The photos: my Blue Moon Geisha-yarn shawl held up to Stephanie, sock style.  Or, at least, it’s there in my drafts.  Hmm.  Anyway.  Stephanie looking for her pattern as I put my knitting bag down; I’m wearing the Michelle pattern from my book, done in Sea Silk in the Teal colorway, which knitty-noddy.com had custom dyed by Handmaiden after I requested it. Laura in Alameda with The Sock. Stephanie arriving.

Okay, here goes. The bookstore had everybody waiting in line outside for hours, but I told them, I don’t do outside–I’m an indoor cat. Right now, my lupus goes after my eyes when I’m in sunlight. Oh, well, no problem. They let me wait inside, which was very nice of them, and all was fine.

Stephanie greeted me with a smile when she came in, and then the biggest hug when it got to my turn in line. And then several more hugs before she let me go. It was so good to get to see her again–a huge shout-out to Jasmin, who drove (three hours up, two hours back), and Nancy, who rounded out the carpool. And Patricia and later Faye, who met us there.

I knew it was Stephanie’s booksigning, not mine, but I also knew how excited she’d be: she had cheered me on during the process. So I showed her my author’s advance copy of my book, and she was exulting, YOU DID IT!!! She flipped through it, asking if her shawl was in there; it is. The Monterey one there, I’d knitted that pattern up for her; she hadn’t been allowed the time in all her booktouring to go see the Monterey Bay Aquarium, so I’d knitted the Aquarium into a shawl and given it to her. I showed her the original jellyfish-and-seaweed one in the book. She was exclaiming, Oh, cool! Look at this!

At one point a little before that, while she was signing and I was waiting for the pre-boarders to finish up, (she always lets the moms with little ones and those with physical needs go first), my friend Laura in Alameda, who’d been part of the standing-room crowd, found me. Laura is a friend that, four years ago, I knitted her a cashmere lace scarf and gave it to her at Stitches: her reaction was to crow, “I get to say I knew you when!” I thought that was so funny! But she believed in me that I would write that book someday that I wanted to, long before I completely believed it would ever happen. We’d been trying to meet up again ever since, with one failure after another. I had no idea she was coming yesterday. So here Laura suddenly appeared out of the crowd, coming over as I stood up in wonderment to greet her, and we threw our arms around each other in thrilled exclamations. Stephanie watched with the very happiest smile on her face: our happiness was her happiness. I adore both of them. And then when Laura was having her book signed, Stephanie recognized her name, and exclaimed, “You’re Laura in Alameda? I know you!”

I got to see Rosemary of designsbyromi.com, the person who, when I said I wished I had a shawl pin that looked like a treble clef, immediately created one. Guess who got the first one? And then she insisted on holding my book while I snapped her picture. Wait, this was Stephanie’s booksigning, not mine!

And a good time was had by all.

Several years ago, we were having some work done on our house, and one morning I noticed that Chris, the contractor, had his dog sitting in the bed of his pickup while he was working that day. We have a fenced yard, and I asked the guy if he’d like to let the dog run back there and stretch its legs? Sure, he would love that! While he was working, he saw me working at my spinning wheel and asked me a few questions about it. You really spin your own yarn? Yes. So the next day, it being summertime, he surprised me with a small bag of very soft white fur he’d combed that night from his Samoyed. Very cool!

Chris had two small daughters, three and four years old. I spun the fur up into a ball of 2-ply yarn, went out, bought a pair of small teddy bears, and knitted up soft, white, fluffy teddy bear sweaters for them.

But. One of the things you do when you spin is rinse the skeins to set the twist, and I went to wash any doggyness out as well, although, Samoyeds make an exceptionally clean yarn that way. But when I got the yarn wet!

“Chris!” I asked him when I saw him, apologetically, but, um, there was a problem. “Did your dog get skunked?”

He was mortified. “Yes, but it’s been a couple of months. I tomato-juiced her, I…” Poor guy. Totally put on the spot, when he’d been trying to be so nice. The dog hadn’t smelled when he’d combed her, he’d made sure of that!

