Last night, our neighbors were celebrating the many accumulated, small, moment-by-moment good decisions and unselfishness that had led up to their marking fifty years of marriage. And we were invited to come share in their joy with their loved ones.

We ran into Penny and her husband there–or rather, Penny grabbed my arm as I walked by through the crowd, oblivious: I found myself suddenly exclaiming, “PENNY!”

The first time I ever attempted Barbara Walker’s Checkerboard Mesh Lace as a newbie–the pattern I used in the body of my Blue Jay shawl–I used it with cobweb 2/48 yarn and size 0 needles for a wisp of a scarf for her. We still had children in elementary school together back then.

When things were winding down, Richard headed towards the foyer and turned back to see if I was following; I was finishing up one last conversation first. And then when I came out:

“Are you all right?” he was asking a woman about the age of our moms, who was sitting on a chair near the front door. I found out later he had already asked her several times. There were other people around, but nobody else seemed to have quite taken notice of her state.

She was not seeing us. She was keeling over to the side in very slow motion, one arm splayed out, her hand tightening up. I hunched down so that I was looking up at her face, and repeated Richard’s question.

She began to come to herself again, and said something I couldn’t quite hear. There are times I rue my deafness more intensely than others, but she said again, faintly, “I feel ill.” Gradually, though, she regained herself as we quietly talked. It was just a touch of indigestion. Maybe it was a hot flash. Yes, she told me while Richard was sent off looking for a friend of hers, there had been pain down her left arm, but only for a moment. I told her, trying to gently counter her denial, that I had had that shortness of breath and classic pain radiating down the left arm–at 31. She was surprised. I was hoping to convey, being clearly no longer 31, that acknowledging what was going on and treating it was important.

She did not have any memory of Richard’s asking her if she was all right.

While he was gone, I mentioned my having lupus and Crohn’s–not to complain, just enough to let her know that he and I both understood and were there for her. When he came back, we asked her if we could call 911. She glanced out the front door, and I knew what she was thinking: the sirens, the paramedics, the loud and disruptive exclamation point to the lovely party and everybody going home with that as what they remembered of it, when maybe it was nothing, nothing at all, no reason for all that–and she shook her head no, while wondering out loud, though, whether she should be turning us down. I told her, “Better to call them and not need it than not call them and need it.” I almost had her talked into it. But no.

The wife of the bridal couple came out and saw us concerned over her and was concerned, too. She came over and spoke with her a moment, to convey, along with us, that it’s okay to be ill if you’re ill.

In the end, the woman allowed Richard to drive her home in her car while I followed behind in ours to get him afterwards. I thought we should sit with her awhile. Women know to come, to sit, to be there with others going through the transitions and upheavals in life. But he was the one who had gone with her, he being able to hear her subdued voice in a moving car when I knew I could not, and she was less open to him than I think she would have been to me. Nothing personal; more a gender thing. But she did at least let us take her home.

And I emailed our neighbors when we got back to our own home, to fill them in and because I knew they knew how to contact her, and that they would want to.

I came away from the whole thing feeling, the signs were subtle. Not sitting up straight, the not seeing, the shaking, and then her not remembering–which we wouldn’t have known had we not asked her questions. We probably should have called 911 on her anyway, but we gave her the autonomy and respect to let her make her own decision. I am hoping that once she was home alone, without a crowd of people around her who might be able to step in, she called for that medical help after all, or at least is getting checked out today.

But still. I woke up this morning with a profound sense of our having been in the right place at the right time. And that she was willing to listen to me, whether she immediately did what we hoped for or not, because I had cleared the path ahead by having already walked down part of it.

Women have always been there in the transitions of life. We all go sometime, but it’s the not knowing, it’s the fear of what lies between and ahead that leaves people feeling alone and afraid. Rachel Remen writes, “Fear is the friction in all changes.” By simply being with her, that woman, whoever she was, gained strength, emotional and perhaps physical. She had not been alone.

And she had given the gift to our mutual friends of keeping the evening a celebration of their lives together.

The CT scan suggested lymph node involvement. There was none. The surgery went very well and was deemed a complete success.

