When our kids, who are 19, 21, 23 in June, and 25 next week, were growing up, any trip to the Urgent Care center at our clinic or the ER came with the bonus of their daddy taking them to the local ice cream shop on the way home for comfort: what Richard calls his own “Emergency Room Medicine.”

We have in our immediate neighborhood a shop, Rick’s, which is a hole-in-the-wall place that manufactures its own ice cream right there and which is a popular local summer hanging-out place. When the old fellow who’d run it for decades retired, the guy who bought it painted cows on the walls and ivy coming from the ceiling morphing into silk ivy coming out of the walls; it was very charming, but one day, I thought, you know? That main cow there needed a tail.

I had some yak hair. Not the soft, cashmere-y undercoat; yak hair. Wretched stuff, rips the skin off your fingers if you spin it too long at the wheel, won’t feed through the flyer without a struggle. When my oldest and I took handspinning classes together when she was 12, the teacher showed us some of this stuff, and I wrinkled my nose and went, wow. What would you ever DO with this stuff?

“Make a doormat,” Karen laughed in response. You know? That was just weird enough that I bought a pound of it against my better judgment, spun it up–although, not too much at any one sitting–and made exactly that. But there was leftover fiber (um, fancy that. It was a really small doormat. It was all I could stand.)

And then I saw that cow. And I knew exactly what I was going to do with that yak. I braided the roving (you don’t have to spin it if you leave it as roving!) and gave it to the guy so his cow could have a tail. I left a nice curl of the long fibers at the end, very cow-y.

The guy loved it, he absolutely loved it. He thought long and hard about it and never did add it to the decorations: he was afraid little kids would tear it apart. He’s right, they would have, but they would certainly have remembered the place and bugged their parents to go there all the more often, and I could always make another one. But instead he took it home as a souvenir of the good people who come into his shop, and that was that.

One summer, our Sam, our oldest, went in there, and mentioned out loud that she was thinking of applying for a job there.

The guy refused to hand her an application. He simply hired her on the spot.

But her schedule was such a problem!

He didn’t care.

But she couldn’t come in at this time, or this day, or…

He didn’t care. When could she start?

And so she scooped cones, and, a short while later, I made that tail.

She’s our daughter who had the ITP scare last week. I mentioned the Emergency Room Medicine thing to my friend and reader Kristine across the country, who happens to live a few miles from Sam but had never met her. Kristine’s reaction was, Say no more! What flavor?

Which is how my son-in-law came to open his door today to see a woman standing there holding out some Ben and Jerry’s, and he stood there, jaw on the ground, exclaiming, Do we even KNOW you?

Okay, I should stop and let Kristine tell the tale, but I have to tell you, she totally rocks. THANK you, Kristine!

Nicholas’s dad sent a link to photos of what had happened. There was one showing his wife gently holding their son’s hand, with his fingers curled towards his mother’s, as the rescuers worked on him.

When I was in critical condition at Stanford four years ago, when they were infusing me with a then-experimental med that would either finish me off or save my life, they had every vital sign being monitored, and my blood pressure fell to 64/44 and was headed down. A nurse looked at the monitor and noticed. She reached for me and held me with one hand, saying, “You okay? Hang in there, honey.” She quickly snapped out orders to the other nurse (there may have been two others, it gets a bit blurry at this point) while she held onto me, never letting go. She never knew how much she was keeping me here by that simple touch and those words. She had no idea how strong an effect it had on me, how much I held onto it as my life raft.

I saw that picture of those two people I love and their hands together as that child lay in that snow under that ski lift.

And used my hands to work on a matching hat for the little brother whose big brother fell such an unbelievable fall. *I* needed to hold them gently, too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Last year’s amaryllis, blooming again, late in the season under the skylight in the bathroom.)

I have a friend I owe several favors to, who picked me up last night to carpool to our knitting group. Remember when I posted about bold and red and big? I thought I had just her color. Yeah, well: without showing what they looked like, size or width or pattern or anything, just the colors–because color is everything–I offered her that or that spring green scarf I’d just finished. I kind of pushed the red a bit, I realize in retrospect.

“Well, I really like the green,” she answered. Green it was, and it looked perfect on her. I’m so glad she got what she really liked! Didn’t take long for those lace-knit leaves to go to the right person.

Every piece of our handknitting carries a history of our days within it.

