There was a photo and a note on Facebook: Did anybody want… Free to a good home…

Someone else asked for the big red crockpot. I asked if the smaller one had been spoken for. (Much more our size anyway.)

It had not. I headed over. The doors at Purlescence are locked now but lots of work was going on on the other side as the place was slowly being emptied of its ten years.

Kaye carried the thing to my car for me and, almost there, threw in the thought of, You wouldn’t be interested in a toaster oven?

YES! I exclaimed a little harder than quite entirely reasonable, surprising myself. I had long wanted to be able to warm up just a bit of the kitchen for some small baked thing, but not enough to justify replacing my elderly cracked-plastic simple two-slicer. We don’t have a lot of countertop space. I had not wanted to want one and it all kind of came out in that one-word blurt.

She apologized that it needed cleaning, but I found when I got home that it needed very little. It’s cute. It’s a two-bagel-slice top with a pull-down door in front and not much more of a footprint than my old toaster, a total win.

But the biggest thing about the both of them is the bit of history she offered with them: all those Thursday nights, all those knit nights, they’d had these tucked away upstairs for a quick bite to eat.

So that’s how they’d made it through all those long days over all those years.

These appliances had sustained my friends so that they could sustain our knitting community and now I get to have them here with me. And someone else got to take home part of that history too, and I like that. I like it a lot.

And I love that I now have a toaster oven that kind of looks like an old jukebox.

I need to go toast me some toast. Anyone got a favorite slow cooker recipe? Chicken tikka masala, maybe?

Got lots of good things done today. The evening was a little more problematical.

I didn’t see the irises as I tripped over them in the shadows as I finished up the watering. Made for a cushy landing, mostly, with the thought of, who knew plants could pun? (Head seems fine and that’s all that matters.)

Trying to figure out where the kitchen is re the breaker box. I managed to bump a burner earlier while putting down a pot and it triggered the ignition switch on it–on a burner that has not worked for twenty-three years.

The Thermidor salesman back in the day went on at great length about how you could melt chocolate or cook risotto without burning them, that these two burners on the left cycled on and off just so for that as he spun visions of perfect meals in our future kitchen. Me, I’d never made risotto in my life–on purpose, anyway–but chocolate, yeah, I could get into that one.

Well, reality is that the engineers had clearly never tested their own product: the repairman later told us they were designed so that if you ever turned either of those two risotto burners up to full heat, they fused shut and never worked again. Which you certainly could, and we certainly did, because we had no reason not to, and since the repair quote was about the same as replacing the entire new cooktop, forget that. I really should have taken it up with the manufacturer–it was just barely out of warranty and a design that absolutely should have been recalled.

We have yet to replace the thing.

So. The pilot is trying to ignite on a burner that can release no gas.

And then the pilot on the next burner started clicking.

And the next.

And the next. Sounds a bit like listening to a fire alarm to Richard’s ears; me, I can turn mine off.

Just unplug the stove, right?

WARNING: DO NOT UNPLUG HERE. GO TO BREAKER FIRST.

Still working on this and it’s getting late.

(Coming back to the computer later to finish this post.)

Annnd… #4. Got it. We had to turn the breaker back on because our fridge was on that circuit. Hoping hard…

Blessed silence. And then still blessed silence.

We walked back outside and he held the flashlight while I marked the spot.

Hanging on to that last bit of summer…

Two boxes for us and the one on the left for another family. I delivered it and got to see the thrilled look on the 13-year-old’s face when he opened that door and saw Andy’s peaches. They’ve had them before. He knew.

Michelle had water on to boil (one minute and then quickly over to the other pot) and icewater to cool for skinning the first four about the moment we walked in the door; picture taken immediately after. Those four made enough puree for two batches of sorbet.

I wanted to show it off while not wanting to show it, too, not yet. The not-yets win: creating something for the first time, discovering what it is as it comes to be, undoing, anticipating visual trajectories, redoing, stopping again and is this angle quite the one that I want…

One becomes both more and less aware of time. More grateful for it. More immersed in what it lets happen.

And it takes more of it.

Not done.

The promised picture: Burnside Bridges colorway by Abstract Fibers. Easy four-row lace pattern used in my Water Turtles shawl.