Marguerite will be okay. And my intense thanks to all who wrapped her in thoughts and prayers of healing, alongside mine.

Jasmin knits socks. Saying that is like saying I knit a little bit of lace from time to time: Jasmin. Knits. Socks!

When she made some comment about a month ago about how her sock drawer had run out of space and gee, she was going to have to ditch some pairs, maybe Goodwill, I had no doubt she was joking, and I joked back at her that I could help her find a better use for them than that.

She showed up at Purlescence last night with the cardigan I’d left behind at her house (oops, and thanks) and five pairs of socks. Which she already knew would fit me because she’d already made me a pair.

I was stunned. She loved it. I protested. She threatened Goodwill again, and told me this batch was for me. Now for anyone who has ever thought me a generous person, I tell you, the true me burst right out and said to the group something like “Mine all mine bwaahaahaa” and it was about another hour before I asked a couple of people, individually (and, they will note, quietly–I didn’t say it too loud) that they seemed to have about my size feet too if they’d like some. They just laughed me off.

Some friends, you can do all the nice things you could ever possibly think of for them, and you’ll still never catch up.

(p.s. For the non-knitters reading this: I never understood why someone would bother to knit socks, something that would wear out after all that work to make them, till the day someone handed me her sock as she knit the other one and said, Here. Put this on your foot. You’ll see.

And wow did I.  Instantly.  There is simply no comparison between that and anything machine knit. I still don’t love to knit sock yarn on size 0 needles, but oh, do I love handknit socks.)

Every year, my family tells me I have enough amaryllis bulbs already, fer cryin’ out loud, and that I’m not getting any more for my birthday nor Christmas. And that’s final.

And every year I fall for it. Because every year, I look around and go, well, you know, I *do* have quite a few, and mine do tend to bloom year after year, unlike some people who simply toss them when they’re spent for the season.

And every year, I dunno if they were plotting it all along or if they cave at the last moment: after all, it’s such an easy way to make me so happy. I adore amaryllises. I adore planting them. I adore watching them grow. I adore seeing them bloom. The only reason their pictures aren’t plastered all over the front of this blog is that–well–there’s just not space for one more thing. Oh, wait, I think I see a pattern here…

Mail came today. A box. “Jolity”? I don’t…where? When did–wait, did I…? Who…?

I opened it. A Candy Cane amaryllis bulb, with a biodegradeable pot, soil, bulb, all ready to go.

Chunks from cocoa trees (how perfect is that?) for helping with drainage at the bottom. A few wheat seeds to add a grassy effect if I want. Even the tiniest tip of a flower bud, and when those start to come, you have to add water quick and let it grow or the stalk will come out stunted. I hunted through the packing slip, trying to figure out where this was coming from–and no, I didn’t wait till my birthday to open it. I’m not getting amaryllises for my birthday or Christmas this year, John said so. So there.

“This just screamed you… Best, Lene.”

Oh, Lene. Oh, wow. Oh, THANK YOU!!!

I finished it in time! This is the Bigfoot pattern, but with the variant that I continued the Rabbit Tracks pattern all the way down the body of the shawl, not just in the yoke. Since I was knitting it in black, it was way easier to tell where I was if the second pattern row was five stitches across a repeat rather than eleven.

My friend Karin (watch the e’s and i’s in this post to keep people straight) had a half-pound hank of black baby alpaca yarn she’d bought from the farmer who’d raised the animal, and she felt it needed to go to me.

I thanked her, told her I felt there were a lot of people who needed yarn more than I did, and that my eyes just didn’t like to knit black–but a few days later she came back to me with the idea, saying she just still felt it was meant to go to me.

And so it arrived in the mail awhile ago, lovely, very soft stuff, so much of it, and I was just in awe that she would offer it up like that. It was definitely black. Looking at it, I just had the feeling that I would be glad I had it in spite of my reservations, and that Karin was right, I would find just the right person for it–and it would tell me when.

In anticipation of my trip, I asked my friend Karen of the Water Turtles shawl fame what color shawl to knit for her daughter.