Sandi is one of the co-owners of Purlescence, and the person who gifted me with that lightweight, collapsible scooter recently. How do you thank someone who offers you your mobility back? I went into her shop last week and bought (among other things) four skeins of Kidsilk Haze and a matching Alpaca With A Twist’s Fino baby alpaca/silk laceweight. I loved how the two strands played off each other.

My son’s doctor blithely told him he would be home within two to three hours after his arthroscopic shoulder surgery. Three hours after, he still had a breathing tube down him, out cold. I knitted and knitted and knitted Sandi’s yarn, keeping the generosity of her spirit present in every stitch as I did. I knit his recovery into those stitches, and of course, he’s fine; it just took patience and time. Like (what else) knitting.

Three days ago, I showed my friend Nancy what I had so far. It was a guess exactly how much the lace would stretch downwards once I blocked it. I thought I had enough; Nancy said no, keep going. So I did a few more pattern repeats, mostly to keep Nancy happy. Then, as long as I was at it, what the heck, I kept working till I was about out of yarn. I blocked it, checked it over, and thought, Great. Now I just knew it was going to be way too long; Sandi is emphatically not a tall person. Twenty-seven inches–on her?

Nancy gave me a lift over to our first time at Purlescence’s knitting group last night. Before we headed off, I showed her the shawl. I was sure I’d blown it, and I told her I was going to start over with another yarn I’d bought from Sandi, so she’d have a shawl that wouldn’t just totally swamp her.

Nancy said, You made this for Sandi. The color will be perfect on her. She will love it. Give this one to her.

You know how sometimes someone with some sense says just what you need to hear?

Yeah. Sandi loved it. Like there was a question?

About five years ago, I ran into someone I barely knew, a former fellow knitter. She said she was a quilter now, and offered to give me her yarn stash! No. I knew what gorgeous work she’d done in the past. Surely you’ll get back to it someday.

No. Don’t want it. You take it. I’m getting rid of it. I’d rather have the closet space.

I finally thought, well, better me than Goodwill, okay, sure! So, soon after, Pamela came over to my house with all these fabric bags stuffed with yarn, nice yarn, good wools and the like. It was an incredible amount, and she refused any kind of payment; she was just glad to see it go to a good home. Wow.

There were twenty balls of a donegal tweed in brown (does that sound familiar yet?), and I ended up knitting them, along with a strand of a darker camelhair/lambswool blend, into a thick warm blanket. My plan was to give it back to her as a thank you for all the yarn. I didn’t know how to reach her other than her phone number she’d given me when we’d run into each other in a store.

I called. I left messages three times, eventually telling her answering machine that I had something I wanted to give her as a thank you. Eventually, I thought, well, I don’t want to stalk you, honey, I guess you’re not interested. And so I quietly kept the afghan. It sat to the side, unused and uncertain.

Last year I almost donated it to Afghans for Afghans, but, for no earthly reason I could tell you, I just didn’t feel like it.

Meantime, Sandi, my friend who gave me that red scooter down a few posts ago, opened a new yarn store last year, and started having knitting group nights every Thursday. I’ve wanted to go, but, not driving, I’ve just never made it there yet. I get to my old group, somehow, just fine. But I haven’t gotten to that one, even though it’s closer.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, I decided this year to finally give that brown blanket to Afghans for Afghans at Stitches–it felt like the right time, at last–I emailed Ann Rubin to ask her if they could handle a larger item at this time, and that whole story happened.

It was long past when I should have been allowed to make such a change to the text of my book, but I asked my editor afterwards if, now that the Barn Swallows scarf had declared whom it had been for all along, if we could mention Ann and her organization in my book before it flew off to the printer. She checked, and–I absolutely love Martingale Press–said sure. So just barely in time, that happened, and that wonderful A4A organization will get the publicity it so much deserves: a place where individual knitters can create connections to other people, create a bit of world peace, one person at a time. And my profound thanks to whoever at Martingale decided I needed my projects suddenly back, so that I had Ann’s scarf in hand in time for Stitches to give to her. When I hadn’t even known I would need it, and neither did they.

Meantime. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee has been doing some home repairs, and someone posted a comment on her blog. I read it, and immediately shot off a note to the woman: I had no idea who she was or where she lived in the world, but I simply said, I live in an Eichler home in California, meaning one where, like your house, the water lines were originally run under a concrete slab. We, like you, developed a leak under there. We knew that; what we didn’t know, was that by not immediately repairing it, the vibrations it set off ended up breaking the pipes open in 17 places. In our case, we’d been sitting for 18 months on plans to remodel our house. All the sudden, we could no longer just sit there, we had to really do something, with the result being that that remodel did happen. Meantime, (I told her), if you don’t want to jackhammer your whole slab, get that fixed right away.

