I wrote yesterday that I was going to go fix those dropped stitches, but I kept putting it off.  I worked out two different ways of tackling the problem but kept doing neither. Finally, knowing I wanted it to be a one-day problem only, I sat down and made myself go for Door #2, Bob.

I put a point protector on one end of my long circular: there was absolutely no reason to risk having stitches fall off that end while repairing at this one.  There was an unexpected sense of relief at that that made the whole job immediately feel much more do-able.

Then I took a second circular needle and slipped the stitches onto it, moving them over one-by-one across the row till I got to the problem area.  Since the stitches remaining on the original needle were not so scrunched up now, and since I wasn’t risking losing any more with that point protector in place, I spread the work open so I could get a good look at the pattern repeat next over and rework the dropped area to match it.  The whole thing took me maybe five minutes; I was surprised.  Piece of cake.

Then I slipped the stitches back onto the original needle on that side, took the spare–it didn’t matter what size it was, as long as it wasn’t bigger than the original needle, I was only using it for holding, not knitting–and went to the other side of the row and repeated the process.  But over there, I had a live stitch that did not end at a yarnover, so it turns out I’d totally lucked out; it could have run clear to the beginning, and it was a fairly slippery yarn. I’d put a snip of yarn to mark and hold it, hadn’t tied it, and it had fallen out and the stitch was running free.

Darwin missed that shawl.

And now it is repaired, re-cast-off, blocking, and done, just needing that final end woven in.  When it is dry I will run it in going halfway across the bottom where it will be a length of yarn in storage for any future repairs, right there where it’ll be easy to find.

Hey, Mary–you want to go to Purlescence today? I hear you beat me that Monday to the new Casbah shipment by a few hours, and I happen to know you like this color.

…Fry, fry a hen.

This is a spoiler alert (because I am being just too impatient to wait any longer).  If you are the person this is for, if you already saw the new shop model at Purlescence, if you had a hand in that shop model’s creation but it was too small for you, go away and don’t read this for a day or two, okay?

Two days ago, I went to block this: I rinsed it gently in tepid water and went to lay it out in a circle.  Some yarns, some fibers, I run my wires through to get them to behave; some just need to dry patted into shape.  But either way, first you have to lay it out the way you want it to look.  The lace stitches magically fall into place when you add a little water–there’s this marvelous transformation from crumpled tin foil to actual, pretty lace.

And when I did, I found that having carried it around on errands during the cast-off row, having it on a 7mm needle while working it with a 10mm straight needle as I cast off, had been a big mistake. I had dropped a stitch and not noticed and it had run.

And then, at the other end of the cast-off row, I found another spot, although I rescued that one at an earlier stage in its bungee jumping.  Dropped stitches in the cast-off?  I have never done such a thing before. And to have done it twice?  What was I smoking?  (Oh. Right. The city’s compost pile.)

What bungee jumps down must bounce back up.  But that blew my plans for delivering the thing yesterday.  Crum.  At least I did get to see that working on an unfamiliar scale with a somewhat unfamiliar yarn, I’d guessed it right and the shawl and the neckline had come out the size and fit I wanted it to be for whom it’s going to.

I had another shawl that had been plodding slowly along in the background while other projects with bigger deadlines had come and gone, and in a huff at the blue one, finished that off yesterday instead.

Today I go bounce back up on the bungee cord here.  Part of me is urging myself to rip out multiple rows and not fuss with fixing, just go way back and then peacefully reknit it; I like this yarn, I like looking forward to making (you know now who you are) happy, and rescue work is a bear.

I’m going to do the rescue work.  It’s good practice.

So I spent yesterday waiting impatiently for it to dry, and then tinked the cast-off before it was probably entirely ready for it, got it back on the needles and now, finally, not only is it ready, but I am too.

“I smell fire.”

“I do too.”

Yes, there’s been this generalized omnipresent smoke all over California for a month now, but this was a far different intensity, and it hadn’t been there at all a few hours earlier when I’d been outside. I got up and investigated. Not in this room so much, strong in that, strong in that…I opened the back door and sniffed. Fire! I shut it quick. I opened the front door: fire! But I wanted to know how close. I stepped to the sidewalk and looked around: the strongest browns in the air seemed definitely to be towards the east, and they were not a sunset. Between us and the Bay, most likely, probably not way across the Bay, it was just too intense for that. But wow, look at that stream of smoke. It was comforting, at the same time; it wasn’t the neighbors’ houses or anything immediately discernible. It was hard to breathe, though, and I hurried back inside, wondering what on earth we would grab and go should it come to that, even if I didn’t think it would, and how on earth the holdouts around Carmel and Big Sur had done it, had hung in there with theirs so close by for so long.

