Diana designed a bag to fit my new laptop, and I am ecstatic.  It’s gorgeous and it fits it just so. Thank you, Diana! We are planning a trip to Coupa Cafe with it to celebrate, and anybody who wants the pattern, now you know where to find it. (Coupa Cafe’s hot chocolate: there is nothing anywhere quite like it.)

Speaking of chocolate.  Our local dairy specialty place stopped carrying manufacturing cream a few months ago.  But. But.  How was I supposed to make my signature dessert now?  Nineteen years I’ve been making that, and at church potlucks and on the block party list they always make a point of having the H’s be on the dessert assignment. There was a tradition to be upheld, didn’t they know it?

That lack of that cream is why I didn’t make my chocolate torte for the neighbors for Labor Day–it wouldn’t have been the same without that 40% butterfat, and I didn’t want to bring an inferior version, so I brought those mini cupcakes–here, let the raspberries distract them.

So. Michelle and I went to The Milk Pail today, and lo and behold, there was a sign from the owner saying that serious foodies knew about his manufacturing cream, yadda yadda.  As if it had never (shhh!) been gone.

I guess I’m not the only one who pleaded.

They don’t sell it in small bottles anymore.

My dairy-allergic daughter looked at that half gallon and went, So that means you’re going to make a double batch (ie, four tortes) and put them in the freezer?

Yes, at least that many.

Then you have to make a coconut milk one too. You can’t torture me like that.

Sounds good to me.

So we have some serious bittersweet chocolate buying to do.  And why yes, I was feeling better, can you tell?

(An aside to my old friend Kelly: it was wonderful to run into you there and catch up on your family. It’s hard to believe your toddler is in her senior year of college.

And yes, we had an inquisitive, fearless baby black squirrel exploring the patio today who seemed to be on its first campus tour of the outside world as it checked out everything in sight. It had its big-hair tail fluffed up for the big day as it dined out at the Sunflower Cafe al fresco.

I briefly pictured knitting up a matching big for it to haul its leftovers home in.  But no, squirrels being cheeky little things, it can manage doggybagging it itself.)

In his honor, I am going to try to get this to post at 9:09 on 9/9/09.  (Did it!)

At the block party Monday, I was talking to a couple who are exactly at the stage I was a dozen years ago: spending afternoons driving kids to sports, music lessons, you name it, go go go.  I told them, Yeah, I used to put 200 miles a week on my car just driving kids, and the husband nodded, So you get it.

Oh yes.

But one of the things that concerned the mom was, as their first kid headed into high school, how do you stay engaged with the school environment the way you did when they were in elementary?

The short answer, of course, is, you don’t.  You can volunteer here or there, you can be very active on the scene, but you can’t stay involved in everything to the same degree you did when there was just a single teacher in your child’s life.

And yet, I told her. Let me tell you a story.

My oldest had had a friend whom I often dropped off on our way home in the afternoons; no big deal to me, and an easy way to get to know my daughter’s friend a little.  (There are no school buses–Proposition 13 got rid of those in the 70’s.)

One day Sam and Jo were late coming out.   Really late.  There were things to get to, reasons to get uptight.

And yet, somehow that day, I just didn’t.  I told the other kids, who were already in the car since the younger schools let out first, Dunno what the holdup is, but whatever, they’ll show up, they know we’re here.

When they did, I saw Jo a step ahead walking towards our car because Sam had taken a step behind her in order to privately shake her head and wave her arms frantically at me in a silent, fervent plea: Mom! Don’t be mad! (Okay, the fact that she felt she needed to should tell you right there that I was hardly a perfect parent.)

But mad?  Nah.  Totally relaxed.  Good to see you, girls, how ya doin’, isn’t it a beautiful day out today?

They got in, I took Jo home, and then Sam could finally let it out. She told me Jo had had a particularly hard day and that Mr. Hodges, their math teacher, had taken the time after school to let the kid spill her guts and listen to her.  He had made it very clear she mattered to him for those 40 minutes and that she could come talk to him anytime.  And this was a proud new dad who would want to hurry home to his baby, so I knew what it had taken for him to do that.

Okay, for this next part, before you get too impressed, understand that I had wanted to do this for quite some time and had been looking for an excuse.  I made half of these for us.  So.

