Tree near the shore, day two. These lower leaves look like a palm, the trunk does not because that’s not what I was going for. We’ll see how this comes out.

I know I’ve told this before, but when I was first diagnosed with lupus at 31, I read Norman Cousin’s “Anatomy of an Illness,” where he talks about the need for a creative outlet, any creative outlet, to cope with a major new diagnosis.

Okay. Choose one.

I went to the library to look for books on knitting to see if that could be it for me; I’d done a lot of knitting in high school but had given it up for lack of time and money in college.

Kaffe Fassett’s coffeetable “Glorious Knits” was easily the most prominent book on that shelf and practically fell into my hands. The center of it was two models in multi-color coats in a Dutch amaryllis field holding my favorite flowers.

I knew I could never knit any such thing but I had to check it out for the sake of those amaryllises if nothing else.

That book changed my life.

My first try was a tiptoe into it: four colors. A vest for my mom.

She wore it to the Kennedy Center in D.C. and when she sat down in her seat the woman behind her was wearing not only a sweater from that same book but that same pattern! The woman told Mom, Don’t you just love his work!

I got braver. I finished a wool coat out of 68 separate colors, where Fassett wrote, These are large, but they drape beautifully on everybody.

Then I met the guy and he almost had to duck to come through the door to do a booksigning at Uncommon Threads. My husband does have to duck through a standard doorway. I suddenly saw how it came to be that when I got done, Richard had said, It fits me better than it fits you, go make yourself another one.

And I did! Spent a little more time collecting more yarn (it is fair to say there were leftovers) and my coat had 86. So there.

I’m convinced that wanting to have that colorwork without that having to do all that intarsia work–I remember counting 64 strands across a single row for one project that I was knitting doubled, which was a little bonkers, because guys, those were cotton–is how the hand-dyed yarn industry came to be.

So here I am knitting what’s aspiring to be a Monterey Cypress overlooking the ocean in my intarsia afghan when the news came in that the area near Henry Miller’s library and Nepenthe in Big Sur are on fire. Not the buildings so far. They’re doing everything they can to save them.

Kaffe Fassett’s parents built Nepenthe. He grew up there. His family still owns it. His colorways reflect the area again and again.

A small part of this whole project all along has been an inward sort of a thank you to him for showing me what knitting could be and why I would want to do it. For me, he changed–sweeping my arm across the whole of these past 36 years, like the Kaffe Fassett vest for the foster teen who went on to graduate from college–everything.

For so many more people than just me.