Twice, we heard helicopters overhead. I googled. Must not have used quite the right search terms. Nada.

Our city, about ten years ago, set up a reverse-911 call system to notify all residents in the event of an emergency; it’s slower than I’d like, but it gets there. The hubby, being on both the Red Cross and the city’s emergency communications volunteer teams with his ham radio license, got called well before the household phone did. But the recorded calls did come.

It’s between us and the Bay (called that one right!) although, to the north by a few miles and across a major freeway, a natural firebreak. It’s the city’s mega-compost pile, with no structures threatened except the ones in our lungs.

I’ve been sitting here the last two hours thinking that sometimes life hands you, if you’re one of the lucky ones, just a taste of what others have to go through so you’ll have some idea of what it’s like when they need you to listen, some day in the future.

I ran a quick errand yesterday and then turned my car over to my daughter–and after she’d left, I realized I’d left my knitting bag in there.  I’d been going to block that project last night, she didn’t get home till late… ! But it’s just as well.  If the recipient saw it here, it would instantly tip her off. She knows that yarn, and she knows me.  Later.

I got a message this morning: the hubby was stopping by in, oh, about 45 minutes, with some friends from work.  Just so I knew.

It is amazing how fast the knitting can get ditched and the cleaning get done when need be.

And so I shall tell you of this dishcloth, (now that they’ve come and gone), well faded in its old age.  Just don’t look too closely at the back of it right now.

Back when my kids were in elementary school, I had a friend empty her closet of all her yarns and give them to me–seven bags’ worth, including large garbage-sized bags.  She told me good wool yarn was cheap in her native Germany, that she’d bought a lot over the years during various trips home, but she’d decided she was just never going to actually use it.  (The ironic thing now is that she recently got back into knitting, now that she has grandchildren to make cute things for.)

I in turn knew a young single mom of very little means who loved to knit, and asked the friend giving me the yarn if this would be okay with her; she was thrilled with the idea.  So.  Having once lived in grad-student-wife poverty, knowing what it was like to only be able to wish to make nice things, I in turn gave a lot of that yarn to this young mom: knowing I could replace what I liked and that here was a one-time opportunity to let her have some really nice materials to work with without feeling like a charity case from me.  Good yarns, with pride kept intact.  Perfect.

But I did keep a few nubbly-textured cotton skeins, and this was at a time I was doing a lot of Kaffe Fassett-style multicolor work.  So. I started into a cotton sweater.  I wanted to wear it to visibly show my friend I was grateful for her generosity.  Because I certainly was.

The further along I got, the more I dragged.  Too wide.  Didn’t want to frog it.  Not quite my colors.  Nubbly, I realized, was just not my style anyway.  Finally, I was reading the Knitlist one day, and someone there said something about knitting dishcloths. My first reaction was, why on earth would anyone put in the effort to knit something to get all grubby and gross in the kitchen?

My second was a sense of relief at the thought, that, I don’t have to knit that sweater anymore!  I can totally justify and make good use of the work I’ve already put into it!  Hey!

I intended to frog it down to the beginning of the armscye, but in a fit of why-should-I-be-patient-with-this-anymore, simply cast off right where it was.  And ever since then, I have had this, um, unique dishcloth. It really was a nice bit of intarsia work once.  You can’t really tell anymore.

Someone mentioned that bamboo yarns have anti-microbial properties, so I guess they would work well as dishcloths.  I can see that. I just haven’t been able to make myself try it yet.  Knitting one, so far, has been enough.  It works for me.

And you should see my kitchen right now.  The hubby’s co-workers did.

I stepped outside just now to snap some shots of the glads that have started to bloom, and the honeysuckle plant next to them caught my eye: a honeybee was buzzing in and out.  It’s a little overgrown, but if the plant is helping the honeybee population, I’m all for it.

I grew up on a street called Honeybee Lane, where honeysuckles grew wild and abundantly at the edges of the woods; we kids used to pull the stamens slowly to the base of the tiny flowers to taste that little bit of nectar in them.

The hummingbirds like the glads, and I can see them from our kitchen, their green flashing in and out amongst the bright pink.

More on the knitting later; I’m trying to keep it a surprise.  But the latest project, which I expect to finish this afternoon, is canna lilies translated into lace.  Although, looking at my glads, I realize it’s not too far off from being individual glad blossoms among their siblings on the stalk.

Amanda (scroll down to see) let me buy one of her very first colorways she dyed up for her then-new Etsy shop.   It’s brighter than this in real life, a very cheerful shade; the flash mutes it here.  The shawl pin holding it on the wheel for me is handblown glass, a gift from my old friend Sheila Ernst from when I saw her at Stitches.

