This is the first pattern I ever had published, in the Knitting Pattern-A-Day 2005 calendar (and on my website). I’ve decided I like it better with an extra stitch added at each side, the way I did here, so, add two to the count when casting on. This one used six repeats. I know, the eye is more pleased with odd numbers within patterns, but this leaves you with seven scallops at the bottom and seven columns among the yarnovers, so it works.

Once, when I was quite new at lace knitting, I started an ambitious shawl project in superfine cashmere, thin as sewing thread. It looked terrible, like crumpled tin foil, and I finally just bagged it. It wasn’t till several years later that I pulled it out, rinsed it, and let it dry with the stitches settling down into their natural shape: it was about 6″ long, absolutely beautiful, and would have become a gorgeous piece. But, by that point, not even protected in a ziploc bag, it was bugbitten and broken.

I let that be a lesson to me that yes, lace tends to look like a random mess while you’re knitting it: but you can rinse it, still on the needles (keep those tips dry if you’re using wooden circulars like I do) and spread it out in an approximation of its future blocked self over a white towel or sheet so it won’t absorb any dyes. This is an easy way to get enthused about it, and to be able to show it off a whole lot better if you’re going to be working on it in public. So, to demonstrate here, I got this shawl halfway knitted, rinsed it, and then finished it and snapped the photo so you could see the difference.

But what I did not at all expect is that this fingering-weight yarn with 51 stitches on size 5.5mm needles (9 American) could turn out to be a wedding ring shawl. It helps if it’s a big ring, definitely. Mine’s a 7; this is a ring for which my grandfather drove out onto a reservation in Nevada many decades ago, picked out a stone, and watched the ring being made for my grandmother. I wear it for best occasions and it connects me to the grandfather I never knew before his passing and the grandmother I only barely did before hers. It was created just for them.

As this shawl was created just for…someone who hopefully doesn’t know about this blog…

About seven years ago, I used Barbara Walker’s Diamond Mesh pattern to knit a large, very soft kid mohair stole to wrap around an old friend recovering from back surgery. The memory of her surprised, thrilled face as I gave it to her is one of the great little joys of my life. I wasn’t about to tell her, though, that the pattern had driven me nuts: I could see how it should be so easy, but it just wasn’t coming to me. How do you see when it’s a yo, k1, yo at the top of a triangle and when it’s a k3? I’d kept picking it up, working on it awhile, and putting it down to go work on something I could actually relax with while doing. It had taken me two months to finish.

Last week, going through my stash, I stumbled across a partial ball of Jaggerspun Zephyr laceweight in jade and one of Misti baby alpaca laceweight in forest, and the two of them together! But there wasn’t as much of the Zephyr as I was comfortable with. I didn’t want to run out.

The day before, someone had posted on one of the knitting lists that she had some expensive cashmere, couldn’t afford to buy more, wanted to make a really nice gift with it, but what? When she wasn’t sure she had enough? I told her, go for a mesh lace pattern and largeish needles to stretch the yardage out; it’ll work.

Time to take my own advice. Let’s try that Diamond Mesh pattern again.

Four days. Fingertip-to-fingertip, and the best part of it, was, I immediately got it! It was intuitively obvious, just like I had known it could be if I only had enough experience. And somehow this time the math of it, the numbers and the geometry in its structure, felt inherently satisfying, like a well-written piece of music.

Anne and Mary Anne asked about my meeting Rachel Remen. Here’s the story.

Dr. Remen did a booksigning at Kepler’s, a large independent bookstore that is a local institution. I love her “Kitchen Table Wisdom” and her “My Grandfather’s Blessings,” and made a point of going to hear her. This was a little after “Grandfather’s” was released.

She talked a bit, she read from “Grandfather’s” a bit, and then she asked the large crowd for any questions or comments. One woman told her how much she’d enjoyed the books; the next one went on and on about saving the planet, imploring Dr. Remen to write about the dire condition of the earth. Dr. Remen heard her out, then gently said that this was clearly this woman’s passion and that the questioner would do well to write the book she had in mind herself for what she could bring to it.

