I hadn’t checked out her blog in a couple of months.  I wish I had.  Looking today, I find she had a fiberarts blogroll of only a dozen blogs–and one was mine.  That means a lot to me.

Her youngest was the same age as my third child.

Five years ago this week and last, I was in the hospital in critical condition, and Ruth Schooley, one of the listmoms of the Knitlist, was checking up on me. I had a Hiptop, the first of the cellphones to hit the market that did email (etc, etc). It was my link to the outside world, once I had the strength again to type into it.  Lying down at first, unable to handle its weight, then, as I got better, eventually I was able to sit up to type back to her and to a few others who weren’t afraid to hear about life at its far edges.  I could read my Knitlist messages and still feel a sense of belonging to my previous normal life outside Stanford Hospital, and Ruth forwarded a few from me to the list so that my phone’s addy wouldn’t be exposed to the whole world.  Much comfort came my way from that.

She was always the voice of calmness in any storm.  She was always one to come immediately help out.  At her most piqued, she would wave her dpns in the air and remind us that she had pointy sticks and she knew how to use them.  The laughter always helped.

Ruth posted on her blog on July 14.  Monday.

Tuesday she was suddenly gone.

I do not know the details. I do know she touched many, many knitters who take part in the online community, and she will be sorely missed.  To the Rocketman and to the children, I, along with many others, grieve with you; you are not alone.  Ruth saw to that.

I love knit night at Purlescence.  I was going through serious knitters deprivation while we were on vacation and then they were too for awhile there.

So here’s the scene: I asked if I could have the shawl back that they had in the window, the Julia pattern from “Wrapped in Comfort,” a little one made out of one skein of Handmaiden Casbah on big needles to stretch the yardage as far as it could go.  It’s softer than the blue Bare one I’d been working on, and softness was something the circumstances really needed.

Kay not only gave it back to me, it had been held on the model with a shawl pin made by a local artist, which she put in my hands and asked that I send it with the shawl to the woman whose husband Marc is so very ill.

Wow.

I regretted not having the Casbah to knit the shop another one; they have it on backorder, and it hadn’t come in.

At which point a woman across the room, Mary, who’d been quietly spinning away at her wheel, and who I hadn’t even known had heard any of that, reached into her knitting bag, stood up and walked over to me, and asked how many skeins it had taken to knit that shawl that was now in my hands.  One?  Good, then!  And she held out a skein, a beautiful blue, Casbah no less, and urged me to take it.

It took me a moment to sink in.  Wow.  I could knit it up and gift it in turn to the dear friends who own that shop.  And that’s what Mary was hoping I would do.  She was giving me her Casbah and blessing all of us in the face of the loss that this other woman that none of them had ever met was dealing with.  We were all in this life thing together.

I was fighting tears.  Wow.

Cast on.

Suddenly there’s so much to process in a hurricane all at once.

A new relative we just added into the extended family just found out he has a malignant brain tumor. Metastasized.  He has young children.

A young man my son met through their internships in DC turns out today to be Marc, the son of a friend whose husband was killed in an accident just after they moved away from here back when Marc was in I think kindergarten.  I lost touch with his widowed mom when she moved the second or third time and have wanted for years to get a chance to reach out again and talk to her.

My son called in great excitement to tell me, not waiting for me to get to my email for him to share the news.  Marc emailed just now that his mom was just as excited as I am at our all finding each other again.  Synchronicity is wonderful stuff.  And he mentioned something to me about his wife–while I’m struggling to picture the little boy as the grown man.  Wow.

The day his family moved away, a number of us at the young-child stage got together at their apartment on Stanford campus, where Bryant, his dad, had just finished his PhD, to box and scrub and watch kids and help out.  Anything to lessen the pain of their moving.  Bryant bought us all pizza at the end of the day, a rare luxury for us all, and we sat or stood under the scrawny pine trees just outside their door they were about to close for the last time, reveling in the friendship with the poignancy of loss that they were leaving.  How much Bryant was going to, just a few months later, we could never have known.

