Amaryllises 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.

)

Someone at Stitches, Jill Stephens, invented something that I had been wishing for years that someone would. I saw someone carrying one around, went looking for the booth, and instantly bought one. How could I not. I am someone who likes her yarn in nice round balls the way yarn balls were meant to be. I’ll knit from the flattened cakes that ballwinders create, but…they’re lacking something yarnly about them somehow, although, truth be told, they are easier to knit from. Cakes unwind as you go without having to do that extra yank or having to nudge it so that the current position of the yarn coming off doesn’t have the weight of the entire ball on top of it. (And I wind one pound scoured hanks from cones into single balls, so you know that that can be an issue. Do it with too much oomph, and suddenly that planet of wool is throwing itself across the room.)

The vendor laughed at my instant take on her gadget: it’s a hamster ball! And you can let it roll around on the floor for the cat to chase–don’t have a cat, myself–or you can put it in the handbaggy-type holder it comes with to hold it still so it can’t run away from you.

Nifty, nifty idea for those of us who love nice round balls the way they were meant to be. Her idea seemed to be more about doing fair isle without tangling, but yeah, whatever. You use yours your way and I’ll use mine mine.

This is Cris in her Julia shawl in Jade Sapphire cashmere that she wore at the banquet Saturday night.

Meantime, a few weeks ago, when I couldn’t get the computer to accept my camera card for https://spindyeknit.com/2008/02/berry-time-for-bigfoot/, it was a warning sign that the computer itself was about to blow. Which it did. (This is the WIP I was trying to show.) I quietly posted from a different one for a little while till the hubby fixed it, and laughed that, oh, well, maybe I was supposed to leave this shawl more of a surprise than that.

Which it was.

Lyn used to manage Creative Hands, a yarn shop in Belmont. She moved to North Carolina after living here for forever and was sorely missed by her friends when she left. She came back this month to see a new grandchild and to hang around for Stitches, and you know the amount of time spent with an old friend is never enough.

Meantime, I had this Lisa Souza alpaca/silk yarn that was lovely but that was a bit towards the gray side for me. And yet it leaped with glee onto my needles two weeks ago and announced which pattern it wanted to be when it grew up, and it felt so joyful to finally be letting it become itself that the knitting worked up very quickly. I had a great sense of anticipation as I played with it, wondering… Who?…

Lyn set up a–well, a play date is the best description I can think of–at Creative Hands for people who wanted more time to visit with her. Two, actually, and I got to go to the first, but for the second, I just couldn’t make it. There was an eye doctor who teaches at Stanford who had volunteered to speak that day to the lupus group I attend, and it was imperative to me that I be there. Crum.

But that disappointment helped clarify what I needed to know, and then it just felt so obvious: that Berry Poppins colorway, how the pink and the purple melted into those soft fibers, those were exactly perfect for Lyn; I’d seen those colors on her many times. She loved handpaint yarns. And I knew.

Nancy Weber, who used to work with Lyn at the shop, was in on it with me. I was trying to figure out the best way to get it to Lyn but I kept missing her at Stitches. After we took our seats at the banquet, my last chance before she flew home, Nancy said, “Here.” (Since I just wasn’t very mobile.) And she took it over to Lyn’s table as if she were at a bar, telling her, “The woman at that table over there wanted to offer you this.”

Lyn, stunned, opened it, stood up in slow motion, came over and threw her arms around me, wiping tears and saying it would be a comfort to her when she went back to North Carolina.

Which is exactly what I’d wanted. For it to be a comfort and a reminder of her friends’ caring.

Who were all about to pull off something major themselves for my own sake, and I just truly had no idea either till it happened.

Where on earth does that expression come from? “My foot!” to mean, yeah, right, buddy, uh huh, tell me another one. …Curious.

Silkie’s full name over at Blue Moon Fiber Arts–I had to go look it up to be sure–is “Silkie Socks that Rock.” You know, like how your mom yells your whole entire name, no fond nickname need apply, when she’s yelling down the block at you at the top of her lungs in front of your friends for full effect? “Come back here Archibald McNamara Hoosiername and clean that room right now!” (Thank you, Mom and Dad, for not giving me a middle name nor a nickname so my friends went through this but I never had to.)

So, just what did the Silkie do? Looks like a plain old innocent scarf to me. Socked its little sister? Never.

Specs: 73×13″, one ball Silkie, stretches easily to 16″ wide or so, Carlsbad pattern from “Wrapped in Comfort,” cast on 43 stitches, ie, one extra pattern repeat across.

Meantime, here’s one of Dad’s Christmas gift amaryllises this morning.

Oh yeah? said the yarn. I am too.

