Auditioned for the next Incredibles movie: st r e  t ch.

So I was going to show you the it-was-going-to-be-finished baby sweater. Yeah well.

Typing gingerly and glad for a hubby who raced for the icepacks: turn the treadmill off first, don’t grab at the handle to keep from falling while it pulls your feet away. Or, how to learn things you already knew and thought you’d planned out against in advance.

Life’s way of saying, forget the chores; go prop up your feet, wrap an afghan around you (thank you all for those!) and go read a good book in the October evening cool.

Why thank you, Three Cups of Tea arrived in the mail, I think I will.

Got back late from an evening out, so this will be quick. We picked up a friend and gave her a ride, and she directed us over a small bridge to get to the freeway from her home.  Houses on this side, apartment buildings over there, the freeway and a large retail complex, a swanky hotel, etc etc right over thataway. We are talking city.

She happened to mention that her neighbor had seen a full-grown mountain lion sandbathing in the dry creekbed there.

Well now there goes the neighborhood.

I spent a fair bit of time poking around the various books at hand and Patterncentral.com and Google, searching for… I wasn’t sure what but page after page, those weren’t it.

Till I stumbled across the picture of the pink one here. Hey. Color Transplants R Us. That’s IT! That’s what my subconscious was trying to push out of the memory banks. I’ve seen that before but I couldn’t tell you how long it’s been.

During the few years of my life I wasn’t knitting much, I was making smocked gowns and dresses for my own babies, and that round patterning around the neck, called a bishop style, was something I made over and over.  A knitted sweater that echoes that, a generation later? Perfect.

I hadn’t ever realized till I took the photo just now that the reverse holds true too: I designed a smocked dress back then for Michelle with a sheep front and center.

Meantime, today was my monthly trek to Los Gatos to buy birdseed. There in front of my car as I parked was a signboard for a shop at the far end of the plaza–where I had never been nor really looked. A chocolatier? There is?  Okay, that’s worth checking out.

You walk in and there’s an intricate haunted house at the front with figures and jackolanterns and all kinds of detail. And it’s chocolate. All chocolate. All made in-house by hand. We are talking someone who plays with chocolate like I play with baby alpaca and silk.

I decided to try just one piece to test the place out, just one framboise.

Oh. My. Goodness. Change the metaphor to qiviut and silk.  Richard exclaimed later, You didn’t get ME one? But I had no idea till she rang it up what it was going to cost vs the amount of cash I had on hand for an impulsive try-out.

To give you an idea, I later got in and out of Trader Joe’s without buying a single chocolate thing. Not even a plain good dark Valrhona bar.  It would only have been a comedown.

The one thing I regret? I didn’t eat it till after I’d left and the woman didn’t get to see my whole face light up. She certainly earned that. I’ll have to go back, and Richard needs to come too.

Okay, right about here a good essay would pull the knitting and smocking together with the chocolate shop. Does that sentence count?

I don’t think Kathryn at Cottage Yarns was surprised when I called.  She recognized my voice.

She thought the edges and width were fine. She was quite happy to sell me more anyway. Her Rios had just come in, the Solis darker than mine but as usual, oh so pretty.  I’ve really wanted to make a baby sweater to go with the blanket and now I can.

After over three weeks, it’s hard to just stop and put the baby blanket down and call the thing done and not be working on it anymore. It’s also over a pound; enough already.

She mentioned that another woman had come in between when I called and when I got up there and was going through the Rios, leaving Kathryn going, uh, oh. But the woman had bought a whole bag of a different color and my Solis was safe after all.

And! She had one last skein from the same bag of undyed Malabrigo Sock I’d bought there awhile ago. I’d been thinking of making a formal christening blanket too and had been wishing I had more, and now I know I can go for it in that so-soft and washable wool.

You know, after 41 years of fighting the knitting grandmother stereotype…

It was after I got home that I finished the ribbing on the Rios, and I remembered wrong yesterday, having not done such a thing in years: if you pick up the stitches from the cast on and knit down, *then* it jogs sideways a half stitch’s worth. Which is what I got at first–but it was quickly clear it was going to feel like knots across that pick-up row. I could just picture the baby doing a faceplant into that and crying. Not our baby! Only one chance to do it right. Do it right.