When Bryant died–he was a pedestrian, struck by a passing car–there was a tremendous need here to do something.  We their friends here got together with one person setting up a video camera, and shared our stories of their father’s kindnesses from people the boys would likely not even remember when they grew up.  So that they had something to remember Bryant by, so they would know the kind of man he was, so they would have his good image to live up to.

So their father would be real to them.  Compassionate and human.

Marc marveled that I remembered his brother’s broken leg. I marveled that he remembered any of us at all. But he did.  But then…  Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised.

Get out the video camera, take out the tape recorders.  Write up questions to ask.  Get the older folks talking about back in the day.  Their children and great great grandchildren will cherish every word.

Meantime, I’ve definitely got some knitting to do.

1. A bird’s-foot view:

Lene posted a photo she took of bird tracks that were probably made by pigeons, and it instantly hit me that if you turned them towards you and drew a circle around them, you had the Peace symbol. The Dove of Peace–I wondered, whoever drew the original, was that their inspiration? So I googled, found this, and have to think they did not make that connection. But it’s fascinating how well the two symbols converge.

2. Catapulted:

I was reading reviews of the Shake Awake, a silent alarm clock to put under one’s pillow, and had to laugh at one person’s descriptions of why it was such an improvement for her sound-sleeper hearing-impaired son: she said that before that, they’d had to throw the cat at him every morning to get him to finally stir.

3. Toucans help too:

I had a cardiology appointment this week, and if ever a doctor is likely to be suddenly interrupted and delayed, it’s a heart specialist. (It was just a follow-up to verify that yes, I’m fine there, my cardiac cough went away when that lupus flare did this past winter.) Definitely a bring-your-knitting appointment. As I waited, a very well-dressed elderly woman was wheeled into the waiting room by her attendant, who caught my eye, nodded at my stitches, and silently smiled at me.

The old one in her string of pearls and silk sat there in her wheelchair looking terribly bored and unhappy; it took me awhile to glance down from my knitting and notice that her lower legs were scabbed over in signs of old sores, many of them. Her shoes were perfect but her skin gave her away. She avoided eye contact. I noticed her attendant had pearl earrings on too, and I thought, you’re both generous souls, then; good for you.

I thought about it, then searched in my purse, looking for a particularly bright and cheerful one. And intricate. I wanted intricate. Something particularly nicely made. I found one, a toucan-looking bird, and just as the nurse opened the door and called my name, I reached across the small aisle between the seats and offered the old woman the finger puppet. A child’s toy? But an adult’s delight as well in the skill and pride that someone, somewhere in Peru had put into creating the piece.

The old woman’s face totally lit up in surprise and delight, and behind her, her attendant’s did too. So did the nurse’s. I didn’t want to delay the office by stopping to describe where I get those from, that no, I didn’t knit it, so as the door closed behind us going down the hallway, I mentioned to the nurse. I figured, if the patient wanted to talk to her about it, she could tell her herself. If they had time. The nurse’s call, not mine; the important part had already happened.

It’s hard to be old and lonely. Saying to somebody that they are noticed, even just in a small moment, can make a world of difference to them, and the rest of us too. It was so easy to do.

4. Now she sees it:

My daughter had an eye doctor appointment and I don’t even remember why I came with and waited for her, but I brought my knitting and did. A woman, I’m guessing Chinese, was walking past, saw the work in my hands, and stopped on the spot and came over and sat down next to me. It is amazing what you can convey with pantomime: she had never seen circular needles before. I demonstrated how you use them just like straights, and that no, the circular shawl I was knitting wasn’t a closed circle, it was back and forth; I pulled out my book and showed her how it would look finished. Oh! Then she wanted to know how to do lace. I taught her on the spot. Ssk, slants this way, k2tog, slants that, purl into a yarnover this way. By the time I left, she had it and she was thrilled. I couldn’t ask her how long she’d been knitting, I couldn’t ask her anything not communicated with waving hands and needles. But there is a universal joy in sharing knowledge and in learning how to do something new. I can just picture her running to me, wherever she is now, with her needles in hand to show me what she’s making now.

5. It’s all your fault:

And if you bought ME a Shake Awake, this being California, I’d probably need that cardiologist, thinking the San Andreas was going off bigtime.

