I don’t know how to cope with it other than to write it out. Feel free to skip if you need to for your own sake. It’s been so much.

I was not going to watch the video. Which quickly became videos, because so many Minnesotans have turned out in the bitterest cold to bear witness with their friends and their phones.

But my friends are there and they are experiencing this madness in person, and so in the end I did.

A woman found herself somehow a little too far away from others and the ICE predators went after her. They sprayed her in the face and as she bent over in agony, they pounced, pulling her downwards to beat her.

The white tall male ICU nurse from the VA had been recording but that quickly became not enough for him and he went to her aid, moving as if to first tend to her stricken face and then trying to pull them off her.

The last decision in his life was to defend the innocent from harm no matter what they might do to him for it.

ICE pulled them apart and pushed him to his knees, they bashed his head with tear gas canisters, then spotted what he had a permit for. One reached down into the scrum and walked away with it–how ’bout them jack-booted government thugs some claim their 2A rights are all about–and then, with him disarmed and on the ground and never having threatened them in any way other than with the truth-telling of his phone, they shot him in the back. And again. And again. And again. And again.

All this started with electing a man who rapes children who resurrected the South’s pre-Civil War Slave Patrols against all non-whites.

Now the dementors he’s let loose are fighting anyone who won’t surrender their every right as an American, especially against anyone who by showing compassion shows them who *they* are so they respond with murderous fury.

The state sued to have the scene be preserved for investigation. ICE defied them.

First they came for… goes the poem.

Maybe, said my sweet husband a few days ago, trying hard to find any way to make any sense of the ongoing horror of all this, maybe all this will be what finally gets America to turn away from her racism for good.

When spinning fibers into yarn, there’s always this tradeoff: how much twist vs how much softness do you want.

Twisting adds friction. Friction helps hold the fiber ends in place. It adds to the longevity of the garment you make the yarn into. Too much can make even pure rabbit hair feel like the roughest burlap. (I did that once just to prove it. I didn’t waste much, just enough.)

Now, I would never even aspire to buy a dress like this but I might daydream knitting something like it. At thousands of dollars and that brand name you would expect it to be of the softest baby cashmere, spun to hold onto that sweet feel. Scrumptious. (Although disappointing that they don’t show the model’s face. C’mon, Loro Piana, you’re using her coloring to stage your product well but skipping out on her humanity? Less than cool.)

But.

For me it would have to be dyed a color not associated with ICE uniforms.

Why I don’t think I would attempt to make one with potential mill ends of such yarns: picture sitting down in that thing.

Pilling is going to happen the most where the most contact does, especially with the addition of weight against it. Can you see walking around in an extremely expensive fuzzbutt alert?

I may just be fable-ing fox and grapes here, since you’d have to have far more money than I to even begin to consider buying such a thing.

What Aesop probably never knew is that the coveted grapes–as I think of how intense wealth has skewed the humanity of some of its more notorious owners these last few years–are poisonous to canines.

The look on his face when I told him that number!

Okay, there’s a plumber I like, Lee, good guy, a one-man show, been doing this a long time, knows his stuff, but he wasn’t available last time I needed one.

I thought about calling the company of the young guy who had come in order to ask him to, y’know, fix his mistake, if it was his mistake, but I just couldn’t. $850 and I’m still dealing with all this and my carpet’s been wrecked and the sunk-cost fallacy was becoming a little too literal.

It must have kept bugging Lee, because when he was done he felt compelled to talk about it.

I thought the other guy had said he’d replaced everything under the sink but the faucet. Turns out he had not. The two on-off switches were very old and they had failed.

I could attest to that–I’d tried one more time last night to see if I could get them to close and the result was that that five gallon pot couldn’t manage that much overnight. The floor of the cabinet was at last starting to dip heavily downwards and the edge of the carpet in the living room was wet again.

Yeah, he said, they forgot to put a washer in. That’s why it still leaked. That part? he said, pointing to the U-tube. Costs $16 and an hour of his time at most to put in. Then he explained, That company got sold about two years ago and the new owners are pushing their people hard for upsells.

Ah–so that’s why the guy waited for his friend to come over to get me a quote on how he was going to fix the damage to the cabinet floor and the wall behind it. (As I suddenly realized I was apparently paying the first plumber per hour for that, too.) I told Lee, I wasn’t feeling it. Didn’t agree to going forward with it.

He spelled out his own bill: $50 and $22 and $8 for these parts, $80/hour for his time, to say, And THAT is how it’s done.

Nothing drips.

Everything works.

The new faucet looks gorgeous. (Richard laughed when I said that to him. I said, It’s not what you would have picked? He said, No, but it makes you happy and that’s what I want. He is a sweetheart.)

