offering abundance

Yes, that's snow on the mountain and a full moon making for an exotic dusk the other night. Since then more snow has fallen and it's quite beautiful. Down here (at 7500 feet) it has rained on and off for a few days and the temperature dropped. So far I like it.

A couple of nights ago I was invited to a book launch party for Bonnie Lee Black's  How to Cook a Crocodile and it felt so cozy to sit by a warm fire with a glass of red wine and have conversations with a congenial group of people. I'm not big on cocktail party talk - in fact I loathe it and am poor at it, but this was a different sort of gathering. Bonnie cooked delicious African food for us and read a chapter from her new book which is about her years in West Africa with the Peace Corps. When I left I had to walk a distance to my car (with flashlight) and the air felt cool and damp - more like a San Francisco night than a frosty Taos night. I'm reading the book (available on Amazon) and it is terrific. I highly recommend it.

In a panic the other day re knitting baby stuff and after two unsuccessful trips to the local yarn shop in one day after hours spent online, I finally found a pattern I liked for a baby hat. I wanted to knit it flat because there are so few stitches in an infant-sized hat that I find a circular needle annoyingly stitch-stretchy - and I wasn't in a dpn mood. I wanted to use my 2.75mm circs flat and a pattern that would hum along without charts and stitch counters. Thanks to Ann Budd's tips in her handy dandy book of patterns I learned that I simply had to knit a round hat flat and then seam it up. Duh. Yeah, I know I'm pretty dense sometimes. I often revert to being one of those blind followers that EZ talked about. Although I do modify and occasionally design patterns on my own, this one eluded me. Probably due to time pressure and the fact that I hardly ever knit baby things (never) and really really want the baby to wear a hat made by me the moment he is born. So I managed to add undue stress to this whole plan which fogged my brain badly. Today, as I wait for the perfect yarn I ordered for the baby sweater I plan to make next week, I am finishing up a fourth hat! Serial knitter strikes again. I can't help it.

These little hats fit perfectly over empty inverted Greek yogurt containers which are approximately the size of a newborn's head. They're brighter and prettier than the picture shows. The light in the kitchen this morning was strange and the camera misread it and I didn't have the patience to reset it manually. The yarn is Knitpicks delicious soft merino sock yarn called Felici. Regular sock yarn is too scratchy. Meant for walking feet.

I'm trying not to get carried away with this wee hat business, but I figure it this way: I have the tools to create a basic warm article of apparel for a being who will enter the cold southern New England world just before winter sets in and one whom I find myself thinking about more and more. He appears in my dreams regularly and I send messages to him as I knit. (I know he's getting them). When all the hats are finished I'll chose a couple specifically for him and steer the rest toward other babies.

I knitted during my friend's illness and death, I knit now to welcome new life