I want to thank each one of you who has left a comment on Marguerite’s post; there is great comfort in reading those messages. Thank you to each person who simply Thought Good Thoughts, too; caring matters. The immense message of illness is that we’re all in this life thing together, looking out for each other.

And I want to thank each person who ordered a pattern from Lynda at http://home.comcast.net/~lmmichaluk/Lilly/ and http://luna-knits.blogspot.com/ She had a problem with IE with her computer for awhile there, and Karin’s comment gave her the heads-up she needed; it’s fixed now.

Meantime, Toni has a kiwi-faced clock on her blog to show which time zone she’s in. I got a good chuckle out of it, and told her she’d just triggered my next blog post. Ergo.

It was back in the day before we were on the Do Not Call registry (which expires soon, by the way, just a heads-up that you need to renew your place on it.) Stephanie Pearl-McPhee was doing her first book tour to the Bay Area, and I bought some Blue Sky Alpacas AlpacaSilk at the yarn store she spoke at, Stash, in Berkeley. I found several balls on the shelf, and they assured me they had more in the back, but with the crowd that night there was just no way–would I mind if they found it later and mailed it to me?

Sure, no problem.

I got a very sheepish message later: they didn’t have more after all. They were very sorry, but there was nothing they could do.

I wasn’t about to drive the 45 or so miles through the worst traffic in northern California to return it; I just had to try to find more of that dyelot somewhere else, then. I started poking around on the web and made a few phone calls.

One place was happy to say they had it. Great! They mailed it–and it was a different one. I reported back, they checked, and went, oh no! The dyelot number stated on the outer bag was the one I’d wanted, but the actual balls inside didn’t match it. Okay, scratch that one. I mailed them back.

The next place took my email and phone number and promised to get back to me when they had a moment to go check. Fine. It didn’t occur to me to tell them where I was.

At the time, we were getting many a cold call from random hopeful newbie Wall Street stockbrokers and the like. Occasionally, you would get one that did not stop to think that there was more than one time zone in this country. Sir, what on earth makes you think I would ever be interested in your spiel about investing in your proferred company at 5 am!?

So. It was dark o’clock, and we were out cold. The phone rang–you know, it’s great to be deaf…and my husband, assuming it was a Red Cross dispatcher, woke up and grabbed it, trying not to drop the old heavy princess phone on my head as he fumbled around for it.

Then he thrust the receiver at me, grumbling sleepily, “It’s your boiler-room yarn pushers in New York City. They want you to know they don’t have your dye lot.” Busted!

At that, I finally appealed directly to Blue Sky for any help on where I might be able to find what I wanted. They had some themselves, it turned out. And not only did they send it to me, but they generously gifted me with it for my troubles.

And so I redesigned Wanda’s shawl to match their yarn as my way of thanking them, and the yarn they gave me is there in that particular shawl that is pictured in my book. And here in this post.