(Picture taken with my camera phone while that was all I had that was working. Pattern is the smaller version Water Turtles, knitted on size 6mm.)

I blogged awhile ago about the bright red cashmere yarn that Karen and her daughter Amy told me I had to buy when we were together at Stitches East last October in Baltimore. About my reluctance to buy something so expensive so very much not my color vs my internal struggle in thinking how perfect it would be for my friend Marguerite (but it wasn’t her turn!) and finally just going along with the peer pressure and buying it…not knowing that Marguerite had been diagnosed with breast cancer three days before and had told not a soul other than her husband.

Sometimes you find out fairly quickly like that. Sometimes it takes awhile longer.

The second day we were there, I saw some Fleece Artist merino fingering weight yarn that was just lovely, and had a hard time choosing between two colorways; I was only going to spring for one shawl’s worth. What I wouldn’t do now to have bought that bright blue and green in cashmere, too, though I don’t remember seeing any in stock there. So, sitting there debating and debating, I finally asked Karen, with the booth owner’s permission, to take one skein of each colorway and walk about 20 feet away from me. Karen walked towards a solid black curtained-off area, which made the perfect backdrop. As soon as she did, it was instantly clear: *that* one. Emphatically. Sometimes you need a little Claude Monet effect and to look at it from a distance.

Later, another friend saw a nearly identical merino yarn in another booth and nearly dove headfirst into it, much to my amusement. She totally loved it, exclaimed over it, fondled it–and then reluctantly put it back, saying something about budgets, it being the end of a day at the overload that is Stitches.

Heh. Guess what I had. I recently finished knitting it up, thinking how perfect it was going to be for her. I’d seen her reaction to it.

And then every time I went to the post office, intending to run multiple errands, I kept forgetting to take it with me. Dumb. I mean, really dumb. What was wrong with me on this one?

Wednesday afternoon at 4 pm I got an anguished email. Masses. I reminded her of Marguerite’s five masses, and how only one had turned out to actually be cancerous and that despite all that they had expected, it had not spread. I think everything’s going to turn out okay for her, too. If I have any say in the matter! Knitting as cancer cure! (Hey, it’s not biopsied yet. Might not even be what they think.)

This time, when I went to the post office, there was no question and no forgetting. And maybe I see why I did before. The timing now was right, the comfort it could provide was perhaps more intense by sending it now.

Steve, one of the clerks, waved hi and then looked at my face and asked, “Having a hard day today?” That surprised me; I didn’t think it was showing. I took a deep breath, knowing that he would want to know (I’ve lived in this town awhile, I prayed for him during his recent surgery) and explained to him what was in the package and why, and pleaded, “Please get it to her quickly for me.”

Priority mail, cross country, and this morning, a day and a half later, I got her email that it had come.

Go Steve go. Thank you.

Made me cry.

I think she did too.

Standing in the aisle at Costco last night, I called her name. She didn’t hear me. I yelled it–my voice can run faster than I can. She looked up with a start, saw me, ran over, and we threw our arms around each other for old times’ sake.

I’ve never had to meet C professionally. Thank goodness for that; she’s an ICU nurse. But we both have big families and our kids went to school together from kindergarten on up. In a state where the school buses pretty much disappeared with Proposition 13 in the ’70’s, most of the parents who are able to, meet their elementary-school kids at 3:00 and take them home. And those parents become good friends as they wait together for the bell to ring, year after year.

I remember running into Albert one day, which was a little unusual, and asking him where his wife CH was; she was home with pneumonia. I offered to bring over a dinner and make life a little easier for them for the day. Yes of course I think you can cook perfectly well, Albert, but wouldn’t it be nice to have one less thing to have to worry about just now?

He couldn’t get over it, as he happily accepted the offer; he kept asking why would I bother over them like that?

I blamed it on my church, and told him, If you were in my Mormon ward, that’s what I’d be doing, so, hey, what’s the difference? It’s what Mormons know how to do, culturally, to the point that we make a joke of it amongst ourselves sometimes. Bring dinner. How many to change a lightbulb? One to change it, three to bring refreshments.

I went all out on that one, bringing homemade bread and a chocolate cake to make their kids happy. Life is for celebrating, along with the chicken soup for his sick wife. Part of that was a nod to some folks at church who’d taken turns and had brought my family dinner three nights in a row, back when I had had a bad bout of pneumonia myself a few years earlier, each one bringing a gloriously-frosted cake; one of my kids a few weeks later had asked me if I could please get sick again–not really sick!–just enough that someone would bring them a cake like one of those again. Sprinkles on chocolate. Yum.

