Knitting Day

 

I thought about knitting a lot today.  A friend shared a pattern for a felted hat so I cruised the stash looking for yarn that'd be good for it.  I found three skeins of bulky, black Icelandic wool that LB gave me. (I know it looks gray but, trust me, that yarn is as black as the basement when all the lights go out.)  Now I need to find something to carry with it--maybe red, maybe more neutral, like gray.



But first I need to finish LC's hat to match her mittens.  I need to knit about an inch more before starting the crown decreases.  I think she'll like it.


Lots of birds stopped by again but, again, not long enough for me to take their pictures.



I was lucky enough to catch the sun tangled in the tree branches across the street as it set.  It was a lot sunnier today than predicted.  Thank heavens.

After supper I went over to Panera to meet a couple of Guild knitters and a couple of non-knitters who want to learn.  We had a blast, talking and laughing, and assuring them that we all felt fumble-y and awkward when we started.  I took my hat along and just knitted but we chatted and discovered that one of them knows DIL1, DS, and kids from church.  Small world.

03 December--Barbara Malcolm, Spies Don't Retire. 

“You were a long time,” Sonia said when George walked in.  “Did you drop off the tanks to be refilled?”  She was surprised when he walked straight through the kitchen without a word.  She looked up from assembling a salad from leftover grilled chicken for their lunch.  “George?”  She watched his retreating back cross the living room and disappear behind the curtain over the door of the little room off the dining area he called his snug.  She saw his hand swing behind him as if he were slamming a door.  She waited a minute and then followed him.  She stood politely at the door.  “George?  Are you all right?”

No answer.

“May I come in?”

George’s voice rumbled toward her.  “I would rather you did not.”

“Did you and Max have an argument?”

“No.”

She left the doorway and started back toward the kitchen and her salad.  She got halfway, turned around, and flung the curtain aside.

George looked up from his desk where he was staring down at a piece of paper lying on the surface.

“What is that?” she asked.

“A letter.”

“From whom?”

“My new handler.”

Sonia felt the pit of her stomach clench and her whole body turned cold.  “Your new handler?  What do you mean?”

He laid his hands down softly on either side of the paper.  “Just what I said.  This is from my new handler, she is giving me a job to do.”

“Where?” Sonia’s hands were clenched tight into fists held protectively at her waist.

“Right here,” he said.

She let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.  “I was afraid they were sending you to the Middle East.”

“No, they want me to do a job right here.”  He paused, his lips pursed as if he had tasted something nasty.  “And I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”

They were both silent, each of them thinking how their enjoyment of retirement had been destroyed.

Sonia spoke first.  “Dimitri?”  He nodded.  “What can I do to help?” she asked.

“Stop fighting with Irina.”

“You know about that?”

His smile was small and sad.  “Of course I do.  Just like I know that bitch Billie Holland-Smythe deliberately set us up at her party…”

“Now, George, you don’t know that for a fact.”

He kept talking.  “And I know she couldn’t wait to report our arrival to her bastard of a brother, Bertie.”

“And Bertie used to work in your office.”

“Yes.  I always thought that even in a profession of tale carriers, that Bertram Scott was the epitome of tattletales.  He took a perverse pleasure in exposing traitors, never once did he express admiration for our adversaries, who did the very same job only from the other side.  It was obvious he thought we were in the right and everyone else was wrong.  A petty and vindictive man.”

Sonia sat in the chair across the desk from him.  “How will my stopping fighting with that pretentious bitch, Irina, help?”

George had to smile at her vehemence.  “It will lower her guard, allowing me to more openly make friends with Dimitri, thereby making my job easier and much quicker.”

She squinted at him.  “What do you mean more openly?  Have you already been making friends with him?”

“Of course I have, dear.  When else have I ever had the opportunity to have a friend with a similar work experience?  All of the men I worked with had covers that did not allow us to fraternize in a natural way.  We didn’t all live in an enclave and our supposed jobs were too disparate to allow for believable contact, none of us even went to the same schools, which could explain a friendship.  Only when we arrived here did I find a man I felt had similar life experiences and would understand me.  That is Dimitri.”

