Okay, I can tell you a little background here, but but but it doesn’t follow that–I mean– ! I absolutely in no way deserve anything remotely approaching this.

Several weeks ago, as I’ve mentioned, my friend Robin was visiting from my hometown along with her close knitting friend Kunmi. We went to Coupa Cafe for the world’s best hot cocoa, we hung out a bit although not anywhere near enough, we had a grand time with what time we were able to have together, and I adored Kunmi on the spot and immediately saw why they were so close. And Robin is a peach.

Kunmi wished out loud that she could find a copy of my book. I exclaimed, Oh hey, I’ll give you one!

And so one went into the mail chasing their airplane home the next day, because Richard rightly insisted that night that I was just too tired to safely drive back over there.

And I didn’t go to Purlescence last night because I was just too tired to safely drive over there.

I got an email from Nathania, one of the owners, that was just enough of a hint that I had to today, though, and see what was up, if anything; besides, I needed my Purl Girls time.

After I got there, Sandi, another of the owners, mentioned that the Epiphany had arrived.  She knew I’d been waiting for it, although I thought I had till Fall to save up for it because that’s when I’d been told months ago Cascade was likely going to expand their color lineup of it.

This red, sold out in the shop for months, is it: the royal baby alpaca/cashmere/silk blend that I so adore, that I splurged and made an offwhite shawl out of recently, guessing the recipient would love all that softness too.

“They’ve discontinued it.”

They’ve WHAT?!

Sandi nodded, “I know,” and explained that the cost of the cashmere and silk fibers had risen so much in the past year that Cascade had decided they couldn’t sell it at a reasonable price anymore. She pointed out that the 60/20/20 had become 72/15 silk/13  for this one last mill run–“and when that’s gone that’s that.”

There sat the new bag of maroony red I’d been waiting so long for, while hoping maybe a good non-muddy teal green might come out too. (Nope.) The price of a whole shawl’s worth right now, budget-wise, much less coming out their door with more than that…  But–this was the last of it… ! Half the bag of the blue was already walking off with another customer on the spot; she’d knitted this stuff before, she knew what it was too.

Just then, Nathania sauntered over with a not-successfully-suppressed grin on her face. An envelope suddenly appeared with my name on it.

What’s this about? I opened it. Inside, a card that on one side simply said Purlescence with a pretty picture of yarns. I turned it over…

A gift certificate for, oh my stars, one hundred mind-blowing dollars. With love from Robin and Kunmi.

On the day that coveted yarn came in. There’s my shawl’s worth and then some.

I…I… I am still just totally, utterly blown away.  *THANK* you, Robin and Kunmi!!!

I periodically (well, yes) get a catalog from a Dutch bulb wholesaler, thanks to a Christmas box a few years ago with eight giant-size amaryllis bulbs in it. (Thank you, Dad!)

I thumbed through the new arrival today and a few minutes later regretfully put it in the recycling bin. Pretty, pretty pictures, but nope, nope, nope. Even beside the whole issue of me and sun exposure: you can’t grow tulips here, really. It doesn’t get cold enough for them to bloom but the first season unless you’re willing to dig them up and store them in the fridge, and they’re poisonous for people if someone majorly goofs.

The squirrels, on the other hand, will thank you for hosting their party the moment you put them in the ground. Daffodils are safe from the little marauders, and my glads seem to be too, but tulip bulbs? Totally dessert.

The lilies in those pages, though–those really grabbed me. I’ve always loved Stargazers, though I think I only ever bought one bulb once years ago and it did not thrive while I was chasing after small children. Was I going to buy $50 worth of Stargazers to meet the company’s minimum? Absolutely not. Thanks for the peek, out you go.

I skipped out on Purlescence time tonight, too tired to drive, but Richard needed to make a Costco run. As long as he was at the wheel, sure, be glad to come keep you company, hon.

