Okay, it looked like we were back up, I tried to post, and everything went poof. As Richard put it, The blog was well and truly hacked.

Let’s see if I can retrieve it… There it is! And yay again for the resident geek! But my preview is gone and it’s late at this point and you’ll just have to take it with no editing work.

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And the blog is back up! Yay for the resident geek!

After ten long months of hanging things to dry in the kids’ old bathroom overnight, with family coming soon that just wasn’t going to work anymore. Did Speed Queen owe me a working dryer under the warranty? Yes they did. Would they do it? No they refused. Did the seller go to bat for me with them? No. Speed Queen would only repair the old one, telling me they never replace, and the repairman said that that was a risk he wasn’t willing to take because the board sparking meant it was too much of a fire hazard. Nearly burning the house down once was enough.

He was clearly afraid I would sue them and he would be dragged into it and he was done with it. He wouldn’t come and they wouldn’t give. And so I got nowhere.

I fantasized about returning it to the seller’s doorstep but didn’t want to be charged with dumping.

I can now no longer prove to Speed Queen that their machine is as the guy told me: it is gone. The new one via Costco is a Frigidaire with good reviews and the delivery men were the best.

Two things I learned: companies seem to be cutting costs by getting rid of the interior light and by curving the top of the back dashboard inward at the sides so they can use less metal. Many reviews complained about clothes falling down behind in the gaps that created.

The Frigidaire is much closer to straight up and it has an interior light and it’s a classic front-entry like I wanted and by golly it works, it works and that’s all I ever wanted in a dryer. It cost about half what my Speed Queen did. Warm clothes that are softened in the process! No more burlap towels!

So: I opened the door to the delivery guy with the greeting, My hero! And explained it had been ten months without one. He laughed. 

There were two of them and they each got sent off with a box of peaches from Andy’s bought yesterday and napkins they were going to need for them. It was 4:30, they’d been working since 6 a.m., they were tired, but they both perked up at those peaches, more so than the tip.

The inaugural load has begun. At long, long last.

Ninety-nine skeins of yarn on the wall, ninety-nine skeins of yarnnn… Take one down, wind it around, ninety-eight skeins of yarn on the wall…

There you go, a picture came through.

This is the left half; the darker blue of the edges continues out into the ocean to the right, the lighter blue is the water near the shore.

The Rios from Other Alison in Australia (thank you thank you thank you!) joined the picture last night.

I have awhile yet to think about it: I debated making a whale tail to look like the one on some California license plates? (Yeah, I think of those as the portobello mushroom slice plates.) Or less straight-up-and-down. I think curved over is better.

Just to show off a little, here’s the dolphin I put in an earlier afghan with three shades of Rios in variegated grays, managing which went where to the point of breaking off sections in the strands a few times that were veering off in the wrong direction. There is no pattern; I basically knit-drew it.

Picked up the needles after a week of trying to get myself to after finishing the white blanket, found myself surprised at just how many long strands and full balls were attached to that thing, and dove back into my intarsia afghan anyway.

And with every single stitch found myself marveling: I had no idea I had missed it so much. What took me so long.

Oh Birkenstock. Do none of you knit? Do any of you who do knit have a dog or a cat?

Because seriously, the yarn barf shoe, with the strap playing ball band trying to hold it all together, is the funniest thing you’ve ever done.

A hey, how are you. A response of, It’s been too long. A, How about we…

And there we were in an impromptu dinner together after a your house or ours we don’t care we just want to see you guys. Fruit from Andy’s. Her yarn in bins over there so she could choose the colors for the next big project, just like mine are over here at the moment. She pulled out my book and said she was going to knit a shawl for a friend and I pointed out the simplest to do (the Julia) vs the more involved (like the one named after her.) I said doing a three-stitch idiot cord for the neck edge makes a stronger one than what’s in there (hey, you learn something 20 years down the road) and you have the cast-on three, the ones you pick up the stitches along the length of it and then three last ones along the far side. You want a wider edge than I made some of those–start at the count at row 2 on some of those if you need to so it drapes better in the front if it’s for a larger person.

I like doing i-cord, she said, not quite sure what I meant.