I wrote this a few days ago, and waited permission to post it:

We went to a celebration tonight, one like no other I have been to. She’d told me, when she’d called, that she wanted to “take a page from your book,” but she wrote her own here and I love her penmanship on the page of our lives that was written tonight.

After my hospitalization, I’d thanked my doctors and nurses individually, with knitting. She brought hers home en masse.

Marguerite had invited her medical team and just a very few close friends who had played roles in supporting her in her ordeal to come to her home as the time of her treatments came to an end. This was for the doctors, the nurses, the woman at the clinic who scheduled her appointments: she felt she owed much. She wanted to give back. She wanted to thank each of us for playing a role in sustaining and affirming her life in the face of her cancer, to have us celebrate with her her last week of radiation. Her teenage son snapped pictures of the small crowd, keeping record.

She didn’t speak very long, just a few words that said much; she let the music, and the very act of playing it, convey the rest of it for her. Her husband, Russ, was on his grand piano, and two friends and one of her doctors joined in with their own instruments. Joyful music, lively music, a touch of jazz here, of Bach there, music that acknowledged the grief, music that returned to the underlying joy. Music that showed life honestly and in true celebration.

I can’t tell you how much it meant to me. To life!

We went to a delightful wedding reception tonight; the groom grew up with my kids, and we got to meet the bride’s parents tonight, very nice people. Dan and Caitlin are like Richard and Kim: they bring out the best in each other. It was beautiful to see. (I teased Dan for a moment about his dandelion corsage, which startled him into checking real quick–no, it was a baby yellow chrysanthemum, honest, Dan!)

It was my first chance all day, and seemed clearly my last, to participate in World Wide Knit in Public Day. I pulled out my needles during a quiet moment, felt guilty, cast on about a dozen stitches, and stashed it quickly back in my purse.

On the way home, our daughter said she needed to stop at Kinko’s a moment. Huzzah! WWKIP Day, here I come!

While she was printing out some materials, I looked around: one guy looked sound asleep, waiting for his stuff to be done, another looked grimly busy, two were semi-oblivious, and one caught my eye, noticing the oddball with the yarn by the windows.

My husband came over a moment to where I had cast away those cast ons and started over and knitted from there, and I explained what the day was all about. He rolled his eyes. “No, really! It really is being observed worldwide today!”

He came back with the perfect answer for a man married to me: “I didn’t know it was a closet sport.”

Now is it easier to see? The Constance shawl, after I listened to the galloping horse whinnying “Neigh!” Reknitting from the double-wound tube was enough of a tangle when I first picked it up yesterday that I knew I had to get past that point before I put it away in the ziploc again for the night. So I did, with no problems after that initial moment.

Nancy’s penguin trying to claim credit for the blue ocean of Bare yarn.

Diana trying on my mother-of-the-bride Camelspin-yarn shawl at Purlescence’s knit night last night. The pattern has memories of strawberry picking with my family, growing up, and the wide, flowing Potomac River knitted into its stitches. I have a tradition of always dipping a toe into the water along the banks of that river every time I fly home. Now I can take it with me without having to crash through the canoe.

The pelicans we saw going to the post office yesterday.

“Is it fragile?” the clerk asked.

“Lemons from my Meyer tree for someone who misses California,” I answered her. She loved it.  We just hoped the box doesn’t start leaking juice before it arrives. We put it inside one of their all-weights-fits-one-price box (good thing!)

The last amaryllis of the extended season, a Picotee–the last bud just opened.

Mom and I went to Purlescence tonight, where I showed her off, got to hold Nathania’s baby (this is a picture from about a month ago that I finally got to work) and tried to make friends with my shawl project again, which kind of sputtered out in the wedding preparations. But when we got home, I ended up pulling out my drum carder. This box finally came yesterday, after the post office had lost it, and I wanted to play with my new toy.