I saw something black in the back and white in front this afternoon that made no sense, so I stood up and walked to the window for a closer look. Meantime, it ran not away from my movement but down the fenceline towards me, continuing my way in a great hurry even as I stepped outside trying to fathom just what on earth that was. Too small and movements too short and jerky to be the neighbor’s Maine Coon cat.

It was a squirrel, and in its mouth was a furry bright white object bigger than it was. Was it raiding a hawk’s stashed kill? A wide strip of pelt and an ear? But–white?

It was dashing for the safety of the redwood and the understory tree below it as fast as tripping over that thing would let it run and it was so intent on stashing and not dropping nor stopping that even a human coming in between couldn’t give it pause. It had its prize and no threat could make it give it up. (But the thought that one might could make it run all the faster.)

And so it ran right past me. Definitely not feathers, that was fur. To line a baby nest? Squirrels do produce kits in August as well as the spring, it’s a little late for that, but. But it was white. There is certainly not a whole lot of wild bright white anything around here, if any, mammal-wise; could it have been someone’s torn stuffed toy?

I knew that color would stand out and I stepped back and looked at the understory it had leaped to but they were gone.

I may see it again, like the weirdly coveted bubblewrap that took a similar route a year ago. Or maybe not.

Knitted, finished my project, forgot to blog till bedtime. Pictures tomorrow, then!

I was thinking that after this weekend I could tell the rest of the story.

Only, it turns out there was a lot more to it than I had anticipated.

Back at Stitches West in February, my potter friend Kris told me that not only did they have sheep at the farm they’d bought, but her son had learned to spin and he had a wheel now.

He was there helping her and they surprised me with the great gift of a skein of his very own handspun yarn. From their sheep! So cool.

This is Kings Mountain Art Fair weekend, where I’ve seen Mel and Kris every year since long before they started going to Stitches.

But that new head injury. It’s certainly not bad, but not pushing it is a good thing. Richard wasn’t up to doing that much walking yet–parking is all car-by-parallel-parked-car along the narrow mountain road there with many many many people coming. Michelle couldn’t make it and it would just be me. Which normally I wouldn’t mind.

So I did the only thing I could do: I said a prayer and asked, if I shouldn’t go, please help me feel bad or hesitant about it and I won’t. If I should, please help me feel reassured, because I honestly don’t know what the most-right thing to do here is.

I very much felt reassured. It was a bit of a surprise. I had thought that waiting till the last day of the fair made the most sense, for that matter, but felt like, no, today. Don’t miss out. Go.

Huh. Okay, then. I really wanted to see my friends and feeling that it was okay to helped a lot. (That’s also why I had to be careful in that prayer, so that I was actually listening to the guidance I was asking for, not just hearing what I wanted the answer to be.)

I had wanted to surprise them back with something made from their wool, meantime, because nobody could treasure it like the ones taking care of the sheep it had come from. One large skein of aran weight: a cowl seemed the sensible thing to do for potters and farmers. It could keep one of them warm while leaving them free from having it blowing around in their way.

The yarn refused. It wanted to be a hat.

I started to cast on for a cowl.

I cast on a hat.
I made that hat. I put it in my purse last night to make sure I wouldn’t forget it.

I came around a curve in the hillsides of 280 and found myself driving into a dense fog as I approached the mountain pass and marveled, This is summer. That’s winter looking. It’s way too early for that. (It was bright and clear not too many miles away at home.) It softened the light, which rested my brain from the sharp reflections that otherwise would have irritated it. It was beautiful and it was perfect. As I drove upwards and turned left towards the fair at the spine of the mountain, there were splashes of raindrops from both trees and sky.

Rain here is the distilled essence of ocean: warm summer showers are not even a concept, locally, and I can remember trying to convince my then-young children that such a thing existed. If it’s raining in northern California it’s chilly, and for the first time that I can remember, it was cold at the fair. That forecast of 67 up there was way off–my thick turtleneck and sun jacket and wool knee socks were not enough at 52 degrees but not so bad as to get me to walk the quarter mile (I got a really good spot!) back to my car for the spare fleece jacket that’s always in there. (There’s a chartered shuttle bus for the really-way-out-theres.)