Black, Karen answered. Definitely black.

Now, I would never have had any black yarn in my stash had it not been for Karin’s gift. It turns out that Karen breaks out in hives if she touches wool, a true allergy, not just that the stuff is itchy, and she mentioned that her daughter was allergic too. But they have no problems with baby alpaca.

Heh. Guess what I had on hand to play with.

Karin was right. This yarn did find where it was meant to go to, and with her help it’s about to arrive there.

(Okay, back to packing.  And yes, I know I’m blowing the surprise here, but a few days of anticipatory happiness on the recipient’s part makes that worth it, I decided.)

Down to the last few inches on that first ball of Zephyr, time to attach the second.

In elementary school, it seems like the girls divided off into the horsey set and the making-fun-of-the-horsey set. I was one of the ones who loved them and learned everything I could about them. I practiced till I could even draw a halfway decent one (and not much else.) I told my mom I was going to live on a farm when I grew up, where nobody could tell me I couldn’t have a horse if I wanted a horse. It was going to be a palomino, with long, flowing blond mane and tail. Mom smiled and said, Well, if that’s what you want to do when you’re a grown up, then, you will.

KC was also one of the horse lovers. She got riding lessons while I got music lessons. She even took me along on a ride once, in high school. Heh. That horse knew I was all nervous eagerness and no sense–it tried to scrape me off on an overhanging branch to ditch me, and I was so bow-leggedly stiff trying to keep it from killing me (with KC shouting encouragements and directions) I could hardly walk straight for a week afterwards. That left me with a new respect for what I’d wished for when I’d been little.

After high school KC bought a horse. She actually bought a horse. She kept him all the way to his old age, and now, finally, he’s gone.

I’m knitting her the Water Turtles pattern, but I wanted to make it a little different; the original was for Karen, and she and Karen were close friends from childhood on up, but she deserved something more individually her own. Okay, so I changed the k1 yo k1 yo k1 rows to yo k3 yo. There’s a little personalizing there. I got to the end of the yoke, and then went flipping through my Barbara Walkers. Nothing grabbed me. I sighed, went back to the first volume, and started in again, a little bored. I need a 10+1, or maybe a 20+1 pattern here, maybe I should go grab the Barbara Abby volume or something, c’mon universe, help me out here a little.

Got to page 209–and burst out laughing.

Sometimes something becomes so ordinary that we don’t really even see it for what it is. That second time through, I happened to truly notice the name of that pattern that I knew so well that I’d just dismissed it without a blink.

Horseshoes.

Horseshoes!

I mean, come on, how could anything have been more perfect. And now, as I’m knitting along, the variegations in the colors make the horseshoes less overtly obvious; they’re there, and you can see them, but at the same time they become one with the trees and the sunlight shining through and the blue of the water and sky splashing down.

Like the memory of riding her beloved gelding through the woods on a glorious fall day.

I didn’t hear back from Johnna, which surprised me. I saw her before the main meeting at church started today, wearing a black dress, and thought, Oh perfect! That will look great with her new shawl! I headed to the back of the chapel to give it to her.

“You finished!?” she exclaimed as I handed it to her. And then, to my utter bewilderment, she burst into tears.

It was May when Johnna was working behind the scenes playing graphic artist and overhauling my website in anticipation of my book release, working on it till 2 am on at least one night I know of, when she had to get up at 6:00 am. Wow. I really, really owed her that shawl. I knew that, I kept wanting to knit her one, I kept going through my yarn and looking in yarn stores, going, ehhh, that’s not it. I wondered what was wrong with me that I hadn’t gotten it done already. I finally thought, alright, enough of this, and had her come over; she discovered the most perfect combination out of my stash that I hadn’t even thought to put together–that Lisa Souza silk and that cashmere/merino blend I’d dyed–and I got to work. At last. About time.

After all this delay, part of me kept thinking, finish it after the trip East. A few more weeks at this point won’t make any difference. I did put the Scharffenberger-cocoa shawl on hold; but Johnna’s refused to go in the corner for long, even after the goofs and the rip-backs. It had to get done, and now. And so I did.

