turned on the fan, and opened windows skylight doors and got a nice quick chat with my neighbors out of the deal.

Richard came home from his errand a few minutes later and walked in going, Did you know something burned? You can smell it down the street.

Naaah. Never would have guessed!

It doesn’t taste smoked. It’s not an Andy’s cherries pie, but it is still definitely cherry pie. Yum.

I wasn’t about to take a white afghan project to the garage while they worked on the car, so the languishing washable-wool purple baby dress got picked up again and the second side has gone from a few indecipherable rows to wow, that’s looking great.

The new mechanic was delighted at hearing it was for a whole new person about to come into the world and it just made his day. Which totally made mine.

With that sense of accomplishment in hand, after I got home I tackled what I’d been avoiding: I dislike doing exploratory knitting that is not usable for anything afterwards except as ripped-out yarn. I know that sometimes for all the sketching I might try I just have to do it but I fight the impatient sense of wasted knitting every stitch of the way.

I did six iterations of what my soaring eagle should/could look like. I didn’t want the classic simple gull-wing V, I had enough detail in the trees and moose that the eagle deserved the same. Not to mention eagles are big. Scale, we needed scale here.

I went from, that’s what I’d thought I was going to do but I really don’t like that, to, rip, I don’t even want to see it, to, okay, keep that to compare against while I try… To, at long last, as my strip added ever more inches, Oh! Of course! That’s what it needed!

I would not have thought of the final version if I hadn’t seen all the in-betweens.

Which I’ll rip out. Tomorrow. I don’t enjoy that part and I don’t have to yet.