“Just don’t let those teddy sweaters get wet,” I chuckled, and sent him off in great hopes that his little girls would treasure their surprises.

I was googling the other day, looking for a local supplier of cocoa in quantity. I’m no longer interested in buying it by the 50 lb bags like I once did–that’s a blog post in the future–but 5 lbs, sure. We do enough chocolate decadence tortes and hot cocoa from scratch around here.

Somehow C&A Builders of San Carlos came up on that cocoa google. Huh? Hey! That’s Chris! So I shot him an email saying hi, and he in return emailed me a picture of those two teddy bears side-by-side. He mentioned that his girls were teenagers now. (How on earth did they get that old?!)

I can’t tell you how much it meant to me that they’d still hung onto those bears. The dog passed away a few years ago, and her fur is still there to remind them of a great dog and friend of their childhoods.

And if you live in my area, and want a contractor who’s a nice guy, who takes great pride in a job done well and in great honesty, I know just the one.

Years ago, I used to trade off babysitting with another mom every weekday morning; she would go work out, and I would go do swim therapy. She had three preschoolers, including an adorable little baby girl that I used to sing “Love you forever” to–the refrain, set to a tune, from a children’s book I’d come across but had never gotten around to buying a copy of. My kids were just a bit past the age for it when I discovered it, cute though it was.

Terri Shea knew none of that. She just happened to come across this adorable little children’s book, “Love You Forever,” and on impulse bought a copy and mailed it to me just because. It was not terribly long after that friend had moved across the country, where I wouldn’t get to see her kids growing up anymore. But no matter the time and the distance, I will love them all forever.

Terri didn’t know I about burst into tears when I saw what was in that totally unexpected envelope. Wow. How did she know… The answer, of course, was, she didn’t. She just thought it was cool. It was. And how!

This book is the one that Terri just finished writing and self-publishing. I think if I had found it before I found Kaffe Fassett, my love for fair isle might have drowned out the ambition to learn intarsia: the focus in this is mittens, but you can take the patterns and apply them to anything you want. This book is a work of love and art (insert subliminal message: buythisbookbuythisbookbuythisbook). She’s over at spinningwheel.net . Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Before there was even a book, Laura, whom I’d met up with at Stitches yet again and was eating lunch with, was holding up her new laceweight scarf from me and crowing, “I get to say I knew you when!” I sat there laughing, going, When what?

She surprised me back recently. And when I went off to hear the recent Good Friday concert, I wrapped her work around my shoulders to wear, to keep my friend’s presence there with me on a day I needed it. I knew people would ask me about it, and I would go no, I didn’t knit it; my friend did. Which happened. Laura, just so you know, you got bragged on.

I’m so glad I knew her when!

Thank you to everybody for the kind words on my book; much appreciated.

Now, to start off: I used fingering weight yarn for the most part in my shawls, trying to keep my patterns accessible to a larger number of knitters and to entice newbies into giving them a try; sometimes very fine yarns can be intimidating. But out of curiosity, I took this one pattern and used Fino, a baby alpaca/silk blend that is half the weight of the yarn in the shawl to the left, for the red shawl here, which I’ve just finished. I was afraid it would come out too tight around. It came out absolutely stunning. Yay!

Meantime, two days after Jim’s son fell off the ski lift, his wife’s mother had a stroke. It turned out not to be a bad one, and she’s doing okay, all things considered. Then yesterday Jim got word that the job he had applied for in another state had gone to someone else. …When it snows, it avalanches.

And so their neighbor Russ threw out an email to all their friends. Jim’s family isn’t moving! We get to keep them! Our corner of the world wins! Come CELEBRATE!!!

And celebrate we did. We poured into Russ’s house en masse, bringing food and company and getting a chance to tell that family how much they mean to us and how glad we are that they’re here. Saying hi to Nicholas without making a nuisance of a fuss over his injuries. After all that’s happened to them, we want to see their 7 and 8-year-old sons grow up, every step of the way. We want to buoy up their grandparents. They belong to us, all of them, and we are so fortunate to have them here. I am so grateful to Russ for giving us a chance to say that by simply coming and being there.