I had no way of knowing. Johnna was hundreds of miles away last week as her grandmother slipped away from this life. She stayed there for the funeral, and then finally came home.

To be handed a gloriously soft shawl, the silk radiant against the cashmere. The Peace shawl. Just for her.

The timing.

I brought my author’s advance copy from May with me to TKGA yesterday. When people asked me to sign their books, I said sure, and asked if they in turn would like to sign mine. They didn’t have to say anything in there if they didn’t want to, but I thought it would be cool if they did.

Most who did hadn’t really seen the inside of Wrapped in Comfort yet other than a brief glance-through at the booth, and the notes were nice ones along the lines of “looking forward to knitting the patterns.” A number of old friends poured love into their words as well. (Gracie Larsen, I am SO looking at you right now. I had great fun telling everybody this book was your fault.) I told everybody pick a page, any page, anywhere that suits you. Given that that copy was the one I received before I knew how my three years of work would do out there, it was a copy of hope and of holding my breath–which I imagine is about how the people buying it felt yesterday: that it would live up to what they hoped out of it, especially given that they were paying full sticker price there.

(Heh. I noticed a certain large discount online knitting-book seller was at backorder this morning…)

I told my son about it when I got home, and that I planned to take it to Stitches East, too, that that had been just too much fun. He went, “Mom! You’ll run out of space in there!” Well, then, cool. “But they’ll have to, like, write across the models’ noses!” In my dreams, hon. In my dreams.

It was about halfway through before I realized I’d probably picked up the idea from the copy that Martingale sent me that everybody there, from the CEO down to the shipping clerk, had signed for me. A way of honoring every person’s role as being essential. Go Martingale!

P.S. The cushion? It was a valve job. It had been left open. It’s fine.

P.P.S. The backdrop? An afghan made by members of my knitting group, square by square, as a congratulations on the book coming out. Knitters are such cool people.

P.P.P.S. (Technical stuff alert): To the woman who asked me if you could use laceweight with my patterns, a question that had so many answers that it all came out garbled: I had just been in Gracie’s Lacey Knitters Guild booth, where they were calling Jaggerspun Zephyr fingering weight. Zephyr is, I’d say, a heavy laceweight. I’ve used yarn as fine as that on the larger patterns and it worked out to a lighter, different effect than my more-typical fingering weight shawls, but it looked and fit fine.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite spots in the whole wide world was Cunningham Falls State Park. We would picnic by the creek, noisy water over rocks in the quiet trees, and then take a hike in the woods, Mom and Dad telling us about the birds and animals in there. I remember looking for beavers, but the beavers weren’t dumb, and none of them ever showed their faces for six young kids scrambling happily around through their territory.

A few years ago, I was back visiting for my parents’ 50th anniversary. My old buddy KC started talking about Cunningham Falls. It was a few miles’ hike to get all the way up to the waterfalls in the hillside well above the picnic area, and I told her sadly that there was no way these days. I used to racewalk four miles or so a day, back when my kids were little, but the old gray mare she ain’t what she used to be no matter how she might feel about that.

Heh. KC had a way around that. She lived out not far from there these days, and knew the roads better than I ever did. This one state road, if you turn the wrong direction, you have highly armed personnel extremely interested in what the *$# you think you’re doing there. (I am told that one of my in-laws goofed and found that out once.) Uh, yeah, a certain presidential retreat in the mountains of western Maryland, made famous by a certain peace accord back in the day… Don’t go there.

But. Go on up the road, up the endless hill, way past the entrance to the state park, on the other side from that retreat. You’re still in the park. There’s a cutout from the road, made into a small parking area: handicap only. There’s a raised wooden walkway, and nobody seems to know it’s there except the occasional passing car. (And out in the middle of nowhere like that, there aren’t a whole lot of those.) You hang your out-of-state placard, figuring nobody will mind that it says California, you get out, you read the Park Service sign explaining a bit about the area, and you walk or wheel–I’ve done both, now–down that slightly-raised walkway (up so as not to disturb the tree roots, and planked so a wheelchair can get through), and shortly you come to where, at a turn in the path, the falls suddenly surprise you, coming up right there in front of you. Water, tumbling and splashing down a long granite face. Usually, nobody else is there. Just a quiet bit of glory-of-this-earth all to yourselves.