Nancy and I had gone in together on an order of Seacell/merino 70/30 mill ends: wonderful, soft stuff, and cheap. But what you don’t pay in price, you pay in time and effort, this being not smooth roving but the stuff that didn’t quite make it that far and got put aside. Well, about time I put that drum carder to good use. (Are you still sure you wanted to sell it to me, Laura?…I can always mail it to your new house if you change your mind…)

I’ve never seen undyed Seacell before, much less spun nor dyed it. I am going to find out. (Tomorrow, as I glance at the clock. Or maybe next week, as I glance at the calendar.)

“Begin: the rest is easy.” Don’t remember where I read that in high school, but it’s stuck with me ever since. And now I have.

My daughter and I had some discussion last weekend at the hotel as to what this looked like, triggered by my delight at the trilobyte posted on the wall. And no, that is not a computer term.

I got told that clearly it was a screw. Looking again, I see a nutcracker. Maybe a lobster that lost its claws in an argument at a restaurant.

An extra bit of joy to share this week: you remember this post? Writing it is what got me to finally go google Jonathan, his last name being common enough in the US that I had long thought the idea of finding him absolutely laughable.

He was right there in plain sight. Third entry in today’s results and on the second page the day I went looking. He got his PhD after all and did his postdoc at Harvard, his area of study and his whole life having been changed by the experience I wrote about; he’s been able to bring much good into the world through his work. (I’m the one saying that, and he’s out there blushing.) I wrote him, it took a few weeks to get past his university’s email filters, but he got it and I now have his permission to tell you all, it all worked out for him after all.

And just to make it a bit better even yet? His mom’s a knitter.

“You may now kiss the bride.”

You may all applaud me on my restraint: it was all I could do, but I managed not to jump straight up from my chair and shout, “YAY!!!!”

If you drove on I-5 in La Jolla yesterday and saw a group of happy people snapping pictures right at the bottom of where the beam of the car obscures the view in this picture taken from that freeway on the way out, that was us.

If you remember Kathy from my book, that was her town in California, and I tried to figure out how to drop by and say hi to her mom for the first time in 28 years, but my time was too short and just too tightly choreographed.

There were moments every wedding ought to have: the old friend of my mom’s from long ago in Maryland, long since moved to San Diego, walking in the door, seeing my mother, having no idea she was the grandmother of the groom, and her jaw dropping on the floor: “FRANCES!!!”

There were other delightful moments: ain’t nobody can dance like my son-in-law. My oldest kindly lent her husband to our young niece, who danced beautifully with him and then looked way up at him with the widest Bambi eyes that said, That was wonderful, did I do that right? Can we do it again!? And then they did.

There were ohmygosh moments, like when the wait staffer suddenly grabbed the bride’s bouquet off her table and blew fiercely on it: the edges of the flower spray had caught in the tea candle. Close one. Then the groom later put his dinner napkin on the table to go dance the first dance, suddenly realized he’d covered over another tea candle and grabbed it off quick before they had a matching set of moments.

There was the groom’s friend who danced Cossack-style.

There were the two sides of the bride’s family, getting a rare chance to come together again and renew acquaintances again as they all included us in on their joy now, too.

There were many, many people clearly having the time of their lives. I tell you, we were CELEBRATING! To LIFE!!!

There were very kind words from the father of the bride, thanking us for raising such a fine son. And you both, too, we told him and his wife. You too. Well done. So very well done. Your Kim is a peach.

There was a husband-and-wife photographer couple who so much belonged to all of us in the moments of the day as we did to them and each other and everybody and…! Such a gathering of hearts! The wife of the couple came over to me before they left to give and receive a hug goodbye, with a fervent wish from me that they lived near us, felt likewise. We would have beautiful pictures forever, not just in photographs. I certainly hope someone snapped some of them, too, for me.

There were pictures in other people’s cameras that haven’t gotten to me yet; I kept either forgetting mine or being unable to manage its clunky presence. If ever I wished I had something smaller and definitely lighter, but that was okay, there were other cameras in abundance.

There was the bride’s elderly maternal grandmother, wishing to me that she had the energy of these young folks to dance with her husband like that. I guess that was a declaration that became intent: a few minutes later, she and her sweetheart were swaying gently together to the music with the rest.