And so we were headed towards the produce when there they were. The lilies. After Eight,  a smaller, even more perfect version of the Stargazer variety, the flowers just as big–five stalks, 10″ pot, $14.99.

The smell was heavenly. There were two whole wooden pallets on the floor covered with blooms reaching high towards us.

We both stopped so suddenly at the sight that someone to the left turned and rammed his cart into Richard in the near-empty store. Oh sorry sir.

I was going, Wow, those are gorgeous, when Richard, to my surprise, ignoring the cart guy, pronounced, “You want one that’s not open yet. How about this one?”

Wait, what?

“Sometimes I buy you flowers,” he added in happy anticipation, waiting for it to sink in.

I looked at him. Yes of course he meant it. Cool! (He had no idea I’d been wishing or even anything at all about that catalog arriving or about how I like Stargazers, none, nada. Never been a topic.) We looked through them all till I came back to the one he’d picked out at the very beginning as indeed the best one. Like trying on shoes, isn’t it.

I had instinctively gone for the ones already in bloom because of my pink azaleas: one of which, I found out the year after I planted them, happened to actually be white. Mislabeled. Oops. Yup, it’s still there at the end of the row of them out there, its branches interwoven by now with the pink till there’s no telling where each begins: they made themselves belong to each other. They stay.

So if there’s one white lily stalk in there with the other four it will just be too funny. But behold the lilies that will be in our field of vision. I can’t wait.

Annnnd she’s a-comin’ round that race track for another lap. Will she start to decrease? Will she go on?  Does she have enough yarn? (We’re in the black hole here, folks, the tape’s saying 8.65″ one minute, 7.5″ the next.  You never know when she’ll pull out ahead of the crowd of stitches.)

Yes! She’s going for another round! And another! Look at that determination. And another! She’s got another skein coming if she thinks this one’s going down. Go go go!

Now, we’re heading into those last laps. It’s fair, isle say, to think she could put a plain round between every one of those decrease rounds and still have enough; what do you say? Looks like she’s going for it. GO GO GO! Almost there, almost there, allllllmoooooosttt…

…And she DID IT! With twelve grams left and a whopping twenty-five yards for the WIN!!!

Ever have your knitting all in a well-behaved queue, knowing exactly what you’re going to do next and what after that and all according to plan? And then have something in your stash leap onto your needles completely of itself and absolutely demand that no, you have to do what it says now.

Matter of fact you suddenly realize it has played loop the leap on you and has you all wrapped around its little needly fingers. And there you go.

Ever have a project, as you knit it in delighted unanticipated anticipation of the outcome, of the person you hope it’s going to make a difference to, tell you that it is THE prettiest, best thing you ever made ever? You argue with it, you know it’s silly, you cite examples–but it grins right back at you and tells you that you feel this way the most when you’re anticipating most happily on someone else’s behalf, and yes you felt like that two weeks ago on that Epiphany shawl (and it was true!) and on the and the and the but for all of that, why, yes, this IS it. The very best thing ever for this particular moment. Can’t wait to send it off.

Yes. I have definitely felt that way too.

I remember my Mom and my next-older sister planning a prom dress together. Would have been 1974. Mom had some beautiful fabric for it; I’m picturing that it was a red and black silk print my grandmother brought back from a trip, hand-batiked in Indonesia, but if I’m wrong I’m sure I’ll hear about it.

Before Mom messed with that treasure she decided to give the pattern a test-drive in muslin. I remember her explaining to me that this is what the pros do, they sew it twice, once for practice and fit and once for real after they see that their design works out the way they want (or what to change if it doesn’t.)

I remember arguing: you have to pay for the muslin in the fabric store so why not pay for some other fabric and get a second usable dress? Why just plain (muslin being in an oatmealy shade I didn’t like) when you could have something more colorful? And softer?

Mom just laughed me off and went on with what she was doing; I do remember my sister happily reporting afterwards that her date had admitted that when he’d heard that Mom was going to be sewing the dress, he had all kinds of worries about how homemade it was going to look–but wow, he said, she looked beautiful!