The woods are deep green, with splashes of white sunlight on the path and bits of ground showing here and there between the fallen leaves. Gray rock above.

I found this dark green Zephyr silk blend in my stash, and a ball of Claudia’s Handpaint silk in white/turquoise/teal/deep gray. It instantly said “KC!” at me; I wasn’t sure why, till I swatched a swatch, liked it, thought, okay, and started in on this shawl. I wondered if she liked variegated yarns; I debated starting over with a plain color.

But it wasn’t too many rows before the yarn was telling me why it was what it was, and why it needed to be for KC. Cunningham Falls. A way to get through, a friend finding the path I didn’t know was there, bits of light coming through alongside moments of looking at the dark, acknowledging it square in the eye: loss and love, lived with, and it’s okay that it’s like that. And always, the growing, living green of the trees.

(Tap. Is this thing on?)

Johnna. This is the blog speaking. Johnna, do you read me? Yarnover, and out.

At my knitting group last week, someone asked me if the bright red was a problem, knowing that vivid reds and oranges make me lose my balance. I laughed, and answered her, “I’m sitting down when I knit.”

But her question got me realizing, while I was ripping yet again, that it was being a nuisance to keep track of my place; I was really having a time processing what part of the pattern I was in, and it’s not a hard pattern. It’s just, my brain kept skittering over the bright surface of the stitches like droplets of water flicked onto a flaming-red-hot pan to see if it was ready for the stir-fry yet.

This is my Peace shawl pattern, and now, finally, with the happy triumph of seeing it in all its glory, I’m really, really pleased with it. I can’t wait to see her in it. (Johnna, do you read me? Come over tomorrow while Z’s in kindergarten?)

So. Sunday night we got an email from Dave, familiar to those who’ve read my book as Dave-and-Wanda Dave. He was going to be in northern California on business and wondered if he could stop by Thursday night for a visit on his way back to the airport? Well YEAH! I asked him if he would mind going and asking Wanda her favorite color?

Note that the original shawl I knitted for her was in a color that was a total guess on my part. Blue is a pretty safe bet for most people, but there are all kinds of blues. White would have been good, too, but at that particular point in my life I couldn’t bear to knit any more white stitches for awhile.

Purple, he emailed back a few minutes later.

I did not have enough purple yarn in the right weight. And every single store in the Bay Area that sells Blue Sky Alpacas AlpacaSilk (which is an exquisite yarn) was going to be closed Monday. Every one. My stash and I were on our own.

I had some lightweight baby alpaca and what was once a full pound of Jaggerspun Zephyr silk/merino (thanks to my friend Karin, who used to own The Periwinkle Sheep.) Together, those would give me close to the same weight, and I could dye it when I was done. I did have purple dye in the stash. And so, as I blogged, the race was on.

I showed a picture of some of those rows I frogged. What I didn’t say was that after that I made another brainless mistake and had to frog it again. So I started 11 pm Sunday night, but in effect I might as well have started Monday.

I alternated knitting with icing my hands and was able to keep on going, hour after hour, Monday all day, Tuesday all day, then Wednesday I was the speaker at a lupus support group meeting and didn’t get to my needles till mid-afternoon. At about 7:30 pm the shawl came out of the dyepot.

I figure, Wanda knew what I was up to the moment she was telling Dave purple. And that’s fine. I love the way the silk in the Zephyr took up the dye a little more slowly, and so came out a little lighter than the baby alpaca and the merino fibers: it shimmers against them. I love it. White is nice, but purpleifying it brought out the best in it.

And I got to give it to him in person. That is SO cool.

(Now, did anyone get my visual pun on that metronome? Given what Dave did for us in the story I wrote in the book, I had to reference the piano while anticipating his coming.)