Mel had one on himself but he was still cold. Kris was comfortable in her jacket, but he was in sandals and his socks and warmer clothes were simply out of reach while they were working their booth.

So much for waiting till they’d rung up my purchase before surprising them–he needed that hat now, and I pulled it out. I told them, referencing their son, You guys are all going to have to work out whose this is.

They laughed. They loved it. Mel not only wore it, he doubled over the cuff for extra warmth and I was glad I’d knitted it to a good length so he could, and I could because they’d given me a generous amount.

If I’d waited till Monday like I’d half-planned, then…

If their son hadn’t felt like sharing what he’d made, and when he did…

And yet all that had happened and it had come out exactly right. Mel kept marveling at the chill, exclaiming, In California! On Labor Day weekend!

The show ended for the day and as Kris pulled the covers over their booth, Mel walked my purchases all the way to my car for me. I in turn drove him to where fair vendors are required to keep their vehicles, well away–and to where his socks were. He was then to drive back to Kris to pick her up, but just before he got out of my car, I told him this:

I get to wake up every morning to beautiful art, to Kris’s and your talent, your skills, your colorwork, and your love in my home and it makes every day of mine better and I just wanted to thank you. It makes such a difference.

Come to think of it, I need to go tell my sister that, too. (Edited to add: done!)

The slant of the light and the earlying of the evening: it feels sudden and it’s taking me by surprise every day as if this were new to me.

Last week the littlest peach tree, in full glow of the light sunrise to nearly sunset for months, was shaded by 3:00 pm; now it is by a little after 1:00, and since this is the Baby Crawford’s first year all I can do is hope its six and a half hours (today’s count) were enough. And again I debate whether this is the year the camphor tree comes down to make more room and light for the fruit trees to grow into.

Tree service or airfare to two more weddings coming up. Well that answers that.

It’s cooler, too, and there is this sudden need to knit All The Warmth that is waiting in the skeins of patient yarn.

Was looking for something this afternoon and stumbled across some leftover Burnside Bridge yarn I didn’t know I still had. Abstract Fibers does nice work.

So tonight, regardless of what I’d intended to knit next, this got started. Cowl. Needles US 5. Knit till I run out.

Knitted a little.

Re that subject line, my mom used that phrase a lot when we were kids as something to always remember to aspire to–and said it at times, too, one must confess, in carefully stifled exasperation, reminding herself of what *she* aspired to, and then repeated by a certain daughter towards her own kids and herself as they were growing up. And so on.

And now I’m going to be boring a moment and repeat what I said on Facebook just because it’s useful information to get out there.

The Produce Picks column in the San Jose Mercury News on Sunday had this line in it: “On a really hot summer day, the pear may reach the minimum desired sugar level in the morning, but the heat will chase the sugar back into the tree. It’s the tree’s way of protecting itself.” I had never heard such a thing before, and I thought I knew at least a little about fruit trees. I wondered, just pears? I would quite doubt that. I’d wondered why a fig I’d picked one morning was so very very good but the ones I’d had since were just okay. Oh. I’d picked them late in the day. So I went out early this morning and picked the two that were currently ripe (I planted the tree last year, it’s new at this) and took that first bite.

THAT. That was what I’d been wondering where it had gone. That was what a ripe straight-off-the-tree fig was supposed to taste like. Moral of the story, and it probably applies to tomatoes, too: pick in the morning.

(And I knew Andy does. Now I know more of why.)

People chimed in who knew more than I do and the verdict was, yes, it’s true of every edible thing in the garden.

In that case, I figure it should be better known than it is. The food you grow tastes better if you pick it early in the day. Spread the word like come-post.

Last night, getting ready for bed, marveling out loud over the events of that day.

And Richard looks at me and says, But I don’t have *my* car keys back yet.

Ohmygoodness! Fixed THAT fast!

The other thing.

Saw a bug in some produce today, and just because of the ick factor from that I decided to freeze a few cones of yarn: they’d come from somewhere that had given me a great price because they’d found evidence of a bug. I’d frozen and heated it before, but hey, just to be on the safe side.

This was not half an hour after telling my brother on the phone how I was finally over my concussions and what a difference it was making, at last.