Practice makes perfect.

Mom later sewed my wedding dress. Those of you who sew who live in the Washington DC area, couture-house lace remnants at G Street Fabrics for the yoke and cuffs. My mom rocks.

I thought of all that as I put my qiviut aside, almost done but before I got any further, just just just to make sure (and yeah I should have done this first like Mom taught me), I went to go play with the same shawlette idea in different yarns: a strand of that so-soft Baruffa merino knitted with one of an alpaca with a bit of wiriness to it–okay, but not baby alpaca.

It’s done. I love how it looks, even if it’s not as soft (well, yeah) as that ohmygoodness qiviut. And Michelle approves.

When the next generation down says it looks good you know you’ve nailed it.

Happy Fourth of July!  My amaryllis is trying for the fireworks effect.

Cheryl asked me yesterday if I had a lot of yarn, and I laughed and answered with a story on myself: the hot water heater once burst and flooded out the back of a closet where there was, ahem, more yarn tucked away–Richard knew about the stash in the family room closet…

But I’ve been thinking since then that although I was sheepish about it at the time that that happened, telling that tale that way wasn’t fair to my husband.  He has so often seen me find out about a need, someone who needed support just then, and seen me go to my stash and find what felt like just exactly the most perfect yarn to launch into for them and I go for it on the spot. Knitting is love made tangible. He has seen the joy. He has shared in that joy.

And I knew he got it, he really got it, 18 years ago when his sister, whose name was also Cheryl, was diagnosed with late non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He asked me if I would knit her something? And he insisted on coming along, driving me and our four kids across the Bay to the  now-gone Straw Into Gold store in Berkeley where the stock was immense, helping me pick out colors for her multi-colored vest. (There was no way I was going to feel sure I could get sleeves to fit from long distance, but a vest, that I could do.)

We wrapped her in our love together for eight more years.

I actually asked him just a few days ago, after a small cone arrived from Colourmart, if he minded how much yarn I had. (Side note to my fellow knitters: those come with mill oils that feel like dried hair mousse and the yarn must be hanked and scoured in soapy hot water, dried and balled before knitting, a lot of work and the missing steps that you pay for when you buy a yarn store yarn. But the cone was Zegna Baruffa, very soft, and the prices are what they are.)

He looked astonished. “No! That’s what makes you happy!”

Not just the collecting it, not the owning it, but the impish anticipation and then the moment in the recipient’s face (whether I get to see it or not) when it all comes together: every skein is a symbol of those moments. My job is to make them come to be in real life.

And this is true, too: the gift my lupus gives me is that it sits me down, especially on a bad day, and demands: KNIT.

So that it becomes no longer about me.

Cashmere Superior with Malabrigo Lace, shades of green. I wanted it supersoft. I knitted a lace scarf for the wife of a childhood friend after finding out they lived not too terribly far away and that his work brings him to my town once a week.

But then I had a bad attack of shy and it sat there. We hadn’t seen each other since we were 18; it’s easy to feel awkward barging in on someone’s attention like that.

The last two weeks put a lot of things in perspective, though, and it felt like it was time. I sent him a message after I got my biopsy report (I wanted to have that sense of relief first), explaining what I’d made, about the shyness thing and saying as how vanity concentrates the mind; given that I was about to lose some hair off my scalp permanently–while I still looked like me, would it be okay to schedule a get-together?

He was delighted. Today was the day. I drove over. After he got off work, we talked for awhile, and then his wife arrived and joined us and we were all old friends together as if it had always been so all around. She’s a peach, and I am so happy for both of them; they’re a great couple. The kind of people who, when you step into their presence, you are instantly home.

And come to find out, through the years we had forged connection after small-world connection with no idea till just then. And even just this week we were forging more.

When I answered his question about where Michelle’s internship was, his jaw hit the floor and he stared. He named her bosses. Close friends of theirs.