There was a friend’s musical piece playing in my head, “Sail Away,” a tune that has always spoken to me of love and belonging, in the quieter moments as I watched the boats going past our hotel room’s deck overlooking the bay from Coronado Island. My friend had no idea what a perfect future backdrop he was creating for me when he gifted me with his CD. Hummingbirds and terns flitted past our window as boats swished through the waters and on out of my sight.

There were two young people dearly and deeply in love, who laughed for sheer joy many times in the day, and a whole flock of people come to tell them how much we loved both of them and how glad we were that they’d found and come to cherish each other. And how grateful we were that they’d brought the rest of us together in their doing so.

She liked it! Hey Mikey! Jade Sapphire cashmere in lavendar, fingering weight, four skeins, the Bigfoot pattern.

So would this be Niagara Falls as seen from the Canadian side or the American? (No, no, that’s not where my son and his bride are going on their honeymoon–at least not as far as I know!)

If one were to get married in the middle of the street, this is what I’d go for, flower petals circling down in the soft breeze on a glorious spring day.

This was one of the streets we drove through on our way to my piano lessons, which were held twice a week, as I was growing up. I saw this photo and instantly heard the classical piece whose name escapes me but which I could go play the intro to right now, that came on on radio station WTOP as Mom drove home: announcing that it was 5:00 and time for the news.

But Mom made a point of exclaiming over the blossoms and making sure my friend Kathy and I took them in, too, as we went along, not getting too distracted away from the moment. It would be over all too soon as it was, and then you’d have to wait another year.

These cherry trees, 1200 of them, were I believe the same variety as the more famous ones planted along the Tidal Basin. This is the Kenwood neighborhood in Maryland near the DC line, and one of my fellow piano students lived just off to the left. Photo from http://www.pbase.com/bryan_murahashi/image/15389068

First, the plums. This is two stories, really, but a lot happened yesterday.

Our house came with an ornamental plum tree that a previous gardener had experimented with and had grafted in a branch of a producing plum tree; it was the oddest looking thing. Burgundy leaves, a graceful shape, and then this one awkward green thing shooting happily off to the side like a two-year-old brought to a formal adults-only party. After a few years, though, that branch got what looked like the mumps and died. Some kind of borer, apparently.

I missed it, so a neighbor gave us some of his plums, and I returned the favor with a jar of plum jam. He thought that was great! So he went back in his yard, picked more, and I made more and gave him a jar from each batch. I had to weigh those plums first, I was dying to know: 45 pounds. His wife was appalled when she found out and apologized to me, while I just laughed it off, saying, hey, I would never have had them to play with otherwise, don’t sweat it!

I’d ignored the recipe that had come with the jars specifying that one had to laboriously remove the skin from each plum. Bag that. For me, everything but stem and stone: the tartness of the skin adds so much depth to the flavor, like sour cherries, only better. You take the bitter with the sweet.

I’ve wanted my own plum tree for years. It would involve digging and putting in a drip system to a far corner of the yard that didn’t have water. We never got around to it.

Part two, written last night:

All the times I’ve said a prayer that I wouldn’t forget. I’d planned this for a year; well, actually, ever since I first got my manuscript accepted.

And yet somehow, on the actual day, I forgot. Given the circumstances, that’s breathtakingly awful, but I did. But I got saved, and so by extension did E, by an offhand comment by my son, who’d called in the evening after the phone had been busy all day yesterday.

Isn’t that the way it so often is? We ask God for help, and He nudges some other person to do some random thing that was just exactly what we needed, while they have no clue and often never will if you don’t speak up and tell them. Although, in this case, it was immediately apparent to both of us.

“Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!” And then my son happened to mention that he’d found out that his future mother-in-law had gone to high school with my friend E.

E!!! Oh my stars, and it’s nearly 8 pm!!!

From the other end of the line, there was the sudden, “‘Bye, Mom, you need to go.” He knew. And go I immediately did, without stopping to comb my hair, just run!

E’s son, who had gone to elementary and middle school with my oldest, while he was away at college, his folks had gotten the phone call no parents should ever have to get. The rest of that story is theirs to tell, not mine. My oldest and I attended his memorial service.

