I got another hat done today, in the same colorway as Parker’s blue one here. We’re now at 208.  I like that he and a member of Congress will match each other; may it charm them as much as it does me.  This whole WHNHH project is for our children’s future as well as trying to set the tone for today.

While Parker wonders dubiously but respectfully whether Grampa remembers how to pull off this carseat idea.

Two hundred. A cool two hundred hats so far for Warm Hats Not Hot Heads. It looks like, from what I understand from Ellen, that eight more hats, especially men’s hats, would get us to having the US Senate covered at 100%.

One hundred percent!

I’ve knitted several other hats of late, too, but they were a tad small to run to Congress…

I don’t use it very often, which isn’t good for the batteries.

Richard had them recharging last night.

I can’t do Stitches West on my feet. I’ve tried. The old head injury effects go into overload in the massive visual presence of the place and my balance disappears even worse and there’s just no way around the fact that Disneyland for knitters equals chairtime for me. That’s okay; there have been many many people looking wistfully at my ride by the end of the day every year.

Richard set it up and went out the door for work; I tried it out.

Dead dead dead. Ain’t goin’ nowhere. Darn.

Jasmin‘s brother Sam, who pushed me last year, was in LA.

My daughter Sam, who pushed me the year before, was across the country.

Well, I *could* try to walk it. (Yeah, let’s see if we can induce a seizure finally after eleven years?)

Um.

I did not call him. I did not text. I didn’t say boo. What could he do? I simply didn’t get myself out the door. I was about to, I kept telling myself, looking at the clock, noting that I’d paid for a two-day ticket, while arguing back at myself, okay, so then, when? How? Use the manual as a walker so you’ve got both hands holding on, at least?

Suddenly there was the front door opening again, and *My Hero* (trademarked) walks in: he wanted to make sure I didn’t get stuck and had it worked no okay he’d wondered if it might not have right he’ll go get that other battery pack and try that one oh yes he’d had it charging too.

You’re home? You did? We do? You can?

He was in a rush to get to work (some days I really really love that short commute) as he unscrewed the battery pack and replaced it. Here try that love you bye gotta run.

YES!!!

And that is how I got to go zipping around Stitches West and have the time of my life among my fellow knitters and friends that I only get to see once a year.  And to meet some new ones. (Michelle, did you see? I was wearing your socks you made me while I was in the hospital.)

I came home to the news that we had gone past 30% of Congress today. GO KNITTERS! Then I read Jocelyn’s post and followed the link in it. Folks, we need gentility, top down, and we need civility in Congress now. If you haven’t yet, will you join Ellen and me and 162 hats’ worth of other knitters in spending a few hours to help get the word out? How often do our few stitches get a chance to create changes for the good for millions of people? Good wool, good work, good plan.

Stitches still has plenty of good yarn left for it. I promise.

Kind of a reverse gift of the magi moment:

I offered Richard some chocolate torte. After all, it’s Valentine’s Day (besides, he had just given me red roses).

He passed, not because he didn’t want some but to save me the effort of making a second batch, to make sure I had enough to bring to Purlescence tomorrow.  Maybe there will be leftovers? There are definitely leftover ingredients to work with.

XRX meets Purlescence. 12:30 Tuesday. There will be chocolate. (And, looking in the cabinets, a desperate last-minute run here for paper plates and forks.)

Meantime, Warm Heads Not Hot Heads hat count for Congress: 119. Go knitters go!

My folks arrived home safely and it is very very quiet without them.

The campaign hit 108 hats.

And India started this by wondering if Ellen or I knew the old song that goes, Inch by inch, row by row, Gonna make this garden grow.

Oh yes–I used to play it and sing it to my kids when they were little, all the time, and I used to sing it occasionally with my knitting, only with, Stitch by stitch row by row and riffing from there.

They started playing with the lyrics and emailed me and Ellen happened to start hers off with that same line. I like that.

So here’s what I’ve thought of for WHNHH so far, and I’d love to hear what anyone else might come up with:

Stitch by stitch, row by row,
Gonna let our Congress know:
Got to make your peace, although
There are differing points of view…

Stitch by stitch, row by row,
We constituents are telling you, so…
Work out ways to help US grow
Now you can wear your thinking cap too.

Stitch by stitch, row by row,
Take a stand against the status quo
Speak for me with civility
Take the day, and make it brand new.

Oh, and by the way, you might want to look here (with thanks to Norma for the link). Jon Stewart’s producer. They can’t tell: is this satire or is it serious?

Are knitters serious?

What do you think?

(The Warm Hats Not Hot Heads count: we are now at 75 committed hats for the campaign for civility in Congress. Go knitters!)

We drove across the Bay and up into the beautiful, wooded hills, the reason for the folks’ visit to California: Dad had someone he wanted to interview for a biography he is writing.

It turns out the man’s son was there too, and that the man is himself a writer–and the kind of warm, bright, engaged, energetic 92-year-old I can only aspire to be someday.