Oh right. Idiot cord–it got shortened to i-cord, it’s where the i comes from.

Didn’t know that. Learned something new!

And a great time was had by all, along with a wondering why we don’t do this more often. Maybe we will now.

Do you ever feel, after finishing a big project, that you suddenly have to Do All The Things, quick! Before the next one?

The plan had been to dive right back into the grandkid afghan that’s a picture of the Big Sur coastline that I put aside to make my brother’s. It’s beautiful, and I really like it, but part of me needs an in-between something before I tackle all those intarsia strands again.

I finished a hat and went looking through my stash.

And looked again yesterday. I can’t go around without even a carry-around project! I put needles and red Rios in my purse but it protested that it was not its turn.

So, again today, feeling like I just hadn’t found–I didn’t know what, but I knew I would know when I did and I hadn’t yet.

Which is exactly what happened: there, the moment I laid eyes on it, put away in the wrong place, was a quarter pound of merino super wash from Karida at Neighborhood Fiber Co. Color: Waverly.

Seeing her is one of the things I miss dearly about Stitches West no longer being a thing. I loved her and I loved the saturation of her colors; you’ll never find white fibers at the center that the dye didn’t reach to, she got it all.

Deep burgundy for a teenage boy’s hat. Because it told me so. Even if I can only guess why so far; the yarn knows, even if I don’t yet, and it says it wants to be cabled. Oh, okay.

Man, it feels so good to be knitting the thing that needed to come to be next.

(Glancing upward) Two words I never expected to type together in my life.

Someone in the neighborhood posted video of a momma possum with her nearly-grown babies clinging to her fur and climbing her and over each other on her as she walked across their yard.

To which someone responded with this hilarious link on Proper Possum Product Placement by someone spoofing Minnie Pearl. Go have fun!

The woman in it does wild animal rescue in real life.

If you live in California, you can now demand that Big Data about you be deleted. It won’t be instant, it takes several months, but it will happen.

Here’s the Mercury News article about it but it may be behind a paywall, so here’s the state’s site for doing so. You have to be a resident of California. To quote the first bit from the Merc:

“More than 300,000 Californians have demanded that hundreds of data brokers erase information about their locations, finances, health and personal lives as the state’s first-in-the-nation Delete Act”

You can register every device, your car, entering every name anyone might have info on you by, the works. Some things by law must be retained–those will be retained. The rest–poof! AI may not use it. Selling, say, your location or social security number will be outlawed if you say so.

Gavin Newsom signed that law and has been lobbying Congress to pass it nationwide.

But there is the information to take to your own representatives in Congress. Let them show who they really think they work for. Many of them have a particular incentive right now to pay attention to their voters.

69″ x 53.5″ unstretched.

I considered how to make the redwood trees, and the fact that they often have most of their bulk near the top, but chose to do them emphasizing the upward stretch–because I like how they echo the flight feathers of the raptor above.

There were nine rocks. Somehow I ended up with photos of only seven, but anyway, the last one down is where the undertow pulls at your feet as you stand in the water and gives you that one small taste of the power of the ocean.

(Photos taken with the afghan thrown over the Big Sur one that I can finally get back to work on. Thus the lumpiness.)

Seven weeks to the day, which was longer than I wanted it to take but entirely reasonable for a large afghan. The forty-five minutes spent casting off felt like anticlimactic somehow, but the breaking of the yarn? That felt almost ceremonial. Done.

Now it just needs the mill oils finally washed out to let that glorious cashmere bloom into the softness it’s been waiting to show off and it’ll be ready for my little brother.

Oh, and, the yarn chicken? I had 17 grams left on the smaller cone–and I found the package I’d been sure I had of five more cones that matched, so we were good there. The afghan took 1.15 Kg, ie about two and a half pounds.

CVS auto-texted that they had his meds ready to go.

They did not even have one of them on the premises yet, and told me to come back between three and four. And you know that means come at the later end of that. Rush hour. Oh fun.

Four-thirty: the lead pharmacist saw me come back in and went uh oh and directed staff towards opening boxes. One was above waist high. Finally, found it! She apologized that I’d have to wait while she filled the prescription.

No problem. Yay for the chair. I was about to start the decreases on a hat.