After a great deal of thought as to what would be appropriate, I knitted her a lace stole in navy blue: a color that acknowledged the darkness and the hurt, a color that spoke of the dawn that I promised with each stitch would still be able to come, however long away, and yes, it would be a long way away, I understood that. I wanted to be there, an arm reached around her in warmth and presence whenever I was not. Her son had been artistic and giving, and I wrote a note to go with it saying that I was sure he wanted to comfort her, too: I wanted to be his hands for him in creating this.

That soft lace was nothing, it was everything: it was what I knew how to do to say I cared.

I wasn’t sure when the most appropriate time would be to give it to her, and somehow I dragged my feet. But one day, after praying to get it right for her sake, the answer came in the sudden strong feeling: NOW. Go *NOW.* So much so that I made my kids wait on the lunch they were preparing for me till I got back, and I simply rushed out the door and made that delivery right then.

It was Mother’s Day.

The following spring, I was at Kepler’s for a booksigning by Rachel Remen. I bought an extra copy of her “My Grandfather’s Blessings.” One of Dr. Remen’s patients had gone through similar circumstances and I knew it would help E to feel she wasn’t alone; someone else out there somewhere knew what it was like, more than I, with all my best intentions, ever could. I explained briefly to Dr. Remen, who inscribed it just for E, hoping, along with me, to offer her comfort.

I brought it to her on Mother’s Day.

And every year since then, I have gone to her house on that day with something by which to say, I remember. I’m thinking of you. I want to see you and I want to be with you for a moment on this day. The first time I ever got an amaryllis to bloom in May, its timing was just right, and I took it to E. On Mother’s Day.

Some pains are forever, but over time, the years add up, and E has the delightful distraction now of two small grandsons and the fact that her daughters live nearby, so she gets to see them all often. One of them pulled up with her family as E and I were talking. The joy has been quietly growing, and it’s been good to see and to be just a small part of it by making sure I visit on that day. Without fail. For this year, my plan had been to bring her a copy of my book.

“‘Bye, Mom!”

E had a vase full of flowers ready and a waiting dish of food she’d made me to gift me back with, and thank goodness I got there in time before the day was up. There was still daylight outside. Thank you, God, for speaking to my child when I wasn’t paying attention.

My attention might slip. But His hadn’t.

And now, what my children gave me for Mother’s Day: my own plum tree. My older son is flying in tonight and will be installing the drip system. It is a gift not only of fruit but of the attitude of looking to a future it once seemed I wouldn’t have, a chance to make plum jam from my very own tree again.

I absolutely can’t wait to bring some to E with the first crop that’s big enough for a batch.

It took a moment to sink in, and then she suddenly exclaimed, “Mom! You’re spinning! I haven’t seen you spinning in” (pauses to think a moment) “years!”

I think it’s been two years since I gave Robert my angora roving. The (now gone) Robin and Russ Handweavers store once listed 70/30 Chinese angora/acrylic roving for clearance at eight dollars a pound; given that most of their customers were, I’m guessing, fiber snobs like me, that acrylic was a dealkiller and the stuff had just sat there. Eight bucks!

Mind you, premium handplucked French pure angora yarn, with each bunny individually groomed and cared for daily, tends to run at about a dollar a gram (as well it should, for that much work). A gram. Compare that to qiviut–or even vicuna. Handplucked angora, especially, fluffs out like nothing else out there, if carefully taken care of. It also felts if you breathe on it too hard.

I bought one pound from R&R, just to experiment with on my wheel, wondering why on earth someone had mixed bunny with something so lowbrow. This was probably ten years ago. The Chinese fibers were all random lengths; handplucked from molting rabbits this wasn’t. But still. I assumed it would be difficult to dye, because the acrylic would be impervious, and yet somehow, when I spun and dyed it, you couldn’t tell one fiber apart from another, and the stuff was, even if not as soft as French, definitely–I mean, this was still (mostly) bunny fur! Sheared four times a year. Wish I could grow my hair that fast.

So. I called Russ’s store back, asked how much they had left of it, and bought the whole lot, maybe fifteen pounds. I knew that that would give me the freedom to go play with this luscious stuff for anybody any time without worrying about the price of the frivolity–just go enjoy.

