It was to be on the anniversary of when Churchill spoke before Congress to tell them WWII really was our war, too.

Yesterday I was horrified: they leaked that he’s coming? They compromised his security like that? Why did we need to know this? Why didn’t he just visit by video again?

And yet: the actual presence of Zelenskyy with Biden. The clear admiration in each other’s faces.

Zelenskyy, again, did the right thing for his country and for his people whatever the personal risk to himself. I pray for his safety.

And then when he spoke to Congress! What a speech. What a riveting effect–on most, anyway, with reporters calling out the very few members of Congress who didn’t show or who did but refused to stand or clap, invoking for me the famous line from Watergate, Follow the money. Given that it has been documented that Putin funded the NRA who funded his favorite Republicans–he got his infiltrator Buttina back in a prisoner swap after she was convicted here of that illegal funneling.

But I took heart in the many, whatever their politics, who rose together as one to applaud long and hard the man and his cause of freedom from tyranny and death, who represented well all of us Americans who admire the greatness of what Zelenskyy has risen to become.

Here’s the video of his speech, which was given in English. Fast forward to about the 20 minute mark for his entrance.

I was waiting for the transcript so I could fill in the gaps that the captions didn’t always help with.

Here’s the transcript, behind a NYT paywall for now but I expect it will pop up in more places by morning. But the words alone cannot convey the depth of passion of the man in the righteousness of his cause and in the defense of his people.

Meantime, I wore my quite large bright yellow sunflower necklace from Oleksandra this afternoon while running an errand, wanting to mark the day that everything, I pray, will have begun to change for the better.

For every hero of Ukraine.

Happy Birthsday to my mom and grandson!

Meantime, there was a potluck at church for the women’s organization and I got to meet the mom and her two daughters of the family for whom we tied those quilts last Friday.

Sometimes you both need to talk about it and you need to have a chance to get away from it and as Ruth joined me and them at the table, we tried to offer both as the conversation flowed.

Have you seen the Stanford Museum?

Didn’t know there was one!

It’s got Egyptian artifacts collected by the young Leland Stanford Jr before he died–looting archaeological digs for the rich was in style in the late 1800s. It’s got a Rodin sculpture garden: you know The Thinker? (and I mimicked the stern face and hand on chin.) It’s there. And you can walk there (from where they were staying.)

Do you need anything, I asked at the last, thinking, because I would do anything. The mom crochets so I’d already, I hope, made clear that my yarn stash was wide open for them.

She looked at her daughters and how do you answer such an open-ended question, which I knew it was.

So then I said to these good folks who’d driven a long hard day’s drive to where they knew no one for medical care for her son, What you need though is a local number. Someone you can call. Here’s mine.

An old and dear friend was admiring my dandelion gerdan in church yesterday, exclaiming over the design and how well the beadwork was done, explaining to me that it takes years to get up to that level of skill in the weaving where the piece lies perfectly flat and even. (I’ve seen a few beginner-ish looking pieces and I don’t doubt it.)

She was wistful a moment but caught herself and tried not to let it show. (While I thought, I know… It’s so expensive to live here…)

She is one of the most empathetic people I know and I knew how much it would mean to her to be able to reach out visually in solidarity with our Ukrainian ex-pat community. I know how much it’s meant to me. I could just picture the random happy moments to come, that I’ve had, that she could have.

UCSF has me in a long-term lupus outcomes study and every year they give me a small VISA gift card for my time, and so often I forget about them and never even use them.

So I had an excuse: I would now, finally, and see, it almost wouldn’t even cost me anything and it would keep me from wasting it.

Oleksandra was thrilled when I came back today, and even more when I told her why I had just bought more of her artwork–the woman who made my really big sunflower that lies perfectly flat with the edges and every bead lined up just so, whose work goes well with my friend’s admiring eye. That it was for passing the blessings forward.

So now there will be another sunflower in the wild, smaller and more her style I think; above it, daisies, red poppies and blue cornflowers. At the top to either side is a stalk of golden wheat sparkling against the black background.