The refrigerator line is hooked up again.

Next time Lee’s too busy I am absolutely going to wait till he’s not.

Went to the post office yesterday and was quietly admiring the sweater of the woman several people ahead of me. She had nothing in her hands.

The line did not move by a single customer in ten minutes and I was debating putting my boxes on the floor and pulling out the latest hat project. But didn’t. Finally it was her turn, and I couldn’t hear the conversation, I just got the faces and the tones of voice: sweater woman presenting what she thought was a reasonable request, clerk lady quickly turning to sounding like what I can only describe as almost triumphantly unhelpful.

Finally, the lady in the thick single-ply blue top-down hand knit gave up and turned to go in disgust.

I’m picturing myself back when they told me they could not pay out the insurance on a package that was a “this must never be lost” but was, and being blown off and being told it had to be missing for one more day than that before they could make good on it.

Five minutes after I got home I got the message that they had miraculously found it. Right there in that building after a month or two AWOL. I guess I’d put the fear of payout into them.

I hope they didn’t lose something she’d knit for someone.

Whether her issue gets resolved too or not, I wanted her day to go better than that, so as she went past me I asked her if she’d knit her sweater.

She had–but in her moment of trying not to voice how she felt at that clerk she took it out on the yarn: she grabbed a bit of fabric near her elbow and told me, Yeah, but it pills!

It’s beautiful! I said as she continued on by.

And it was.

And that’s the last thing she heard walking out of that post office.

I got the same clerk. She knew I’d seen all that. Maybe she even was glad I’d tried to make things better for the woman. Or maybe it was that because we were actually doing a transaction, her job required that she ask me at the end to click the pointer at the screen to mark whether I was smiley face or sad face at how I’d been helped.

Her face was such a funny mixture of pretty please!!! and this bared-teeth smile that was trying too hard that I fought back the ‘you have got to be kidding me’ impulse, the laugh-out-loud one, too, and gave her her hoped-for smile.

One for each of them. Fair’s fair.

Next year there will be no happy anticipation of the best ten days or so of the summer when the Kit Donnell peaches are ripe at Andy’s because there will be no Andy’s.

Raintree is a nursery my sister shopped at when she lived in Washington. Loved the place.

Nobody else seems to stock that variety this year, or if they did, people who know a good thing have snapped it up. I sure hope so. It worried me that a big wholesale grower has taken it off their list; it cannot be allowed to vanish when Andy’s goes. He and Kit created it. The peaches are too juicy and the skins too thin to hold up to commercial mass production. The flavor!

Today we finally decided and now Raintree’s stock is officially down by one.

When I put its roots into the ground we should have music to celebrate: how about, Another One Bites the Dust?

So I was doing my walking time last night and saying a prayer, telling G_d the obvious and that I needed to know what to do about that water coming up into the rug.

Suddenly I knew. I KNEW. I mean, I didn’t know know but I knew!

So of course I ran to Richard to tell him that.

Well, go and look, then!

And there it was. The dishwasher was running and the water was streaming out underneath the sink to the ruined cabinet floor. Yes a $$$ major plumbing fix happened last month, but not that particular part. But that’s why I hadn’t thought of it, I thought everything under there was fixed.

I put my biggest dye pot underneath it. I didn’t know if it would run like that all night or just while the dishwasher emptied or what.

There were over four gallons in the morning. I couldn’t just empty it into that sink (actually I probably could have), I had to carry it outside. On second thought, I hope the detergent doesn’t kill the Chinese elm on that side of the house, I should have carried it down the hall to the bathroom but my back was distracting me.

A new faucet is on order.  The old one leaked a quart or two over the course of today, a whole lot less than I was afraid of, and I am not turning the dishwasher on again till the new Delta and its intact supply lines are in there.

Phew.

And now I can’t wait for Spring for my tree to show what it can be now.

Meantime, in Minnesota, in response to ICE beating US citizens on their own properties without provocation nor warrant nor legal right to trespass (“But you have an accent.” “You have an accent too!”) the people have figured out a new way to inform their neighbors when ICE is on their street: set off their car alarms via their key fobs.

This is after one of their agents threatened a young child that he’d put a bullet in her head for protesting with her mom. Putting a woman in her place: start’em young. And after one threw a flash-bang at a car with children, injuring a six month old. A baby.

Republicans have a chance to redeem a little of their names for history if they at long last impeach and convict the pedophile-in-chief and end this siege. Do it now.

Because anyone who doesn’t, you don’t have to worry we’ll find out your name is in the Epstein files: you’re already making it clear.

