On the other hand…

This, on size 4.5 needles and finer yarn than the original in the book,

finished becoming this.

I decided the best way to thank Rachel for the gift of her time and her wrists Saturday was to pay it forward: by knitting up and giving away the qiviut fiber she’d spun up and then had insisted on giving back to me. That had been on my good-intentions list for awhile.

Procrastination, however, had not cured me of being a little afraid of touching it. One must experiment, one must frog a little, when playing with a new yarn of a very definite length and no more.  One must see what kind of width vs length vs pattern I could get out of it.

Well, now I really owed her, so today I’m here to say that Rachel’s superfine handspinning of dryer-lint-fine qiviut is something that will stand up to being (oh so very gently) ripped out. It did fuzz a bit when I did. Just those first few rows–umm, wrong needle size. Didn’t like.  Try again. Um, wrong stitch count, won’t have enough.

I thought.

I expected to just whiz through that small ball in no time.  It has been thwarting my expectations in wonderful ways.  Out of 24 g, I really have 16 still left?  Really?  Unblocked, I’ve got 20.5″ already–I was expecting to get a cowl’s worth but instead it’s going to come out an actual scarf. (I didn’t knit it in the round out of sheer optimism.  Definitely paid off.)

Details: the lace pattern of the main body of the Michelle shawl from “Wrapped in Comfort,” plus an extra stitch each edge for a solid selvedge. I cast on 27 stitches on size 4.5mm.

I bought the fiber hand-dehaired from the owner of the animal.  This yarn is so exquisitely soft, the best qiviut can be, and oh, it is so warm. Can you just picture having your own Alaskan Musk Ox to comb the undercoat from?  Or even making socks out of this stuff to keep your feet really really warm on the ice? (But the idea of wearing holes in it! No thank you–I’ll knit my own holes in and call it lace.)

Because–Frankly, my dear, I don’t qiviut a darn.

But I have been pushed around lately by the fact that a) I’ve got the falcon cam on the big monitor attached to the husband’s Mac, because b) that site crashes my Firefox Ubuntu absolutely every time. Completely. Gone to lunch, ‘bye. (Which is why this year I haven’t posted the link. Don’t worry, that’s the link to the link.)

So tonight Richard was teaching me basic stuff on his machine, like how to open a new window and why it wasn’t working when I tried to. How to change the size of the window (so help me, that was designed by someone with sharper eyes than mine.)

It’s like knitting lace: it used to be, I didn’t know how, I didn’t (I told myself) particularly want to know how, but it bugged me that it was something I couldn’t do–but it was knitting!  I eventually tried to teach myself, but at the time there was just really nothing out there and certainly nothing that told exactly how one was supposed to, say, purl, much less knit, into a yarnover of the previous row and which way one was to wrap the yarn, much less that it changed depending on what came before and what after.

Now, of course, it’s all as automatic to me as breathing, you just sit down with the needles and go:  the Barbara Walker books from the last big knitting craze of the 70’s were finally reprinted, and I made myself slog through row after row with one eye on her first Treasury of Knitting Patterns directions and the other on the work in my hands.

A swatch. Then an afghan in a simple pattern, trying to drill it into my brain while learning to read my stitches, trying to learn not to panic and what to do if I dropped a stitch, how to put it all back together when it’s not simple knit and purl but with direction and–well, you know. One dropped stitch can unravel two or three below it and then that many more again each from there, and, yeah.

And then a second afghan.  Trying to practice at it enough for long enough to make it worth the time spent learning how.

And how!, now.

So eventually I put my own book out there that prefaced with the laceknitting directions, verbal but also pictorial, that were exactly what I’d gone looking for and could not find all those years ago.

I think it’s a pretty good book. (They’re almost gone.)

But I don’t think that means I’ll ever, ever write one on my new-found expertise on using a Mac.  Trust me on this one. Truly.

“How long have you been here?”

The woman answered with the owner’s name which I didn’t catch, “…’s been here 34 years.”

“I’ve been here 23. How did I miss you?!”

A search for in-person Malabrigo Sock had gotten me here.  Jade, this is all your fault–you gave me some as a very lovely, extremely soft Sock Summit souvenir and I’ve been wanting more ever since.

But in all my years of knitting here, I had never heard of this place.  I couldn’t believe it.  The entrance was at the side of a building that had the names of its other businesses facing the street–and the Cottage Yarns sign was pretty and big, true,  (not the one pictured on the site, which I was looking for) but it was sideways to the road and if you missed it on approach, looking for something else, and went past, you missed it.  You could not see the store itself till you walked past the gate.

I pulled over anyway, figuring that had to be it, looked back to the sign, and went, well, duh, Alison. I walked down the sidewalk and there you go.

The ironic thing is I had had lunch once at the cafe kitty-corner from there–with the employees of a competing yarn store, no less, a LYS now gone.  I was right there.  And I did not see this place.

Advertising is a good thing.  Meantime, now I know who stocks a lot of Malabrigo!

“Give me your phone number and I’ll ball it up for you and call and tell you when to pick it up.”

That was very kind of her, I told her, but no, thanks; by way of explanation, I told her what town I’d driven from.

Oh.  She chuckled.

