You know, that header really needs a celery stick in the picture to finish it off, but we’re fresh out.  The charcoal shawl, she is finished.

I wrote a draft last night that I will finish when I finish the project it goes with.   A blog stash.  I can’t wait!

Last Thursday at Purlescence‘s knit night, I was feeling very broke, having just paid college tuition and college rent and the first half of my new hearing aids.  I took a good look around the shop, as I always do: looking at yarns is the best way to come up with new ideas.  Colors trigger memories, memories trigger patterns…

And so I noticed just the most drop-dead gorgeous new color ever over that-a-way, in a yarn from Claudia’s Handpaints that for right now was just plain out of my reach.  One look at it and I knew exactly whom it should be for.  Nothing else would do.  I hoped it wouldn’t sell out.  It was just so exquisitely THE color. (Okay, I’m suddenly stuck with Barbara Streisand singing “Misty watercolor memmmmmmoriesssss…” in my head. Shhh, stop, get out of my post!)

Sandi, one of the LYSOs, came over, checking up on me–I’d had a sudden severe bout with my dysautonomia two nights before, and I wasn’t going to mention it, but one look at my worried face and she’d decided to ask what was up.  Those bouts are when the brainstem and the blood pressure and the heart and lungs forget to all stay connected to each other for a little while there.  It had been rough.  I’d reacted to it with the thought, Tina Newton and Lisa Souza both just sent me yarn out of the goodness of their hearts and I am NOT going to die with it sitting in hanks in ziploc bags! Those are going to become LOVE first! BREATHE, you stupid body, BREATHE!!!

A little adrenalin goes a long way, and the body did this, Right-o, old chap, carry on.  And I was fine.  And that was that.

Sandi was hesitant to say it, so I did outright for her: knitting for others helps keep me alive.

And she handed me that Claudia silk I’d been admiring, and said, “Take it.”

Ohmygoodness!!!

And now I have a blog stash and I can’t say… yet. But Sandi–you’re a peach and I adore you.  Knit long and prosper well.