For Marnie. The woman who brought her daughters and a comfortable swivel chair to my house and washed my hair over the sink after my discharge from the hospital years ago with a PCC line still in, utterly unable to manage the energy of the thing and absolutely forbidden to get water near my heart where the line went into but desperate to finally have a clean head at long last.

Martha of Biblical fame washed Jesus’s feet with her hair. Marnie washed mine. Carefully.

Her gerdan is being created starting today. (Click on the “7 sales” if you’re curious, though the thumbnail doesn’t really do the beadwork justice. There are sparkles in just the right places.) It’s coming, and I can’t wait.

Don’t tell her.

(Edited in the morning to add, the 6.4 quake in Humboldt County was way north of us and I woke up to an alert on my phone but didn’t feel it. We’re fine down here as we wait to hear updates re those affected.)

Come to the ice skating rink on Friday, they said. A ward party. The place is rented out to us for two hours. Pizza and hot cocoa will be served and eight quilts will be tied for the incoming family.

Ice skates and nighttime outdoor quilt tying? Yeah, I did a double take, too.

Turns out there’s a family coming the week between Christmas and New Year’s from I have no idea where whose 13 year old son is being given a last-chance try at Stanford at stopping his brain cancer after five years of treatments. He is one of the younger children in a family of eight.

This was a good time to find someone who would be away visiting loved ones; a home was volunteered for them so they could all stay together at this time.

They would be long-distance driving in, one assumes with not a lot of room with that many people and space for surely only their most essential luggage.

It’s been below freezing at night this past week.

And so it was quickly resolved that we would make every one of them a quilt. Given how short a notice the whole thing was, those turned out to be two layers of soft fleece with snips made all around the edges and then those pairs of snips tied together, upper to lower: simple, warm, and easy for a bunch of people to work on together and finish quickly, no sewing, not even setting up a frame, just laid out on the picnic tables together–and go!

I admit my first thought was, man, it’s cold out here.

Of course there were no outdoor heaters: they have to keep the ice cold. The check-in booth is inside but there’s no roof to the rink itself.

I hadn’t been in that facility since before my ’00 car accident. Skating on ice with no sense of balance just doesn’t sound like a great idea, y’know?

But what intrigued me (as I played spectator) was the accommodations: now, they had polar bear chairs, designed for little ones to ride on while being scooted on the ice pushed from behind, with those chairs being strong enough that the teenagers got in on it too and the ice patrol was totally cool with it while they occasionally swooped in to scoop up a toddler, mindful of every person on that rink. What a great idea!

There was a kid in a wheelchair, and the older kids playing with the bear chairs completely normalized his sitting down as they twirled around him sliding on the ice, legs akimbo. He could look down to them, rather than his peers always looking down to him. So cool.

I have Reynaud’s and my hands get white and stiff in the cold. But I wasn’t skating, so after I ate my pizza and cleaned up the hot cocoa I spilled down my skirt (brrr) and off the concrete so others wouldn’t slip on it I got called over to hey, come help us with this!

I was amazed at how fast others were going at it and my cold fingers fumbled as I thought, I am not good at this.

But you know what? Once I actually got going, things did limber up and when someone new joined us, I was now the one at that quilt going at a good clip, and man it felt good to be doing this for that family.

I said to the person who organized it, They’re surely not going to have the room in the car to take all these home afterwards. We should offer to mail them home for them when they go.

That’s a great idea! You’re right!

So. Now, we wait. They are coming.

And they and their son and brother are loved already, whoever they are.

Chocolate and pastries at Dandelion in San Francisco for the birthday celebration, by special request. I wanted that more than going out to dinner.

I thought I’d mentioned it here but I’m not finding it: in October I found a pattern for a dandelion gerdan being sold by its Ukrainian creator, but the only place selling a finished one anything like it was someone in India with scathing reviews warning would-be buyers away from having anything to do with the guy.

I only wanted to do it to support Ukraine anyway–that was the whole point.

Well, so maybe I should consider the idea. After all, I figure digital sales are safer than going to the post office there.