So I ripped that and did what I’d tried to get out of: I carefully undid that first row, unthreading the yarn woven through each stitch going that direction. And then, hey look, the loops connected beautifully. A little loose-looped along some parts of the pattern, but. I decided loose loops don’t sink WIPs.

So. On the knitting front.

One skein of the Rios had a knot almost exactly midway as the scale measures, its presence highly unusual in my Malabrigo experience. I snipped it right there, not wanting a princess and the pea effect, and knitted the baby afghan with the other five skeins in the two different dyelots I had, alternating them. (Note that the left side in the picture looks lighter because it’s the right side of the blanket while on the right is the back side.)

I didn’t start it with ribbing because ribbing eats yardage and at the time I didn’t know if the Webs dyelot on the way would work at all. So the starting end curls. Which bugs me even though I told myself it wasn’t allowed to.

I’m now at the far end, out of yarn besides those two half balls, finished with the last pattern repeat, and thinking I’ll just finish it off with a half-ball’s worth of ribbing and then pick up the beginning stitches and add the other half a ball in ribbing over at that end. That would work. There, no curling.

Except, in my dreams, I’d like to make that ribbing really big and go buy several more balls and add more ribbing to the sides too to match and to widen the blanket. Yes, it’s good enough as it is. But yes, I wish I could do that.

Fine. Go buy three or four more skeins, make this thing really big!  And hurry, the baby shower’s coming up.

All well and good–except one thing.

That means finding more Solis (that matches).

In Malabrigo Rios. Which has been on the market for a month or less.  The yarn stores have been standing in line, it’s like a first-year Toyota Prius, everybody wants it and with good reason. It is seriously nice, useful, supersoft, densely-spun machine-washable wool.

Imagiknit doesn’t even have the line on their website now, at least not for the moment. Not a single skein in a single color up there anymore.

On the mail order front, which I don’t have time for anyway, Webs is sold out of Solis. Jimmybeanz is sold out of Solis.

I’d rather shade-check in person anyway.

I could call Cottage Yarns in South San Francisco in the morning and Golden Fleece way down in Santa Cruz. Green Planet in Campbell, dunno if they ever got Rios in at all. Anyone got any other Bay Area leads?

Width, 32″ unstretched/42″ mildly stretched (the pattern tends to pull in on itself sideways) by about 46″ length, unstretched, before ribbing and definitely before water touches it.  I intend to wash it to get any (probably nonexistent) possibility of lingering dye away from the baby and knowing that laying it out to dry flat will give me a blocking effect, relaxing the pattern. That will give me a few more inches all around.

I think I should just be glad I’ve got those two half balls to go polish off those two ends (that knot actually turned out to be highly useful and in just the right place) and call it done.

I’m going to be a lazy blogger tonight and post here, with a touch of editing for clarity, what I put on Twinset Jan and Ellen’s blog.  Jan had made some baby socks and hat in a soft, soft angora yarn in a muted sunflower-yellow shade; scroll to the bottom of the post to see them.

I don’t usually comment at such length in someone else’s space, but her picture so grabbed me.

——

Oh. My. Goodness. That angora. That shade (you photographed it better than I did.) BOY, does that bring back memories!

My mom bought some pure angora that exact color on a trip to France before I was born, to knit for her little girls in anticipation of their being upstaged by the new one coming (me).

My oldest sister got a green sweater and she was highly allergic to it. The yellow…sat in a box for something like 45 years.

Until Mom and Dad packed up and moved out of the house they’d raised us in. I had coveted that angora all through my teens and beyond, the only one of the four girls to latch onto knitting like Mom, and Mom had always said, No, that’s not yours. I promised that to your big sister.

She out of the blue, just before the moving van came, mailed it to me after all, all these years later.

You see my blog header? That bit of yellow and those scarves?