Two days ago I thought he’d spilled a glass of water  (“No…”) and dabbed it out with a towel. Yesterday my sock got wet again when I stepped on the edge of the carpet there. Today it was Houston, we’ve got a problem. The soaking went several feet wide now.

This house was built with the water pipes running under the slab but ours failed years ago. The then-plumber explained that the reverberations from one leak can make a weak old pipe give way in more places and in fact we had, suddenly, 16 of them. We could jackhammer the entire length of the house–or we could run new pipes across the roof.

Done.

And so here I am 32 years later, going, yeah we had a freeze, but there’s nothing under the house. The wall is dry. No sign of dripping through the ceiling. Somehow water is seeping up through the concrete from the ground, is the best we can tell, even though it hasn’t been raining. This is going to be $$$.

We tried to figure out who we should call for a problem whose cause we don’t know.

Well, a plumber would be able to pinpoint the sounds of the water if it has anything to do with pipes.

I’ve been pushing towels at it all day and the washer is running a load of them as I type. But I think at the very least we’re about to lose the carpeting in the living room.

So I did what one does in such circumstances: I went outside this evening, looked at my oldest Anya tree (2019) that didn’t get to go in the ground because it didn’t look as healthy as the other, but that could be because it’s been potted too long, and finally, a year after I bought a bigger pot and soil, did that transplant. By myself. Without telling anyone.

Those branches are fragile and so am I. It was heavy. That rootball was an impenetrable mass, no easing individual roots apart like I had intended, not while trying to keep it from falling over and crashing. I hope I didn’t leave bare spaces between it and the new soil underneath because air prunes off roots but I’m sure in some places I did. I ended up pushing the mass down with my knee from trunk to pot edge, around and around to try to connect it to below. And then threw those pants in the washer with the towel load.

It was all frankly a stupid thing to do because a friend told me he was going to get some kids from church to come do it for me, but I never got a firm time nor day. I didn’t want to pay another repairman, I didn’t want another major home repair (termites were $79k) and in that moment what I wanted most was the satisfaction of getting this one thing done that had bugged me for over a year so my plant could go live happily ever after and maybe even give me some fruit.

Besides, what are back exercises for.

It feels so good to have gotten it done.

I half-apologized and warned the friend from church so the kids wouldn’t be disappointed, and thanked them for the offer.

So, if you’re thinking about the shape of Half Moon Bay, our local coastline, and you take a classic feather and fan and stretch it out a bit and then run an outward-purl row immediately after the yarn overs so it looks like the crests of incoming waves and the closer to shore you take it the closer together those two rows come to the next set of two, while dropping one repeat to the right every eighteen rows, turning those into plain stitches (which I just did again, hidden under that needle)…

…and you graph out a starfish in purl stitches…

…and it comes out looking more like a lobster but what the heck…

…Then it turns out that, as usual for me, the more I get done the faster it goes because it’s actually starting to BE something.

The mill-end yarn (50/50 cash/cot) is not pre-washed. It’s going to bloom and look a lot softer and denser.

You might even be able to see that there’s a starfish down there near the corner.

There was going to be a Barbara Walker’s turtle, too, but it’s just too many rows to scale right in there.

There will probably be a redwood above. I’ve debated an apricot tree (they have one of mine) and even adding apricot colored apricots but you know baby fingers would put a lot of effort into trying to pull them off. So maybe. I have that color, I could. Or all just cream like it is. Got awhile before I have to decide.

An officer’s body cam footage of handcuffing an emu on the lam is the video we all need right now.

Meantime, I have a question. Macy’s was selling a cashmere turtleneck for $43 plus a $10 off coupon, in a color I liked. $33. I sprang for it. I figured it wouldn’t be the best quality but cashmere at the price of cotton, hey.

It arrived quite perfumed. I don’t know if it was worn and returned or just happened to be next to the warehouse’s moth repellent efforts, but it looked fine. I debated returning it but there were none left to exchange it for so I thought, nah, I can wash that out.

Several spots refused to get wet. On both front and back but not the sleeves. We’re talking blotches an inch and two inches high or more.

I held it under. I soaked it in unscented suds for hours. I defied the ‘don’t agitate the water’ rule of hand washing woolens and squished soapy water through those spots again and again but they stayed looking exactly how they had: bone dry. Huh. If it was mill oils repelling the water the soap would be breaking that down by now. If it was super wash treated, ie the yarns coated in the thinnest film of plastic so it can be machine washed and dried, they would have used it as a selling point (without admitting to the plastic part.)

What gives? I’m a fiber artist, I should certainly know. A fraudulently synthetic-cashmere blend that spun out into clumps of just synthetic?

I tried working water into it during the rinses, too. (Tepid water not cold thankyouverymuch.)

