Thank you so much to everybody for all your support and kind words.  They will be monitoring Michelle’s counts carefully; she’s doing fine.  And Richard feels good about how he did on that test.

We went!  Gigi and Jasmin aka The Knitmore Girls and No-Blog-Rachel and I carpooled up to Santa Rosa to see Stephanie. We left early and came home late and had a blast.

Stephanie gave her talk; the bookstore sat me where I could lipread, which was wonderful, but I’m afraid I still missed far too much.  But what I did hear was thoughtful, inspiring, insightful, and very, very funny.  I love that one of our own got Barack Obama to hold her sock on her needles.

Stephanie announced it was time now to sign books–and then instead, came around the table and first threw her arms around me.  Then she turned back around the table again to her seat and started, pre-boarders first.  We hung back and visited.  When it was my turn, she asked me to grab my book for her picture to be taken with, and I went for hers while my friends went, No, she means yours, silly!  I’m not convinced, but either way, look what picture I got!  I had to crop it way down to get WordPress to take it.  Hmm.  Given a choice between slicing her off at the forehead or slicing my book, um, yeah, I don’t think that would be the help with her hair she was talking about.

Laura came!  She told me she always keeps spare needles and yarn at the hospital where she works, just because, well, you never know, right?  (I see every knitter reading this nodding yes.)  She’d recently had a patient who’d been brought in under emergency circumstances, no chance to pack, whom she was talking to–and…

…Hang on a second.  Stephanie, in her talk, mentioned the satisfaction of knitting a particularly nice pair of socks while at the same time knowing that most of it was going to spend its life unseen inside some shoes.  I’ve got an answer to that: Laura’s patient saw a flash of color as Laura was leaving the room, and called out after her, hoping Laura would hear. She did.

Only another knitter would have instantly realized that those were handknit socks.  Only another knitter would have realized that that means either Laura was a knitter, or Laura was dear enough to a knitter for that level of effort and that if so, that knitter also knew Laura would appreciate them.  (Laura had made them.)  Only another knitter, or perhaps someone deemed worthy to be knitted for, would get how dire the patient’s need was.  Yarn!  Oh, please, anything, do you have any?  Laura ran down the hall and got her size 7s and some Encore and gave her patient a promise of more in that dyelot as needed.

Now that’s my kind of medical insurance.

(Hey, Jasmin–I wasn’t really kinnearing you. I was just being a klutz as I turned off the camera, and guffawed when I saw the result.)