The next day I made a double batch of cinnamon rolls.  Now, when I make cinnamon rolls, they’re more a pastry than a bread and they are *good*.  I timed them to come out of the oven just so, popped them out of the pan, and drove to the high school and parked. When the kids showed up, I asked where Mr. Hodges’ classroom was, quick, before he goes home!

To say he was blown away does not begin to tell it.  Still-hot cinnamon rolls? Homemade just for him?  For talking to someone else’s kid, even?!

I told him, for my kid too: Sam knows now that if she has a problem and needs an adult to talk to, you’re absolutely someone she can turn to.  That is the greatest gift a parent of a teenager could ask for, and I wanted to make clear how grateful I was for that.  And for Jo’s sake too.

He couldn’t get over it.  He told me  that in his years teaching he had, a few times, had parents send him a fruit basket or some such, but not once–not ever–had a parent actually sought him personally out to thank him in person.

To which I would say, about time!

The big annual Labor Day block party.

Random Hershey’s cookbook cake recipe–using mini muffin pans, it made three dozen.  (Note to self: fancy schmancy Williams Sonoma one?  The pan looks artsy, the results, not so much. Go for plain and round only next time, like the ones shown here.)  Bake 13 minutes.

Ganache: 1 1/4 to 1 1/3 c heavy cream, ~17 oz good dark chocolate (one Trader Joe’s Pound Plus Bittersweet bar.)  Break chocolate by smashing bar (still wrapped!) to the floor repeatedly.  Thwack.  Melt chocolate in cream, stir; will semi-set fairly quickly.

Raspberries: rinsed, then carefully individually dried off.

Three of my neighbors in this square block work at Stanford Hospital. One is about to start a new job in a different department; I told her the names of my favorite nurses she’d be working with and to tell them hello for me.

I didn’t mention that the last time before this month that I finished a pair of socks, it was six years ago, done as a thank you to the highly empathetic B. for being willing to walk in his patients’ shoes. Earlier this year, I found myself saying to someone at the nurses’ station, “I’d know the back of that head anywhere!” and he turned and we had a delighted reunion, IV pole and all.

I spoke in church briefly today about a man from a local ward (congregation in Mormon speak), not ours but the next one over, whose volunteer assignment is to offer the Sacrament on the Sabbath to members of our church who are hospitalized at Stanford.

And thus a month ago he found himself with a list of names and room numbers in hand, walking into my room for the fourth time this year, where, there I was, IV and all all over again.  He exclaimed, It’s YOU! How ARE you!

Much better as of right now, and thanks.

Such a simple act: kneeling by my bedside.  The heartfelt prayer.  A little bread.  The second prayer.  A little water.

Such a powerful act: coming to one who cannot come to you.  Declaring by how he lives that there are no strangers now, only friends.  Being with another in their extremity, completely present for them in the moment, offering a shared faith in the light and love of God that surpasses all such circumstances.  He brought to me, in his own way and fulfilling his own part, a healing.

Looking back at all that I went through this past year, I said today, the pain simply falls away: all that is left is the moments of light.  The love.  God’s.  His. The doctors’. The nurses’. Every person who cared.  It is made so visible by their choices in those circumstances.

I still don’t remember that man’s name.  But I will always know that warm smile.

About an hour ago, I only saw a blur with my glasses off, reading; Michelle saw the falcon swooping by in front of the window in its peregrinations.  She stood there, going, Wow!

I was wishing, More? Please?!

Note that the squirrels have again gone into deep hiding.

Meantime, last night at Purlescence, I said to Jasmin that some of you out there allowed as how you actually *liked* to kitchener.  (She was totally being set up and she knew it.) She said with immediate perkiness and the biggest grin, “*I* like to kitchener!”

And thus my socks took the easy way out, with both of us promising that, next time, I was to do it myself.  But she worked that grafting as easily as casting on a new project. ‘T’ain’t hard.

There will be next times: I started another pair today I’d been planning in Casbah, and DebbieR surprised me by having told the LYSOs from afar to gift me with their Jitterbug (it was a b.o.g.o. on their sale table) to keep me going with this whole sock thing.  Yeah, I know the racket: someone expresses interest knitting-wise, you bombard them with really good yarn, and you know they’re hooked on the spot. It’s insidious, I tell you.