I finished up the shawl in Lisa Souza’s El Dorado heftyish kid mohair/silk, a mix of the Julia and Constance patterns that I’d been hoping I could get ready for Lisa to hang in her booth at Stitches West this weekend. Done. I had two projects in mind to try to get done quickly after that, both of them with the best of intentions.

I have had a hank of Silkie balled up, waiting its turn, now was its turn, I knew exactly where I kept it, and why on earth couldn’t I find it? I spent a fair amount of time yesterday searching for the silly thing. I knew just who I wanted to knit it for and I wanted it done!

While I was searching my stash, this single, rather short ball of mohair that I’d bought from Karen at Royale Hare at Stitches a year ago leaped out at me. I tried to ignore it. But it assaulted my needles, beat my inner schedule up, and dragged me into knitting my Zinnia scarf pattern out of it. The color pattern is awfully busy for that zinnia, but it absolutely refused to be anything else. Flower power rules!

Yeah, my yarn bosses me around like that. What, doesn’t yours?

I just wrote this, thought, but it’s GOT to be in there!, walked in the other room, opened that bag again and searched for that Silkie where I’d searched over and over yesterday, and there it sat beaming innocently up at me. The scamp. Hide and go seek. Ollie ollie in come free!

Lene’s amaryllis still hasn’t quite yawned and stretched all the way open yet. Slowly, slowly. It’s 64 degrees in that room in winter (brrr, and lots of afghans in there), which means the amaryllises grow in slower motion–but they stay blooming longer. A good spot to curl up with a good book.

At Stitches West two years ago, I bought a huge hank of alpaca laceweight from Lisa Souza in her Shade Garden. I knitted it up into two shawls: for the first, I ran it with a strand of merino in lilac for a one-off for my friend Kristine at http://lilacknitting.blogspot.com/ which you can see me trying on if you click on “My Books” at the top of this page. The other, I ran it with a strand of light blue Baruffa merino fine laceweight and knitted it in the Bluejay pattern. (Lisa has since changed to a finer-micron-count baby alpaca laceweight, and I can’t wait to look over her stock at Stitches again in two weeks.)

Diana tried the Bluejay on for me last night. She was going, “This isn’t even fingering weight!” even with the two strands together. True.  It seems to me, the finer the yarn, the more formal-looking the shawl, and that’s the effect I was going for.

See you all at Stitches! I’ll be signing books Friday and Saturday afternoons.

Technical stuff first: in “Wrapped in Comfort,” I give the stitch counts in the stitch patterns so that you can downsize and make a scarf out of any of the shawls; cast on so many repeats and go. This is one repeat of Nina’s Ann Arbor Shawl pattern with an extra stitch at each side, so, cast on 23 and knit till you’re done. This isn’t blocked yet, and even when I do, it will stay fluid and drapey in this yarn. This is one skein of Blue Sky Alpacas’ AlpacaSilk yarn, some of the very best baby alpaca out there: silky, shimmery, gorgeous, and durable enough that I couldn’t break the strand with my hands when I was done, I had to go get a pair of scissors.

I named Nina’s shawl for where she went to school at the University of Michigan, as I wrote in the book. But the look of it also reminds me of the climbing bougainvillea that was blooming freely here when we moved to California, in vivid, cheerful colors that were startling compared to the gray/white aging-winter snowscape we were leaving behind.

The first time I remember seeing bougainvillea blooming was on the trip to New Orleans when I was a teenager. We ate at the Commodore Inn, a beautiful old place that Katrina later wiped out (I don’t know if it’s been brought back; my attempts at googling it would suggest it has not, but I’d love to hear differently.) The bougainvillea climbed to the second-story balcony like Romeo impatient to see Juliet, deep green leaves and bright fuschia flowers spilling freely over the balustrade, a grand bouquet tossed at the eyes of the diners below. Gorgeous.

(Update: I thought I’d add in a photo of the current state of my amaryllis crop.  The really tall one waiting to open up?  That’s Lene’s.)

Sue’s amaryllis today: yes, the same plant that was blooming the first week of December. It just keeps on lighting up the place.

(Added later): The mail just came, and with it, a copy of the second edition of my book–it’s in reprints already. Woohoo!

And yet by golly it was time to grow, so there!

I found this under the sink of the kids’ bathroom last night, having no memory of putting it under there months before. Somehow it had decided it had waited long enough and it was just going to go do what it was born to do. I found the dried top of the stalk wrapped around the pipe under there like a cartoon of a guy in cowboy boots on the desert gasping, “Water!” at a mirage. And still–with only its inner reserves from last year’s careful care–there you go.

And yes, I’ve now cleared off the debris and added water. We’ll see what it can do now. I like this one. I’m going to baby it for awhile while it gets its strength back.