And I did. But boy did I sneeze while those bits of fluff flew as I spun.

I made a number of things out of it, but ultimately, my body got the better of me. I spent a long, hard time, several years, where any extra expenditure of energy left me gasping for breath or simply too wiped out for the day, and handspinning just took more out of me than I could manage. A little ironic, I thought, given what I had named my website. One of my children breaks out in hives if she touches angora, it turns out, and that was all the more reason to not spin this particular stuff.

Robert spins as well as weaves. He taught his elementary school classroom about the tradition of the medicine blanket like the one he made me, and asked them whom they would want to weave one for.

One child said his grandpa had cancer. Another child raised their hand and said *they* had had cancer–which no one in the room had known. Wow. And so they got to work, warp and weft, working together and individually, a lesson put into action on acknowledging what life is and what we can do for each other about it.

And so it was only right: I gave Robert that bag of roving. It was down to maybe eight pounds by then. I knew it would go to the best possible use at his house. He told me later his surprise that it tended to make a heavy yarn, and I nodded that yes, it does–quite pleased that he’d started to spin it. Maybe to please me, to be able to tell me he had, but hey. It will wait patiently for its time. It did for me.

Jasmin got me talked into going in on a Crown Mountain Farms order with her on some hand dyed merino roving a few months ago, and when it didn’t look like I was going to get it spun, she spun the first pound for me. Wonderful gesture, gorgeous yarn. And you know? I had another pound still. It pulled at me.

Last week I sat down and got my first bobbin spun up, picking out most of the lighter areas of the roving first. Then after a few days, I did the second, picking out most of the brighter pink areas. The resulting skein is brighter and lighter than Jasmin’s, and the darker sections left in the bag mean I can’t match my one skein. But that’s okay. It got me started spinning again, it showed me I could, and that was mission enough.  Jasmin, once again, I owe you. The yarn is, as always, a thicker one than the fingering to lace weights I generally knit these days; that may be a contributing reason why I haven’t spun much. I don’t have the feeling in my fingertips required for making a very fine yarn.

But. I am inordinately pleased with myself. It has just the very slightest degree of torque in the wet skein, a sign of my being out of practice, but not enough to impact the final fabric. It’s almost perfect.

I have some seacell/merino mill ends waiting for my drum carder and then my wheel. It’s awfully good to be back.

Come ON dear, we have to GO, I tried to hurry him.

But in the end, we ended up leaving not that much later than I had been planning on anyway, and in the end, it would have made not one iota of difference either way.

Googlemaps notes a distance of 223 feet to merge onto Cancar Drive.  That was the fast part of the trip: 20 minutes.  I think half the population of the Bay Area was trying to go where we were trying to go.  I was marvelling at all the cars, thinking, I haven’t seen traffic like this since the Loma Prieta earthquake at 5:04 pm, where everybody was trying to go home at once and none of the streetlights worked.  Wow.

We creeped up to the faire’s parking lot and got waved on past.  At four minutes to noon, I figured Stephanie was probably done–I dialed Jasmin from the passenger seat.

It rang, she picked it up, and I heard about five words. Stephanie over a mike.  Then clapping, as Jasmin tried to make herself heard over it.  She had an extra copy.  She’d also talked to Stephanie beforehand, and Stephanie had told her how much she was looking forward to seeing me.  Thank you, Jasmin, thank you, Stephanie, that helps very much!  It really does.  I needed that.

Judging by where people were walking from, I was going to have to walk a mile in the noontime sun to get back to where Stephanie was going to be signing after the now-finished talk, assuming we were able to get parked and walk back there before she was completely gone.  Gotta watch that wonder publicist of hers.

Richard told me, “I’m not going to tell you what to do.  I CAN’T tell you what to do.”  (Heh.  He’s onto me.)

And with that we bailed.  The northbound freeway traffic facing us was well snarled up to that exit.  We walked in the door at home, I glanced at the computer, and just at that moment it pinged.  Email from Lene.  Hoping I was having a good time there.

And that’s when I finally cried.