The mail: Michelle’s first reaction to LauraN’s package was, a spider? No–an octopus, ready to get to work on socks: Mrs. Weasley’s airneedles have competition now.

But didn’t I tell them?  Lace shawls, sure.  But socks?  I don’t knit socks. I have quite a few pairs of handknit socks, thanks to Jasmin, Deb and Kate, Niki, Bonnie, Michelle, Chris, and my daughter Sam has a pair from Judy Sumner that turned out to be just her size.  My longtime readers know that I wore mine every day at Stanford this year as a way of declaring, I am loved.

But me?  I do not knit them here or there, I do not knit them anywhere.  Not in a house, not with a mouse, not on a train, not in a tree, my hands don’t like them, Nancy, see?

That package that arrived last week from some Sock Summiteers, had, as I mentioned, a hank of Blue Moon SockGate sock yarn in the colors of the logo of the Summit that was going on while I was holed up in the hospital. A yarn with a good firm twist for holding up well under heel and toe–cushy for a foot, not so much so for, say, a shawl. It was adamant about what it wanted to be when it grew up.

I looked at it and thought, it could make a cool hat for some guy sometime…

Wait. Would I knit a hat on the size needles that stuff would require? For anybody? No matter how much I loved them? When I could make one in a third the time with something else?

No.

I noticed that there not only was no return address on the envelope, the thing had been auto-stamped in such a way that it didn’t even say what town it had been shipped from, fer cryin’ out loud–if I wanted to surprise Nancy back, much less the others, with something finished from that yarn? Dude. Totally out of luck.

She/they wanted me to make myself a pair of Sock Summit socks to match the t-shirt and did a good job of reinforcing the point.

But I don’t knit socks. I can, I have, I don’t, the needles are too small, I drop too many stitches, blahblahblah.

I am wearing the shirt.

And looky here. How did that happen?! I do too knit socks!

I still won’t take them here or there, I’ll still drop stitches everywhere. But I do, I DO like knitting socks!

And quite honestly, I would never have sat down with a porcupine scaffolding of size 1s if it hadn’t been for the happy peer pressure of that package:  I have some designated blue-and-purple yarn of at least two or three years’ standing in my stash to prove it.

I am having the time of my life watching this first one coming to be and I’m really hoping to show off the pair at Purlescence on Thursday.  You guys go give each other a big hug from me, y’hear? You have SO earned it! I can’t wait!

As our family started praying for my sister-in-law, whose breast biopsy came back positive a few days ago, I got another message.

One of the wonders of the Internet is how easy it is to reconnect with people whom you knew back when.

One of the wonders of continuing to be alive on this planet is learning how, when you once care about another human being, however much, wherever they may go forth to in this life, you wish them well in it all. And that that never stops. Ever.  The caring only grows more important, even when it takes you by surprise because you simply hadn’t had occasion to think of the person in years. But they matter, and they always will.

I spend very little time at Facebook: this is where the bandwidth real estate is my own.  And yet, forgotten password or no, somehow one old friend after another showed up and there it was.

And so I got asked today by another Churchill grad, someone I’d known since elementary, how life was now.  It stumped me. How was hers, too?  How on earth does one sum up 18-50? Got married, had kids, and in my case, wrote a book?  If you add up my four kids’ ages, that’s 96 Mom-years; that could get a little wordy. By mentioning having systemic lupus and Crohn’s both? Nah, that’s just the background noise. Tell her to read this entire blog back to front?  (Spare her!)

It may not have been the best answer, but I responded saying I’d always wanted to be a writer; published now and off to a good start. And then it seemed the best way to sum up the whole rest of everything else was simply to link to the story of the man with that Stanford Blood Center t-shirt on.  The everyday trip to the store.  And yet.

The context that had brought us together was the group “Pray for Chuck Heidel,”  a tall kid who’d teased me in junior high math class but a kid who by late high school had transformed into the downright decent, good person he’d been all along, as most kids do. He’d been a member of a champion football team that had included Brian Holloway and Jeff Kemp: I was by no means part of the jock scene, but we had a crop of decent people among ours that defied stereotypes.  One of them, I said to at the 20th reunion, “I don’t remember much about you: but I remember that you were always a friend to anyone.”

