I’m doing this pattern again, sized up 10%. I gifted the original to Tina of Blue Moon Fiber Arts when I found out she and I grew up at the same time about two miles from each other. She happily surprised me back with a whole box of yarn, including another hank of the Geisha in the Backstabber colorway that I think is so gorgeous. I quite regretted that I couldn’t give her the pattern, too, but I’d designed it with the next book in mind.

Which meant I did still have that shawl knitted up, but not in her yarn. The other day when I blogged that all those yarns were calling out, knit ME, when it came down to it, what I really wanted to do was to knit up that Geisha for Tina’s sake.

And so, Sunday, I cast on. What I hadn’t expected was how intensely satisfying it is to work on. Normally, that feeling comes with looking forward to making someone happy by gifting them with what’s about to come off my needles, whereas this one, once it’s done, won’t be going anywhere.  But it’s a promise kept. A hope of the book to come, but plans can change; the feeling of thanking her back by knitting this and a new friendship treasured is what I’m really enjoying about this.

I emailed her; the new one would be bigger than the one she had sent for display in the booth at Stitches East, was that all right? She laughed, and wrote back, “It’s your design!” Well, yes, true, but hey.

There was another yarn in that box that, a little before the trip, told me what it wanted to be when it grew up. And so, while in Maryland, we pulled off the road in a couple of places and I snapped pictures of the rock quarries: Carderock, River Road. The Giancola one is gone, along with the stone house that had been perched above it, just a scooped-out blank spot in the earth. But the other two, on opposite sides of the street, continue on.  I need to knit me a quarry–those were at the midpoint between Tina’s house and mine, growing up.  A piece of home.

Steady as a rock. They carve out those stones and use them to strengthen and decorate the homes and places surrounding them.  If you go back and look at my American Gothic post, they’re most likely where my in-laws’ fireplace came from.

And I scoop out my yarn with my needle tip and knit on.