Then she said she had time for one more question. There were a lot of people and many hands went up. I was about a third of the way back in the crowd, and thought, she’ll never call on me. I can only wish. I raised my hand, but only barely; I wasn’t sure she could even see that I did.

There was what I can only describe as a sense of white light that somehow passed between us as she looked in my direction and called on me anyway.

Like the others had done, at her invitation I stood to ask my question. I tried not to make it too long. I told her:

I have lupus. I also have a hearing loss. I have an ear doctor who discovered that the cause of my growing loss was a severe reaction to aspirin, and I quit taking any and the progression of the loss stopped.

Ten years later, I developed Crohn’s disease (something I knew Dr. Remen could definitely relate to.) I was put on a med that, with my history, put my hearing at risk, and I got sent back to that ENT for testing.

He walked into the examining room at the edge of tears, and asked me, “WHY are YOU!! being put on ototoxic drugs!”

I explained that I had Crohn’s now. He stood there a moment, taking it in, and affirmed, “That’s bad.” Another breath. “But…*I* thought you had breast cancer, or lymphoma, or…” as he shook his head, grieving at the loss.

(I didn’t say to Dr. Remen that I have a Daniel Wallace lupus book that says that 80% of lupus patients whose intestines start bleeding die in the first episode.)

I had walked into his room with a heavy burden, and that good man lifted it right off me by his empathy. I walked out with the weight of the world gone. He had heard me, he had been there for me, and he had remembered the cause of my hearing loss–ten years later! I wasn’t just another face passing through, it was important to him that I be okay. He remembered! It felt like my life expectancy was being stretched forward right there in front of me in those moments.

I wanted some way of telling that good man what he had done for me. How much it had meant to me. I knit, I told Dr. Remen–and here I held up a gossamer-fine lace shawl I was working on, by way of show-and-tell–and after reading your book, I knew what I wanted to do. I knit his wife a wedding ring shawl, one that can pass through a ring (again, the one in my hands demo’d) as a way of conveying how grateful I was.

(Note to my readers here: this was when I was new at knitting any kind of lace, much less of that fineness, and had never considered giving all those weeks of work away to anyone other than immediate family.)

I told Dr. Remen, “I did not know what to do or how to say thank you till I read your book. You gave me my voice.”

And then I sat down, as the room exploded in clapping.

One strand of Lanas Stop kid mohair (from stash, and this laceweight version seems to be discontinued, as far as I can tell via Google). Knitted with one strand of Gentle, an 85/10/5 superfine merino/tencel/cashmere blend laceweight from Purlescence in Sunnyvale, California. I love how it shimmers against the fluff.

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.

Yesterday I was at the dentist’s and then the doctor’s, and I took this project along to work on. Usually people ask me what I’m making, but on this one, instead, three times I had people ask me how I would describe the color. Guava juice? That was the best I could come up with.

My friend Constance, a fellow knitter, likes to say “Color is everything.” That all is else is secondary; if you don’t like the color, you’ll never like the project. And if you love the color, all other faults can be forgiven.

That said, everybody seemed to love the color on this one as much as I do. Whatever one might call it.

Having had my fourth child a month before the oldest turned six, nearly nineteen years ago, I remember waiting rooms and kids running around and their being bored or tired. I remember how much one kind word or smile from an older parent, remembering, meant to me.

I discovered not too long ago that there are women in Peru who put bread on their families’ tables by handknitting intricate, adorable fingerpuppets; I bought my first one, a penguin, at Stitches West one year, from Pam Bell at Pacific Meadows Alpacas. I put it on the joystick of my motorized scooter that I use for long days out like that, and instantly became friends with every small child being dragged around by their mom that day. Adults who saw it couldn’t help but laugh too.