Chuck was recently in a bike accident and was airlifted to the U of MD Trauma Center.  Unconscious.  Paralysis. Blood clots. Intubation.  As I read the reports of what he’d been enduring since then, I kept thinking, I had that in January. I went through that in February. I had that three weeks ago.  Part of me wanted to tell his family that his voice will sound normal within two weeks because he didn’t try to talk while he had that tube down his throat–he was unconscious then. Part of me wants to make jokes about hospital food while jumping up and down that he can swallow again. And he lifted a glass to his lips!

There was his daughter’s awe at her father’s example of asking the family to gather round him to pray for the patient next door, in worse shape than he.

And that, I could tell her as a patient, is how one copes. By finding a way to bring forward the best in oneself, the faith if we have faith, our goodwill in all circumstances, looking for any way of serving those around us in order not to have the bodily damage hog all the attention.

Because the love never stops. The caring never ends. It only grows with each new experience.

I was finishing up knitting the purple baby alpaca this afternoon when the doorbell rang.  I wonder?…

There were two absolutely adorable little blond boys, ages 4 and 6, a little shy as they looked up at the stranger in the strange house, a get-well note in their hands and with their smiling grandmother, who had driven them, standing behind.

A moment of confusion on my part and then I got it.

A little before my surgery, the local paper had run a story on their family: the dad with the Silicon Valley job and the small in-town yard but a little bit of the Woodstock “got to get back to the land, and set my soul free” in him, and so, he had set up a small beekeeping operation with his little boys.

Who get to deliver the goods. But they’ll only go as far as a four-year-old’s attention span.  We’re on the far end of town (and there’s only so much honey for their subscribers); we just barely squeaked in.

Delivery times are, as I understand it, whenever there is honey to share; I told the dad in an email when I signed up that I was going to be heading into surgery and if nobody was home, would it be okay to just drop it off at the door? He said he would send a honeybee to buzz my window hello at Stanford for me.  I was charmed.

But I got to see the boys instead.  It took me a moment to register that oh, right, as I opened the door, not seeing their jar of honey quite at first.  Lost in the cuteness.

And I have to tell you, that is the best-tasting honey I have had in years. Note that the jar isn’t quite full–it was earlier… (Yes, Mom.  You used to catch me dipping a spoon in the honey back in the days when I, too, was little.  Haven’t changed a bit.)

I had an appointment today with my cardiologist to ask questions about my blood pressure med; everything’s fine, and no, this wasn’t the Thursday post-op. Routine stuff.

I got there a little early for a doctor who is  always late because he takes the time to listen to his patients, which I like, and pulled out needles and the purple baby alpaca I’d grabbed on my way out the door.  I’d had a project already started to try to get done by Thursday, but somehow it just..wasn’t..it. But purple was. So.

Doodling around, let’s see, cast on 33, take it from there, I was several inches into it, wearing the shawl on the cover of my book, wearing the socks that Michelle knit me, when another woman not much older than me checked in. (Wait, I’m 50, I might look that old too… I tend to forget that…) Now, when you’re sitting in cardiology, it’s fairly striking when someone younger than the average clientele comes in–but it was my knitting she was drawn to as she sat down by me.

On a whim I’d brought mine in a Purlescence bag rather than one of my knitting bags.  She told me she was a knitter too. She hadn’t heard of that store and wanted to know what the place was like.

My mind glanced briefly back towards the owner of another shop who’d once asked me, “How are you?” rather warily as I’d walked in her door.  Someone who has seemed to me fearful of what life might be capable of: who, a few months before that moment, had suddenly come upon me waiting at the elevator at Stitches in a wheelchair and with no preliminary conversation, had simply exclaimed, “It’s not fair!” like a small child and had rushed away while I was going, huh?

“Do you want to know?” I shot back.

“No.”

Well, that’s honest, I thought, and answered, truthfully on the non-health side of things, “I’m fine.”

Purlescence, though…  (Here’s a half skein of the Sea Silk in Glacier I bought there last week. The dark line lower right is just shadowing from the chair behind the scarf.)