That yarn was totally not protected, totally chewed up. I pieced it back together as best as humanly possible and then knitted it up: a scarf for my not-allergic older sister, one for my younger sister, and one each for my brothers’ wives. I dyed them partly on the grounds that no moth stages could survive the boiling water, partly on the grounds of felting together any slipping pieces beyond the splicing efforts.

And that is the story of how my blog top came to look like that. (Note that the ball of yarn has multiple ends.) After wanting that yarn for all those decades, I finally got to have it come to me–and after all that time, Mom was right: it wasn’t for me after all. It was for everybody else.

—–

(Wow. I’d totally forgotten I got seven scarves out of that box!)

Don’t stomp in the puddles! You’ll get your feet wet!

Well, yes; that’s what puddles are for, aren’t they?

One of the treasures of my childhood was all the times when, on returning from following the trails and climbing over the rocks and splashing around in nearby Cabin John Creek, my mother would look us over appraisingly with a big grin and pronounce, “You must have had FUN getting THAT dirty!”

If you remember, the peregrine falcons who fudged their fledge the first time got rescued by Glenn Stewart, the UCSC biologist in charge of the peregrine recovery project. He would scoop them off the ground, (like this time) put them in a box, and take them up the elevator back to the nest area–and before releasing them would give them a good soaking so they couldn’t try to get away from him in a panic till they’d dried off enough and recovered, by which time he’d be long out of sight.

So. Today, after their usual six months’ vacation, the clouds came back and started back to work. Rain! I remember rain… (My children do not believe in this myth of warm summer rains back East. Rain is never in summer. And it is always ocean-cold. Or so they say.)

With the new camera up on City Hall this year and its new views, there was one of our peregrine parents, EC, this afternoon. On the 18th floor louver. Spreading his wings open to the rain, then splashing across the louver to the other end, turning again, his wings wide to the sky still.  Puddles incoming! Catch me if you can! And he flew off into his game of tag with the raindrops.

And Clara flew from her tree to join him.

News flash: our nephew and his wife, he being the son of Richard’s late sister, had twin baby girls yesterday, everyone healthy and well. Yay! I can just picture Cheryl giving her granddaughters one last hug before their trip down here.

The baby afghan fabric the Malabrigo Rios is turning into for our grandson, meantime, is solid, substantial and warm, exactly what I wanted. But my wrists can only do so many M1 twists at a time, so it tends to go slow.

Every now and then I stop and look at how much is actually nevertheless getting done with my one pattern repeat minimum per day and it surprises me–cool, look at that!  Getting there!

The blog has been photophobic lately but I’m hoping this old shot goes through. (It’s not a great one, but it’s better than what I’ve been able to get since.)

I brought the blanket with me Thursday to Purlescence to show it off there for the first time, and they all made my day with exclamations of Oh, that’s *pretty*!

I told Sandi, the pattern should be intuitive–but it’s not, and I pulled out a simple scarf to work on.

“Some knitting isn’t social knitting.”

True.  But oh, but that yarn and that pattern so much want to be. Just wait till they’re done.  Stitch by ongoing stitch, it’s gradually, beautifully, in spite of my impatience, all coming together.

I’m sure my daughter-in-law knows that feeling right now way more than I do.

Don’t read this. This is just me getting it out of my system.

I got an update from my medical supplies provider. Seems this one supplier has listened to the feedback from their customers and engineers and Yes! They have come up with a New Improved! version.

(Delete delete delete.)

NO.  (If I even just SAY velcro and bag out loud in the same sentence it’s TMI, but, trust me, NO.)

I got in my car in my driveway and closed the door. Purlescence night.

I opened that door right back up again and grabbed my keys, spurred on by the strong feeling that no, I needed to have one with me, and unlocked the house and ran back inside. Where I grabbed a copy of my book.

At the shop, though, I left it in the car–it’s not like the thing was a novelty to anyone I expected to see.