So I made chocolate cake for CH and Albert’s kids. Dessert comforts kids. Pay it forward.

That closeness in the elementary school days led to a sense of loss as our kids got older; we let go not only of our kids being little, but of our getting to see much of each other in the day-to-day as time went on. At the high school graduation of my youngest and C’s second-youngest, there were of course a bunch of us old Fairmeadow Elementary parents all in one place, and C pronounced, “We need a reunion party!”

And then she threw one. It was great fun. One of the old Fairmeadow teachers came, too. So C threw another party the next year, but Richard and I were on a plane that didn’t arrive home from Baltimore quite early enough that night last October and we missed it.

There at Costco, without a backyard full of guests for her to have to attend to, we had some free moments to talk, C, Richard, and me, and she stood back, took me in a moment, and allowed as how good I looked now and how so many of us–including me–never thought I’d live to see the day. But here I am, still.

Richard said something about how my book was doing well. I’ve got plans for the next two. I told her happily, “I’m not going anywhere!”

She mentioned that that scarf I’d knitted for her and given her at that party a year and a half ago, when she’d put it with a favorite dress of hers, it went so well that it looked like it had been dyed to match. She just loved it.

And you know? That’s it. It’s the tiny little miracles like that, day to day, that come when you try to make use of whatever you’re good at to make others’ lives a bit brighter, that help sustain the life and the love in us. I think every time I’ve seen someone’s face light up like that couple’s faces did on Sunday, it adds a year to my life.

C, it turned out, knows Ann’s parents well, and was blown away by the randomness of their granddaughter having met and now being about to marry our son. Small world. You knew, coming away from that conversation, that she was going to go tell them what a good kid their granddaughter was marrying.

Come to think of it, she might very likely have been one of the nurses attending to Conway, Ann’s father-in-law, after his heart attack. I don’t know that she would specifically remember him now, but he was in her unit, and he would have been in kind and good hands with her taking care of him.

It IS a small world.

Life is SO good.

When I was working on knitting for my book, just about everything on my needles was focused on that; I was making one shawl for my recipients, one for the publisher, shawl after shawl. Maybe that color would look better, better go make another. After I shipped everything off to Martingale, it was a relief to be able to just knit for the sheer joy of it, to be able to give my time and skill away for the love of it without having to put any of it off to the side.

And after all those shawls, I wanted some near-instant gratification. Now, if anyone had told me when I started out that I was going to end up knitting a lace scarf for every single woman who comes to our church, I would have run away screaming in protest, no way! But, starting off with a scarf or two and gradually coming to realize that I’d come to the point of no return where I couldn’t leave anyone out now, over a year and a half, that’s exactly what I did. Everyone. Except for the blind woman whose guide dog was far more interested in that exotic animal he could smell in there than she was; a scarf was the most impractical thing in the world, and she let me know it. You could just see the dog exclaiming “Dang!” with a snort as I put hers back away. That’s fine, I actually kind of expected that. I couldn’t leave her out, though, I had to at least offer.

So I was done (which felt weird). And I stopped. But living in a college town, people didn’t stop moving in and out, and the end result is, it’s been several months since I’d made the last scarf, but there were half a dozen or so new women here. Time to get back to doing at least one church scarf a week and play catchup. It’s not like I don’t have the yarn…

So, yesterday I walked up to a newly-married couple whose names I ought to remember and don’t, and said to the woman, “I *think* this is the color you were wearing last week,” as I pulled one out of my purse. “I was playing with some yarn this week.” I had the ball band tucked in there so they could read what it was made of if they were curious, without my having to play puff-it-up at them.

She and her husband were instantly surprised and delighted, and as she pulled it out of the bag, their faces were in perfect happy synchronicity. She put it on and kept it on. Elann’s Baby Cashmere, one skein, 19 stitches till it ran out, made up into what my mom calls a “yarn necklace.”

I went to my own seat, thinking at myself, remember that. Remember those expressions on their faces. THAT is why I do this. Get a clue. Do it again.

(p.s. After I did that, Jo kept trying to get my attention so she could wink and smile at me. Go Jo!)

There was a bit of a buzz on the Knitlist about things to knit to donate for a silent auction, and someone said, make a felted bag; handbags are always in demand, and a one-of-a-kind one would be doubly so.

Ah, yes… (Cue to Back In The Day.)