The person I’d mailed a shawl off to last week–dear, dear mentor to him and a  friend of his dad. Known her for years.

When his wife came, the twinkle in his eye as he just waited for her reaction–she’d been reading my blog, she’d read about that chocolate torte, yes–and then, listening to him, she turned to me and went, WAIT. *YOU* made HER birthday cake?! (And then she laughed, going, “Yes, she really did have a horrible rotten no–good I think I’ll move to Australia kind of day.”)

And Cheryl, I found out today, is a knitter. They now have a copy of my book, autographed with great delight. I am now a proud owner of “Feeding Baby Green,” autographed with great delight.

And I on sudden impulse on my way out the door had stashed a copy of a book by, as it happens, that mentor in my knitting bag, having no idea.  They didn’t currently have a copy of it. They now have it. I apologized that I hadn’t had time to find a more pristine copy.

Too amazing. Too wonderful. To life!

I had a summer job in college back in the day working for a company that processed payroll for other companies. That’s right, kiddies: I was a keypunch operator. Ask your great-grandpa.

That meant a lot of names went by as I typed, and I used to keep a mental collection of the funnier ones.  Cherie Baum, for instance. (Was there ever a kid who didn’t get teased about their name?)

During college, I worked as a copy editor for one of the colleges on BYU campus and the other woman hired said she could never change her name when she got married; she’d been born a month before the book had come out, and nobody ever forgot Charlotte Webb.

Okay, so. On my way to Knit Night tonight, same old route, about to turn left, when over to the right was a company name emblazoned on a building where I’d never noticed it.

Ron Fetsch and Associates.

I have no idea who they are nor what they do, but I tell you, that’s a name you just can’t shake a stick at. (Just tell me his parents didn’t give him the middle initial N–and yes, I’m sure he’s heard it all. Whatever we go by, we all have.)

Some knitting’s been getting done.

An appleblossom amaryllis spent the day opening in slow motion–almost there. In June!

Pain at the news: some of the peregrine falcons nesting towards the north end of the Bay had abruptly disappeared. And we finally knew.

Two had been shot. They are in a rescue center and there is some hope they may make it; whether they can ever be released again is in question, though.

When that word went out yesterday, word came in today that a third had been found shot as well.  Someone had found it, called his local wildlife rescue, got no answer, didn’t wait, put it in his car and headed for the bird rescue center at UC Davis over two hours away, trying to save it. That peregrine didn’t survive. He apparently didn’t know about the falcon groups tracking the birds nor whom else to call till he saw the fliers asking for information in the neighborhood they were all found in.

This was devastating, but especially to those who’d spent their lives bringing that species back from the edge of extinction and who so rejoiced at every successful fledging.

Thank goodness for people who step up and do the right thing.  That man in Oakland tried. I’m sure he didn’t know it would mean anything to anybody but him at the time he did it, but his good impulse offers comfort when it is needed by many.

I was brooding over the new senseless casualty when I decided to put down the computer and just go and sit and knit. The birds at the feeder scattered, as they often do when I stand up, and I barely noticed but for the wren checking over its shoulder before diving for cover; I reached my perch at the couch and was about to sit down when–

–there he was. He flew in to the back of the dolly, which is behind that couch through the window, right there from where I was. My moving around had not scared him away from landing.

My bird. My big wild bird is okay. As if he’d wanted me to know that.

I will never cease to catch my breath at the sight of that beautiful, living, curious, intelligent hawk.

(Edited days later: I am sorry to have to add that there has been some question about the veracity of the report to the peregrine group about a third one having been found and its attempted rescue. There is a third one missing and its fate unknown, although, not all the ones out there are banded and personally known to us.)

Richard said to me first thing this morning that the fact that I hadn’t heard anything yet meant that it was sitting on someone’s desk because it wasn’t urgent; he wanted me to call them.

But the doctor said she’d…

Hey. Ask if I need to be pushed twice. I called.