I got a note back yesterday from the woman. She exclaimed, “I think I KNOW you!”

It was Pamela! All this time later, she’d come back to her needles after all. There was a knitting group meeting at Sandi’s shop, and she’d been going to it, in case I was interested in meeting up there.

If I had gone to Purlescence’s knitting nights all those times before, all those times it never quite happened, I would have seen Pamela, I would have given her her afghan and been glad of it, and that would have been the end of it. Ann Rubin would never have been able to ship it off to Afghanistan, Ann never would have gotten her scarf, and associating it with her and mentioning her in my book would never have occurred to me.

Pamela checked out my blog, saw the photo, says she missed out on a good thing, but was thrilled that that blanket is off to where it’s off to–“How cool is that!” was her reaction. Go Pamela!

And now I can finally, at last, get her yarn-holding bags back to her!

He wasn’t supposed to happen.

I had major problems getting our third child here. We got her here safe and sound in the end, to everybody’s profound relief, but the doctor sure didn’t want me to risk that again. My blood pressure had been so low. This was years before my dysautonomia was diagnosed, and he thought it was specific to pregnancy–which it seemed to be, at the time–but, whatever, never again!

But we just strongly felt we were supposed to have one more child. We did what we do: we prayed hard about it. And then we went ahead and did what we felt was right for us personally, and we had our son John. Easiest pregnancy of all my pregnancies, piece of cake, and what we got for it! The nicest kid you could ever ask for. How many teenage boys drive their moms to yarn stores and cheerfully hang out with her friends?

I once upon a time stumbled across Robin and Russ (now defunct) selling baby alpaca at a dollar a ball on closeout; the undyed brown in fingering weight just hadn’t sold well. I bought enough to knit it triple-stranded into big, warm afghans for each one of my children. Some of it, I dyed.

Three years ago, I was knitting up the balls I’d dyed in crimson, and John across the room put down his book, came over, grabbed the bottom of that afghan, and started rubbing it against his cheek, enjoying (ed. note: I wrote “swooning at” and he read that and exclaimed, “MOMMMM!!!! Swooning? SWOONING?? On your BLOG!??” and retyped it as “enjoying”) the softness. That particular afghan instantly became his.

So today’s his birthday, the day he’s officially old enough to have his papers in to go be a Mormon missionary for two years–first, though, he’s having shoulder surgery tomorrow and will need a bit of downtime afterwards. But meantime, today is a day for me to reflect again at my great good fortune that he made it into this world, and how much he blesses our lives every day. He’s a good one. I’ve already knitted that afghan, so I don’t know how to say it any more powerfully than this, but–John. I love you.

And I admire you, too.

Before I say the rest of this, I want to publicly thank Shelly, who has emailed with me any number of times but whom I had never met. Today was her first-ever Stitches, she was only going for the one day, and she spent three hours of it pushing me around. Knitters are such nice people… Many, many thanks, Shelly.

When I was knitting my Barnswallows scarf for my book, I picked out a yarn that reminded me of the color of well-weathered wood, Jaggerspun Zephyr in Mushroom; it went with the story and it felt right. But as I knit it, I wondered whom it would eventually go to. It was pretty, but it wasn’t a color you’d be seeing me wearing any too often.

Ann Rubin is the person behind Afghans For Afghans, as I noted on my Weapons of Mass Construction entry, and for the last several years she has run a booth cum collecting point at Stitches for people wanting to donate handmade warm woolen things for the people of Afghanistan. To wage peace and goodwill. I’ve stopped before and chatted a bit, but never felt virtuous enough to make the effort to knit a whole blanket.

Well, Ann recently put out a call asking for hats, mittens, small things; someone was flying over there, but luggage space would be a problem. The one time I finally have an afghan I want to offer, a donegal tweed wool knitted with a camelhair/lambswool, big and warm and practical. So I emailed Ann; could she still use this? Sure, she said; there will be another shipment going not too far off, bring it, and thanks.

I went to the KnitU meetup last night, held after the opening-day stuff was otherwise over. I didn’t expect Ann to recognize me; other than the fact that I’ve been in a wheelchair at Stitches past, there was nothing ever to make me particularly stand out when we’ve met before. She and I were sitting across the large room from each other at this meeting, and she was dead tired, could hardly keep her eyes open–but they had us go around the room and say our names; she registered mine when I said it, her face lit up, and she smiled a silent hello.