It’s worn out and a bit flea bitten and I don’t know where it is at the moment, although I know it’s safely inside a plastic bag somewhere, but I have it. In its honor, here’s a photo of a handwoven wool-and-wood plant hanger I bought at a craft fair, the planks having been the roof of a circa-1800’s barn falling in on itself and recycled, that I fell in love with when I was 18. I used it for many years, and looking at it here, I think maybe I should bring it out of retirement. Anyway.

My husband was in his first post-grad-school job in New Hampshire. We had bought our first house at the very best interest rate then available in several years: 12.5% fixed. (It still makes me shudder. But we had neighbors with an ARM that hit 19%.) We had small babies and not a spare dime anywhere.

My folks, meantime, went to a craft fair in southern Virginia. Dad being an art dealer, they always love to see what people are creating, and they came across someone selling handbags from wool that I believe was handspun from their own sheep (right, Dad?) and handwoven, with a twisted-cord strap, done in the natural colors of the sheep. Dad bought Mom one; Mom had once tried handweaving herself when they were newlyweds and had made herself a couple of handbags, but had long since worn them out. Dad bought me one, too, in a slightly different pattern, probably thinking of my plant hanger and knowing I would like it; they sent it to me for my birthday.

I was thrilled. I was inordinately proud of the thing. Something made so much by hand, something nobody else in the world owned anything like, something that spoke to my upbringing in a household that valued the artist, and I took it with me quietly proudly to church and tried not to hold it up in the face of every person I encountered, demanding that they admire it too. (Joyce, do you remember this?)

The second week I had it, our Mormon bishop’s wife happened to walk into the chapel and one look at her stopped me dead in my tracks. I got her attention, church not having started yet, and barely able to speak the words for disbelief, asked her, “Where…did you get that?”

“Oh, isn’t this nice? My husband and I were on vacation and we were driving through southern Virginia, and we stumbled on this craft fair.”

She’d picked one in I think it was the same weaving pattern as mine, with a slight variation in the coloring; probably done on the same warp at the same time as mine, I’d guess. Out of all the people in all the places on all the planet, and all the choices at that craft fair, for that matter, what were the chances…

One could say God definitely has a sense of humor. And a tendency, like any good parent, to tell me not to get too full of myself. It still makes me laugh, all these years later.

Scene: college apartment with four girls in it, ’79 or so. I loved to bake; Kay tried very occasionally, mostly cookies, but pretty much left the oven to me.

One day, though, she decided to make some I think it was banana bread, but some type of quick bread, anyway. Only instead of putting in the 1/4 tsp of baking soda that was called for, she put in 1/4 cup. The loaf rose beautifully (um…) and she was quite proud of herself. She invited all her roomies to dig in as she sliced us each a piece and put them on plates. Hey. We were being high-class here in the solemnity of the occasion.

Roommate #1: “Um, Kay…”

Roommate #2: “What did you DO to this?!”

Roommate #3 (that would be me): “That’s really good, Kay,” (finishing it off), “can I have a second piece?”

Gaack. It was as bad as you think it sounds. But I was nothing if not a loyal friend; Kay and I had been roommates since our freshman year, and I wanted to encourage her to keep trying what I enjoyed doing. I didn’t want her baking career to stop cold on the spot.

Ever since that day, I have not cared for the taste of soda in food. Especially bread. If the recipe calls for it, I substitute baking powder. Chocolate chip cookies? Why do that to a good cookie? Don’t tell me it’s to neutralize the acid, I know the theory, theories don’t make food taste better, soda is soda, I make cranberry orange bread without the stuff and it’s wonderful my way and that’s about as acidic as you could ask for.

Now. Here, from the chocolateandzucchini.com website, is the world’s best blueberry cake. I notice that it has a smidgen of soda in it right now; the author has put it in and taken it out from time to time, trying to decide. My copy is printed out from when it wasn’t in there. I can guarantee you (taking a bite) that you just can’t improve on it my way. And half a cup of butter to three cups of blueberries? How can you go wrong? I use a non-runny plain (but definitely not nonfat) yogurt, frozen berries.

Go ahead, try it. Impress the people who live at your place.

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.

At 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.

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.

A few more Stitches on my needles:

Sheila Ernst (modeling her Blue Jay shawl, knitted from one strand laceweight in Lisa Souza’s Shade Garden colorway in baby alpaca and one strand light blue Baruffa merino laceweight), and her husband Michael, two of the kindest, gentlest folks you could ever hope to meet. I surprised Sheila with the shawl, and she surprised me with a shawl pin. I already had the larger one, but she thought I needed a smaller one to go with some of my finer-weight shawls. Handblown glass–they do beautiful work.