I sat on hold, on hold, on hold. Then the young male receptionist came back sounding pressured and in a hurry. I gave him the requisite name, birth date, why I was calling–and added that I knew the doctor had said she was going to call and that I hoped I wasn’t being too antsy or causing problems, but if they did know anything yet on that biopsy, I would love to know.

His voice changed. Suddenly I was more than a name on a screen and a voice on the phone, I was a fellow human being; he did what he could for me and wished me the best and I heard in his voice that he meant it.

Not long after that, the doctor did call. She was saying things about nodular and tendrils and 5mm size plus the 2mm edges each side she’d gotten out with the biopsy and that she was going to have to take out more because–

–and I had to stop her a moment. Sorry, I didn’t hear; so–was it basal?

She started to apologize for going on before I’d caught that part; I think it bothered her that she was going to have to take out more of my hair forever than she’d wanted to. My question was reminding her about the good side of all  this.

Yes, she affirmed, the gratitude showing in her voice. It was basal.

Praise be.

I bet you Sue knows what I’m going to write about tonight.

1. But before I get there, I knitted a little Camelspin on the side today in a sudden hurry to get that done yesterday.

2. Nope, no phone call today from the doctor, or at least not while I was home, and no messages were left while I was out foraging for chocolate.

3. My daughter had a co-worker who, last Friday, was having a horrible, rotten, no-good-I-think-I’ll-move-to-Australia kind of day. (That’s the refrain on most of the pages of a certain children’s book–just to make that clear since one person who’s going to be reading this has a loved one who *did* move to Australia and who clearly has turned out very nicely for it.)

4. So I offered to bake a chocolate torte for them. (Here’s the recipe.)

5. Tomorrow is that person’s birthday, it turns out.

6. Well then!

and, 7, since I always make two of them, and since today’s our anniversary, and since Michelle can’t eat dairy, I substituted hazelnut oil for the butter, coming about two tbl short out of two cups needed for two cakes–close enough. We’ll call it the low fat version. I can’t begin to tell you how heavenly it smells.

8. Richard and I are home now from going out to dinner so we might go cut into that second cake if I stop typing a moment.

9. We went to the restaurant where Sue works, hoping to see her; for those of you who’ve read “Wrapped in Comfort,” (still available at Purlescence) it’s the first story, and yes, that Sue. Nope, they said, wrong night, not here, sorry.

10. On our way out I explained to our waitress why I’d so hoped to see her: how, when we moved here we came here a lot while on a per diem the first month, and how 20 years later she still remembered what my then-small kids had liked to eat. She loved my kids and we all adored her.

11. At that point, a different waitress exclaimed, “She’s here now!” Sue and her husband had decided to beat the heat and go out for dinner too, coming to this really great place they happened to know really well.

12. Hugs, love, intro to her husband, and then Sue told him that our kids were the best ever. “Some kids in restaurants, you know, but yours were always perfectly behaved.”

13. They were just shy of 1, 3, and 5 at the time; I don’t remember them being perfectly behaved. But I do remember them as being perfectly loved around her. Every parent of a small child needs some other adult who feels their kids are adorable: it helps the children and it helps the parents, too, to all rise to the occasion.

Sue was there. Our occasion got even happier. She laughed to her husband about my four year old who liked lobster. (It was a moving-expense per diem, the corporation didn’t care in the least what she ordered as long as it was below $25. Come to think of it, four-year-olds ordering lobster several times a week because they miss New Hampshire would be memorable.)

14. Happy anniversary, Richard! With no skunks this time.

(If that one of the three budding amaryllises turns out to be white, I’ll know it was the one Sue dropped off at Purlescence for me back when I was sick. Thank you, Sue!)

Love you, Richard!

God’s answer to my interminable wait for the biopsy report.

