Christmas Chez Garter was jolly, heralded by rumpusing canines, much cookie baking (I went with these recipes in the end), and cute cousins in StarWars hats:

Yes, even too-small StarWars Hat the First made an appearance on a smaller head! Pardon the bleached appearance of this picture – something unfortunate happened to the reds in the transfer to the web. Rest assured that my cousins are healthy and beautiful boys, and are not kept in a damp cave pining for sunlight.

Presents were exchanged. (Much coveted Blue Faced Leicester wool was received. I shall endeavor to show you in the next few days, as I don’t think I can resist knitting a swatch right away.) In the midst of the unwrappings, I glanced out the window and — mirabile dictu! — it was snowing. Great fleecy flakes were fairly cascading out of the heavens. I had to stare in stupid wonder for a minute to be sure I wasn’t imagining them before I shot out of my chair shrieking like any six-year-old. It didn’t stick, but it felt like a benediction.

And the handknits were a hit. But does anyone else suffer acute camnesia when racing to finish holiday knits? I seem to have a terminal case. Marika’s Christmas in Tallinn stocking came out beautifully, but I did not take a picture. Asa loved his Elizabeth Zimmermann garter-stitch slippers from Knitting Without Tears (knit in chunky-weight wool on 5.0mm needles for a kid’s size 7 – they’d be a perfect accessory to go with a Tomten or Baby Surprise Jacket, by the way), exclaiming happily, “These are my ice skates!” and sliding all over the hardwood floors. But they were captured only by chance, and quite unrecognizably, in the corner of the picture above. I made another bias garter hat for my neighbor, this time in ShibuiKnits Merino Kid in Rapids and Colinette Parisienne in Castagna, but I did not photograph it before I gave it to her.

Since I have no pictures, I offer instead my Christmas dinner recipe for vegetarian Yorkshire pudding. We went to Britain when I was thirteen to visit the great-aunts and see the sights. Dining mostly in pubs, my brother and I subsisted largely on pasties and Yorkshire pudding. (Also there was this drink I loved. I believe it was made of lemon and barley water. One day I’ll find it again.) Having been vegetarian these twelve years past, I’ve never tried to cook any of it. I recently decided that a mushroom reduction could stand in pretty well for the roast beef drippings, so on the 25th I followed this recipe for the pudding (I couldn’t resist a name like Ishbel), using butter for the fat, and Marika and I improvised the following:

In plenty of butter, sautee 1 1/2 lbs. chopped mushrooms, mixed portobello and button. Add a splash of red wine as the mushrooms begin to cook down. Throw in some finely chopped herbs – we used fresh thyme and rosemary. Stir a little cornstarch into half a cup of hot water or broth to dissolve, then add another half cup of broth or milk. Pour the lot in with the cooking mushrooms to thicken up the juices. Cook until you like the consistency. If you haven’t used a commercial vegetable or mushroom broth, you’ll probably want to add a little salt. Spoon over squares of the pudding and eat it hot.

You could make the whole thing vegan by using oil or vegetable shortening in the pudding, and then oil in the mushrooms. It would be just as tasty.

I’m up at my old island home now, editing reports for school and writing thank-you notes and a New Year’s letter and knitting and dog-wrangling. I’ve finally picked up the cashmere stole again – only five months until the wedding! – and worked most of a chart repetition last night while watching Ratatouille and a couple of West Wing episodes from Season 2. And there’s another Drifting Pleats scarf on the needles, commissioned by a friend for his lady love. Pictures soon, I promise!

After four halcyon weeks of September sun, the Oregon rain arrived last night. Yesterday I did my research outside on the lawn, basking in the warmth we know will never last, and managed one more evening lounging in a friend’s backyard as our bookclub met to discuss Cry, the Beloved Country. (Next up: Madame Bovary. We are the geek squad of bookclubs, and we like it that way.) Granted, we did our lounging fortified with hot toddies of whiskey and spiced cider and had a merry fire in the outdoor fireplace Eliza and her husband built themselves, but the night air was pleasant and dry. During the small hours of the morning, the first big drops spattered the skylight and spooked the cat, and he scuttled up to curl himself under my chin and purr us both back to sleep.

It was almost comical, the feeling I had when I awoke to the steady drizzle and the zliss of car tires on the wet pavement: “Oh, this is real life again.” As if the whole sun-dazzled summer had been nothing but a fever dream, and here we were waking to the wet reality of Oregon again. It wasn’t a depressing thought; we children of the northwest have a broad streak of puddleduck in our natures. Rainy days are cozy days, and the ancestral climate of knitters besides. Wool between the fingers never feels better than on the wet days when we can stay in our nests, perhaps beside the fire with a good radio program or an audio book or an old movie and a warm lap cat for company.

Of course, this is a workday, but a girl can fantasize. There are a few projects to wrap up, and a wealth of new ones to begin. I have a sweater’s worth of Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed and a fresh design crooning to me, and I just received the wool for my next ShibuiKnits project, which must be finished by November. (It’s a sweater, using Merino Kid and Sock in the beautiful blue called Rapids. Can’t tell you too much more, although you’ll see a few teaser pictures next month.) Then there’s my brother. I love him, in the unforgettable words of Anne Lamott’s small son in her excellent writing book Bird by Bird, “like 20 tyrannosauruses on 20 mountaintops.” But you’d never know it from the state of the kid’s handknit collection. He has only this measley Fishtrap swatchcap (modelled by me – we look alike, but not that much alike):

The dude needs a sweater in the worst way. It’ll be like my contribution to his hope chest before he gets married next May. I have yarn (pumpkin orange Morehouse Merino 2-Ply), I have pattern (Teva Durham’s Irregular Rib Raglan with Toggle) — all I need is time and volition. Is it too much to think I could finish three sweaters before Christmas? Let’s hope for lots of rainy days. Meantime, I’ll leave you with my favorite anonymous rain poem:

The rain it raineth all around
Upon the just and unjust fella
But mostly on the just because
The unjust stole the just’s umbrella.