Problem: the second circ I’d thrown in was both a size too large and had a gouge in the wood that refused to let stitches move past it. Well that’s a bug.

Got the med finally, got out, decided to stop by Trader Joe’s to get Richard’s favorite mini ice cream cones. Except by then it was after five and the place was jammed.

There was a woman, late 70s? Eighty? She had the biggest scowl on her face and was holding a basket sideways as if to get people out of her way.

There were two young petite Asian women talking and they didn’t notice her fast enough. She rammed them with it and pretended not to have so much as seen them, much less any apology. I was horrified. Yeah, I thought, and I bet I know who you voted for for President, lady.

There was a tall Asian man at the other end of the aisle who saw her do that and was likewise horrified and he was still angry when I tried to smile at him a minute or two later because his baby of about 15 months was adorable.

Understandable.

Where the check out lines form a sort of W near the door, I got the middle line and a dad was close by in the one next to me with his toddler. Out came a finger puppet. Then the tall Asian guy appeared on the other side of me, and he was paying attention to his little one and not being mad anymore. Out came another finger puppet with another “Happy Birthday!” and the little ones could see each other with theirs and this was great.

Then a woman I hadn’t seen previously finally caught up to her husband, pushing a second cart with their older toddler.

She was with the tall Asian guy.

The clerks were slammed, mine was working as fast as she could (really fast, I was impressed) but looked like all she wanted was a place to just sit down and breathe a moment.

I found a little wooly giraffe for the woman’s little girl.

Now we had a club going. The clerk found her second wind, loving this. People farther back in the lines were all smiles. My own day was rescued.

And as the couple walked out the door with me, the woman asked, Did you make them?

I buy them from Peru, I told her. But they are handmade.

Their little girl waved goodbye as we got in our cars. Her mommy and daddy had had her say thank you but she wanted to do it of herself as well.

Summer, college town, new people moving in, always a new medical intern or two. (Being sick at a teaching hospital in July means the new ones haven’t yet had time to get a little experience, but what I saw years ago from the patient side of it is that they are very very earnest about it and trying.)

So: to welcome everybody and help them get to know people, it was announced at church that there would be a picnic in the park next week. Potluck. With a pet parade. There’ll be a softball game that anybody can come and go as they wish, any age; last time, they said, we had a four year old–and Hank!

A bunch of people laughed.

I noticed that some clearly wished they were in on whatever that was all about, so I raised my hand and said, For those who are new: Hank is 95.

A four-year-old playing ball on a great great grandpa’s team: the rest of the room laughed for sheer joy at that mental image.

And, I have no doubt, at being noticed and included, too.

It was a good start.

Alright! Twenty-five hundred and eight stitches later, the raptor is finished, and from here on out it’s plain stockinette sky and seed stitch edging with a minor game of yarn chicken and this will be done!

I’m working doubled from two cones that I think were 600 and 900 grams and I can always break off the rest of the 900, wind it in halves, and work from there. But I don’t wanna, so we’ll see if that smaller cone makes it through.

There are general knitting rules like, go down two needle sizes for ribbing edges, that cable work averages a third more yarn to do than stockinette (which is one reason cabled commercial knitwear usually weighs and costs more), and when you’re picking stitches up the side of a piece to work a perpendicular edging you work two out of every three side stitches unless you actually want the ripply edge one of my kids’ afghans got years ago.

If there’s a guideline for yarn usage for seed stitch vs plain, you’d think I’d know it by now. Clearly the backing-and-forthing of the seed stitch will take more.

But if anyone wants to hazard a guess how much so, I’d love to hear it. Thanks!

Clara Parkes on her Substack today asked, if you were to make a sign to welcome people in here, what would it say? A fact? Something humorous? Encouragement, wisdom, suggestions. What would it be?

It took me instantly back to a moment when I was at the point of death and in no way sure which way it would end up. But what I felt!

There was also this: that it was required of me now, that it was more important than there could ever be the words for, that every person I ever encountered after that should feel that, too.

Which was utterly beyond mortal power but I knew in my bones I had to try, while grateful to still be here to give it my best.

So my answer could only be this:

You are loved.