I didn’t spin it out–if it turned out blotchy I wanted to be able to say it had not touched the washer nor dryer.

Hours later, while laid flat to dry, those gaps slowly slowly closed up and the thing became a solid color again, darker of course because it’s wet but at least now it all looked wet.

Huh.

Well, the mill oils with their dried hair mousse effect are definitely washed out now because the sweater has softened up beautifully.

I like it. Hey Mikey.

On a different note: fifty Bavarian sheep got distracted by acorns and then, they believe, someone carrying a bag in.

A feedbag! Thus suddenly they were checking out the inside of a grocery store. I imagine automatic doors were involved. Lettuce? Nah, go for the drinks.

Meanwhile, the shepherd in the middle of moving 450 other sheep didn’t realize he’d lost a tithing of his flock.

The grocery chain, rather than going after the shepherd for cleanup and replacement expenses, knew a priceless ad campaign when they saw the viral video, laughed, and said they would sponsor those 50 sheep’s feed for a year.

Loving, laughing, forgiving. Thanking.

Man, doesn’t it feel great.

I heard from two more Minnesota friends today. Love Thy Neighbor is what this whole resistance thing is about.

One of the former owners of Purlescence, my favorite yarn store during its ten years, lives in the Minneapolis area now, as does her ex. He teaches at one of the local schools.

He posted that he is riding the afternoon school bus to the end of its route now in order to make sure every child on it makes it home. He said it’s not just fear that something could happen, it’s reality–kids have been snatched there by ICE between the bus and their front doors and as a white man and a teacher and just plain a decent human being he felt heavily the responsibility to do whatever he can to protect those kids and to spare their parents the horror of them disappearing for the color of their skin.

DHS is circulating a memo to its agents falsely stating that ICE have absolute immunity and that anyone who interferes with them in any way is committing a felony. Who decides what is interfering? They do. Ergo, you’re a felon and going to jail. American or not.

The NY Times broke down that claim: ICE are not cops and immunity was always qualified.

One agent was so horrified at Renee Good’s murder that they leaked the names and info on several thousand agents to an Irish relative living in the Netherlands. Who is not rushing to immediately publicize them but rather is checking each one out: do they still work for ICE? In what capacity? Nurses, daycare workers–leave them alone. Beating people up on the street? They want to verify that first.

Because good people have ethics.

The town paper says about 500 people showed up at that plaza last night. On less than 24 hours’ notice. Yay!

The phone rang tonight. It was our new House Rep offering a conference call to his constituents. Ask his staff to put you in the queue (so it isn’t bedlam), then when you’re on you ask him your question and we all get to hear how the guy responds on his feet. He started off by honoring the Hatch Act and made a point of not politicking, not advocating, just truthfully answering questions to the best of his ability.

People dropped in and out of the call as it went on and there were some repetitions.

Several asked, how do we get 47 out of there? The frank answer was, we can’t right now. He didn’t say Ro Khanna and I… that would be politicking… Just, We don’t have the votes. And then he told what measures he’s voted for, what bills he’s helped with, bills that would put limits and stops (to things that are illegal and unConstitutional and we all knew it.)

So, Congress. Who else wants to be able to be proud to tell their future grandkids what they did during this time in this country when it so needed their help?

We found out this morning that there was to be a protest tonight at the plaza in front of City Hall. We both wanted to go. Neither of us felt up to it this evening.

But we were there in our hearts and to you who did show up, here or elsewhere, you have my profound gratitude.

I found myself in the back yard yesterday looking at two Anya apricot seedlings to the right: they were small, but only because the pots they were in weren’t very big. There was a third one in a big pot to the left and it’s twice the height even though the same age. Those littler roots need some space!

Someone would love one if they only knew.

I found myself saying a prayer, going, If there’s someone who would really want one, please help me find them. Please make it so obvious that I won’t second-guess myself over it–because with Andy’s closing there aren’t going to be any do-overs after this year.

The phone rang today. It was Dave. We’ve known him since he was a teenager in our ward in New Hampshire; his kids are teens now. He was thinking he’d like to stop by and catch up a bit? See how we were doing? (He knows about Richard’s foot.)

Absolutely!

He was at one point asking questions about taking care of his young pluot tree.

I asked him if he liked apricots.

Dave, with intensity: I LOVE apricots!

He was certainly not expecting what happened next. To carry home an apricot tree, much less a specialty one–but he was very very glad to. Cool! Given a choice between little and easily carried or big he chose little. It’ll make up the difference quickly once it’s in the ground.

Just like that. Done.

And, selfishly, I’m delighted that I’ll get to see that tree growing up and becoming all that it’s meant to be.