Sonia was horrified.  “You haven’t told…”

His answer carried a load of scorn.  “Of course I haven’t.  And neither has he.  But we had similar general experiences, we could share that at least.”  She started to speak but he held up a hand to silence her.  The silence stretched long and unbearable, and then he muttered.  “And now I lose even that.”

She reached across the desk and put her hand on his.  “I will do what I can to help.”  The sound of feet coming up the broken coral “lawn” reminded them of their guests.  “I had better finish that chicken salad,” she said as she arose.  “You take them onto the patio and serve drinks.  I made a pitcher of sangria; it’s in the fridge.”

I went to the Y to work on the machines today but for some strange reason a couple women would do a few reps and then check their phones, do a few reps and back to their phones.  These weren't millennials either, they were baby boomers like me.  Grr. I finally gave up and left having done about 2/3 of the machines.  I don't get it.  I'm addicted to my phone too but, if I'm not walking on the treadmill (when I listen to a podcast), my phone's in my locker.  Work out and then be on your phone, people.  You annoy me.  Especially today.
--Barbara

Birds!

 

Some birds came today.  One Bluejay came to see if there were peanuts or corn.  None were available so I got a dirty look from the fence.  The Juncos came to investigate the suet feeder, to scratch around in the new snow, and poke their beaks in the birdbath.




 


The Mourning Doves flew in for a drink and flutter.  A Downy Woodpecker came too but I couldn't get to the camera in time.


All I did the rest of the day was have a chiropractor appointment, go to the grocery where two of the three boxes of chocolate pudding were leaking.  *sigh*  One leaked on the conveyor at the grocery so the cashier tossed it and the other one I tossed at home.  I contemplated going back but it was on sale for a buck so I let it go.  And this evening I got to go to my first Knitting Guild board meeting.  Busy busy busy.

02 December--Barbara Malcolm, Spies Don't Retire. 

     George looked up from the close-typed page in his hand and out over the wind-whipped waves in front of him.  “Why do I care about a nearly ten year old suicide?”  He read on.

    

     “In the course of reviewing old case files, new eyes have examined these facts and we are interested in ascertaining what, if any, involvement Roskova had in the matter.  Cognizant of the fact that he was a very effective operative for the KGB, we are convinced that he used his not inconsiderable charm to obtain the above-mentioned formulae and diagrams.

     In view of the fact that the Army researchers are still laboring to develop an anti-gravity propulsion system and have discerned hints from their opposite numbers in Russia that they too are near to perfecting a similar system, we would like you to insinuate yourself in Roskova’s confidence and determine whether he did indeed use his position and Ms. Shoreham’s infatuation with him and all things Russian to steal this information.

     Roskova’s long-time handler, Alexei Smatanof defected to America one year after the theft of the data but seems unaware of it.  He claims that so much information came from those under him over his career that it is impossible for him to remember each one.

     We would appreciate your immediate action in this matter.  We anticipate hearing from you soonest.  This is a matter of national security.

     If you are discovered during the pursuit of this matter, we will, of course, disallow all…

“Blah, blah, blah,” George said as he came to the end of the page.  “You’d think they wrote the script for that old Mission: Impossible series on American television.  I always expected letters like this to be signed Mr. Phelps.”

He laughed at himself, a hollow laugh, knowing there was no way he could refuse this assignment and regretting already the loss of the trust and friendship he and Dimitri had built in a few short months.  He also wondered if Dimitri had received a similar letter from his old handlers and what he planned to do with it.

Realizing how long he had been sitting there and anticipating probing questions from Sonia concerning his extended absence, George started his car and turned toward home,  a very different man from the one who left it so lightheartedly just that morning.  He felt the noose of responsibility tighten around his neck, just as he had every other time he was given a new mission, but this time rather than anticipation and even excitement he felt sick and tired, and very, very old.

Tomorrow the cleaning lady comes and then I plan to go to the Y.  Maybe I'll work a circuit on the machines and then take a walk on a treadmill.  I'll walk for sure.  It was sunny all day today.  Ahh.
--Barbara

Snow!

Holy moly, did we get snow.  Last night when I went to bed it was raining.  This is what I saw when I opened the drapes in the morning.  That conical lump lying on its side covered in snow is the birdie tree.  When I went out to snowblow the driveway (thanks again for fixing it, LJ!) the weight of the wet snow convinced me that I wouldn't be able to lift the tree and stand it up all by myself.  