I’ve been trading off between the big-stitch project and the little-stitch project, trying to wrap up the big one fast and get it out of the way so I can really get into my mug-o’-cocoa Malabrigo shawl. Scharffenberger, Dagoba organic–only the best in those stitches. I can just picture it on Alice Medrich: those who have her gorgeous “Cocolat” or “Bittersweet” books or ever ate one of her truffles at her Bay Area Cocolat shops before a fire closed down the plant and undid her business would understand what I’m talking about. Malabrigo? Something this soft, and with the swirls of different chocolates so artfully displayed? Absolutely. Only the best would do to represent her.

Not that I happen to know her, so that’s a totally moot point. But I can just picture it on her, the woman who pronounced that one must never cook the raspberries to make the raspberry sauce to go with your chocolate torte, or “You will assassinate them!”

But meantime, back in real life, Johnna wanted red. Johnna’s the friend who overhauled and updated my website, and I’ve owed her bigtime for a goodly while now. Hmm. Not that shade of dark-ripe raspberry sauce that I’ve been working on, which was heavier than she wanted anyway–it pleased me, but it wasn’t quite right. Not that finished Bigfoot shawl in a handpaint. Too variegated, too casual. Something vivid and splashy and formal and gorgeous. I had her come over yesterday to look, telling her, I’ve looked in all these yarn stores I’ve been doing booksignings in, and I just haven’t found something that quite declared itself to me as being the right yarn for you. But I’ve been looking!

She immediately asked me, Something I would like that you could stand to knit?

Alright, now, don’t put me on the spot like that… 😉

I showed her my Lisa Souza fine silk done in St. Valentine’s red; beautiful and bright, and I’d thought that one would do well on her, but so thin I would want to run it with another strand. I knew Johnna didn’t like the fuzzies; Kidsilk was out. (I showed her some. She wrinkled her nose.)

And then–I realized later I’d always kept it in a separate place from the silk, and somehow I had just never pulled the two out at the same time together: I showed her some 50/50 cashmere/lambswool I’d dyed, telling her I hadn’t found something to run with this one, either.

And she offered the absolutely obvious solution of, why don’t you just put those two together?

It was one of those stunning moments when you realize something so blatantly right there in front of your face, how on earth had you not thought of that yourself? I had never pulled them out together at the same time before, I’d never seen what could be. We twisted the strands together to see how they played off each other. Exquisite. And she was thrilled at the idea that her shawl would be hand dyed by me and by Lisa–not just something bought from some random shop (not that there’s anything wrong with that.) More personal than that.

So now I am about to go sit down and launch into the last four silly rows of that dark red to get it out of my way so I can wind up the 1000 yards of St Valentine’s so I can finally go make Johnna’s shawl so I can finish the Malabrigo after that so I can work on the… Carry on! Johnna’s project has totally changed for me: it’s no longer the angst of, this yarn or this? This pattern or this? Will I like it? Will she like it? Will this work? I will trade off with the Malabrigo when my hands need different needle sizes for a break, because it feels like it’s going to be hard to stop knitting either one–I’m too excited about both these. And just look at those reds! I love it. Johnna loves it. It will look fabulous on her–definitely just right. Yay!

I’m debating adding to this post… I’ve started fighting a cold, which has started my lupus and dysautonomia flaring. Last night I couldn’t breathe if I tried to sleep on my right side, a Bad Old Days symptom I emphatically do not want back. But I kept thinking, I refuse to get sick now. I refuse to give in. Johnna’s got her red shawl coming at last. I finally know just what to make her. I rolled onto my left side before my blood pressure dropped too low, deciding, so be it…

…And somehow, with all that happy anticipation to buoy me up, slept a good night’s sleep just the same.

If you could package knitting to make others happy into a pill, the drug companies would make a fortune. But it’s a whole lot more fun to be handing the medication money to people like Lisa Souza.

Thursday at the booksigning at Purlescence, my friend Jasmin mentioned that Constance was making the drive down for the weekend.

Turns out, Jasmin had just bought a new house, and it needed a lot of work; the place had been left in terrible shape when the previous owner had passed away. Lots of her friends were coming to pitch in, scrubbing floors and walls, playing barnraising, and one of them was Constance, the same Constance I mentioned in my book; she had a three-hour drive down from the Gold Country. Any excuse to get together anyway, and this was a great one.