And then I put that first two pound cone in the upper part of the freezer. Dropped the second. Bent over to pick it up at just the wrong moment and that first one hadn’t been done so well after all.

Icepack. Meet head. Klutz.

(Ed. in the morning to add: that little voice did tell me, as I picked up the cones, You don’t need to do that. Answered it with a half thought of, yeah I know but I’m going to anyway. That’s the part that I felt dumb about.)

Michelle had borrowed our car and stopped by home for me to drive her home. Before we headed out, Richard offered a short list of things he needed picked up on my way back: more wraps and gauze pads for his still-healing foot.

Sure, no problem.

I dropped her off, waved goodbye… And somehow just didn’t feel like going to the drugstore. I examined the thought, wondering: lazy? Tired? Dinner time? It would be a quick jaunt and done, if through a bit of rush hour traffic.

My car headed towards home as I argued with it but I felt no particular angst over going that way. Eh. I can go after dinner. Or maybe I need to make sure I’ve got a full list from him as to what he needs, yeah, that’s it.

Right, because smartphones can’t text–I didn’t even think of the phone or any of that.

I pulled into my own driveway, put it in park, had almost turned it off.

When I saw it.

The little yellow light icon that looks like a key broken in half with a squiggly line in between. Why…and then it staggered me what had just happened. Wait, how did it keep running if my keys were still in her purse?

Sometimes, said my sweetie after I asked him that question, it’ll keep running if it’s already on when the key leaves.

Had I gone straight to that drugstore I’d have been stranded with no way for either of them to reach me. And, turns out, I’d left my phone home. Where everybody’s phone numbers were stored. At rush hour, at dinner time, when it would have been maximum inconvenience to anybody else to come to my rescue if I’d even been able to figure out how to reach them.

But instead I’d gone straight home to where the second set of keys was.

One might think, in these days of social media, that one might never lose track of an old friend. But I did after she moved away a few years ago. She’s a nurse, so over the years she’s understood better than most what some of the medical stuff I’ve gone through has been like and she knows she can tell me about her own.

To my great delight and surprise she was back visiting today and we were passing in a hallway before church started, finding ourselves suddenly together with time and in a spot that was mostly alone to chat in for a moment.

I asked her about that transplant list.

She so loved being able to tell me this: she’s not on it now. They’d tried something new, her lungs had plateaued, and she wasn’t needing to replace them. (There’s always the subtext of, for now, and we both knew it, but when you get good news you revel in it for every possible day you’ve got it. It was an understood thing.) She mentioned a few ridiculously strenuous activities that she wasn’t planning on doing anytime soon, but hey!

I tell you. I went into that church meeting just really, really, really happy.

Then later in the day I headed out the door not to buy, it being our Sabbath, not to make others work for me, but simply to be present. I’d gone in yesterday to buy that one last souvenir skein already.

Purlescence was throwing itself a going-away party. I figured sharing the love was what the day was all about and that there would be a lot of it there, and oh, was there. So many people I haven’t seen in so long–we all wanted to see each other and share the experience, that community in that place one last time. The friendships will last, it’s the meetups that will be harder to come by.

It was good. It was sad. It was wonderful–because it means Kaye and Sandi will now have time to do all that creating that they’ve been teaching so many other people to do for these last ten years. It’s their turn.

And I thanked them yet again for that big basket that had showed up on our doorstep seven years ago filled with cards and best wishes and get-well gifts when I was so very very ill. A lot of people had pitched in on it. I’d felt I had to live to use that buffalo yarn they’d surprised me with just to justify their doing such a thing, if nothing else.

And so I did.

Long busy day, including seeing someone from my childhood, who married the granddaughter of my sister’s favorite teacher at church from when my sister was a teen, and someone Richard vaguely remembers from when he lived in France for two years as a missionary there starting at nineteen, and someone we all knew but didn’t know the French guy knew from when that someone lived in that French town too (I had not known that!) for half a dozen years after that. And there we all were. It was a wonderful, happy, small-world day.

I got a note from someone saying my blog posts weren’t showing up for her these last few days and she was checking to make sure everything was okay.

Huh. I have no idea what the problem is.

If I ask here if any of you can’t see it either, um, that doesn’t really work, does it?