So I asked my renter to come over in the afternoon and he got it where I wanted it and tied it to the posts that the honeysuckle grows around.  I knocked most of the snow off the tree before he came out because, as you see, it was well-covered with the stuff.


 



Since it snowed most of the day I spent the day knitting.  I cast on and knitted the second white-and-black yarn to see if it's more what I was thinking of for that single Christmas knit.  It might be.  To be honest I think I'll finish them both, at least the body of them both, to see which one is the right one.

01 December--Barbara Malcolm, Spies Don't Retire. 

Enough procrastinating, George thought, and held the paper up to begin reading.  There was no salutation, no return address, just a date, and then the letter started right in.

     It has come to our attention that living on the island of Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles, is a former Soviet agent (Cover: university professor) by the name of Dimitri Roskova.  Roskova was the lead suspect in the investigation into leaking of information concerning the Army’s research and development of an anti-gravity propulsion system being conducted at a facility outside Tilleryton in Windsor.

     During our investigation after the discovery that vital formulae and the diagrams of prototypes had been leaked, all trails pointed to a senior technologist on the project, a woman named Talia Shoreham.  It was determined that Ms. Shoreham (37 years of age & unmarried) was the sole member of the group, aside from the principals, who had access to both formulae and diagrams.  The investigation revealed that Ms. Shoreham, a lonely spinster according to co-workers, had taken a night class offered by her local university in Russian Literature taught by Dimitri Roskova.  Roskova (aged 49 years at the time) was in Great Britain on a faculty exchange from Moscow University and living in Aldenham.  He was retained to teach sixteen hours per week while doing research in the British Museum on  papers bequeathed to them by Feodor Dostoyevsky.  This research was corroborated by Mr. Amery Chirchpatrick, head curator of ephemera, of the Museum and copies of the logs of Roskova’s visits and requests for files are on file.

     After the sudden (non-suspicious) death of the adjunct slated to teach a night course in Russian Literature, Roskova was asked to step in.  Friends of Ms. Shoreham indicated that she, by virtue of having had a Russian great-grandmother whose life she romanticized, signed up for the class and was excited that the substitute teacher would be, to quote her directly, “an actual Russian.”  Friends expressed fears that Ms. Shoreham’s contact with Roskova would be a great disappointment to her, as few could live up to her romantic dreams.

     It was proved that Roskova was seen in a café near to the university on several occasions with a group of middle-aged women, including Shoreham, after the first weeks of class.  As the term went on, the population of said group diminished until finally, approximately half way through term, Ms. Shoreham and Roskova were meeting alone.  Employees of the café (Mrs. Lebnen’s, corner of Broad and Front in Aldenham, closed in 2001) reported that Ms. Shoreham and Roskova engaged in lively discussions pertaining to the material covered in the course and not much else.  One young woman charged with clearing tables and washing up soiled dishes did mention that she overheard Ms. Shoreham quizzing Roskova on current life in Russia.  The young lady remembers thinking that to her Russia didn’t sound like a place she’d want to live in or even visit, so she thought Ms. Shoreham was daft to be so interested.  No other meetings between Ms. Shoreham and Roskova were witnessed or reported.  Close questioning on numerous occasions of Ms. Shoreham’s acquaintances did not produce any further information on their relationship.

     Shortly after the discovery of the leaking of the project information Roskova’s faculty exchange term ended and he returned back to Moscow.

     Ms. Shoreham was questioned along with the rest of the people involved in the development of the anti-gravity propulsion system.  She came to the head of the suspects list when it was learned that in the week afterwards she met a final time with Roskova, again in public at the café, and upon the day after that meeting, she ended her life by her own hand.”

I finished drizzling the fruitcakes with boozy syrup this morning so they can go downstairs now to mature for a couple weeks before they're ready to be eaten.  I've been going over the list of people I want to give it to and I think I have enough.  There's the cleaning lady, the renters, my trainer, my hairdresser, my writing partner, the Friday Night Knitters (5), my children... and me.  Which adds up to 13... uh oh.  Maybe there's only 4 FNK and maybe one kid won't want any...  It'll work out, it always does.
--Barbara