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