Another lightning-quick project designed by the talented Anna at Mochimochiland!  Grass was started Friday, finished and presented Saturday.

Peekaboo!

Little cousin Mary found it quite hilarious.

Before it went off to its new home, Grass toured the yard, visited the lake

Grass at the lake

 stared down a foe

Grass meets an old enemy

Grass, resting

Have a great life, Grass! And be sure to take the time to smell the roses.

Grass and roses

This is not a hat

The Grass is coming along nicely.  Little cousin Mary arrives at 5pm today, and I think I might be able to get it done.  But first I have to to a little yard work.  Yes, I have to  . . . cut the grass.

For a moment there, a few minutes, in fact, I thought I had too much yarn.  Let me explain.

A tiny cousin, not the tiniest, but now the middle of three recent additions to the family, is coming over for dinner with her parents tomorrow, and it’s just past her first birthday.  I has a vision yesterday of quickly knitting up a Grass to give her to go with her Bob, and I knew just what yarn would work, a rich green woolen singles I had dyed some time ago. 

But where was it?  Not in the bag of odds and ends. Not in the basket of yarns that need more yarn spun to go with before starting a baby sweater. Not downstairs in the boxes of  mostly weaving yarns, sorted by color. Not in the closet with fiber, estate sale yarn, and other folks’ destash yarn. Not in the Damselfly stockpile, or the heap of Damselfly test runs, or the boxes of Damselfly base yarns. Not  . . . anywhere. Anywhere that I could think of.  Did I have more places to stash yarn than my brain could keep track of? I knew I had seen it fairly recently, could picture the round greenness of it, the feltable texture, the sturdy weight . . . but where was it?

I searched again, this time looking deeper in the baskets, boxes, bags, peeking at the bookshelf that has, umm, some more yarn, but surely it couldn’t be there.  It was, I felt sure, in a flexible container, not a stiff boxy one, but which one, where? 

Making another loop through the house, I remembered another basket, the one I take to Seaview Weavers meetings, the one I keep not four feet from the computer.  And there it was, taken to the meeting where we tried out Nantucket rug-hooking, nestled comfortably on a hooped-up piece of canvas.

Found

 So I don’t have too much yarn, and can put my hands on just what I’m looking for in a few minutes. And that’s a relief.

And the nice thing about touring the stash while looking for something is that you refind things you’ve kind of forgotten about.  I’ve got a small bag of suri alpaca to spin, what a surprise!

What have I been doing?  Well, there’s been some knitting, some dyeing, some shipping of yarn to my yarn club (6 members — whee!), some weeding (but never enough), and the usual day-to-day stuff, but the big preoccupation the past few weeks has now gone live, available at an internet tube near you.

My husband, writer Greg Bear, has a new book coming out in August, City at the End of Time.  We decided to plunge into an internet-based viral marketing sort of thing to help get the word out about the book, publishers not always doing such a good job of that these days. So click over to Cityattheendoftime.com and wander around.  With the able technical assistance of amazing web-guru Terran McCanna, who also does fabulous beadwork, we’ve created a series of interlinking webpages that gives a taste of the book, offers a couple of opportunities for reader-created content to be posted, and we hope  piques interest and drives the multitudes to the bookstores or your favorite online bookseller.  One such, The Signed Page, is doing pre-orders for personalized signed copies, even as we speak. Publication date is August 5th.

We’ll be at the San Diego ComicCon and the 2008 WorldCon, Denvention 3, passing out buttons, t-shirts, and very cool MOO mini-cards, so if you are there too, please say hi!

Oh, you wanted to have more fiber-related content?  Here’s a picture of the June yarn for the yarn club, called Blushing Apricot:

Ripe and ready to knit

Yet another fish dinner – this is Golden Trout Salad. It has antecedents in both Floofy Salad and Salad Nicoise, and made a lovely dinner in the golden late afternoon.