So I priced out beading looms and read up on various models and why and that led me to start wondering about the beads I already had and how good I might be at using them in a way I hadn’t previously considered, which got me to later ask the blog about what all those numbers mean, and thank you for the help.

But reality: moderate cataracts and corneal dystrophy. An inability to feel much in my fingertips. Chasing the really tiny beads around with a tiny needle? Thirty years ago, but not now.

So I asked the artist if she knew of any of her fellow countrymen making her pattern for sale. I said a little about Bloom County, how a dandelion field was its solace and spot of heaven, and how I think one of the best chocolate makers out there likely took its name from that comic strip.

It’s the Pogo of our generation, but I didn’t go into that much detail.

She considered a moment and told me, Yes–yes I think I can do that for you, sure, I’d be glad to.

Saying it that way completely endeared her to me: every knitter out there knows what a great compliment it is to the person we allow to jump our queue, and how they often never even know they did, much less how much it means.

She warned me it would take her over a week to make and I responded, I am in no hurry–I’m just thrilled that you’re willing to do this for me, thank you. Whenever works best for you in your schedule, you come first.

I signed for the package less than a month later, and in terms of mail from Ukraine in the middle of the war, that is lightning fast. I certainly can’t say she’d manage that the next time but she did on that one for me.

And that is how I came to own a dandelion gerdan to wear to Dandelion Chocolate today, where one of the staff exclaimed over it.

And where, as it turned out, we ran into a former co-worker of Richard’s whom he introduced me to. Sam, if you’re reading this, I apologize that I couldn’t hear a word in the noise. I tried hard. Richard explained to me afterwards that your in-laws card and weave wool and you’ve read my blog from time to time and what I wouldn’t have given to know that while you were right there to talk to! So cool! But at least I got to meet you, and you really tried, and thank you for that.

The texture: I would say it’s like a dried fig without all the little seeds. (It did have one small shrunken persimmon seed.) The flavor: it’s a Hachiya alright but with more depth and character, there’s some there there.

It’s good. I like it. A fresh Hachiya is so big but is such a barely-held-in bag of loose jelly that you feel like you didn’t really eat much at all afterwards; this is so solid that it feels like half a lunch to itself, even when you know it’s the density of it; it’s still just one single persimmon.

I found myself going in the kitchen and cutting off another thin slice again and again all day (say the word persimmon to my husband and I get to have the whole thing to myself) and I still have this little bit left of the first one.

So I had to photograph the next one for you. Has a certain Mesa Verde look to it, doesn’t it? (Third picture down.)

After an abrupt closure at the height of the Christmas rush due to covid exposure, yay for negative tests and today Andy’s Orchard announced they were open again, stocked with your favorites and a discount for coming in.

I’d been waiting all year for the stuffed figs (not on his website yet) to make their seasonal comeback. And to replenish my dried apricots, the Blenheim slabs, (also here in a gift box) ie the ones that were dried at the point of greatest ripeness such that they smeared when cut open. So good. Adding ten minutes to my daily exercise and snacking on those these past two winters satisfied both the sweet tooth and the need to drop the pandemic pounds–and I did. Lost the prediabetes, too. Apricots for the win.

There was one other thing. I’d seen them there before but it wasn’t till I read about them in the New York Times that I saw why I should try those weird-looking shrunken-monkey-brain things, and Andy’s is the only place I’ve ever seen that has them.

Lily Chin (famous longtime designer in the knitting world) expressed her extreme delight at discovering some in New York City. Alright then, I had to at least try them, given that we live where they actually grow and I could support the farmer directly. This was the first year I hadn’t yet had so much as a ripe persimmon and that season’s about over, and it was easy to entice me with the idea of a variant that would keep, as well as buying some fresh ones by going down there.

(My neighbors who always traded me persimmons for pomegranates moved away this fall and their tree sits there unpicked and untouched.)