And then that yarn sat there in my stash, patiently waiting its rightful turn, with a false start I finally frogged.  Till Amanda wrote a post about how her business was doing that sparked my pulling that gorgeous green out of the stash and casting on to see how far I could stretch my one little skein to go.  Normally, I would have used needles a size or so smaller, and I would have cast on more stitches, but I needed all the length I could get.

It was good to see it back where it belonged.  Her picture (note the beautiful brunette) is way more fun than mine.

Specifications: size 10 needles, the faster-version Julia from Wrapped in Comfort through the yoke and increase rows, then the Michelle shawl through the main body.

First, thank you to all who have written about Ruth. My hope is that her husband aka The Roketman will follow the link back here and read your words and mine and find comfort in them.  I am told there was a spinners’ guild meeting yesterday with him present, with tears and funny stories told on his wife.

What I wanted to mention for this morning.  Yesterday, my husband and I went off to Costco a little before they closed, and ended up in a slow line well away from the busy central aisle.

Very shortly a young couple with two little girls pulled their cart up behind us: three and a half year old twins, identical as far as I could tell, and absolutely adorable.

The mom looked really frazzled, the dad less so, but clearly it had been a long day; it showed in all of them.  As the wife went off to grab one last thing somewhere, my husband looked at the dad, smiled, and said, “I remember the days.”

When your children are little, there’s nothing in the world so comforting as a middle-aged stranger who thinks they’re adorable rather than a pain for being fussy.  And when you’re a parent, that is one of the perks of getting to that age. One twin grabbed her sister’s head and pulled it into her lap and rocked  back and forth a moment.  The other enjoyed the closeness at first, laughing, then decided to assert her individuality and pushed away hard. Normal sibling stuff.  She got her daddy to let her out of the cart, and then promptly laid down on the floor, swishing her arms and legs full circle.

“Wrong climate for snow angels,” I laughed, and the dad’s face lit up and he laughed.  He mentioned a trip to Tahoe they were looking forward to.  The other twin experimented for a few moments with the fact that she now got to take over the leg holes in the upper cart for both sides–it was designed to seat two–and then, when it wasn’t fun to take over her sister’s territory if her sister didn’t notice nor care, asked to be let out too.  Whereupon she flopped down on the floor a moment herself, looking the very picture of exhaustion, then leaped up and ran around her twin like a sheepdog herding her.  Never letting herself get too far away from her sister.  Stay close where it feels safe from the big world.

“I wish I had that much energy when I’m tired.”  Again, the dad laughed in response.

Next time Costco exhausts me, I will picture myself on the floor making snow angels.  Maybe one of their 25-lb bags of powdered sugar would help.

I hadn’t checked out her blog in a couple of months.  I wish I had.  Looking today, I find she had a fiberarts blogroll of only a dozen blogs–and one was mine.  That means a lot to me.

Her youngest was the same age as my third child.

Five years ago this week and last, I was in the hospital in critical condition, and Ruth Schooley, one of the listmoms of the Knitlist, was checking up on me. I had a Hiptop, the first of the cellphones to hit the market that did email (etc, etc). It was my link to the outside world, once I had the strength again to type into it.  Lying down at first, unable to handle its weight, then, as I got better, eventually I was able to sit up to type back to her and to a few others who weren’t afraid to hear about life at its far edges.  I could read my Knitlist messages and still feel a sense of belonging to my previous normal life outside Stanford Hospital, and Ruth forwarded a few from me to the list so that my phone’s addy wouldn’t be exposed to the whole world.  Much comfort came my way from that.

She was always the voice of calmness in any storm.  She was always one to come immediately help out.  At her most piqued, she would wave her dpns in the air and remind us that she had pointy sticks and she knew how to use them.  The laughter always helped.

Ruth posted on her blog on July 14.  Monday.

Tuesday she was suddenly gone.

I do not know the details. I do know she touched many, many knitters who take part in the online community, and she will be sorely missed.  To the Rocketman and to the children, I, along with many others, grieve with you; you are not alone.  Ruth saw to that.

Look! Up in the sky! It’s Battman! And Bobbin, the toy winder!

(Some spontaneous wheel decorating took place about ten years ago when a kid tried to balance a cup of grape juice on the sidebars of the wheel.  This didn’t work out quite as well as was apparently hoped, and has made for endless teasing ever since.  Does the purple racing stripe bother me? Nah, get a grape on it.  No wine-ing allowed.)

My daughter in Vermont wanted to see pictures of the plum tree she’d instigated, and the emailed picture didn’t go through, so I’m putting up shots here of the day it was planted and what it looks like today, two months later.  Sprouting like a teenager–it’s already taller than me.

