I sat down in front of him. He looked at my face and asked what’s wrong. I stuck out my lower lip like the best grumpy pout a five-year-old could pull off in order to make fun of myself so I wouldn’t take it all too seriously and explained.

He said something I don’t think he’s ever said before: “Well then you have to rip it out.” He never tells me what to do with my knitting. But he was telling me what I was essentially telling him I had to do with my knitting, and yes, I did have to.

All those eighteen-strand rows: gone, and it feels much better now. There shall be a clean start.(The roots were supposed to go twice the width of the tree, not four times! I had counted from raccoon+tree rather than just tree. It was impressively bad.)

I managed to do it in an hour, including reknitting the last blue/green row, far less time than I’d expected, probably because I was willing to take scissors to those roots when they snarled.

And then I did what I’d been trying to get myself to do all weekend: walked away from the afghan, picked up the long-hoarded Sublime bamboo/pearl chip viscose yarn, paid lots of attention to the length at cast-on and hoped for the best fit as the chemo cap on size 5 US began. That yarn is so soft, and it temperature-controls for both warmth and cold like silk does. It’s in a soft green on the sage side and would go well with the cotton jacket my cousin with Stage 4 ovarian was wearing last time I saw her.

I can’t promise it’ll be perfect. But I did promise the love would be made tangible and get put in the mail, and for right at this moment that is by far the more important project. I just had to get over my fear of doing it wrong to be able to do it right.