I wrote this draft and expected to be able to come home from knit night and gleefully hit Post!, and I’m going to anyway, but it was Nathania’s night off and she wasn’t there.  Kay called her at home saying I had something there at the shop for her; Nathania put it to a family vote, and not surprisingly, the whatever nebulous thing it might be got voted down.  Mom time is not to be tampered with.

I said to Kay a moment later, we should have told them there was homemade chocolate mousse cake waiting here for all of them.  Kay asked if I wanted to bring the shawl back tomorrow?  No?  It’s burning a hole through your pocket?

Oh, you betcha.  So I left it there for discovery in the morning, and since I took a wrong-time-of-day bad-lighting picture before I left, I’ve got one for this post, and Nathania will probably find out the details here first.  Here goes.

Nathania (scroll down to the second to last picture) went to go visit her friend Tina at Blue Moon Fiber Arts in Oregon recently and came back exclaiming over some of the new colorways Tina was about to put out, wishing she’d been able to bring some of them home.

Which led to some behind-the-scenes emailing and scheming.  I thought I’d given it away when I mentioned this Geisha yarn in Oma Desala had arrived, along with the Potomac colorway Tina had concocted for me to play with in memory of our childhood homes near each other’s on the Maryland side of the river.  But no.

At knit night last week, I pulled two shawls out of my bag to show Nathania: one was the gray, not yet gone to its recipient, the other, my Geisha yarn shawl from awhile ago, where I’d used the full skein to see how much length I could get out of it. It totally swamps me, but then, I’m a fairly small person.

Both of those were in a particular pattern, I told her, that I needed to test on various body sizes–would she be willing to try this one on for me?  Sure.

She dutifully went over to the mirror with the Geisha; yes, it’s long enough, yes, it’s wide enough. Very nice.  She handed it back to me and the old pang hit me hard that I had knit a shawl for Sandi, I had knit one for Chloe, the other two owners of Purlescence, but I had not knit one yet for her.  And she would have loved it if I had, but instead, here she was, handing the shawl back.  Ouch.

I had wanted to for quite some time, badly, but what to make and what to make it of just hadn’t come to me at all.  I had to wait to see and I didn’t know why and it bothered me.  I had been looking for a yarn for over a year that would speak to me–and all I could come up with is I just felt, no, it’s not time yet. Something’s missing.

Till she took that trip and Tina and I started talking behind her back.  What Nathania didn’t know was I was having her try on my shawl to know how long I should continue this one for her.

And I knew now. This wasn’t just for me. This wasn’t just for her. This was to bring Tina into the circle of this shawl, too, in happy anticipation and love in together creating something to make our friend happy.

And all those times I’d wondered what pattern I would ever knit for her: as soon as I had the right yarn ready to go, I just knew.  She and her husband had met in a singing group.  They are musicians.  And so, to celebrate two people I adore having found each other and having chosen to live happily ever after,  I started with the Michelle shawl, named for my own daughter and knitted here in celebration of her daughters, to the end of the yoke; from there, I switched to the Concert Scarf pattern, repeat after extra repeat across, to make a one-of-a-kind shawl but at the same time one that anybody with a copy of “Wrapped in Comfort” can follow. The only change is that you’ll need one fewer stitch in the increase row before the main body, and there you go.

I don’t usually put busy colorways with busy patterns, but here, it’s perfect: how they met and their love of music blends into the background of the overall fabric of their lives.  I’m really pleased with how this came out. And very gratified that, at last, I got to knit this shawl: to celebrate Nathania, for her close friend Tina’s sake, and to honor as well, with the pattern, the man who loves Nathania best of all and whom she loves best of all.

Hey, you guys: there’s some leftover chocolate mousse wheat-free anniversary cake waiting for you.