The eye doctor
Wednesday March 05th 2008, 1:07 pm
Filed under: "Wrapped in Comfort",Friends,Knit,Life

Got it done, got it delivered. Okay, here’s the story:

Remember when I missed that second play date with Lyn?

An eye doctor who teaches at Stanford has a patient who is in my lupus group, who asked him if he would come and speak to us. He told her he’d be glad to. When he came, he clearly had spent many hours putting together a powerpoint presentation so we could see slides of what he was talking about, and written descriptions on more slides to help us remember the details.

At one point, he said, This is what iritis looks like–but you don’t have to worry about it, it’s very rare and only 4% or less of lupus patients get it.

I raised my hand and said, I’ve had it.

A few minutes later, he put up a slide of optic neuritis, again assuring us, But this is rare.

Guess who raised her hand slightly, with a slight nod of the head. He immediately came back with, That’s more common with MS, have you been tested for MS?

Spinal tap. Yup. Negative. I didn’t add that when the neurologist told me I had to hold absolutely still curled up afterwards for half an hour, I asked his nurse if I could knit; after hemming and hawing, she told me, well, that’s a new one, I guess so! So in the position I was told I had to stay in, I was holding my daughter’s sweater above my head, stitching away with it dangling onto my nose and thinking I must really be crazy to be doing this–but my Christmas deadline was looming… (My fellow knitters understand that one.)

Doctor V. said something about anti-inflammatories, and I shrugged, I go completely deaf on one dose of NSAIDs. Not an option. Oh. Steroids, then. Steroids don’t touch my lupus, I admitted. I told him, Remicade saved my life after my lupus spread to my GI tract, giving me symptoms of classic Crohn’s, but it gave me congestive heart failure; permanent chemo is it.

I saw the tears that leaped to his eyes, and I was suddenly glad I hadn’t mentioned the dysautonomia or the car accident to pile it on. I wanted to throw my arms around him and comfort him and tell him, it’s okay! Really, it is!

Because his tearing up had hit me right where I live. Someone knew. Someone who was a doctor, who knew what all those meant, who was there for me. It mattered to him. Thank you, sir, more than I can say.

Carslbad scarf in Lisa Souza’s Max Sky DramaAt Stitches, I told Lisa Souza about that doctor and that day, and her reaction was to *give* me a hank of her silk/merino Max yarn she’d dyed in her Sky Drama colorway for me to go knit up for him as a thank you from her, too. To express her gratitude as well for his empathy and kindness in taking so much time to be there for patients he hadn’t even ever met before. For giving two hours out of his day, plus transportation and all that preparation time, answering every possible question for us. He’s a good one. She wanted to tell him so, too.

The Carlsbad scarf and story in the book that mentioned my eyes? Her silk in Sky Drama.

And so I made another Carlsbad scarf for this good man’s wife with Lisa’s generosity. It had to wait till all the Stitches knitting was done, it had to wait till the Lunasea Silkie for Andy got finished, but at last I got a chance to get to it.

And it is now where it needs to be. Being a tangible reminder of our gratitude–Lisa’s, mine, every patient’s in attendence at that lecture–for an eye doctor who truly sees and who was willing to give so freely of himself.

Thank you, sir. My best to you and your family.



Try, try again
Tuesday March 04th 2008, 2:34 pm
Filed under: Knit

Ellen’s HalfPint Farm baby alpaca/silk laceweightLooking at someone’s very fine-weight lacework on their blog recently caused a real pang; I missed that. The fingering weight I usually work with makes lovely shawls and fairly practical ones: you can absent-mindedly throw your purse strap over your shoulder and not freak out that you just shredded a hundred hours’ worth of work. For me, the 5 to 5.5 mm needle sizes I use with those are by far the most comfortable in my hands, working them hour by hour; the smaller ones with the finer yarns require much more frequent breaks, and for my eyes, too.

And yet… There’s nothing in knitting quite as satisfying to me as creating with a very fine laceweight. Knowing how ethereal and airy it’s going to look when you’re done. Picturing the recipient looking absolutely glorious, wearing just the slightest warmth against the breeze on a spring day full of the opening-up of the earth to all its new possibilities.  (Okay, cue Bambi stepping out of the forest, turn on some Mozart…)

And so I found myself reaching for the baby alpaca/silk laceweight at Stitches at Ellen’s HalfPint Farm‘s booth. That was the light blue I wanted. Alpaca’s a bit sturdier than wool, given that the fibers are twice the length, to answer part of the practicality argument, and it was so soft. And the spinning was just right: four tiny plies rather than two, spun not so tight as to be too wiry like some alpaca laceweights are, not so loose that it would fray easily. Just the right balance.

swatchI had a stitch in mind that I’d somehow never tried before that I wanted to use it with, and I swatched it first on Amanda‘s merino I’d bought recently. I’m glad I did. I liked it enough that that swatch will keep going till it’s a scarf, but I found it fiddly enough that I don’t want to do it in the alpaca, which does have just enough energy to it that it would be hard in that stitch to see where I am in the pattern. Mismatch alert. Not those two together. Not for me, anyway, not now.