Coming back to the moment, I told my fellow patient, “They have a great selection. And also this: I had a shawl on display there, and came in asking to have it back after my daughter-in-law’s uncle had a brain tumor and went into a coma; I wanted to get one to his wife quickly.

Whereupon Kaye, one of the owners, not only gave it to me, she took an expensive, beautiful, handmade shawl pin, put it in my hands, wrapped my fingers around it, and asked me to give it to Barbara too. Someone she had never even heard of before.”

The woman went, wow.

And then I told her, “And last January I was in the hospital. The owners of Purlescence gifted me with two skeins of a buffalo-blend yarn, which cost something like $50 apiece, as a get-well card.”

Her eyes got even bigger.

“They are NICE people,” I told her.  “Just the best.”

That being true, I thought I would repeat here what I told my fellow knitter in that waiting room today. I wish that all yarn stores could be like the one that I get to go to.  I know how lucky I am.

I could have gone on and on about how they attract good people like themselves, (that’s just for a start), but my name was called.

I so hope that woman shows up at Purlescence sometime when I’m there!  She would fit right in.

To Nathania, Sandi, and Kaye: you create much good in this world. I am blessed to know you and have you nearby.  I just wanted to say publicly, thank you.

By, say, wearing a cool Sock Summit t-shirt and a Sock Summit pin and wearing Sock Gate-colorway socks, dyed by Tina (you have to knit them first) when actually, no, you weren’t at Sock Summit.

This drive-by knitting gift landed in my mailbox today, from Nancy, crediting JoAnne, with a little tag in there from Ellen, and saying Stephanie approved.  A group hug, it sounds like.  Thank you doesn’t begin to express the sense of wonder at being included like this.  Wow.  Cool.  Thank you!

I confess to cowardice last month: I did tell my surgeon there was a knitting conference. I waited to see his reaction before I was going to specify that it was actually not just that, but a sock knitting conference–and then somehow as we talked about things related to the kinds of stitches he was going to be doing, it never quite came up.

Heh.  I know how I can make it obvious now. Now that I’ve broken him in on the general idea, with my husband enthusiastically nodding that oh yes, thousands of knitters come to these knitting conferences, I can show that indeed we do.

And now that I have been made well at his and the other surgeons’ hands, next time I won’t have to miss it. Or even worry about missing it.  I can’t tell you what a gift that is.

Meantime, this is what Sea Silk looks like in Glacier when it’s damp, which it won’t be for very long. One more finished!  Silly doctors probably don’t realize the post-op is supposed to be a grand reunion time: my head surgeon will just have to go play a knitterly Santa Claus afterwards, I imagine.  Think he’ll mind?

Phyllis asked me, while on the phone yesterday, and I told her my soapdish dispenser I’d bought from Mel and Kris had broken and that I’d love it if she could pick one out for me from their display and have me pay her back.

This morning, at church, she handed it to me and told me that when they’d found out who it was for, they wouldn’t accept any money. (Insert futile protest of “But you’ve got to earn a living, you know!”)

Note that they didn’t confess later to me when I came by after all; they wanted Phyllis to get the delight of having me be surprised.   Did I mention that they are really nice people?!

One of the reasons for my escape later was this:  I wanted…  Now that I knew they were there, I needed something that was meaningful to me and small enough for me to be able to carry back to my car  (even though I didn’t end up carrying nor walking with it.)  I needed it  small and lightweight for Deb to carry, too, luggage and plane rides being what they are.

So I bought a small ceramic bowl.  Mel and Kris do beautiful work.  It is the handthrown pottery equivalent of cupping your two hands together.  I’ve had one for awhile that I love; the colorwork and sense of their presence gives a certain reverence to the start of my days as I mix cocoa (a lot) and sugar (not much) in mine, then pour the mixture into a mug of hot milk. Perfect.

Today I got to give the new little bowl to my friend Deb, who stopped by after flying into the area from back East.  I had no idea she loved to collect beautiful ceramics; it had simply seemed like the right thing.  It was fun to watch her delighted reaction.

She, on the other hand, had knitted me an exquisite lace bookmark, and it matched the lace socks she and her daughter Kate had knitted me earlier.