But there I ran into someone visiting from out of town whom I’d really, really wanted to give a copy to. I had no idea she was going to be there.  What I also didn’t know, as I in great delight  signed that thing, was that it wasn’t just me imposing on her (I was afraid it would be like, See? See this cool book I did? You like it, you really like it–right? Ummm…) Actually, she had really wanted one.

And for the second time Susan surprised me with a gift of some of her yarn to go play with, and I tell you, she does gorgeous colorwork.

Some nice people. You just can never catch up to them. It was *so* good to see her!

To the BBC guy: no, it wasn’t over. Not till all 39 were out. The rescuers count too.

To all who pulled off the impossible: thank you!

To President Pinera of Chile, who went ahead and authorized the operation after being told there was only a 3% chance of success but who still did the only humanly thinkable thing and ran with it, knowing those men were alive down there, who greeted every single man with the biggest smile and hug for 24 hours straight: thank you!

To the miners, who kept the faith with each other and God to get through it all, thank you for the example and strength you showed the world. May you hold fast to that forever.

I barely managed to tear myself away to go to my lupus group, but I did.

Back home, knitting in front of the monitor, cheering on each appearance of that funky-angled rescue capsule both above and below ground and the appearance of each man finally back up at the surface, stepping out into the arms of everybody.

BBC… It ain’t over till the skinny guy sings.

And then they all did, with all the celebration one could possibly put into it. CHI CHI CHI LE LE LE!!!

I was coming home from a meeting tonight when I saw it, the second night in a row that I have, from the same stem: a daylily. After nine pm.

A well-established daylily cluster can produce hundreds of blossoms to make up for how very short the life of each. This plant was just over a year old, planted when the street was redone and re-landscaped; it’s a young one.

It was shooting its one long stem stretched out far to the side and up, as if it were reaching with all its might, up towards the streetlight, which seemed to spotlight it directly. Daylily flowers typically falter and shrivel at the first hint of dusk (and this is October!), but it must have found what it needed, the streetlight must somehow have produced enough energy to light the dark away: the yellow flower was in full bloom and full color in spite of the night. It was very striking.

I got home, marveling over that, to where my husband was watching the BBC news live.  Where the third trapped miner in Chile, after 69 days underground, walked out of the rescue capsule and into the arms of his wife and the whole wide waiting world, in night lit up like the day.

This is not the most reverent post. Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends!

When my boys were young, they–well let’s see. Dates. 1990 for the first Super Soaker? Sounds right. They kept making them bigger and squirtier from there on out, coinciding with my boys’ growing appreciation for just what a fine piece of machinery these could be. (With the occasional summer exclamation heard of You boys keep those things AWAY from my hearing aids!) The girls played with them too, but with not quite the same passion for power.

There was a birthdays-and-Christmas arms race going on for several years running. If one of the boys got one (and they did, it was at the top of their wish list), their dad had to have a bigger one.

I thought the things had all long since gone to that great recycling squirt gun in the sky, but no: when I said something last week, my husband grinned and said he’d kept his biggest baddest one all this time. Never know when you might need it. (Grandson? January?  Did you say grandson? Dude!)

Remember that book my daughter-in-law sent me that says squirrels don’t learn by fear because then they just couldn’t be squirrels?

The gray ones have, with the onset of Fall, gotten bossier and meaner to my cute little black ones I watched grow up and have been vigorously chasing them away at teethpoint from the area under the birdfeeders.

This will not do.

The first time I hefted that thing, wondering, (for the record, it weighs more than I do) I had a gray bushytail looking at me like, what is that? Is that fruit? Those bright colors says it’s fruit and it’s sweet and I want some. Just hand it over, lady, winter’s coming and I gotta stock up.

I opened the door.

It couldn’t take its eyes off–but no wait Feederfiller is coming OUT! RUN!

That water can run faster than I can. Okay, wait, I have to prime the thing, open the door, raise, aim, oh wait hang on, step further away from the feeder so I don’t get the seed damp, okay, now try!

Those gray squirrels, over the last few days, have stopped doing a flat-out run and have started doing the anti-hawk zig zag dance trying to get away from it better. They can plot the spray’s trajectory better than I can theirs. I’ve barely gotten a drop of water on any of them and only from a goodly distance.