The yarn is Camelspin that I bought from Beehive Wools, the booth that was next to where my hamster ball was. Beehive had a huge selection of Fleece Artist and Handmaiden yarns–it was dangerous to get too close to them.

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.

 (Edited to add later: actually, he said “Wrapped in Comfort by Alison Hyde” over and over, but it sounded too full-of-myself to write my own name over and over when I posted this.)

So many stories. SO much to say. My goodness.

Someone came up behind me yesterday at the show, brushing a hand lightly on my shoulder to get my attention as she stepped in front of me and beamed, “I love that book! I see you got the yarn to make the same shawl as the one in the book!”

Oh my goodness. Um, yes. I burst out laughing, and then thoroughly enjoyed myself as she exclaimed “Ohmygosh you’re the AUTHOR?!”

But the best part of all was at the end. They had been going to surprise me. But then they realized they’d better make sure I was going–and actually, I had had no intention till that point, I knew that three days of Stitches was absolutely going to do me in (it always does, but my goodness, what a way to go), and then the evening banquet on top of that? No way.

But I had to attend when they ratted themselves out and let me know what they were planning.

The dinner was followed by Rick Mondragon of XRX, the sponsor of Stitches, and someone whose name I just couldn’t hear MC’ing an event that included having knitters parade down a catwalk with their creations.

My scooter is not compatible with holding a cane, so I hadn’t brought one. I know, my husband’s been telling me I need a collapsible one that fits in my purse, he’s right. Anyway, the scooter was dying the death again by evening, and I managed to get it into the banquet hall and plug it in, found myself a spot and sat down and was joined shortly by my friends.

When it came time for the runway, they were calling people up alphabetically. Jocelyn sent a note up to the stage. A moment of off-mike hemming ensued. Okay.

So then, at pretty much the end–I don’t think anyone paraded after them, I think we became the grand finale, but then, I was pretty distracted by then so if I’m being egocentric by saying that, I apologize–ten friends from my knitting group went up together. They did the police lineup thing together on the stage.

Another friend gave me an arm and helped me over to a temporarily-empty seat near the end of the runway so that I could see better. My left side kept trying to collapse, and I was unsteady, to say the least. My friends weren’t going to let that stop them. They had already agreed I was to be moved over there, and move me they did.

And then Rick had the ones on stage parade down, one by one, as he called out, “This is Fae. She’s wearing the Julia shawl in Lisa Souza’s merino in the What-A-Melon colorway from ‘Wrapped in Comfort.’ …This is Cris. She’s wearing the Julia shawl in Jade Sapphire Cashmere in black from ‘Wrapped in Comfort.’ …This is Jocelyn. She’s wearing the “Peace of Mind” shawl in Sea Silk from ‘Wrapped in Comfort.’ …This is Vera. She’s wearing the Bigfoot shawl in (mumble, sorry) from ‘Wrapped in Comfort.’

And on and on. Lyn raised her arms high as she twirled at the end of the catwalk, showing the full scale of the circle and the effect of the pattern. The crowd cheered.

When they were done, Rick had me stand and be acknowledged. I was fighting tears. Wow. Someone I did not even know was kind enough to tell me afterwards she had been, too.

And then the one friend close by stood, took me by the arm, and helped me stagger back to my own chair.

And then those women in their shawls came off the stage, went straight to the back of the room, grabbed me, and took photos with multiple cameras of all of us together. (Although the one in the zinnia scarf escaped.) I was throwing my arms around them, and there were more tears. How can you thank your friends enough when they… What I wouldn’t have done to have had Richard see all this… Rick was so wonderful in letting us put on a display from a book his company hadn’t been the ones to publish…

Wow.

At the end, I got my scooter back and got someone to flag Rick down for me as people were leaving. I thanked him profusely for what he’d let happen. There was a genuineness and a warmth in him as he responded.

And I said gratefully to Nancy as she drove me home, and Lisa, who’d manned my camera for me, that that was a once-in-a-lifetime event.

And to think I’d almost missed it.