She also knitted for both of the get-well afghan projects that were going on unbeknownst to me in January.  She knew it would mean much to me that she knit one of those squares with leftover yarn from my socks at the center, surrounded by yarn from her late son’s socks. As a matter of fact, one of her squares was knit with such an intensity and speed that it was the first to arrive.

I got to show her, finally in person like I wish I could for Anniebee and Elizabeth who did the piecing together and for everybody who worked on them, the finished afghans.  We shared stories. We laughed. We missed Robbie, my son John’s age, sharing hospital stories, and wept.  And hugged.

Some friends you can never get ahead of.  But they are also the kind of people where that doesn’t matter.  It was such a rare treat to get to see Deb as well as Mel and Kris; it has been a weekend all around of holding friends close in much love. (Phyll and Lee, you too.)

For weeks now, I’ve been wondering if I would get the same phone call as last year.

I did.

Phyl and Lee again went to the city’s annual juried Art Fair that takes over University Avenue for three days, and again called me to tell me they’d found Mel and Kris:  They’re at this corner (they knew I couldn’t walk the length of the avenue.)  Did I want to come see them? (Mel and Kris created this, among many other things.)

How badly you could not begin to know, I thought.

So. The hubby and daughter go off to the grocery store and I make my escape, noting that my old car, not having been driven for three weeks, has gotten dusty and bird-pooped-0n and is not a pretty sight.  My hair looks about as bad.  Oh well.

Last year, when I saw those two, I found out that my feeling that I needed to put them in my daily prayers had coincided with when Kris was a trauma patient who had barely survived.

Today, we threw our arms around each other, and since they’d already talked to Phyllis, they were stunned to see me.  (Probably not as stunned as one of my two surgeons who had just gotten out of her car as I was looking for my own parking space.  I waved hi, thrilled to see her, and I think I’m going to hear about it at my post-op.  Driving at two and a half weeks?! Busted!)

And it turns out.  Mel and Kris aren’t on the ‘net much, which I knew, and they hadn’t heard, till earlier today.  I knew they were moving and I didn’t have their new address, so I’d figured I’d just have to wait till I saw them with their pottery at another fair to get back in touch.

Kris told me:

Last summer she had had a bum knee and, she reminded me, I had this cane I’d given her.  I’d told her not to give it back.  She thought she should, though, but in the still-ongoing move, it had gotten misplaced.  It finally turned up–in January.  She immediately strongly felt, looking at it, that she should pray for me.

So she put that cane where she would see it every day going past her work station to remind her, and every time she saw it she said a little prayer for me. She didn’t know why but it just seemed important and the right thing to do.

I told her a little about what January was like. And since then.

She was as gobsmacked as I was when I found out the same kind of thing after I’d started praying for her.

And here I was. Surgery Aug 5th. Drove myself there (pillow under seatbelt). Looking peachy-fine.  It was near closing-down time, so I wasn’t in the way of too many people.  We had such a good visit!  Finally, she said I needed to rest even if I didn’t feel yet like I did–we knew, both of us, that she was right–and Mel drove me the two and a half blocks to my car over my gentle protests, since his was right there by the booth.

I cannot tell you how glad I am that I went and that I got to see them.

My surgeon saw me. My husband and daughter got home before I did.  I am SO busted.  And so very, very happy at how it all turned out.

Written before Knit Night at Purlescence:

I wasn’t expecting any packages… Channon?

Anti-windowsmacking bird panels. A magnetic bookmarker.  A bluebird enameled pin. A–get this–tiny bobbleheaded bluejay that went straight to the top of my monitor.  I love it.  Thank you, Channon!

And today, as I knit madly away on the cotton candy, there was a loud smack against the window. Oh, ouch–I turned around to see if the bird that had hit it was hurt.  No sign of a little bird, but I found what it had been madly racing away from: there, five feet from my face, was a huge hawk staring in the window.  (If that thing had hit that window there wouldn’t *be* a window.)  I, doofus that I am, yelled to Michelle, “Come SEE!” forgetting that even if I can’t hear, other things can; it took off for a nearby tree.  Michelle came over just in time to see the redtailed hawk with about a four foot wingspan whoosh out of the tree and away.

Wow.  Michelle pronounced, “So that’s the real reason you have a bird feeder!” Thinking, I’m sure, of the golden eagle I’d once seen perched on the neighbor’s roof.

No, but, my stars, what a gorgeous bird. What an experience!  Think it’ll come back if I parade around with a decoy of an enamel bluebird? Because I’m going to.

(p.s. The shawl? That pink rinsed blob thing I tried to get all the water out of? Uh, yeah, I finished knitting at quarter past three, later walked past the room where it was blocking, did a doubletake, thinking, wait, where is it?, walked back, and of course it was right there.  It was so gossamer fine that it had simply blended in.)

Written after Knit Night:

Jade surprised me with some exquisitely soft Malabrigo merino from Sock Summit.   She knew how much I’d wanted to go so she brought some of the Summit back to share.  Again, my thanks; I am so going to have fun playing with it!

Oh, right.  The shawl. Yes, it was dry in time for showing off tonight–if I’d had to stand over it with a hairdryer it was going to be dry in time! But I didn’t have to. Not at that thickness.

Cast on 24, keeping stitches 1/2″ apart on size 6 (4mm) needles.  Two skeins Cascade baby alpaca laceweight at 400m/437 yards each.  It has the plain stitches near the neck of the Nina shawl, the yoke of the Kathy’s Clover Flowers (slightly tweaked at its last row), the body done in a variation of Carlsbad, with a bottom edging of the Water Turtles pattern.  All of those are 10+1 lace stitch patterns.  If it weren’t for the reinforced neck edge, it could qualify as a wedding ring shawl, ie, one you can pull through a (preferably large in this case) ring.  Done!

(Dear Dr. S’s wife, if he was wrong and that’s not your color, I have more yarn. Promise.)

First it was an email. Then a phone call. Then: the prisoner escaped!

Kathy showed up from San Jose, the sweetie–I’m hardly on her way–and took me to Purlescence for some rather desperately-needed hanging-out time.  Not only that, she gifted me with hand-dyed yarn she’d bought as a souvenir for me from Sock Summit: a gradient set of five skeins of seacell/merino from Three Irish Girls, whose work I highly admire. (I voted for their Georgia Peach colorway that not only won in its Dye for Glory category, I ordered some.) And, two skeins of Double Bambu, on mini-cones.

Sandi and Kaye wound up a skein of their Purl Up and Dye merino, Purlescence’s own hand-dyed, and refused to ring it up for me.

Lisa came in, and Sock Summit stories started zipping around the room, to my great delight.

After two hours, Kathy looked at me and asked, Are you ready to go?

Not that I wanted to admit.  But she picked up on the fact that I was fading, for which I’m grateful–I wouldn’t have had the sense to kick myself out, I was having just too good a time being with friends.

I went home, crashed, and woke up with a new design idea bouncing around my brain that I can’t wait to try out. Creativity: it’s contagious. Thank you, Kathy, Sandi, and Kaye, and everybody, for that matter!

Today, the surprise box was for Richard.  It looked to me at first like something maybe from the Monterey Bay Aquarium?  From Sam again, this time trying to replenish her father’s brain cell supply.  (Well, dear, see what happens when you tell your wife to blog it? Heh.)

Meantime, I reluctantly admitted to a friend who asked me that, yes, we could indeed use some help; Michelle’s on crutches and can’t stand for very long, and Richard had minor surgery two days before mine and it was botched–they accidentally punctured the wrong spot and gave him an unexpected spinal tap. That leaked.  Last Friday, he came to visit me, called his doctor five minutes later, and spent the rest of the day in the ER. We’re a cheerful if rather sorry bunch.

Said Andrea, say no more. And so AlisonF and Julia of the Julia’s Shawl fame came over today, with Michelle telling me to lie down and take it easy (while not doing so herself) and them all cleaning away on the house. I can’t tell you how much better it feels–thank you!

I wanted to go pick them tomatoes as a thank you. I started towards the sliding door–and–most of them were gone. They were there yesterday, nice and big and bright and red and ripe.  But… But!!!

That does it. I am not knitting those raccoons any sweaters. So there.