I did not shoot photos of the party. You’ll have to make do with the shawl shot. But believe me, a good time (and strawberries and chocolate sauce and cream puffs and tiny quiches and stuffed tiny tomatoes and–okay, I’ll stop now) was had by all.

Celebrate! Here, I’ve got some more Fino, I think I’ll go cast it on now.

First, let me say that by a combination one particular day of chance and of decision on my part–and then hers–this woman and I became friends in an instant, and all was healed. Enough said: I don’t want anyone to realize, oh, her! It’s been 20 years and long gone.

We had just moved 3333 miles, as the moving company bills, and went to church for the first time in our new ward. We had moved from one that had 40 toddlers under the age of four to one that was mostly elderly people and had very few children of any age. Being in a strange place, ours, ages 11 months, 33 months, and just shy of five, were–well, reasonably good and not crying that first day, but not totally silent through the whole meeting, either. They were little kids, plain and simple. Actually, I thought they did a pretty good job of being quiet.

I of all people should understand, and do, what background noise does to make a meeting difficult to follow for older folks with any kind of hearing impairment. I have also learned that sometimes that’s just the way it is, after the hearing aids and the lipreading classes and the what-all-else. You learn patience.

Afterwards, a woman we had of course never laid eyes on before came up to us and gave us what-for for our having disrupted the meeting with our little ones, and ordered us to haul them out next time.

This was absolutely not your normal meet-the-new-folks greeting one encounters in a Mormon church! We managed not to say a stony, Welcome to the ward to you too?

Like I say, there’s a follow-up story, and she, who at the time, it turned out, was going through terrible things in her life that I have never had to go through, and I, eventually became good friends. It required a conscious looking for the good and wanting to move forward. But we both did.

But the flip side to that day, and the reason I tell the tale, is what came from it. It had been one of those moments that epitomizes how small children can be very unwelcome from time to time simply because of who they are, and the hugeness of that encounter in my life to me just then as a thoroughly-isolated stranger made a radical difference to me: I didn’t want any young mom to ever feel like I felt right then. Ever. I wanted every small child to feel treasured and welcomed. So when there’s a new mom at church, I make a point of celebrating her little ones. There’s always a smile and, should it be helpful, a knitted finger puppet in the purse to cheer them and charm their parents.

The last two weeks, there was a woman with a husband and a one-year-old who had just moved in, and I noticed her outfit: bright red, both weeks. Got that color in my stash, cool, so I knitted her a lace scarf from the ball pictured above. Today I gave it to her, putting it in her hands with, “This is just a little bit of cashmere and silk I made for you.” She was wearing a different dress this time, but again it was bright red; clearly a favorite.

She was stunned, she was delighted with the color, she was thrilled at having been noticed when she didn’t really know anybody yet, and thrilled that she mattered to someone enough that I would spend the time and that kind of fiber on her. Every emotion I had hoped she would feel in the moment I gave it to her, she felt. It was intensely gratifying, and a strong reminder of why I do this.

And I have to say, I am grateful that that older woman took out her frustrations on us, all that time ago. Because of how important it made it to me to actively do the opposite. And especially because I know that now, she would want to be having that same positive effect herself; she grew and changed over the years and became a much happier person. And that is something to celebrate most of all. I am so glad and so relieved that I did not lose myself in my hurt and turn away from her and the possibilities she had to offer of friendship after all.

A few years ago at Stitches, towards the end of the day, a tired friend asked if she could hang her bag on the back of my electric wheelchair. Sure, no skin off my nose; go ahead!

If only there were a video. I was tootling along, and had no idea that between her bag and my chair, somehow the back snagged someone’s rollaboard luggage they were using that day for their purchases. I saw a few people’s surprised expressions, having no idea why, and then all the sudden my 250-lb chair was popping a wheelie! That woman had seen her bag suddenly going airborne, had grabbed for it hard, and I guess you don’t come between a knitter and her new yarn.