From there, I’ve bought them by the dozens online, and always keep some in my purse just in case. I try to always ask the parents first before handing one over. It is amazing to watch a waiting room in a doctor’s office be completely transformed as a child goes from not wanting to be in a strange, unsettling environment, to, playing with something cool and new and with a face and personality they can go play with. The whole room lights up in delight at the imagination of a now-happy child.

I was getting low, so I reached into the closet to pull out the bag they came in to replenish my supply. And out came: a blue elephant. Given last week’s election returns, that suddenly struck me as very, very funny. I guess this one’s for me. 

(The Elephant Ear promised to behave. We will ignore that it seems to be sticking its tongue out there.)

I admired some yarn from a small farm at Stitches West a few years ago, didn’t buy any, but told my friend Karin about it. Who saw it at Stitches East later that year, bought a half pound, and surprised me with it. Wow.

But it sat there, obstinately refusing to tell me just what it wanted to be when it grew up. Sometimes a yarn will suddenly declare exactly what it has to be; this one, it didn’t seem to be forthcoming.

Till I recently asked my friend Terry, to whom I owe much, her favorite color. “Periwinkle. Wait. What are you up to!…”

Karin recently closed her yarn store, The Periwinkle Sheep, so that she would have more time to relax with her knitting. I had periwinkle dye–and hey! So Karin’s white yarn became what it had been waiting to be all along: a bridge between three people who’ve never met in person, two of whom only came to hear of each other because of the ways they’ve been kind to me.

Every act of generosity touches more people than the original ones involved. So seldom do we get to know… What a treat to be able to introduce those two good people.

The man-eating plant out back said it had gone vegetarian. It promised it had. But in the end, it declared with a grin, smacking its lips, that hadn’t meant vegan! And so Joni’s beloved wool yarn met its untimely end. No sheep were hurt in the process, so the green monster declared itself still true to its word.

I knitted this today out of Elann’s Baby Cashmere along with a strand of leftover Kidsilk Haze I had sitting around, that I’d overdyed and then decided the shades of red played well together.

I hadn’t noticed till I took this picture: you wear this scarf, and one side will be down arrows and the other up arrows, like Newsweek’s Conventional Wisdom watchlist. In with the new officeholders, out with some of the incumbents. Maybe I should have knitted it in blue?

Mysterious are the ways of Blogger. You write a post, and it disappears into bloggervapor. You write it again, shorter this time, and poof. So you add this whine, thinking how you don’t like whining, and I’ll bet this one goes through. That’d teach me.

This is a better shot of Lisa Souza’s handiwork and mine in my Shade Garden shawl. I wanted to send the picture to Lisa to wish her a great trip while she’s at Stitches East in my home state of Maryland. 

One of the things the Stanford doctors asked me, during my four-day EEG, was, did I have an aura to go with my seizure symptoms?

All this was new to me: I had pneumonia in July, my suppressed immune system soared right past my chemo drug, and with it my autoimmune symptoms; next thing you know, I started having these seizures. Escalating to, after about a week, sometimes being grand mal–except I never lost consciousness. What on earth an aura felt or looked like or whatever sense was involved in having one, I had not the slightest clue. I was reading Winterdance, about Alaska; how about an Aura Borealis?

Rather like the time, 15 years ago with an acute pericarditis attack, another doctor asked me if I were short of breath. I told him, reasonably to me at the time, no; because I could draw as long a breath as I wanted to. I just didn’t feel I got any air in whatsoever when I did.

Doctors. Define your terms when it’s all new to us. To be fair, I asked them to this time, and they tried, but it didn’t seem to match me at all; maybe another patient could have described it better than they could have. Dunno.

So maybe tonight I finally could begin to answer their question. I keep my knitting needles in a handthrown pottery jar on top of my piano. Beautiful handiwork, by the way, of my friend Kris Kunihiro; go to mkwares.net if you want to see Kris and Mel’s ceramics. The navy and rose/burgundy/teal mix. Anyway. I have a shawl I’ve been working on that I wanted to check how the length was coming out; with lace, you never know unless you stretch it out. I wanted to find the rubber needle tips at the bottom of that jar, so that I wouldn’t drop a ton of stitches while stretching the thing.