Any other favorite rain poems out there?

It’s that time again. The children have reconvened to spread merry tumult and germs in the schoolyards, and those of us who work in the schools are settling in for the long voyage of the academic year. For me, a vast new project: shaping our little school’s curriculum for publication. I spoke with my dear friend Curtis today; he’s a newly minted professor unveiling the complex delights of Chaucer and Keats to a cohort of first-years who have almost certainly never worked so hard nor learned so much. I envy them: Curtis is a smart and passionate guide when it comes to literature (and apparently they think he looks like someone hot on TV). I’m going to reread The Eve of St. Agnes this week just so I can pretend I’m back in the classroom with him. Vicarious study of literature is the best I’ll be able to do this year; my two-job schedule won’t permit me time to take classes this term. Remembering the tingles I got when I set foot in a university again last year, I regret it. But it makes me all the more excited for my cousin, who’s going back to grad school after giving over the last seven years to raising her boys. Surely this grand occasion calls for a present.

Wine and Roses mitts from last winter’s Interweave Knits. The yarn is the scrummy Jade Sapphire 2-ply cashmere silk specified in the pattern – we got some in at the store and I knew I was going to have to make these lacy mitts with it. My cousin likes deep aubergine purples, so I think these will be a nice accessory to her fall wardrobe. They’re also a little symbol of her new modicum of release from constant parenting, since silk and cashmere are not exactly the fibers of choice for handling small sticky boys. For one weekend a month when she jets off to California for her intensive classes, she can slip into these luxurious adult handwarmers, and have her fingers free for taking notes and paging through tomes of Jung and Freud.

It’s thanks to Megan the Knitting Philistine and her Fiberlicious yarn photography movement that I thought to pose my work in progress with actual eggplants. It’s also thanks to Megan that the mailman brought me these:

My first order from Good Soapworks of Athens! I could smell them before I even picked up the box. I chose the warm spice and citrus scents I love for dark winter mornings: sweet orange, clove, cinnamon. Since I was out of bed at five this morning to catch Brazil vs. China in women’s World Cup soccer, I got a foretaste of the coming months – rising in the dark when even the cat prefers to stay snuggled in the blankets. It’s a downside of the return to school all too easily forgotten during the summer. But my spicy and soothing new soap will help pry my eyes open and wake me more pleasantly. And speaking of the cat…

My fur is all up in your knitting. Mwahahahaha!

And pssst…speaking of fingerless mitts, the Axel Mitts are now on the Patterns page as a PDF at last. (Thanks for the reminder, Kristen, and for the Rockin’ Girl Blogger nomination!) Happy fall knitting!

I meant to be writing this on Monday. I had pictures ready. Pictures of knitting, finished knitting, made by me. But as it turns out, it’s been a week of anxiety and lumps in the throat, sore feet and the glum blues. Mingus the cat went missing on Sunday night — maybe it’s spring fever, maybe a dog chased him into an unfamiliar neighborhood, maybe it’s something worse. The not knowing is worse, for one. Mingus is a prime booger, up to no good at least once a day, usually looking for trouble and finding it, but I miss him… I can’t even write how much. I’ll get snot all over the keyboard. This week I’ve done everything you can do — visiting the shelters every two days, posting fliers all over a ten block radius and the internet, calling for him everywhere, talking to neighbors (you can meet a lot of really nice people looking for an errant cat), pouncing at every new message on the answering machine, running outside in a bathrobe at 2 a.m. without my glasses because some cats were snarling at each other and maybe it was my bellicose little pisser disturbing the peace. Mr. Garter left for Texas and his sister’s graduation at the crack of dawn on Wednesday, and it’s lonesome here without either of my boys.

Tonight I finally broke down and wept a little weep. I was already kind of unhinged about the cat, and then I got the news that Lloyd Alexander died. Most of you probably don’t pay a lot of attention to children’s literature, but he was one of the Truly Greats. And as Kristen put it, there won’t be another writer like him. Lloyd was an old-fashioned storyteller, and his books were marked by innocent joy and skillful craft, always wise and gentle and true and fun. No potty humor, nothing racy or edgy — and they still capture kids’ imaginations by virtue of the peculiar and simple magic of good story. I loved them growing up, and I loved them even more when I was assistant to his editor in New York. It felt like private admission to Xanadu to open a box containing his typewritten manuscript, and how I glowed when he adopted my suggestions. In my little experience of him as an author and as a person, he was witty and generous, scholarly to the point of endearing nerdiness, and a great lover of cats. On my mantle is an Edward Gorey stuffed cat he gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago. I propped it up there when I was unpacking because I didn’t have another place in mind for it, and somehow it’s stayed. I like its funny eyebrows and its red & brown knit sweater. Lloyd always drew his own Christmas cards; invariably they were cats standing in for the figures in famous works of art, and we all had to guess what painting they spoofed. I hadn’t studied art history yet and I wasn’t very good at guessing; I like to think that this year I would have gotten the reference.

I don’t know what Lloyd’s thoughts about the afterlife were, but I like to think of him as having gone to dwell among his many vibrant characters — with his wife and all their cats, of course. And I kind of hope he’ll keep an eye on Mingus for me, and maybe remind him that it’s good to return home after the journey.