Getting ready for bed last night, it suddenly hit me in total clarity: if I knitted something for Ann, anything warm she would feel morally obligated to share with those in far greater need of that warmth. She is someone who cannot sit still when there are humans in need. But the story of that Barnswallows scarf was about creating a place of peace in a background of ongoing war–and it is a wispy little thing, a bit of Jaggerspun Zephyr, a symbol and an airy lightness.

There is nobody else it could possibly have been for.

(Ann hesitated to accept it; she didn’t want to leave the other volunteers out, and she didn’t want the focus to be on her. I told her it would be wonderful publicity for the Afghans For Afghans project, and with that she relented. And she absolutely loved her scarf.)

(My Rabbit Tracks pattern with the recommended extra edging at the sides. Yarn: Lisa Souza’s Seafoam colorway; sorry I don’t have any more of the requisite cashmere knitted up on hand for the illustration.)

I am so stealing this line from Carol H., a commenter over at Yarnharlot’s blog. Stephanie aka Yarnharlot wrote a superb post Friday that every knitter who has ever been condescended to, but who wants to handle it well, can relate to. For me, the biggest such moment was when a medical resident last October, seeing me knitting as I sat in my hospital bed, having just met me and knowing nothing whatsoever about me except the fact that I knit, when I mentioned something about my blog and website, gasped loudly, “YOU!!! have a WEBSITE?!!?”

Like wielding two sticks and some wool means you’re not capable of using a computer? Sir?

Stephanie is a woman who, single-handedly, raised $320,000 for Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres from her fellow knitters simply by asking for people to open their hearts. This is a woman with great power to do good, by how she writes and who she is. Her picture is on the very first day that this blog was launched, if I may so brag, from when she was in Los Altos, CA for a booksigning–one that involved a city permit to take over a large parking lot to accommodate the over 300 knitters who showed up for it.

And yet at another venue, she had someone hesitate to set up that tenth chair in their hands, no matter her protests, sure there couldn’t possibly be ten knitters in the area to want to come to a signing for a knitting book. Knitting?

Thus Carol H.’s line: we hold “weapons of mass construction” in our hands. We use them to show people we love them. And there are a lot of us. Ann Rubin’s Afghans for Afghans project, putting warm clothes and blankets made by hand–not just physical warmth from things bought, but a real and human warmth, stranger reaching out to stranger–I think goes a huge but quiet way to launch peace between the peoples of our countries. Our hours spent doing so cannot be bought: they can only be given. And when they are given, when we measure our lives in a manifestation of real caring, we have great power to do good.

Weapons of mass construction. Let’s knit!

Oh, and, that resident? The last day I was there, he looked at the lace scarf I was working on, in cashmere that I had dyed in shades of a royal blue, (absolutely gorgeous if I do say so, and I do say so), and said, wistfully, “I have a wife…”

I thought long and hard about it after I finished it, and finally went back to Stanford and left it with my favorite nurse, whom I’d already gifted with baby alpaca/silk lace, to give that man for his wife, the resident being unavailable just then (she paged him; he was there somewhere; we tried.) A physical reminder, soft, lovely, and skilled in the craftsmanship, that he needs to truly see his patients, not write them instantly off on the basis of his prejudices. It gently holds fast to the truth that I did not write HIM off despite that and other mistakes I believe he won’t repeat. I figure, if I’m to be part of his medical education, then it’s essential I play the part well.

We can construct a massive amount of good by holding fast to our good will. When we express it in stitches, all the better.

My mail just came. There was a package. The return address was from a city my sister lived in–oh, nearly twenty years or so ago. I looked at the name, and thought, both, Hi, Niki! and, huh?

And inside was this gorgeous pair of Koigu handpainted-yarn socks. Made as if she’d measured them to my feet as she’d knitted along. Wow. If I could make everybody’s feet feel like mine feel like right now with these on, nobody would ever again ask why anybody would bother to handknit socks. Wow.

Thank you, Niki!!!

Last night, heading out the door to my knitting group, I had my show-off shawl project ready… but grabbed a simple throw-in-my-purse scarf project that I had sitting there. It had a pattern I could do in my sleep; always good for when you want to listen to what’s going on.