So. I could not for the life of me think of the word. The clerk was checking me out when I remembered with, Oh! Do you have… uh… The Hachiyas, y’know, dried and shriveled Japanese style and, um, hanging on a string (pantomiming holding the string delicately with thumb and forefinger while flicking at it from below with the other hand as if to make it swing back and forth in the air or as if I’m the rude kid in elementary school sitting behind you trying to grab your attention when the teacher’s not looking. What was the name of the boy behind me who liked to do that.)

I got some!

Slice them and serve them with cheese like salami, the Times says.

Fruit. Salami??

I haven’t tasted them yet; there’s this whole wait-till-Christmas mentality. It’s two days too late to use my birthday as an excuse to dive in early.

If I adore them like crazy, given the price tag (well deserved; they have to be massaged daily while drying. I am officially jealous of a persimmon), I will just remind myself, I have my apricots. I have my Andy’s extra ripe slab dried Blenheim apricots.

And that is no small thing.

(Frost on apricot.)

We were FaceTiming with the grandkids in San Diego who called for my birthday yesterday and the 7, 9, and 11 year olds (two of those numbers change next week) along with their 4 year old baby brother nodding solemnly were telling us that it had rained for two days and they’d had to stay inside to play. They need the rain, we all do, but…

I told them it had rained here, too, and had left a puddle.

And that the puddle froze. It was solid ice this morning!

ICE! I had their full attention. No such thing had ever happened at their house. (It helped that it had been a very shallow puddle.)

I said, Yeah, and when I went to change my clothes, you know there’s just this little flap of metal between the dryer hose and the outside. The underwear was in the dryer.

I topped off my tale with, I put on frozen underwear!

(Just in case you ever want to know how to make southern Californian kids go wide-eyed and then fall over laughing so long and so hard and so shivery as they imagined just what that would feel like. I think I just stamped a dominant Gramma memory for life on their childhoods. Ice cube undies, yessir. I am so going to hear about this at their weddings.)

Without in the least bit planning on it I’ve found myself humming that tune all day.

I didn’t wait for Mom’s birthday.

I am what Paul McCartney thought was old when he was young years old today.

Oh. Wait. I spent my usual writing time not blogging but composing a thank you letter to Sola for making my mother so happy. (Typing fast.)

Mom got her package today (don’t look at the price tag Mom); her birthday is next week but I had told her don’t wait, go enjoy.

Once she saw it…!

She made herself stop and try on her new hand-embroidered vyshyvanka before calling me so she could say it fit–she knew it would and it did–and then realized that that intricate work was not even sweeps of blanket stitch but tiny X’s of cross stitch. Done by hand in Ukraine, all of it.

She ran to her friend’s apartment to show it to someone who would understand just how much work and how much love went into that and look at this!

Then she came back upstairs and picked up the phone and called me and was so happy I was almost in tears. This. This is why I did this. This is why Sola did this and what she was so looking forward to, too.

I didn’t get to go with Mom to her Christmas party tonight a plane flight away from me where she showed it off, but my heart sure did.

In tonight’s segment of, “don’t believe the captions”: one knitting friend in the Zoom meeting was mentioning how her son loved to put peanut butter and a few chocolate chips on his mushroom before putting it in the microwave.

People were going back and forth and chuckling and I finally found that one moment where it was safe to interject and went, because I just had to know, Chocolate chips and–mushrooms? So tasty. What am I missing here.

MARSHmallows! They howled.

Usually I guess such things in time but then how would I amuse my friends?

We don’t have Netflix, don’t even have a TV (my desktop just guffawed) but I found myself Googling questions about subscriptions when you just want to watch one episode of one show.

David Letterman, interviewing his absolute hero President Zelensky in Ukraine below ground with air-raid sirens and trains overhead and being just in awe of the man in front of him, who is not only a great leader in wartime but such a truly decent human being.

The trailer is here. Definitely worth a viewing in its own right.

Edited to add, here is the Washington Post interview with Letterman about his interview with Zelensky that got my attention in the first place.

Go to Andy’s first and replenish my apricot supply or go to the post office? I had plenty of time to do both if I hurried. I’ve never tried his Japanese-style preserved Hachiya persimmons but after the New York Times’ write up, I need to and Andy’s is the only place I know to get them.