He gave us copies of several of his books, waving me away when I offered to buy some, and I, having discovered that his daughter-in-law crochets, wished fervently I had a copy of my own book to share with their family, too.

We had a lovely morning of it, time I for one would never have had with good folks I would never have had the good fortune to meet but for the passion both of the older men in the room were bringing to the project at hand.

I’d driven my husband’s Prius, switching cars with him for the day since we were the ones who were going to be putting on the mileage.

And as we walked back to the car and opened the trunk to put away Dad’s equipment from the interview, there it was: a copy of “Wrapped in Comfort” that my husband had proudly put in there to be ready to show off my work and me at any time. I asked him later and he said, “Oh, I always have one in there!”

I hurried back down the walkway and rang the doorbell one last time.

Fifty years ago and then again today: “I think you need a nap, dear. Go to bed.”

I’m not tired.

“I think you need a nap, dear.”

(I don’t wanna. I don’t often get to visit with my parents, even if I’m trying not to breathe on them.)

“You need a nap, dear.”

Alright… (I’ll lie down for ten minutes and make everybody happy.)

Zonk…. And it did help a lot.

Meantime, I think Parker’s got that Mona Lisa thing down just so.  And Warm Hats Not Hot Heads is at 60 hats! Go knitters!

An old friend whom I’ve known since college has of late been a visiting professor in a country not known for its journalistic openness.

And thus my stunned staring at his vacation abroad photos he recently posted after leaving there. Talk about spring break.  Duuuuude.

I didn’t say it, but someone else did, and he answered, yes, that was him and his wife on camels near the Pyramids. Last Friday.  They had no idea.

Wow.  We have it so easy in the US.

So.

I started a new soft wool hat tonight–it seems to be a trend–and looked again at the spreadsheet Ellen set up: even though constantly checking there is like watching stitches grow on sock-size needles, it’s–like watching stitches grow!  In qiviut! Cool! Forty-four hats this afternoon, 49 now as I type this with 2 extra at the bottom there–I cannot tell you how thrilling it is to see each new one show up. Thank you thank you everyone.

And there was one so far for an entire state, being offered up by a member of one particular Congressional district there in Arizona, for the one person in thoughts of whom all this began to come about:

For Gabrielle Giffords.

Does anyone else find themselves wishing they could knit hats for everybody in Egypt? I wish and hope the best for them and thank them for their peaceful efforts; they are representing themselves well to the world. I’m holding my breath and fervently hoping they’ll get to do so in their government too.

We are so blessed.

Here at home, there is now a Ravelry group at http://www.ravelry.com/groups/warm-hats-not-hot-heads for the campaign to knit hats for our Congresspeople and there will be a Facebook group soon.  If anyone feels so inclined, please, feel free, spread the word on your blog or your knitting group or wherever. If you knit a hat for your congressperson, please shoot an email to Ellen, here if you would; we’re hoping for Feb. 28th as a deadline to get them all shipped by, en masse would be great but if you want to sooner, more power to you. Sending it to your representative’s local office works well, in person even better; the whole idea is to make it feel as personal as possible to them.

Those who tell Ellen so she can put it on her spreadsheet, by whatever moniker you want for yourself there, will be the ones I’ll be able to know about for sure: because when this is all done, I told her that as my thank you I’d like to draw a name and send out an autographed copy of “Wrapped in Comfort: Knitted Lace Shawls” to that knitter, wishing I could do it for everybody. I know, I don’t need to bribe anybody, so many people are already simply diving in and doing this without feeling the need to tell about it, but I’d like to be able to do something by way of thanks to those who do.

Ellen and I talked on the phone tonight, and someone she knew had gone from, I could never knit for…!, to, I need to knit for them. Don’t I. Yes.

And so I told her the story of a nursing assistant in the hospital during my first severe Crohn’s flare in ’03 who was just an angry person, consistently and bewilderingly mean to her patients–just angry. I wondered why on earth, at that time of all times, I had to be stuck dealing with her. Her accent was thick, my brain equally so in my illness on top of my hearing loss; we were not a good match.

And then a few days into this I found myself wondering what it must be like to be her. Or what got her that way.  What is it like at home for her? Where is her family, what are they like?

That stopped me, and I said a prayer for her: not completely willingly, and apologizing to God for that, but this much at least I could try to do. Please bless her? (So I don’t have to?)

The next time she walked in my hospital room, though, what happened was definitely not sweetness and light: I beat her to it and immediately snapped at her. The one time she had done nothing to deserve it, I just didn’t want her in my room just then, I’d had enough.

And she, instead of yelling back or defending herself, suddenly looked deeply sad. She spun on her heel and was gone.

I felt TERRIBLE. That was so not what I had prayed for, my stars!

The next time she walked in the room it was by coincidence a step behind when her boss did, a nurse who was one of my favorites, and I grabbed my chance: I said to the woman, in front of her boss, “Thank you.”

(Say what?! on her face.)

“You came in here and I snapped your head off and you were kind to me. I did not deserve that. Thank you.” Because I knew that for her, that was the best she could have done and she did it.