Golden Trout Salad

• Golden trout filets
• Peaches, halved and pitted
• Yukon Gold potatoes,  sliced into 1/4 inch slices
• Mixed salad greens (I used butter lettuce and arugula)
• Olive Oil
• Vinegar (I used sherry vinegar)
• Dijon mustard
• Generous handful of fresh herbs (I used basil and oregano)
• Lemon, sliced thinly
• salt, pepper

Broil peach halves until hot through and browned on top.  Set aside to cool.  Bring a pot of salted water to the boil, add potato slices and cook until they are just done.  Meanwhile, make a vinaigrette from olive oil, mustard, salt, pepper, and vinegar.  When the potatoes are done, drain and toss in a bowl with a generous amount of the vinaigrette.

Take a roasting pan and lightly coat it with olive oil.  Lay the fresh herbs out in an even layer that is the same size as the area of the trout filets. Put the lemon slices on top.  Salt and pepper the trout and put skin-side-up on the herbs, then lightly brush the skin with olive oil. Put under the broiler until just done.

Meanwhile, slice the peaches and toss the greens with the remaining vinaigrette.  Arrange a bed of greens on the plate, top with the still-warm potatoes, and garnish with the peach slices.  When the trout is done, leave the herbs and lemon behind, and place the filets on the salad.  Serve it forth!

I was knitting away on a sock for Summer of Socks, and glanced out the window.  There seemed to be something furry in the tree, and peering more closely revealed that it was a raccoon, settled in for the late afternoon.  But then

it seemed like there were more ears and heads than you might expect one raccoon to have

and indeed, it was two: a young mother and kit.

No, we don’t leave pet food outside, and don’t want to actively encourage them to stay.  But they are darned cute.

Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?

I don’t remember growing older
When did they?            

When did she get to be a beauty?
When did he get to be so tall?

Wasn’t it yesterday
When they were small?

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze

–From Fiddler on the Roof, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick

My daughter and youngest child, Alex, graduated from high school Saturday.  My Sunrise Socks were finished a few days days ago, and were just the right thing to wear. 

And, since it was Worldwide Knit in Public Day, I brought along a Marsan Watchcap I’m working on for the Whipstick Knitters.

This is now a season of last and first things:  last high school play, last time getting  up to make a 7:30 class, last day of school, last child getting ready to leave home: in September, the first time with no children under my roof for weeks on end, first time in a zillion years with no parent meetings or school volunteer needs.

 But perhaps not the last time for a student to hug a favorite teacher.

And why were those socks exactly the right thing to wear?  Because their colors are graduated, of course.

You may recall my struggles with these socks, which I called Suitcase Socks, with the promise of an explanation later.  They were  made for a dear friend who on was the list for a liver transplant, and intended to go into his take-to-the-hospital suitcase. Designed to be soft, warm, stretchy, to keep feet warm in a chilly and stressful place and time  — hospitals are always a little chilly, I find  — and then be good for padding about during a long recovery period.  Dear Friend (hereafter known as DF — it’s not for me to disclose his medical information along with his name) came up to visit along with his wife (also Dear), arriving yesterday morning.

After a day of visiting, we all settled in to sleep, and were awakened around midnight by a call:  A liver was available, and if he could be at his transplant center by noon it was his.  Calls to airlines, a strategic meal and hydration schedule, a power nap until 3:30am, then a swift ride to the airport got them on the first flight out of Seattle. Somewhere before the eggs and English muffin, I remembered the socks, and presented them for duty.  DF was amazed that there were no seams at the toes, thanks to Judy’s Magic Cast-On, and appreciated the subtle nod to the Aubrey-Maturin books we both love, in that the cables on the sides of the socks are both cable and hawser-laid. And into the suitcase they went.

We returned from the airport in the pearly dawn, and I saw that the indoor cyclamen from Thanksgiving had popped open the first flowers from its reblooming.

A new beginning, a new day, thanks to the simple act by another man and his family designating him an organ donor. I hope you’ll consider taking that step, too.

I’m not the only one thinking that this is an exceptionally dreary June here in the Puget Sound area. Cliff Mass, UW meteorology professor and radio precipitation pundit agrees. I especially like the barbecue index he came up with.