Sue’s amaryllis put up a third stalk, taller than the first two. The bud on Lene’s took awhile to get past that first peek at the world, gathering up strength like they sometimes do, and is now on its way up day by day. I can’t wait to see it when it grows up.

There, there, little orchid (the amaryllis reaches out a leaf) see how much we’re more alike than different? We’re all friends here. Glad to have you move into the neighborhood. (Turns on the stereo, and the orchidstra starts playing.) Enjoy the music, pull up your knitting, and set a spell with us.

It just finished fading out, and it’s gone now, but this was the last of the amaryllises last week for the very-stretched-out season. At the same time it started blooming, I started watering a dormant bulb that I’d let rest early from this past winter, and soon I will succeed in my efforts to conquer the world (or at least the back patio, the windows, and the bathroom) and have my bulbs flowering year-round nonstop.

I thought of Lois, and decided I needed to put this photo up here for her.

“On the cover of the Rolling Stone.”  (Everybody keeps asking me who the models are.   I should ask.  I don’t know.)

“Gonna buy five copies for my mother!”

Looks like we’re back from the hard disk crash. Alright!

My dad has always, for as long as I can remember, given my mom an amaryllis bulb for her birthday in December.  This year I get to offer this picture of an amaryllis that is blooming right now for my dad for his birthday, in June-of-all-months, when they supposedly are out of season.  Happy birthday, Dad!

I did the most mundane of tasks the other day: I called in a prescription refill on my meds.

One of them had expired, needed an okay from the doctor, and wasn’t ready when we picked up the rest. Nuts. It would need its own trip. It seemed kind of a waste.

And then, for no reason I could have told anyone, I didn’t get around to going all week. I just didn’t feel like it. Today I looked at the fact that it was Friday, that the clinic’s pharmacy closes for the weekend at 12:30 Saturday afternoons, that it was going to be closed Monday for the holiday, and, hey, I’d better get a move on already. I headed out the door.

And wondered, as I went along, if I would run into anybody I knew. It’s a big enough clinic that I fairly often do.

I go to the local lupus support group to try to show those struggling with a new diagnosis that life does go on, that you can be cheerful still, that you adjust and find you’re still yourself and still just as capable of being happy: I try to be who I needed someone to be for me 17 years ago.

There was one time, probably two years ago, that a woman showed up who just couldn’t hear a message like that, absolutely not, not yet and maybe not ever. She was sure she was too close to death to make any plans for any kind of a future, she despaired of having any chance of seeing her children grow up, and she was as depressed a person as I’ve met in a long time. This was no time for being chipper, this was a crying need for someone who understood–and every one of us there tried to be that for her. Every one of us had, on some level at some point, gone through that same uncertainty and struggle, if not as deep, still, enough to know. And several of us had gone through episodes where life was in the balance, and knew the power of knowing someone was there for us through the worst.

I have to say that for all the best intentions on my part, I think I was the person she least related to. Much though I would have wanted to do better than that. I was too successful at what I wanted out of my life.

As they were ringing up my prescription at the counter today, I happened to glance behind me and see who was waiting next for theirs. It took me a moment–it was her! I smiled; she seemed to have no idea who I was, and ignored me.

The next clerk motioned her over. She was waiting for them to get her meds when I finished; I walked behind her and softly called her name, not entirely sure I remembered it correctly. There was a moment’s hesitation on her part, and then she turned to see who on earth? I re-introduced myself as being from the lupus group, and now she remembered me: ah, yes. Okay. I asked her how she was doing; she sighed, gave a small smile, and said, well, she was here every Wednesday and Friday.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” I said sympathetically.

She looked me steadily in the eyes, and answered calmly, “Beats the alternative.” And then was clearly glad to see me laugh ruefully, gently–whereas once she might well have taken offense at that, might have thought it meant I didn’t really understand the depths of her pain.

Oh, I do.

I had hoped against hope back then that at that meeting she had simply let the worst of her fears vent, that it wasn’t really that bad, day-to-day, for her. But I didn’t know. I hoped we’d done some good in hearing her out. But I didn’t know. And then we didn’t see her again.

And I didn’t know.

And now I know. Whether we played any part or not, now I know that she did indeed begin to cope.

Today she got a chance to show a member of that group that had seen her at her lowest point that she, too, was continuing on now. That she, too, could smile now.

I don’t know if she’ll come back and give us another chance to befriend her.

I do know, today, she helped me. So few words were spoken, but so much was conveyed. She would be all right after all, come what may.

When I got home, I walked into the bathroom under the skylight and noticed that my amaryllis’s bud, which is still growing upwards, had started leaning to one side, so I turned the pot to even it out in its trajectory towards the light. And found, on the other side–I told you God is a poet!–what I never, ever would have guessed. Surprise!

A second bud.