Wait.

Priorities. Get the Christmas presents mailed so you know it’s done. The shipping process isn’t going to speed up the closer we get.

Last year I did my homework and it was cheaper to use the post office. So I got my mom’s and my daughter’s off there and then headed over to the UPS store to buy a box of the right size for the other grands.

Turns out the size they had was close to my 27x22x14″ one and they cost the same to ship.

But the price! Twenty-six less than the post office! I ran home, packed it up at long last, ran back and got it done, with thanks to the random stranger who saw me struggling to wrestle it out of my car with the cane in my way and carried it in for me. So grateful. It was a bear.

Rush hour kicks in ~2:30 around here and it just felt like, no, don’t go, it can wait. The drive to Morgan Hill? Let’s try Monday.

What I didn’t know and was not expecting was an email from Andy’s: they’d had a covid exposure. The book signing and holiday get-together are canceled and they are closed till further notice.

They’ve been so careful for so long. Andy, like most farmers, is not young. I’m going to be holding him and his close in my prayers.

It’s that time of year again: the one where you recycle what you know is a perfectly good box (plus about five more) and you know you’re going to want it in two or three weeks but you think you have plenty of time to find another one and not have this cluttering up your house, and besides, you don’t even know what you’re going to need then because the things you’re going to be packing haven’t even come yet, much less gotten wrapped.

And then two or three weeks later you sit there with everything looking all pretty for their trees and ready to go, your tape measure in hand and your screen open to USPS Send–Pricing.

Your largest box, which came Santa-ing six grandkids in two different states, is a lot bigger than you need.

The next largest is a half inch too small and you only just managed not to shred the wrapping paper trying.

But, but, you just had that other one…

Because they want $83-something for that monster one. Doesn’t matter what it weighs (to a point irrelevant to the question at hand), it’s oversize. And they’re happy to offer incentive to ship smaller.

I could ship way bigger for that much: at Southwest’s very best sale fares, I could fly me there and hand-deliver a free suitcase’s worth in person. Just not in December.

I need a 22.5×16.5×11.5H if it even exists, plus a little extra for the December birthday presents (but they can go separately.)

I knew, I knew I was going to need that earlier box, but did I listen to me? Did I open the bin outside to see if it was even retrievable after being stomped on, like it kept pleading for me to do?

It is I-told-you-so-ing faintly from whatever it’s being reincarnated into. Likely more boxes.

A few years ago a friend was telling me that knitting with beads is easy, and showed me how before she moved away.

But so many details I didn’t know to ask about. What is an 8/0 vs an 11/0 and does it matter and is the bigger number the smaller bead or the opposite, and where did those numbers come from anyway and why are they fractions. And if you’re just stringing them, what kind of thread should you use?

Questions I learned when an online yarn store was selling out their beads and I thought, hey, those must work with yarn because it’s a yarn store selling them, right? And I bought a bunch of pretty colors. Plus some sparkly white to be, y’know, practical and all that.

And there they have sat.

I found a simple beaded scarf pattern from someone who appeared to be American and it seemed like you wouldn’t need to buy a beading loom for it, so that was good–till I read a scathing review saying the pattern had been lifted from someone else’s video.

Now whether she’s right about that or not I don’t know; it seems to me that that simple a mesh would be like designing feather and fan–it’s easy, it’s been passed on forever, I’ve known people who claim they don’t know how to do lace, just feather and fan. Which..is…a lace pattern, but never mind.

So maybe it’s like that.

But whatever, I followed her link because a video is always going to show you more anyway. (I’d skip the first four minutes or so.)

I’m guessing it’s in Russian. It might be Ukrainian but I think that’s hoping for too much. There are English captions as best as the machine could do.

I still don’t know how to pick the right synthetic thread and size needle to make such a thing, and I’m willing to buy a pattern, hopefully from a Ukrainian.

After the holidays are over I just might try after all out of curiosity.

But even so I’ll be buying from Ukrainians. They need the help and the work and I love what they create. (Yeah, I do–I need to knit that. Gorgeous.)