Saturday morning, my phone rang; did I want to be kidnapped? Heck yeah! Much though I would dearly love to, I’m not up to much when it comes to being useful, but I was greeted with huge hugs and Constance told me I was to be the decoration to the festivities, and that was that. So here, in a moment of total karma, is Constance reaching to rearrange knitting books just so while adding more on Jasmin’s bookshelf. Note the four Barbara Walker stitch treasuries to the left of her hand: the important stuff first.

But what I didn’t expect was that when I exclaimed over Jasmin’s pair of handspun socks she had sitting on a shelf in a basket, from Lisa Souza’s Jellybeanz roving, Jasmin said they were too small for her. My feet were 6.5? Here, try them on!

Thus giving new meaning for my feet to the term housewarming present, when the air conditioning kicked on briskly. Oh. My. These are wonderful. Wow.  Thank you!

A detail edited out of Wrapped in Comfort for the sake of space: Dave’s astonishment at being offered a full berry box’s worth of strawberries at dessert. I had bought a case at a farmstand, my rebellion against New Hampshire’s refusal to give up the cold weather at Easter. He had never before considered a pint of strawberries and a person to be a one-on-one possibility.

I thought of that just now as I offered my son a large bowl, like this one, but full of sliced strawberries ready to eat, and his eyes got big as he asked, “All for me?” You betcha. Happy Fourth.

I want to sing Martingale’s praises for a moment.

My final deadline re the book was mid-January. In late February, I went to Stitches West, ran into Ann Rubin, and knew exactly who that Barn Swallows scarf had been meant for all along.

When I knitted it, it had absolutely demanded to be made in laceweight in that taupe color that it’s shown in in my “Wrapped in Comfort” book. That is emphatically not my color, but nothing else would do. I did not know why. I did knit it again in other yarns, but it felt like, for the book, that taupe laceweight was what it absolutely had to be.

After I blocked it, I thought the edges would look more solid if I were to redo it with one plain stitch extra at each side edge–but then I would have had to spend hours looking at that taupe again, and frankly, I didn’t know any good enough reason to do so to motivate me, not in that color, and I just didn’t get around to it.

I wrote a caption for the main picture of each project. But the one for the Barn Swallows scarf never pleased me, never felt finished, never felt like I could rewrite it well enough, and I had no idea why.

And then I saw Ann. I recognized her from previous Stitches events as I gave her this wool afghan for her Afghans for Afghans charity; she didn’t recognize me, which was fine. One look at her and I knew that taupe was exactly the right color for her, that it would be absolutely beautiful on her. (If only I had known that, I could have anticipated specifically and been just peachy-fine knitting up that color again and adding those edge stitches!)

Had that scarf been a warm one, Ann would have felt morally absolutely obligated to pass it along to the people she serves in Afghanistan, and rightfully so; their needs are so much greater than ours. We have so much here. But it was a wispy little thing, a decorative little thing, a thank you for the work she does for so many people, encouraging knitters to give of their wool, talents, and time, helping those in need not just to receive physical warmth but human warmth as well: the tangible evidence that someone from around the world wanted to reach out to them and wish them well. And yet–it’s okay for her to feel thanked and reminded that people are grateful for her efforts, too. (That took some convincing from me, much though she loved the thing. She didn’t want to in any way put herself above the other volunteers.)

Changing a manuscript so very late in the publishing process is, my daughter with a college minor in editing tells me, very expensive. But after I gave Ann that scarf, I knew exactly what I wanted to do and what that caption had needed to be all along and why it had felt inadequate before. Martingale put people over profits and immediately agreed with me. We changed it, and they added A4A to the Resources page as well. I must say, I think that new caption totally makes the book, it ends it exactly perfectly.

I don’t have a new picture of the afghan I gave Ann that day at Stitches, nor of the original scarf–which arrived back from Martingale the first day of Stitches, exquisitely perfect timing on their part–so, you’ll have to put up with this old photo.

How that afghan came to be is a whole ‘nother post.