That’s two evenings in a row: I saw my Cooper’s hawk flying across the yard to the right, chasing dinner–and a moment later he surprised me by flying right back and perching on the back of the chair in front of the feeder to look me in the eye for a goodly minute. I would have set it there long ago had I known he would like it so.

Tonight I was walking into the family room with its wall and a half of glass and saw him after a finch and away; I sat down, glad for my hawk sighting for the day, when again he immediately turned around and came back, landing this time on the patio, looking not for prey but at me–but his view was a little obstructed there, so he fluttered up to that chair back.  He seemed to clearly want to look me in the eye again.

From maybe a dozen feet away. Glorious.

He shuffled his feet, wiggled his tail, settled in. Tucked his head down, still eye-to-eye, lifted one of those giant feet of his and scratched himself behind the head, casually fluffing those neck feathers up. All relaxed, looking for all the world as if he were about to launch into a story for me.

Pull up a chair and welcome home. It’s all good here.

The qiviut is humming along nicely now. It’s hard to put it down.

Meantime, there’s been a lack of Parker pictures because I nearly killed off my aging computer trying to take on a lot of them, so this is a cell phone shot: Parker, six months now, and his two-month-old cousin, Kim’s sister’s daughter. It tickles me no end: every kid should have a cousin their own age, and these two are going to grow up close by each other.

On the wildlife front, two days ago there was a sudden flipping the lights off and on behind me and then again in front of me, all in a near-instant as I looked out at the backyard–only, it was bright midday: it was the sun, the windows blocked as wide wings flew over the house. Wow.

The headline in the paper the next morning was all about five juvenile California Condors, the oldest being five, maturation at six, seen partying together on Mount Hamilton in San Jose the day before; the story talked about how they can fly 150 miles in a day, etc.

I’m assuming the shadow was from my Zone-tailed hawk I’ve seen before, which is certainly big enough, given that it can reach the entire keyboard on my piano and then a bit. But it’s so cool knowing there were five (!) Condors so close by, where none had been in a hundred years, shooting the breeze, swapping eagle stories and those parental puppets?–nah, never fooled me a second, you? Nah… Well yeah, I thought he was condor funny looking, myself.

A male Nuttall’s woodpecker–I’ve seen a pair dancing around each other on the tree trunks of late, I’m hoping they set up housekeeping here–landed on the birdfeeder this morning, something I’ve never seen before. The quarreling house finches tried to play their games with him while he was trying to figure out how to stand on this perch here and get food out of that port there, being taller than they, and he would have none of their harassment–he would turn to them with that sharp beak of his and stand them quickly down and go back to his efforts: there is food here. Clearly. The trunk of this thing doesn’t do diddly, how do they all do it, okay (Go away chirpface!), and at last he leaned over just so and snatched himself a seed.

I said to somebody yesterday that knitting is therapeutic: if it doesn’t come out just the way you want, you can relive the hours you spent on it and by golly make it come out exactly right.

I got called on that today.

I knitted a lace repeat on my qiviut project, looked at it and there was no way around it. Out. As I reknit it I thought, well, at least I learned something useful that I can apply to the design. I was gratified  at how well such a fragile-looking yarn stood up to being ripped out yet again.

Except there was more to learn. When I was in my Kaffe Fassett colorwork phase years ago, back when I knit  a coat with 68 shades of wool and mohair and then a second in 86 shades just to beat his after my husband happily claimed the first for his own, I learned that a color will look different if you put it next to this one vs that one.

Lace patterns do the same thing. Who knew.  (Well, I did, but we’re talking particular details here.) After five hours of knitting… I get to go see exactly how this many stitches at this gauge will fit after it’s off the needles, no guessing anymore, because everything I did this afternoon is again frog-centric.

I have hopped around enough perches by now.  I have sown enough seeds. Now I’ll be able to get this design to come out exactly how I want.

(A little later, frogging finished, a fair amount knitted up again: the yarn is just ever so slightly fuzzier, almost imperceptibly so from any distance–but the hands know, and the neck will. Soft soft soft.)