A last thought on yesterday’s post: at the time Kurt’s wife and my father-in-law had that conversation, probably 15 years ago, I remember wondering why it was so important to her to know something that had happened years before–and why now, finally.

A little older, a little wiser, I get it now: she was trying to cope with the death of her brother by searching for a way to be thankful for the dramatic good that had been given him in his life.  To express gratitude towards a person who so much deserved it, to let him know his heroism and his kindness had never been forgotten.  (Or, by that point, to at least tell his family so as to make sure they knew that part of their father’s story, too.) And at the same time she wanted the comfort of knowing for absolute sure that all that was real.  It was.

And so Life–whatever way one is most comfortable describing it is okay with me, for me, it was a clear sign of a loving God–let it all come together for her to ease her pain.  I remember my father-in-law, after we got home from church that day, marveling over and over, Nobody else could have told her. Nobody else in that room that day is still here to tell the tale.  I’m the only one!

And I marvel at that meeting having been scheduled at just the right time, the driver from another town coming in for it and being at that one intersection at just the exact moment…

Which would have been meaningless had he chosen to just pass on by. But he did not.  He could never possibly know how many lives he touched by his caring that day.  The good that we do does live on.

Now.  In the where-moth-and-rust-doth-corrupt department: nine hats in nine days, and my fingers were starving for something back in my own comfort zone and routine. I had this marvelous skein of Creatively Dyed’s calypso-line Tempest laceweight that had been impatiently waiting its turn.

But it was so fine.  I wanted more instant gratification.  Let’s see, that Cashmere Superior in the stash, as long as it’s a splurge project anyway…

And thus Michelle came in and saw me working on this yoke.  In real light, the Cashmere Superior is a fairly subdued rust color, much improved by the Tempest. (I’ll try for a better photo in the daylight tomorrow. )

Now, as a parent, you can never teach your children all the things you know, and I’ll never learn all the things they know.   She’s a generation removed from the art-dealer-daughter life I grew up with.

And yet. She instantly recognized what I’d been thinking, and told me that “All that colorwork”–and she gave recognition in that word, the way she said it, to the actual and extensive work that had gone into creating that colorway–“is lost in that rust.”

“Well, not lost, but it is subdued.”

“Yes, but if you put it with a black strand it would really pop out.  Or red.  But better black.”

I looked at it a bit stunned.  She was absolutely right.  Black hadn’t even occurred to me.  (Wait–maybe because I have like about zero black yarn in my stash.  Knitters?  Or at least older-eyed knitters? You with me on that one?)  I said something about art dealers and backgrounds and how I ought to have picked up on that, and she grinned, “Well, I know clothes,” and went on to describe her best friend’s new outfit that was in exactly the Temptation colors and black.

Wait–(man am I slow)–that might have been a hint.

656 yards of the Cashmere Superior before I run out, 1200 of the Tempest.  If I use a slightly heavier yarn and bigger needles the second time around, I can definitely try it with black later.