But still.  Turns out they like being squirted about as much as cats do. And they don’t come slinking right on back, either, like they would if I’d only scared them–not if I’m anywhere in view they don’t.

The black squirrels have already caught on pretty much that I’m totally cool with them.

And now they get the place to themselves, unbossed and unbitten. The supersoaker is resting pointing at the porch. They’ve all learned.

(Psst–that thing’s obsolete by ten years. Did you see that Wikipedia link? How to powerboost your soaker? Go for it, kids!)

A Sunday School lesson, and the discussion started turning around the short command in the Bible to “Stand in high places.”

“What does that phrase mean to you?” the teacher asked.

I’ve been finding myself going back to that question all day since.

Having gone to college at BYU in the Rocky Mountains, and having just read Greg Mortenson’s book, I find myself drawn to the image of high peaks.

I used to get away from my classes and studying and find release by walking briskly across the bench of the mountain directly facing campus.  Often. To give you an idea: Robert Redford owned a ski resort, Sundance, on the other side of the next peak over. These were not low-lying hills.

A few times, I climbed trails way up into areas where it was probably really stupid to be at certain times of the year, and where I found out later were off limits due to potential avalanches, but as someone from Maryland to whom it was all a novelty, what did I know? I stood under a dripping outcropping and pointed my camera upwards, getting a shot of water falling above and behind me in such a way that my roommates puzzled at its trajectory and which way was supposed to be up in the picture. They couldn’t tell which end the water was coming from.

I went higher.  You can see a lot more of what’s ahead when you take the time to make the effort to do something that doesn’t come easily.

I sat on a boulder, dangling my feet.  (Not a high one.  There are limits to this courage thing as far as heights and I are concerned.)  I remember being surprised that long, narrow Utah Lake looked so blue and so close from up there.  Distances shrank.  The mountains that rose from the far side of the lake, across the valley, you could actually see them, and then peak after peak fading from blue to light gray and off into the distance. All these things that, back down on the valley floor, I knew would disappear from view into the curve of the earth or the buildings of the campus and town.

So far away. So clear as day.

I tell you. God rocks.

And while I’m talking about education…

The story stuck with me and I went searching to finally share it here. The description of the new school building is here. It will provide the bridge between medical-school book-learning and actually putting that knowledge to practice on patients without freaking out in an emergency when one realizes that an actual life is depending on what you do now.

The San Jose Merc recently told the story of the man who built the place. He’d been deprived of an education growing up in China and had sorely missed it; his son was accepted  into Stanford, and the father walked around the place with his incoming freshman 28 years ago, awed by it all.

But the real reason Li Ka Shing built that new medical school building halfway across the world from his home?

On that trip with his son, he saw a beautiful blue bird. I’m guessing it was a scrub jay, by its location and the fact that it stood its ground so long, but whatever, he stopped with his camera to take its picture.

He was trying to get just the best shot; he was totally in the moment, seeing something novel and beautiful and wanting to bring it home with him on film as part of his trip where his son was going to be able to attain what he himself had never had a chance to.

And then finally he looked up and saw not one, not several, but dozens of students on their bikes, presumably on their way to their classes, whom he was blocking.  (I can guess where on campus that bottleneck might have been.)  They had noticed what he was doing and were reverencing his experience: they had stopped, waiting, fingers to lips in silence to others approaching that he might be able to get a good shot and that they might not scare the bird away from him.

Love silently expressed for a stranger’s love of nature.  A generous impulse, repeated over and over on the part of a whole nameless crowd who, like his son, had come to this place to learn.  It left a lifetime impression. He wanted to give back.

And so those who dedicate their lives to making others well will now have the biggest medical simulation facility in the world to learn in before they go work with live patients. They will have a better education, others will be taught from what they will learn, and we are all the better off for it. Having been a patient at Stanford Hospital when the alarm was sounding for me, having dealt that day with a novice doctor, that means a tremendous amount to me.

I hope they have photos of blue birds all over inside the place.