Dianne’s Creatively Dyed Yarn is at booth 930, and her daughter is just as nice as she is. Go tell them I said hi. I was wondering if she’d remember me–hah. I walked up, and she dropped everything and exclaimed, “ALISON!” when she saw me, and threw her arms around me. I got her back for it, though, when I opened my bag–and she was wearing a shirt that exactly matched that scarf. She got me back, though, when I tried to pay for some really really gorgeous merino she’d dyed. Fine, be that way–I’ll knit it up and put it in the next knitting book. So there.

People who don’t knit miss out on so much!

Oh, and–we’re four for four (or is it five for five) on the Stitches/wheelchairs saga. We got the silly thing charged okay, and then I couldn’t get it out of the minivan. But I didn’t drop it on my foot this year.

Kevin at Purlescence gave me his cell so I could plead for help if need be tomorrow.

People who don’t know people who are knitters miss out on so much!

Karen at Royale Hare, as she was stroking her new mohair scarf from her yarn, admitted she’d seen it on my blog and wished… Not that she would ever in a million years have told me that. But she was the perfect person for it. And I would never have thought of it if that Silkie hadn’t played hide-and-seek, so that the Fitch Mountain Frost could get a chance to leap out of my bag at me while I was searching for the Silkie.

Speaking of which, Kaci, where were you? Your Silkie’s coming home in a few days. You said at Stitches East that you liked that colorway too. (I figure by the time you might read this, you already know.)

Oh, and–I told a few people that everybody seemed to be sold out of my book. My bad–Lisa Souza has a whole ‘nother case. And Pacific Meadows Alpacas had a few copies left as well. Nina Price will have some too. Phew! I was afraid we were going to have booksignings with no books left!

My friend Jasmin was putting in a bulk order for hand dyed roving to Crown Mountain Farms and asked if I wanted to go in on it. My mouth caved in to what my eyes and fingers wanted to play with, no matter what my brain had to say about it, and I told her yes.

She started in on her roving right away when it came. I went ooh, aah, watching her spinning it at Purlescence, and I could only wish; when I spin, which isn’t often anymore, my yarn is never as fine as the stuff I most like to knit up these days. The finer I want it to turn out, the further down my fingertips I hold the fiber at my wheel; with almost no sense of touch left at the tips, spinning like that is a strictly visual task. And one can only stare at a small spot for so long. I could make perfectly lovely yarn out of it, but there was no way this soft merino was going to turn into the lace shawl knitting I so much wished for.

Jasmin had an answer to that. She asked me to bring a half pound of it back to her. I was stunned. I kept asking her, “Are you sure!? Are you serious!” I knew how much work that was! But twist my arm, heck yeah, and I handed over those eight ounces.

That was a week ago. Yesterday (that was a lot of work done fast!) she handed it back to me: in the form of three skeins, three-plied, (three plied! That’s way more work than two-plied!) fingering weight, 794 yards’ worth of that merino, enough for one of my shawls. In absolutely the most gorgeous colorway (well, um, yeah, I picked it out. “Oh Pretty Woman.”) Oh. My. Goodness. Thank you, Jasmin!

I have to add: my friend Nancy came over yesterday, before we saw Jasmin, and I told her, “You have to see this.” She walked into my living room, saw the amaryllises, and gasped out loud over Lene’s: “That one just towers over the others!”

Yeah, my friends tower over me all the time. It’s so cool.

When Purlescence got a shipment of Blue Moon’s Silkie merino/silk in last month, I went through their basket and dithered between the turquoise and the purple colorways. Turquoise or purple. I love purple. But, for reasons I couldn’t put my knitting fingers on, the turquoise is what came home with me.

When it was just an unkempt blob of stitches on my blog, Lene commented how much that turquoise reminded her of her beloved ocean that I knew was so much a part of her growing up in Denmark. What she didn’t know, was, I had spent over a year wishing she would let slip somehow what colors she liked best.

She’d sent me that amaryllis and I had her return address. Heh.

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.

I’ve heard a few people say they were afraid my shawls wouldn’t work for plus-size types. My friend Diana’s reaction to that was to play model for me at Purlescence’s knit night tonight.

First,

she wanted to show off her blue Bigfoot shawl. Well done! I knitted Bigfoot a few months ago in Alpaca With A Twist’s “Fino,” which is a baby alpaca/silk laceweight, much lighter than the weight she used here; she tried that one on then, she loved it, and she started in on this one.  Beautiful.

When she saw the shawl I just finished, she tried it on for me, too. (I snagged a stitch badly and wrecked the blocking on one side today while fixing it. A rounded hem works fine too.) Note that this is the version of the Julia shawl with the smaller stitch count.

Thank you, Diana!