More Parker at the zoo photos.

First the knitting story, then the knitter story.

I have this silk shawl I’ve been working on. I’ve put a ton of time into it and it only needs a few more days. Note that the needles are 3.5mm, US4s–quite small.

And to accommodate that, I changed the neck a lot from some of my earlier work.

There was this nagging feeling that kept telling me, as it grew steadily, slowly longer, that, you know, you might want to doublecheck that beginning edge, because if the V-neck goes down to your belly button…

So any number of times, hampered by the length of the circ, I stretched and measured it every way I could think of–except one.

Today it finally got to me. I have often told people to rinse their lace still on the needles, let it dry overnight, and then it will show you how it will look when it grows up.

I didn’t want to wait that long, and for the length of the rows I was knitting it would have taken two circular needles to do it anyway.

So. I went hunting for another #4 and for needle stoppers. Found two; needed four; used rubber bands as a makeshift and hoped they would be wide enough. I knew there was a great risk of ruining days’ worth of work, especially given how loosely I knit–the stitches could slip right over those and off. Maybe. But I needed to know.

And so I knitted halfway across the next row and carefully to a point where there were no yarnovers, only smaller stitches, switched to the new circular, attached a needle stopper to the end of the first and continued on across while trying not to snag the silk with the stopper; then at the end of the row I added rubber bands and the other stopper, making both circs endless and hoping they would hold.

The moment of truth.

I carried it all carefully to the bathroom. Put the cone down. Wished for Richard to hold the two points at the center just to be sure–but he was napping.

Well, then. And I put that shawl carefully over my shoulders–great, I snagged it on my hair clip, I should have remembered to take that out first, but mercifully they came back apart without grief. The covered brown needle tip hung down on one side, the green the other.

And then I looked at the shawl itself shining back at me.

You know that feeling when it seems like you’re knitting the most glorious thing you ever knitted in your life?

And the shawl was perfect. Generously sized to fit others well, too.

Story of the day number two:

It was Easter Eve and everybody was doing last minute grocery shopping at the same time.

I was at Trader Joe’s, where the lines tend to be close together, and after I got checked out I said to the next clerk over, a tall young man, “Did you knit your hat?”

“YES!” he exclaimed in great delight that someone had noticed! It was plain stockinette in a heathered gray, the ends curling slightly, with three or four decrease lines at the top. (Being a lot shorter than he was, the number was a guess.)

The woman he was checking out said the yarn looked so soft. Notice: not hat. Yarn. And their conversation was off and running and I was out and away.

I was so glad I took the risk. The whole place got happy.

I wish a blessed Easter and Passover to all who observe them, and joy to all.