“You can’t have it, Jessie, it’s mine!” Cheryl grinned at her teenager, who was stroking it. I had just given her a handspun angora scarf, simply done in a triangle shape: cast on three stitches and knit into the front and back of the last stitch on each row till it’s the size you want. It was before I knew how to knit lace. But spinning I could do, knitting I could do, softness in the face of Cheryl’s cancer, this was what I could do to cheer her on. It had been a few years since I’d made her a Kaffe Fassett sweater at my husband’s urging at his sister’s diagnosis, which was the first time I knew my husband got this whole knitting thing: Richard had even driven an hour away across the Bay with me to Straw Into Gold to help pick out the colors.
White angora this time. Cheryl beat the odds and continued on, as her doctors tried one therapy and then another. For eight years.
My in-laws left this morning to help out with the next grandchild’s wedding, and I found myself taking stock: finish the cashmere and silk project. Okay, I can do that today. Keep the second WIP off to the side–that purple one that’s mostly done can wait yet a little longer, because the person getting it has no clue and there’s no rush (even if *I* want it finished. I don’t like to let things sit like that.) There’s the ocean Sea Silk I bought for my mother-in-law that needs to get started, and the blue-formerly-Bare I’d like to dive into.
But. Most importantly. There’s the niece getting married in two weeks.
Jessie was in college when Cheryl finally passed; her dad had bugged out of his sick wife’s life about halfway through. (I debated long and hard about mentioning that here. One could write all kinds of outrage here and in the comments, and they would be soundly deserved by him, but not by his daughter.) If ever a young woman deserved some knitting from me in support and in celebration of her new happiness…
Whichever yarn in my stash wins out, I promise you it will be something exquisitely soft.