After she left I said to her boss, “I’m so glad I got to say that to her in front of you.”

And the boss, a dear woman, answered with a glance to the door to make sure we were alone, “Me too!”

That nursing assistant completely changed. The next time she came in I honestly didn’t recognize her, her face was so different. She looked radiant! She had finally seen herself through someone else’s eyes in a better light.

I later knitted a lace stole in the boss’s favorite color and several more things for quite a few more people there; and I knitted a hat in case I might see that nursing assistant, whose name I never did know–she’d tended to keep her badge turned over, I always guessed so that people wouldn’t be able to complain about her by name.

I didn’t see her but she saw me down the hall when I came back for that visit. She ran down the hall and she *threw* her arms around me with great emotion. She had no idea yet about the hat. No language barriers. Friends, in the deepest sense of the word; she wept, and I knew then that what I had done had meant everything to her.

I said to Ellen, Now, can you imagine if I had NOT made her anything while I was handing out my handknits? Thank heavens I did. Thank heavens I knit that hat.

Ellen said, “It made all the difference to you, too, then, didn’t it?”

Oh you bet. Oh, honey. It was one of the most important things I ever made.

(Picture this line as the ticker tape streaming above the blog: the Warm Hats Not Hot Heads campaign has more knitters. Yay, and thank you!

And second, copies of Wrapped in Comfort are available at Purlescence at the cover price+shipping. Hey, I’m not good at this marketing thing but I have to try a little occasionally. )

Back to the blog.

To quote my sister quoting my mom on the phone today on the subject of reading: “I can abstain but I cannot be moderate.” We had a good laugh over that one because it’s so true; a good book is for getting totally immersed in. Good yarn, too, definitely.

Speaking of which–it was knit night tonight. Last week, Kaye exclaimed emphatically, “Oh *cool*!” at the pink sparkly hat that was going to someone else, turning it over and around in her hands to see how I’d made it.

Well hey, I know how to respond to that.  So I went home and knitted a second and you know whose head it stayed on the rest of this evening. That was way too fun, and there’s one more hat’s worth of that Classic Elite Intrigue;  I offered to give it back, since it was their yarn to begin with, and they just waved me away.

And even more: they handed me another bag with another murmur of You’ll know what to do with this, another explanation that this too just hadn’t worked for them personally.

And I instantly did know. I asked permission and got an Oh, perfect! in response.

Just let me catch up a little here first.  I am definitely not abstaining. But my limited number of arms and the brain cells it would take to keep track of all the multiple sets of projects they’d be holding forces me to moderate the pace at least somewhat.

And another hat got finished today.  I’m hoping our Senators and House Representatives have plenty to choose from by the time we all get done with Warm Hats Not Hot Heads. Shoot a note over to Ellen at the twinset.us blog when you get done with yours, if you would, or let me know if I can for you.

I want to knit at least an extra hat for the Afghans For Afghans basket at Stitches West, too, to feel like I’m taking care of the truly needy as well.  But I needed a break to work on something not-hat for a little while. A little variety.

There’s the qiviut waiting; I’m trying to use it as incentive and motivator–what I’d had in the queue ahead of it was being obstinate and  I wanted it done. It’s some Abstract Fibers Supersock that I’d started on, gorgeous stuff, but I’d put it down while my kids were here and had tucked a note in the bag saying I’d goofed on row x and would fix it in the morning.

Did I fix it? I have no idea.  Which absolutely will not do.  I knew it had to go: it is a new pattern, therefore it must be done perfectly, end of story. But it looked so much prettier knitted up, they always do, because then you can really see how those colors can show themselves off.

Ripped. Totally. Gone. I finally did it. And looking at it with the yarn laying there in kinks it suddenly hit me that, look at that, you know, I could… I did like this one hat and, you know, I could riff and do it like…

Bam. Totally new approach. Totally new take on what I was going to do. And that could only have had a chance to hit my brain by my having knit something for someone else that was so different from my usual–because I’d wanted to make them no more than just a quick little hat.

Sample letter, feel free to use or not when you send yours in:

Dear (Congressperson),

This hat was hand knit for you by me, ____; I live in ___. I wanted to show you that I appreciate the work you do for those of us whom you serve in the House/Senate.

I knitted it as part of a campaign among knitters for Warm Hats, Not Hot Heads. We are from many political backgrounds. We want those who engage in angry and even vicious public rhetoric to stop speaking for us in those ways. We want civility in Congress.  We are choosing to give hours of our time silently to be able to give you a visible, tangible, heartfelt symbol of our desire for respecting and honoring one another within our government–and to thank you for doing your best.

Each stitch is individual. Each stitch depends on every other stitch within that hat being present for it to be able to do its job where it is of creating comfort and warmth.

I wish you the best in your work and thank you for your service to us all.

———–

(And then the imp in me is tempted to add, It’s not all about running…)

Ed. to add: Ellen at twinset.us is keeping tally on who’s getting one/who needs one.