The woman next to me had a soft pink scarf in a simple pattern, and I reached out and touched it and went ooh aah. “It’s nothing like what you make, though,” she answered a bit apologetically. I laughed, “It’s not a competition!” and she laughed back. She reached out to my scarf that I’d reluctantly picked up out of my bag–I really did want to make headway on that shawl–and went wow as I told her it was baby alpaca. Left over from my daughter’s afghan. Nice, she said. And from that point on, it felt like she was trying not to look at it too much. Trying not to wish for it too much.

I looked at her and thought, this is exactly your shade of red. Eight inches done so far, well, we can try. I started knitting as fast as I could.

It’s a large group, and we all chatted as we waited for people to come in. Knit! There was the usual go around the group, say your name (there’s always a new person, after all), talk about what you’re working on, maybe a little of what’s going on in your life. Talk, you guys! There was one person who always says, simply, “I’m _ and this is my _” and that’s it; she actually added a few more sentences as I silently cheered her on. Knit!

I wrapped it around my neck, holding the needles. Too short. A few more people. Knit! When they got done, the topic of changing the date of the December meeting came up, and a lively discussion ensued. Good. Keep going. That done, I wrapped it around my neck again. I think so; I turned to my neighbor and asked her opinion.

“For throwing over your shoulder?” (I wish!) “No, for tieing like this.”

“Oh, then, it’s perfect!” And with that, somebody else came up to talk to her, the meeting being officially over, and I concentrated on binding off fast before she could walk out. I was in too much of a hurry; I totally hashed that first stitch there, and tried to work some looseness back into it with my needle. No time to frog. I didn’t have a yarn sewing needle, so I had to work the end in by using my needle to imitate knitting, more or less, to pull it through each stitch across the bottom of the scarf, pulling the strand all the way through each. Slow.

There: did it! I put it in her lap, and the look on her face! Surely I’m only showing off that I got it done. Right?! She dutifully held it up and handed it back. I stuffed it in her knitting bag: no, I meant it, this is for you!

She was speechless. She was thrilled. She told me, “I so much love that color!”

It’s not a competition. But I still would say I definitely won. It’s people like her that keep knitters knitting for others.

Now, let me tell you about that persimmon/coral scarf there, and why I made it the color I did. I hopped out of bed one day last week and set up the dyepot on the stove before I did anything else, having figured out just what I wanted it to be. I couldn’t wait to see it become what I was picturing!

I didn’t already tell the story because first I emailed my brother and sister-in-law to make sure I’d gotten the story right. Which came back very funny: no, SHE did this, I did THAT. But the core of the story was right on. And it is this:

My parents had long since given up on my younger brother ever getting married. And he didn’t want to be bugged about it. So it was a complete surprise to them when he phoned them to tell them what the girl he was going out with (Mom: he’s dating?!) had done.

They were supposed to have a date one particular evening. But, it turns out, Bryan’s apartment building just happened to be on fire. Larisa showed up at his place, looking for him, couldn’t find him in the crowd milling around, so when the firemen weren’t looking, she dashed past them to run into his place to save him. She saw no sign of him and came back out, and finally, very gratefully, I’m sure, found him–he was busy trying to find out what had happened to HER, meantime.

And Mom was saying, he has to marry her! Nobody else could possibly live up to that story!

And, actually, yes, they did get married. But just before their wedding, it was his birthday, and I, living near the redwood forests, found the perfect birthday card. It was a picture of a small boy looking up in complete awe at a giant sequoia. Open the card, and there were the words, “It’s your birthday. Time to count the rings.”

So you know who that diamond pattern scarf had to be for (although I still gave her her choice; she did pick that one.) I dyed it the color of the soft flames crackling in a fireplace on a romantic evening in their dream home they recently finished building. I’m a month or so late with it, but hey, you guys: happy anniversary.

I had knitted everything I was going to knit from that mothy box of yellow angora. I thought. I only had a few rolled-up balls left that had anything more than just a yard or two, and why bother with the stuff anymore, when knitting it had been so demanding: it was like a two-year-old. I couldn’t take my eyes off it for a second, or a broken ply would sail through my fingers. I should just toss the leftovers, quick, before anything hatches from it and infests my stash, I was thinking.

But today was a day where I came home from the doctor, eyed that yarn, and needed to create something positive out of–everything. The yarn, the day, everything. The doctor had been warm and kind, for which I am very grateful. Time to go make something warm for the sake of kindness myself.

It wasn’t much, it wasn’t big, it wasn’t the right color–but it’s the right color now. Boiled. Bugfree. Exquisitely soft. And tomorrow it will be ready to go make somebody happy. I look forward to finding out who.