But the best part? Besides getting really nice yarn and being able to check the shades and match up the handpaint skeins in person?  I tell you.  I asked her with a twinge of shyness as she checked me out if she were familiar with the book “Wrapped in Comfort,” (note that Amazon has now dropped that last, three-cent discount–their stock on hand must be really low, and when they’re gone, they’re gone) and she smiled and said, “Oh, yes! We’ve got it right here.”

“That’s my book.”

The oh cool! look on her face made it worth every mile.  Every. Single. Mile.  Thank you, whoever you were.  I will be back.

It was a day.

Remember this? Prove you’re married or we drop your wife from the health insurance, etc.

We finally got the kid’s transcript in hand; deadlines are wonderful things. So.

Off to his office to fax everything in. Reading the fine print after I got there that I should have paid attention to earlier, marriage and birth certificates in hand, I realized, wait–they want our tax return too?  And, just in case we got divorced since last year, they want a bank statement or utility bill with both our names on it that’s not older than two months?  But what if those don’t put both our names on them?

Back home, growling at the lost time and the utter stupidity of it all.  Growling at myself for forgetting to hit “save” on my *Turbo-taxes yesterday (the software later restored the files for me when I finally dared look at it)…  Trying not to let it all get to me.

The only reason I found what I needed is that, on a whim, yesterday I’d gone to City Hall to pay my utility bill in person as long as I was running an errand nearby.  Meaning I hadn’t torn off the top of the bill, the part you mail in–and the only part that had both our names, the bank being of no help.  Small favors that are everything in that moment; thank you, dear G_d.

Back to the office.  I was almost there, driving along–when suddenly I noticed it. Somehow I just simply hadn’t before.  It was instantly clear to me what it was.

The eruv.

I am not Jewish. But this is Passover week and Easter week, and those who’ve read my book know that our first day in our new house here, the day of the moving van, a day that was completely overwhelming with boxes erupting constantly from the truck while I tried to manage three kids ages four, two, and crawling, we were invited to come to a Seder as soon as that van left.  Just because we were friends of friends and Nina knew what moving was like.

We were the strangers at the gates.  She and her husband warmly welcomed us in.

That line overhead had never called attention to itself.  It was just the simplest reminder on Earth that G_d is here, too.  It brought me up short and completely turned my day around at a moment I greatly needed it.

A piece of string. It healed my world in that moment.  My thanks to those who put it there.

I was out with friends tonight, and although it was warm at the time we took off carpooling across the Bay, I carried a sweater and a shawl in my knitting bag with me; it’s always cold at night here when the San Francisco fog rolls in.

Several hours later, I caught one tall friend shivering, and being plenty warm myself with just my sweater, I surprised her from behind when she leaned over a moment (ie, I could reach!) and wrapped my Bluejay around her shoulders.

She loved it.  I told her I was afraid she couldn’t keep it, because it was one of my in-the-book projects, but she loved how soft it was; baby alpaca? Ooh, nice.

I told her how that bluejay got its heathery effect, and she laughed.

But I got to see one of my shorter shawls on one of my taller friends and mentally gauge the fit and length and how to adjust them to better fit more people. Always a good thing. She reinforced some ideas and did me a favor.

And yes, she cheerfully gave it back at the end; I’m sure she had no idea it was with a pang on my part.  But really, though, it was a tad short on her anyway.

The Newsweek also in my bag didn’t stand a chance.  I was a few rows into a Concert scarf, (Fleece Artist, very soft Wool Silk, one skein will be plenty, I’m 20 g out of 100 and 15″ into it), sitting in the exam room for a quick appointment to catch up on some old questions and fill Dr. R. on where things have been since the last surgery.  Waiting…

…And he walks into the room.  Looks down at my hands. “You’re knitting. This is such a surprise.”

I think he’s on to me.

Hey, Mom, reach for the stars.  John thought I was looking too serious, pulled a John and got silly and made me laugh, and quick! snapped this photo before I could recover. I am so going to miss him after he flies out Saturday–school, work, getting on with life.  But it’s been such a joy and a rare treat to have him home the last couple of months.  He’s a good one.  I am going to miss him fiercely.

To this

To this

To the last. Cast off!

With a comforting hat for one of the Taylors, dyed and knitted by Karin, added in, and thank you, Karin. (I’m trying not to touch it or breathe on it, but I had to get a good shot.)

The shawl is blocking now, and oh goodness, if I thought it was soft and lovely as I was knitting it, rinsing the brushed cashmere and silk and Dianne’s laceweight knit together and laying it out in its pure form now…

One thought to add in here.  I’ve knitted two strands of laceweight together before, and found it mattered to me that they be a little grabby at each other. I once sent my sister (sorry, Carolyn, but it was so pretty!) a shawl knit of a strand each of baby alpaca and of a gorgeous, shimmery silk–and before I mailed it off to her, I managed to snag the silk somehow and that stitch slid wayyyy out of there.  Working a stitch back into a lace pattern, tugging gently along its lines, is one thing; doing it when one slippery strand has gone bonkers while a twin strand has stayed demurely in its place was something else.  It took me two days to fix, and I mailed it off with a catch in my breath, no time left to reknit the project in something more sensible.

She, however, is graceful. I am a klutz.  Her shawl has hopefully done just fine there.

Won’t be a problem with these two yarns.  They’re best friends, hand in hand, for life.