So. Rather than picking up the jar like a sensible person whose balance is impaired, and bringing it down to me, I stood on my tiptoes, leaned over it, grabbed the nest of circulars and lifted them up out of the way; just as I reached in with the other hand, leaning way over, to get at those tips down in there, I had just the briefest instant to react.

I was about to have a seizure. With, still sitting in the jar, all my short, sharp double-pointed needles right there in my face, and I mean right there.

Now, I’ve been the mother to four two-year-olds, one right after the other. I’ve raised four teenagers. I even taught three of them to drive after that speeder totalled my car and my balance six years ago. I’m the mom. I’m in charge here. Just try me, I’ve had lots of practice. And I instantly proclaimed decisively at it, NO!!!, just as loud, inwardly, as I ever yelled at any child of mine about to run in front of a car.

No needles in my eyes. But it was a very near thing.

Now. Almost all set. I just need to knit six more rows, bind off, and put it in the mail Monday. I really like this project. More on it later.

Something I’ve been wanting to show off for a few weeks; I finished this a few days before I went into the hospital. Yarn: Lisa Souza’s alpaca laceweight, Shade Garden colorway, one strand, knitted together with one strand of Misti Alpaca baby alpaca laceweight that I overdyed in solid Jacquard Purple. I picked a more reddish purple for my dye than Lisa’s, and really like the way the two yarns played together. The shawl pattern is a one-off that I didn’t bother to write down; after knitting roughly three dozen+ shawls over the last two years in the course of writing my book, well, by now I can just kind of wing it as I go along, you know? 

Remember when I said that if you gave me a lovely hand-dyed sock yarn I would knit a lace scarf or shawl out of it? I guess Joni took me at my word, because she not only gifted me with this soft merino sock yarn she’d dyed, she sent beaded stitch markers she’d made along with it.

Wow. Seriously nice stuff. I just sat there and stroked the yarn for awhile, wondering what I’d done to deserve this.

As the author of a book of knitted lace shawls coming out next July, I have a confession to make: I have never had stitch markers. I’ve always just placed snips of a contrasting yarn between the stitches, which tend to snag out, disappear, travel down the rows into irrelevancy, and basically make my lace look like a bad hair day. Just waiting for some hospital orderly to address it as “sir.” The whole ninth of a yard. But now! My needles have jewelry to separate my pattern repeats and I am very very delighted with it all.

That wreath-y type thing came with instructions for knitted cuffs, and has its own beaded stitch marker at the top (which is being camera shy there), but when I saw it, my immediate reaction was, oh cool! Yarn as jewelry. Hang it from a silver chain. I am so there. I’m picturing the Saint Bernards in the Alps thing, with rescue supplies around their necks. Do my hair up with some dpn’s, and I’m good to go anywhere anytime. I tell you: this is so me. Wow.

Thank you, Joni! 

So our kids pretty much grew up in northern California, with only the oldest remembering snow at our old house; she’d been not quite five when we left New Hampshire. Then she was off to college, to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, up at a goodly elevation and right by the side of a mountain. Her first semester, we got this phone call. Cue the Calvin and Hobbes: “It’s snowing. I’ve got my electric blanket set on Deep Fat Fry, and I am *not* coming out!”

Now the middle two kids are at BYU, and I didn’t want my younger daughter to shiver. Scarves and more scarves, till finally, she said, um, Mom, I really appreciate it, but I really don’t need more scarves.

When our kids are young, they take all our time. Now, it’s like I can take all that love gained over all the years, and radiate it further out. Everybody’s baby is my baby to admire, I’m not distracted with my own. Everybody’s joy is my joy.

And everybody’s a potential recipient for a good, soft, handknit scarf.