This after spending a few hours–actually, a couple of days–hashing out a whole shawl pattern, working out the details, figuring it out visually, writing the rough ideas down, working out the stitch counts. I’ll knit that one later–just not in that particular laceweight.

I had more ideas. I cast on. But it didn’t matter what plans I had, somehow I cast on the wrong number and didn’t notice till a fair bit along. (I *always* count constantly when I’m trying something new! But I did not this time.) When it hit me, I sat there going, why is this being so hard? I’ve made dozens and dozens of shawls, I don’t make silly mistakes like adding 22 with 21 and getting 53 on paper, I just don’t!

I did. Rip.

The end result is that by the time I got really going at last, I had spent enough time at it to let a different way of seeing the problem percolate through. I found, to my surprise, I was glad my other ideas hadn’t stayed on the needles. I knew exactly what I wanted, I knew exactly why it should be what it was turning into now, and I knew that nothing else would have done as good a job of conveying what I wanted the stitches to represent. I’d tell you more, but then the person it’s going to would guess, and you’re going to have to wait until they get to find out.

But I gotta tell you, it feels good to know that this time, it’s coming out exactly the way it was meant to all along.

I’m writing this on a hands-and-eyes break from it, but I can’t wait to get back to it.



Warrenton and more Stitches photos
Monday March 03rd 2008, 12:50 pm
Filed under: "Wrapped in Comfort",Knit,Life

I have to write here my reaction to Channon’s comment:

Warrenton! I was at what was supposed to be a five-day-long girls’ camp in Virginia that got evacuated during Hurricane Agnes.  According to Wikipedia’s dates, I would have been thirteen; memory says I was twelve.  Anyway.

We got as far as Warrenton on our way home on a bus before we got told we weren’t going anywhere else, all the bridges were underwater. The person who had all the food in her car had made it home, but the bus behind her, unknown to her, had sunk in the mud when it had come to pick us up and had been delayed by having to be towed out of it–and a tow truck big enough to haul a bus stuck at an out-of-the-way location took awhile to find, while the rain kept piling up. So there we were that night, no food, no place to go, no way home. The Mormon Church in Warrenton, with a brand new building, took in all these muddy kids, and we slept on their floor for a couple of days till the waters receded enough to let us go on. Someone that the adults knew from church back home in Maryland was also stuck in town, and he let the kids go to his hotel room, several at a time, so they could use the shower and feel human again.

The camp counselor showed up at McDonald’s the first morning and ordered, “Sixty-five Egg McMuffins to go, please.” After that, the people at the church took over, bringing food. They weren’t a large congregation, and there were an awful lot of us. We were there for, if I remember right, two nights.

And so you see, I have a very soft spot in my heart for the folks in Warrenton, Virginia. Good people.

Meantime, here are a few more Stitches photos from my friends.

Lyn’s Michelle shawl in Sea SilkLyn.

Jan’s Michelle shawlJan.

Jocelyn’s Peace of Mind shawl in Sea SilkJocelyn.

Nancy and her Bluejay shawl in Geisha from BMFANancy.

Catie and her Tara’s Redwood Burl shawlCatie.

Vera’s Bigfoot shawlVera.

I don’t have pictures of everybody, so if anyone has more, shoot me an email, would you? Thanks.



A post for my parents
Sunday March 02nd 2008, 8:37 pm
Filed under: Amaryllis,Family

Amaryllises in front of the pipe organAmaryllises are exquisitely sensitive to where the light is strongest, and especially when they are in full bloom, they will reach within hours in that direction. Sometimes, where they lean to seems counterintuitive at first glance: I have one spot where they’ll go for the white wall rather than the window at certain times of the day.  They perceive what I cannot.

Thank you, Mom and Dad, for the brown clumps of possibilities and promises, and look at these now (with more on the way up!) And thank you, most of all, for teaching me in my life to perceive what really matters and to reach for that which brings in the light.

Charmeur amaryllis



Duck, duck, GOOSE!
Sunday March 02nd 2008, 12:23 pm
Filed under: Friends

Driving by the baylands to the post office with Andy’s package on Friday… I know, it’s hardly a great picture–squint real hard, they’re back there–but it’s what this camera can do from a distance.Baylands