Every year Mr. G’s family does a Christmas exchange. I find these things pretty hit or miss, depending on how much care the participants put into considering each other’s character, tastes, and needs. Not that I have anything against gift certificates  or money, but I like it best when the gifts are really personal. This year we drew Uncle Bill’s name (we floated some more creative ideas, but it turned out all he wanted was a gift certificate to Cabela’s) and when our package arrived, it was from Cousin Brian. And let me tell you, he hit it out of the park. His thoughtfulness revived my faith in the value of this kind of exchange. In our box were items Brian had gathered in traveling the country: apple butter from his friends’ farm in North Carolina, coffee roasted in Olympia where he lives now, soap made by a friend of his, and three skeins of yarn from a pueblo where he stayed in New Mexico. It was beautiful sheepy wool spun at a little place called Tattersall Mills (and it must be really small, as they have no web presence whatsoever): a chunky dark single-spun Debouillet still rich with lanolin, a soft Aran-weight gray Jacob 2-ply, and a bulky marled light and gray Jacob.

This struck me as the kind of gift that needs to be shared, so I’m sending some of it traveling farther on — to Deer Isle, Maine, where my friend Betsy is spending the winter and where it’s cold enough to merit chunky woolen hats.  Betsy is a rare friend who writes beautiful letters (yes, with pen and paper) and sends tiny accordion books bearing poems she’s chosen just for you, or sketches of things she’s seen in her adventures. She also leaves you little jars of cherry liqueur she’s put up from the trees at school, bakes delicious muffins and breads with surprising ingredients like green tomatoes, and can help a goat give birth and intubate the runt to feed it when it’s too weak to survive on its own. I admire her greatly and she’s just the kind of person it’s worthwhile to knit for, and I thought she was most deserving of this special wool. I grabbed a pattern from The Knitter’s Book of Wool, which seemed the thing to do with an unusual farm yarn, and the Blue Hill Country hat was quickly born.

I doubled the length of the ribbing for extra warmth over the ears. But I couldn’t send it out immediately. By the time I’d finished photographing the hat, this was my view of the box I intended to pack it in:

This hat took only a few hours to knit, but I love the thick, warm, stretchy, rustic result. The Jacob wool is soft enough that I hope the ribbing won’t be itchy against Betsy’s forehead. But the Debouillet has clearly had minimal processing and should be good for repelling the snow and damp.

Here’s what else is a warming thought: my husband comes home tomorrow after ten days in New York and Boston. I quite like a bit of solitude now and then, but I miss my partner and best friend when he’s away. As my neighbor Sarah, who’s finally moving to DC so her young family can be together all the time instead of just for a few weeks a year, told me last night, it’s easy to find a routine on your own and to forget how to be together. I’m fortunate that we aren’t apart all that often, but two busy people living parallel in the same space can suffer the same thing, and it’s a good reminder to make the most of it every day. Hurry home, honey.

I’ve enjoyed reading the annual crop of New Year blog posts — some triumphant reviews of projects accomplished and milestones passed, others contemplative reflections or statements of resolution for the new year and the new decade. And yet I’ve been reluctant to poise my fingers above the keyboard and begin my own. The last weeks have been all hunkering down and wintering in, reconnecting with loved ones, warming ourselves around the little fire of our hopes for 2010.

At my house, we gladly bade 2009 good riddance. While it didn’t contain major tragedy for our little family, it was a year riddled with disappointments, frustrations, and road blocks. It brought us good things, notably the birth of our nephew, but many parts we just had to grind through and endure. We had to revise our expectations, defer some dreams, jury-rig and improvise here and there. Toil didn’t always pay off. Lights appeared on the horizon, then winked out. Spirits were sometimes low, and communication was sometimes poor.

Prising ourselves out of the teeth of such a year to blink in the light of a new one, resolutions seem laughable. We see promise and peril, currents that could sweep us to joy or to grief, tests of courage and faith. We don’t expect a smooth voyage, but if fair weather comes it will be very fair indeed. If it doesn’t, we’ll make everything fast and sail on. Maybe just a few points on which to be resolute, then: To trust my partner and to offer him kindness and support, every day. To take pleasure in the work of my hands and brain. To stay open. Kick me if you catch me breaking any of those, but leave me to the pursuit of wool and cream and chocolate and the avoidance of strenuous exercise, should I choose them.

Onward.

I realized I’ve been keeping you all in terrible suspense about the state of my possibly piratish eye. Turns out it was just irritated and what I thought might be a flap of peeling eyeball was only cornesomethingsomething, or a weird eyeball wrinkle with a six-syllable name I forgot as soon as the eye doctor pronounced it.  She gave me some eyedrops and sent me on my way.

So off we went, patchless and parrotless, to Friday Harbor for a long weekend. I escape up home whenever I can, and this looked like the only opportunity until New Year’s.

My parents are building a new house perched on a knoll in a madrona grove. You can see Mt. Baker, the Olympic range, and even Mt. Rainier on a clear day from the site. It was not that clear a day, but the last sun filtering through the trees and warming the valley below was delicious. This stone patio is going to get a lot of use, I’m sure.

(Yes, it’s funny that the dog’s belly appears to be the light source in the picture.

“Darling, it’s a bit dim in my reading corner. Would you turn on the Labrador?”)

Pssst… spot the handknit socks? I’m not sure you could miss them given the comical length of the pants I’m wearing. I am not so good at packing hastily, and although I dried and retrieved the last round of laundry before we left, I did not take my jeans from the basket and place them in the pile of clothing to take north. So I borrowed pants from my mom, who isn’t as tall as I am.

Next time I’ll tell you about our trip over to Lopez and the exciting wool I brought home. Yes, it was a good weekend in more ways than one!

Thank you, each and every one of you, for your comforting words about Selkie. It’s so hard to believe she’s gone when I’m still vacuuming her fur out from under the table. My parents brought her down for a visit just a week ago when they came to collect another truckload of my grandmother’s furniture from my garage. I’m glad I got to see her so recently, to give her love and pats and praise.

During the effort to move the furniture, my father spent hours breaking down the excess packaging, and the wind blew some heavy cardboard over to squash the tender young lupines I planted in the patch of soil by the garage. I put them out in homage to a favorite book from my childhood, Barbara Cooney’s Miss Rumphius. (I loved saying Rumphius. What a name. Someday I’m going to design a comfy cardigan and call it after that character. I just had the thought that if the book were coming to print today, surely the marketing department would insist on a different title – The Lupine Lady, perhaps. Miss Rumphius isn’t a very enticing and obvious sell to grown-ups.) Anyway, the foliage on one side was all busted, but the main stalk seemed to be bent rather than broken, so we propped it up with a sturdy stick and hoped for the best. Here’s the same plant, ten days later:

Isn’t it marvelous how things grow back?

In an effort to jolly myself out of the glummery of the past week, I finished cutting my Leafy Snowball fabric and laid it all out.

Never mind the little seafoam-green squares; they’re not staying. I’ll find either a more olive-ish green or a grey-blue of similar value. But here’s the thing: I have LOTS of squares left over. I could make this quilt twice as big, and I just might. I’ll need more of the border fabric, which I think I can get; the calico for the back I think is all gone at the store, but I might be able to hunt it down somewhere else. Or I could just have the back be half something else. Here’s a medium-large cat for scale:

You’ll be glad to know I didn’t think about the layout for this quilt for more than the three minutes it took me to crawl around setting down squares willy-nilly. I wish it had more large-print fabrics, but I’m not going to worry about it too much. It seems I’m helpless before an array of beautiful calicoes, so that’s what’s here.

Oh, and lest you should think I’ve stopped knitting entirely: