It’s kind of dangerous to post pictures of things friends have made for me because I can’t possibly fit everything in here–but it is all appreciated.

From my friend RobinM, quoted with permission:

“This morning I heard an interview with singer Tom Jones.  Members of the radio audience had submitted questions.  A woman said she had been to lots of Tom Jones concerts; no matter what mood someone was in when she went to the concert, she emerged with a smile.   What made him smile?

He said that he had been bedridden for a couple of years with TB.  He used to look out his window to see kids playing by a lamppost.  He told himself if he could ever get to that lamppost, he wouldn’t complain about a thing.  He’s never forgotten it.  What makes him smile is to sing and see the smiles on the faces of the audience.”

I loved this article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/04/AR2008120403537.html It states that someone had studied the effects of being happy on others: a shared guffaw, a smile, a thoughtful act.  I’d have been curious to follow them around to see exactly what their methodology was, to see for myself whether the presence of the researcher had contributed to the positive expectations: whether people felt they had to show the stranger that the kindnesses of their friends was important.  Curious.  But either way, they found that the ripple-on-the-pond effect goes out to three degrees of separation to people who didn’t even know nor see the originators, and that it can extend up to a year.

I would guess that it actually goes far longer than that, although I’m sure it depends on how you define it.  After all, just think of someone who went out of their way to do something uncommonly nice for you, and doesn’t it lift your spirits years and years after the fact? That teacher who believed in you.  The friend who gave up her time to listen when you needed it.  The stranger who smiled hi in passing on the day you most needed it.  That provides motivation, years after the fact, to go and do the same for someone else.

We knitters have an edge in all that.  What we make and give is a tangible reminder of how we feel about someone, a way to bless them over and over and over, bringing a smile to their face as they put the shawl to their back or socks to their feet, feeling warmed and thought about.

That’s powerful.

And hey, Jasmin, with the Crohn’s and lupus flares going on, I put on that second pair from the right today. I didn’t get to take you up on your hot cocoa offer yesterday, so I carried you around with me all day here instead.

Thank you all of you and to every person who comes to read my blog.  Much appreciated.

Camelspin, shown here in Berry, is one of the softest yarns I have ever had the great good fortune to have running through my hands for hours on end.  Drapey and shimmery.  Gorgeous.  Lisa Souza‘s Merino/silk is right up there with it, but hers is a slightly heavier weight.

I originally blocked this with crisp points along the bottom edge, but the silk gradually sagged them out. I finally reblocked it in the round.  I sent a picture to my son and new daughter-in-law.

Remember this post?  I had Kim in mind when I knitted it, but then I dithered and didn’t mention that part on the blog: color is such a personal thing.  She loved it (yay!), and yesterday I finally popped it in the mail.  I just wish I could show more than the color here for right now. (The yarn I dyed to match it is still waiting its fit of inspiration.)

There’s a Peninsula to Pier Shop Hop going on this weekend, and there was an ongoing stream of carpooling knitters yesterday at Purlescence; one woman remarked to me how very different all these different yarn stores were, how fascinating it was to see what different things they offered and what they looked like.  I wanted to tell her, well, this is the best one of all.  It carries Blue Moon. It has Handmaiden.  It has Claudia.  (Plus a few others I really like, but throw in some Lisa Souza on the side, and I’m set for life.)  It has Nathania, Chloe, Sandi, and Kay.  There are other good stores too, but I have to say, it just doesn’t get better than this.

I wrote this draft and expected to be able to come home from knit night and gleefully hit Post!, and I’m going to anyway, but it was Nathania’s night off and she wasn’t there.  Kay called her at home saying I had something there at the shop for her; Nathania put it to a family vote, and not surprisingly, the whatever nebulous thing it might be got voted down.  Mom time is not to be tampered with.

I said to Kay a moment later, we should have told them there was homemade chocolate mousse cake waiting here for all of them.  Kay asked if I wanted to bring the shawl back tomorrow?  No?  It’s burning a hole through your pocket?

Oh, you betcha.  So I left it there for discovery in the morning, and since I took a wrong-time-of-day bad-lighting picture before I left, I’ve got one for this post, and Nathania will probably find out the details here first.  Here goes.

Nathania (scroll down to the second to last picture) went to go visit her friend Tina at Blue Moon Fiber Arts in Oregon recently and came back exclaiming over some of the new colorways Tina was about to put out, wishing she’d been able to bring some of them home.

Which led to some behind-the-scenes emailing and scheming.  I thought I’d given it away when I mentioned this Geisha yarn in Oma Desala had arrived, along with the Potomac colorway Tina had concocted for me to play with in memory of our childhood homes near each other’s on the Maryland side of the river.  But no.

At knit night last week, I pulled two shawls out of my bag to show Nathania: one was the gray, not yet gone to its recipient, the other, my Geisha yarn shawl from awhile ago, where I’d used the full skein to see how much length I could get out of it. It totally swamps me, but then, I’m a fairly small person.

Both of those were in a particular pattern, I told her, that I needed to test on various body sizes–would she be willing to try this one on for me?  Sure.

She dutifully went over to the mirror with the Geisha; yes, it’s long enough, yes, it’s wide enough. Very nice.  She handed it back to me and the old pang hit me hard that I had knit a shawl for Sandi, I had knit one for Chloe, the other two owners of Purlescence, but I had not knit one yet for her.  And she would have loved it if I had, but instead, here she was, handing the shawl back.  Ouch.

I had wanted to for quite some time, badly, but what to make and what to make it of just hadn’t come to me at all.  I had to wait to see and I didn’t know why and it bothered me.  I had been looking for a yarn for over a year that would speak to me–and all I could come up with is I just felt, no, it’s not time yet. Something’s missing.

Till she took that trip and Tina and I started talking behind her back.  What Nathania didn’t know was I was having her try on my shawl to know how long I should continue this one for her.

And I knew now. This wasn’t just for me. This wasn’t just for her. This was to bring Tina into the circle of this shawl, too, in happy anticipation and love in together creating something to make our friend happy.

And all those times I’d wondered what pattern I would ever knit for her: as soon as I had the right yarn ready to go, I just knew.  She and her husband had met in a singing group.  They are musicians.  And so, to celebrate two people I adore having found each other and having chosen to live happily ever after,  I started with the Michelle shawl, named for my own daughter and knitted here in celebration of her daughters, to the end of the yoke; from there, I switched to the Concert Scarf pattern, repeat after extra repeat across, to make a one-of-a-kind shawl but at the same time one that anybody with a copy of “Wrapped in Comfort” can follow. The only change is that you’ll need one fewer stitch in the increase row before the main body, and there you go.

I don’t usually put busy colorways with busy patterns, but here, it’s perfect: how they met and their love of music blends into the background of the overall fabric of their lives.  I’m really pleased with how this came out. And very gratified that, at last, I got to knit this shawl: to celebrate Nathania, for her close friend Tina’s sake, and to honor as well, with the pattern, the man who loves Nathania best of all and whom she loves best of all.

Hey, you guys: there’s some leftover chocolate mousse wheat-free anniversary cake waiting for you.

Kris and Mel, my potter friends, stopped by here today on their way down the coast; art fair season isn’t quite over yet.  She got her pink shawl (which came out shorter than I’d expected; rather like the original Bigfoot in the book.)  And since upcoming surgery means sleeves will be an issue for her this winter, and my shawls seemed exactly the thing she needed, ie, they’ll keep her warm and they’ll stay on without effort, I had it all planned out and I gave her this blue one too; it ran longer on her.  Variety is a good thing.

They certainly didn’t need to, but they came bearing gifts: handmade soap, and a doorknob hanger of handfelted honeybees from Plum Blossom Farm’s sheep, with beads and a little bell at the end.

I rattled the bell and actually heard it–not very loud, but hey. I heard it!  They didn’t know I grew up on Honeybee Lane; and hey, wool taking over the house all the more, I love it.  I can’t wait to tease my kids.

The handmade soap was wrapped in felted Wensleydale wool.  Again, in the they-couldn’t-have-known department: the AP once ran a one-paragraph little filler story about a woman in the British Isles trying to keep the last herd of Wensleydale sheep in the world alive, and how glad she was to get a large Japanese order for fleeces: it gave her the financial wherewithal to keep going.

I spent ten years after that trying to track down a source of Wensleydale wool.  It has had a real resurgence since that article, helped by the handspinning market, and I did find and spin some for a coat.  And here there was not only someone with some actual Wensleydale sheep in the US now, but Kris and Mel actually know her and brought this to me from her!  Along with Wensleydaled honeybees! Life draws in in small circles that surprise sometimes. Totally delightful.

Before we let them go, I had to take them in my kitchen and open the cupboards and let them see my Kris and Mel collection.  I showed them how I take my tiny rice-type bowl, mix cocoa and suger in it every morning, zap some milk in my Mel and Kris mug, and make my morning hot cocoa.  Looking at the size of the cup I use for it–it was not their coffee cup-type cup, Kris laughed, “Yeah, I like lots of hot cocoa too!”

And I’m glad I live in a climate where it’s cool every morning, y’know?

And a very, very good day was had by all. It is amazing sometimes how much of a difference we make to each other even when we so rarely get to see much of each other in person.

Teri and I used to chat occasionally via the Knitlist, and I found out her dad was the partner (retired now) of our family’s ENT doctor.  Cool!  So she grew up here.  I snapped this photo of our backyard lemon tree to share a bit of California with her.  She lives in Hawaii these days, and one time, while visiting her folks, she showed up at our house with a box of chocolate-covered Hawaiian macadamias: one of those too-rare times where you get to actually meet a person you’ve known online.  She’s as warm and wonderful in person as she is across the electrons.

I wrote a few days ago about knitting for the staff at Stanford Hospital, and here’s a post from two years ago that is important to me as well.  You’ve got to go see what Teri just did!  Wow!

(Edited to add: Teri got the ball rolling re the plans for yarn and needles in the waiting areas; I hope they follow through.

I have another friend who was hospitalized with a serious illness and baby twins at home she wanted to be taking care of, and she was telling me afterwards about a nursing assistant at Stanford Hospital who was supremely understanding and kind and who took the time to be there for her and her husband: to listen and to make them laugh.  He was such a gifted healer at a time they needed it.  I asked her the guy’s name, sure I already knew…  Was it Noel C.?  Yes!)

Someone just introduced herself over at KnitTalk, mentioning her career in a neonatal ICU, and I wrote her a note hoping that the parents of some of her patients had brought their kids back for her to get to see.

Which reminded me of Beth, one of my favorite nurses during my 10-day stay at Stanford, who, when I was about to be discharged after having been in critical condition, I promised I would come back to visit.  The intensity in her reaction surprised me: she exclaimed, “The patients always say that. But they never do!”

Well, hey.  I could do something about at least one patient.  It took me a few months and several trips to find everybody, but I knitted for sixteen people–doctors, interns, nurses, nursing assistants.  Beth got a Rabbit Tracks scarf in a soft merino.  Brian got socks as a thank you for walking in his patients’ shoes. Franklin and Noel got hats.  Robin got a lace cashmere/cotton scarf to match her scrubs.  And on and on.

One nursing assistant had been terrible to me, had hated being assigned to a GI patient and had let me know it.  I was there long enough to go from, why on earth do I have to be stuck with her, to coming to realize, how much pain must she be in, greater than any physical pain of mine, to be treating people like that?  There is more to her story, but this is not the place for it.  But I decided the only way I could handle her and hold onto who I am was to pray for her: to recognize her need to be cared about by somebody, anybody.

When I did go back to Stanford to visit, I came bearing those knitted gifts to convey the depth of my appreciation for everybody’s work and for their caring.  But in their faces, I got to see the great joy for them in simply getting to see me walking back in there, on my own two feet, no IV pole, no longer so gaunt and definitely strong again.  I was coming to thank them in person. That was all they needed.  The knitting was just the icing on the celebratory cake.

And on the visit that I found that one nursing assistant, who knew nothing of the knitting, she saw me first and RAN to me and threw her arms around me and wept.  I held her, too, and then pulled out the bag that was for her…  Knitting is time and love made tangible and undeniable, and of all the people there, she’d most needed that.  And that I could do.

When we care and are cared about, all things that matter can be healed.

For Jessie and Jeremy. The picture refused to shrink and felt in the Adobe wash, so I had to cut it with the Picasa scissors. The front edges of the shawl are folded back on themselves.

Thank you to those who emailed: my Crohn’s is settling back down like we told it to, and in time for their wedding, too. Isn’t it nice to have an obedient disease like that?

Specs: Monterey pattern using Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca Silk, a heavier yarn than used in the original, so I swapped out the pattern and used the Constance pattern from “Wrapped in Comfort” as a template to get a smaller stitch count. Size 10 US (6mm) needles, four skeins, using 14 g of the fourth 50g skein.

“You can’t have it, Jessie, it’s mine!” Cheryl grinned at her teenager, who was stroking it. I had just given her a handspun angora scarf, simply done in a triangle shape: cast on three stitches and knit into the front and back of the last stitch on each row till it’s the size you want. It was before I knew how to knit lace. But spinning I could do, knitting I could do, softness in the face of Cheryl’s cancer, this was what I could do to cheer her on. It had been a few years since I’d made her a Kaffe Fassett sweater at my husband’s urging at his sister’s diagnosis, which was the first time I knew my husband got this whole knitting thing: Richard had even driven an hour away across the Bay with me to Straw Into Gold to help pick out the colors.

White angora this time. Cheryl beat the odds and continued on, as her doctors tried one therapy and then another. For eight years.

My in-laws left this morning to help out with the next grandchild’s wedding, and I found myself taking stock: finish the cashmere and silk project. Okay, I can do that today. Keep the second WIP off to the side–that purple one that’s mostly done can wait yet a little longer, because the person getting it has no clue and there’s no rush (even if *I* want it finished. I don’t like to let things sit like that.) There’s the ocean Sea Silk I bought for my mother-in-law that needs to get started, and the blue-formerly-Bare I’d like to dive into.

But. Most importantly. There’s the niece getting married in two weeks.

Jessie was in college when Cheryl finally passed; her dad had bugged out of his sick wife’s life about halfway through. (I debated long and hard about mentioning that here. One could write all kinds of outrage here and in the comments, and they would be soundly deserved by him, but not by his daughter.) If ever a young woman deserved some knitting from me in support and in celebration of her new happiness…

Whichever yarn in my stash wins out, I promise you it will be something exquisitely soft.

Totally outshone by those flowers below taking up all the light in the room. Which amuses me to no end.

I really do need to get my pattern photos up on Ravelry. There–if I say it out loud, it’ll happen. Harness that peer pressure and put it to work, right? This is the Clover Chain shawl (rather scrunched up at the bottom here) in the book, done in baby alpaca fingering weight, but something like Jaggerspun Zephyr laceweight and going down three needle sizes would work too, just, you’d get a much smaller-around V-necked shawl that would be good for tying in front rather than a throw-over-your-shoulder wrap.

And, well, yes, for those who have asked–what name could I possibly have used there but spindyeknit. And I’m sitting here lecturing my fingers not to add a .com after that word.

(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?)

I had plans for what I was going to write about today, about the two shawls I’ve been working on, but it got thrown out the window last night when the phone rang. First, my sister, so my brother would have to make one less phone call. Then my brother anyway.

He had played tag-team with his wife with the other kids, so he hadn’t been there at the bedside when the doctor had been. He was not yet familiar with the medical jargon I know well.

“So they put her on TPN?”

That got him. “Uh, what’s that?”

“Total parenteral nutrition. It’s what they fed me through a tube with, through a PCC line” (pronounced ‘pick’).  “Does she have a PCC line?”

More silence. “I…don’t know… She’s got an IV, and they’re feeding her through it…”

I described my PCC line, and the fact that it had left me with plastic valves hanging out of my upper arm under a bandage for three months in case I should need it again; inserting that catheter is considered surgery and a risk and you don’t want to do it twice, and they’d wanted to be very sure I wasn’t going to relapse. What I was trying to do, as I mentioned it to him, was to be someone who knew the ropes a bit–and who loved his daughter–whom he could come talk to about the medical stuff.

Cherie is not my niece’s name, but she is well loved, so it will do for here. She was riding her bike Monday and thankfully had her helmet on so her brain is fine. But she’d taken the handlebars hard in the abdomen.

That night she didn’t feel exactly chipper, and her folks gave her an ibuprofen for her pain. Yesterday morning, her mom thought, you really don’t look good, kid, and started off for the ER. They took one look at her and called an ambulance for Children’s.

I’m waiting for the next call or email about how damaged they found her pancreas to be.

Five years ago, Cherie was in the hospital for an illness that is usually fatal. I mentioned my worries to an online friend, and it happened to be at the time that Ronni was anticipating the anniversaries of the deaths of both her husband and her only child from cancer. One of the greatest human needs is to be needed, and the gift that Ronni gave my whole family then was very much needed: she decided to knit Cherie a soft doll to comfort her, and, wanting it to arrive as soon as possible, stayed up most of the night to make it, even though she had to go to work in the morning.

And Cherie absolutely treasured that doll.

Last night, with the first shawl blocking, I was knitting away on soft baby-alpaca-and-silk yarn for the next one, feeling it run through my hands, anticipating the reaction of the person I’m making it for. I glanced over at my advance copy of my book sitting next to me, and the thought hit me, not for the first time but more intensely than before, that Martingale’s title for it, “Wrapped in Comfort,” was so exquisitely perfect. I realized that, although I have never met Ronni in person, and although I’ve never seen the doll she knit, I know how much she put herself out to make it, and for a little girl she had never met. I knew what a great comfort it had been at the time, and now, it was again–to me. It was as if I were a small child, clutching at the thought of it. Ronni’s warmth comforted me as I knitted away for my editor.  (Ronni already got her thank-you shawl, long since.  But I want to say it again: thank you, Ronni!)

I actually went bud-hunting among my amaryllises today, just in case, I mean, you never know, and no, there wasn’t another bud popping up anywhere, but on the other hand, this one had one flower arch over to the side overnight, and by tomorrow that blossom will open wide to welcome the new day.

I do feel Cherie will keep on being our miracle child.  She’ll be okay.

I agreed recently with another knitter that often, on a large project, there’s this sense of loss, almost grieving, as you finish the cast off, run the ends in, and put the thing aside. That that loss gets in the way, all too often, of starting in on the next project, no matter how much you feel you should get going and get a move on with it.

That got me to wondering why it should be so. Today, looking at the stitches on my rosewoods, I saw it: I have done so much work on this shawl that every minute I spend on it now tells me how much I’ve accomplished. Tells me how much the recipient is going to love it. Tells me how lovely this pattern is with this yarn and how much I love looking at it and seeing it all coming to be. How much I love anticipating the moment–even if I’m not going to be physically present–where its new owner exclaims over something dyed and envisioned and knitted up just for her.

The moment I put it aside I’ll be working on another one that is just as important to me to get done. But it’ll be a bare ball of yarn and sticks, possibilities rather than accomplishments, at the start.

I think I’ll go do the yoke on the next before I finish this one last repeat on the periwinkle.

Wow. It really WAS a wedding ring shawl! From my Nov 30, Dec 2 and Dec 6 posts to here: http://kits-knit-spot.blogspot.com/2007/05/married.html

Congratulations Kit and Pete, and much happiness forever!

I have wanted for years to knit an afghan for Jim and his family; they are dear friends, and Jim’s a second cousin to my husband. It was on that list of want-to-do’s that every knitter has but it had never quite happened yet, even though I knew just what it would be: either cream or green in basketweave, to match their cream and green plaid couch.

I blogged recently about finding the amaryllis bulb in the half-dark in the garage, shooting up a large bud, when I hadn’t watered the thing in enough months that it should have been dead–there’s just no way it should have been preparing to bloom big and beautiful like that. But it did. I took it over to Jim’s as a way of celebrating the life of his eight-year-old son, the one who had fallen 30 feet off the ski lift during spring break.

And there was Nicholas. With a handknit wool afghan. In basketweave, and a cream and green variegated yarn. I was speechless–who? How? Nicholas’s mom flipped the edge over for me to see the label: Linus Project. Someone had made this and donated it to the hospital in Reno, and the trauma unit had given it to Nicholas.

Someone had channeled my inner afghan. I don’t know who you are out there, but we wanted you to see this. Photo by Nicholas’s parents.

Last night I finished a heathered blue brushed baby alpaca scarf quite late; it was a UFO that, when I picked it up, just felt like no, it needed to be longer, even though it was at a goodly length already; I just somehow had never gotten around to binding it off. So I added another foot to it, finally did that bindoff, blocked it, and went to bed. This morning it was still slightly damp, but I grabbed it anyway on my way out the door.

And there at church, visiting after having moved away a half dozen years or so ago, was my daughter’s dear friend Emily, the young newlywed back then who had been the adult my child had needed as a teen, the person to turn to, the voice instilling confidence in my child in the confidences they shared. One of the people who had made a tremendous difference to her.

Emily is quite tall; adding those extra inches made it exactly right. And I finally got my chance to convey my thanks.