My children gave me a new summer tradition, and they didn’t even know it.  About 8pm each Wednesday, I figure it’s late enough in the day that the UV levels are probably not a problem.  And I go out in the back yard–such a simple grace to be granted to one’s soul–and I water my trees.

The most amazing thing happened when I did last night: it was quiet as I walked out the door.  No counting to see how long it would take before I got squawked at (two steps, on average), no bluejays flitting noisily just above my head.  I’d seen two out there earlier in the day, but territory-wise, the back yard was all mine now.  Double-check those hearing aid batteries…but no. All was quiet on the western front. The little ones must have fledged.

And I feel like the proud momma as if I’d raised them myself.

Nice idea.  Spent a lot of time on it today.  Good thing I swatched before I launched into it on a grand scale.  Watch me frog.  Watch me hit the delete button. ‘Bye.

Nice idea #2.  Spent a lot of time on it this evening.  Realized it won’t work well with the idiosyncracies not to mention the quantities of the yarn I’m wanting to use.  Nope. Try again.

Nice idea #3. Hey. I like this one!  Careful consideration of yarn qualities and quantities taken into account. I think I got it this time.  Nope, haven’t swatched–I ran out of day.

There’s a reason redwoods are so tall: they live along the ridgeline of the California coast, between a near-desert climate and the ocean and where heavy fogs roll in at night.  They are designed to pierce the fog with their height, causing water droplets to condense and run down their trunks and water them–which is also why they have very shallow roots. They typically reproduce by having new ones shoot up from the roots, with the new ones joining in to help form a wide underground lattice of roots that supports the whole community of redwoods together.

Which is also why my treedling might actually make it.  There was no depth to the bit of earth it was clinging to when I pulled it out, probably no broken roots.

All that said, I gotta say, “bonsai redwood” to describe it is one of the funniest ideas I have heard in awhile.  Totally nonpsychodegradeable.  Thank you, Carol!

(Oh. Right. The shawl.  Tailor of Gloucestor alert!  Heh.)

Specs: One skein Casbah from Mary’s stash, size 11 (7mm) needles, Faster-version Julia shawl through the yoke, then I switched to the Michelle pattern for the body, it being a 6+1 lace pattern as well, both of them in “Wrapped in Comfort.”  This did not make a very big shawl, the Casbah being a thinner yarn than the original mohair, but it’s good for a small person.  Lying flat, it’s 19″ long.  It’ll stretch out a bit held up when it’s dry.

I guess it’s the squirrels on this one?  A few days ago, I found a redwood seedling popped up among the azaleas.  Which is all well and good, but, give it a few years and in the coming argument between the eaves of the house and the redwood, the house loses.  So I pulled it out.

And roots came with it.  I looked at it a moment and thought, well hey.  To paraphrase the old saying, Give trees a chance.  I imagine I damaged it too much for it to recover, but I plunked it in an empty pot outside the kitchen for the time being with some water, where I can wonder how I’ll get it out the next time if need be.  You never know.  Some things recover that you’d never expect.

Kay just called from Purlescence: the long-awaited Casbah shipment finally came in!  So that means I can knit Mary’s skein up, they can put it on display, probably when I come to next Thursday’s knit night if not sooner, and that shawl will be a sample of skeins they actually have in stock.  Everybody wins.  Again.

I love knit night at Purlescence.  I was going through serious knitters deprivation while we were on vacation and then they were too for awhile there.

So here’s the scene: I asked if I could have the shawl back that they had in the window, the Julia pattern from “Wrapped in Comfort,” a little one made out of one skein of Handmaiden Casbah on big needles to stretch the yardage as far as it could go.  It’s softer than the blue Bare one I’d been working on, and softness was something the circumstances really needed.

Kay not only gave it back to me, it had been held on the model with a shawl pin made by a local artist, which she put in my hands and asked that I send it with the shawl to the woman whose husband Marc is so very ill.

Wow.

I regretted not having the Casbah to knit the shop another one; they have it on backorder, and it hadn’t come in.

At which point a woman across the room, Mary, who’d been quietly spinning away at her wheel, and who I hadn’t even known had heard any of that, reached into her knitting bag, stood up and walked over to me, and asked how many skeins it had taken to knit that shawl that was now in my hands.  One?  Good, then!  And she held out a skein, a beautiful blue, Casbah no less, and urged me to take it.

It took me a moment to sink in.  Wow.  I could knit it up and gift it in turn to the dear friends who own that shop.  And that’s what Mary was hoping I would do.  She was giving me her Casbah and blessing all of us in the face of the loss that this other woman that none of them had ever met was dealing with.  We were all in this life thing together.

I was fighting tears.  Wow.

Cast on.