So here I was at Stitches again last week, and as I’ve mentioned, my chair was dead. I ran into my old friend Sandi. It was her first time being there as a vendor; she’s one of the co-owners of Purlescense in Sunnyvale. We talked wheelchairs a moment, and she said she’d inherited a scooter she didn’t need and hadn’t been able to find anyone that did need it. My electric chair was dead? Did I want this other one?

This is like asking, do you want some cashmere yarn to go with your stash?

We finally got down to San Jose to pick it up from her. Wow. Thank you, Sandi! I have to tell you, we need to replace a car, and one of the issues holding us back was that we didn’t want a big one anymore, and we couldn’t see buying one where we couldn’t haul that monster chair around. It seemed like we were stuck with my big minivan with the seats out. This scooter, Richard simply lifted it up into the car. It folds. It splits into pieces for transport if need be. He can fit it in the trunk of his ’01 hybrid Prius. We can replace my van with another Prius. The scooter isn’t as fast, it’s certainly not as turbocharged, it puts me very low to the ground–my husband, who is 6’8″ to my 5’5″ wryly commented that that was certainly not a new thing–but for me it does everything I really need. Wow. Thank you, Sandi!!

(Now, I just have to figure out how to put a finger puppet on this thing somewhere somehow.)

I got this as part of a letter from my Mom yesterday. She was talking about someone at church she’d been paired up with to go visit and keep an eye out for some of the older women in the congregation. I thought it interesting enough to share, with permission:

“My new companion is a Dutch convert in her 80’s, a lovely soul with a strong conviction and sense of duty. We had a few minutes between appointments, and I got to know her a bit. She lived in Rotterdam as a young woman during the German occupation, and she had some stories to tell. I have heard Uncle Wally talk about Dutch potatoes sent to help German saints after the war, but Truus (that’s her name) was there, helped grow the potatoes. She said that they were not told at first who the potatoes were for; they assumed they were growing them for themselves. They had had a very hard time under the Germans; she called 1944 the hunger year, when the ration of bread was 1/2 pound of bread per person PER WEEK! Lots of people starved. The farmers sold food at first to those who could get out into the country, but toward the end of winter refused to sell. She said that the stake president called everyone together and sent them out to forage in the fields and byways for whatever was growing and edible, and then bring what they found back to the community soup kitchen, where things were boiled up and served nightly. This finally broke down when people quarreled about who got the best portions.

But you can see why they were delighted when the church sent seed potatoes and told them to plant them. She said their potatoes grew better than anyone else’s, because they were prayed over. There was a huge harvest and people were ecstatic. Then the church leaders called them together and said the potatoes (or at least a large part of them) were for the German saints who were starving. She said it was a real lesson, hard but necessary, in learning not to hate. The brethren were not only feeding German saints, they were helping Dutch saints spiritually. I had never heard the story that way before.”

(p.s.: No doubt lots of other people prayed over their potatoes and whatever all else they may have been growing. And of course, participation in sharing the ones Truus was talking about was strictly voluntary.)

Some days just need a tiger hug, and this one’s for Lene, my friend over at theseatedview.blogspot.com. Not as cool as the real four-month-old tiger cub she once got to hold, but it’s what I’ve got.

One of my earliest memories is of watching in huge excitement as my dad opened up his suitcase in the middle of the living room rug. He’d just gotten home from a trip to Europe; I’d missed him fiercely, and he told me he had something in there for me and something for my little sister. He’d toured a stuffed animal factory in Germany. First, he pulled out my tiger. (There is no Steiff ear tag; at some point in my childhood it must have mortally offended me, so out it went.) Then a koala for my little sister.

There were many stuffed animals along the way over the years growing up, but none with the power to comfort like my tiger. Mom used to hold him up to the light at bedtime so there would be glowing cat eyes in the dark, always watching over me and keeping me safe. Now, as in any parent/child relationship, he’s in his old age and I’m the one keeping him in good care.

As I do my friends, to the best I can. Hey Lene. Consider yourself tiger hugged.