They’re new at church. I had given it to her two weeks ago: “Honey, this lady knitted me a scarf!”

He responded with the confidence of an authority figure on the subject, “Oh, nobody knits anymore.”

His wife and I looked at him–um, what did your wife just tell you?… I wanted to tell her, while she stood there agape, it’s okay. Let him be bloggable like that. Heh.

Rachel’s washable wool baby blanket.

And a few celebrants cheering it on.

(This swatch’s worth isn’t a great shot of the colors, it’s still a bit damp in the blocking so I can’t move it near a window yet. It’s more a soft peachy-pink overall in real life.)

In the end, my pregnancy of this project only took two months; no back aches, no morning sickness, I’ve got nothing to complain about. I bought the superwash wool for it from my friend Karen the day she was closing up her shop for good, and I told her who I was going to knit it up for and why. She liked that. It gave her something to be happy about that day.

Which meant I felt obliged to make good on my word to her so that I could show it off to her and she could feel she’d played a part in the joy of the sharing. Which she had. I am debating blogging the little aside that the yarn was terribly splitty and thin and needed tiny needles and took forever and it was like knitting the world’s most monstrous sock for the tightness and it drove me nuts and hurt my hands. This baby was kicking me. Note that I did buy a competing superwash merino from Purlescence after I’d started and gave myself an out–I’m no angel. Heh.

And yet… Every time I stopped and really looked at the fabric that was coming out of my needles, I pictured it wrapped around Kathy’s baby. The Kathy in my book, my friend I grew up with, who’d just had her second baby. She told me that after the death of her father when we were in seventh grade, it had taken her awhile to learn to finally trust life enough to marry, to start a family. She was so glad she finally did. They had a little boy. And now they have a daughter, born near the time of my 49th birthday.

They named her Rachel.  After the grandfather she will only know through those who loved him, Ray. But that love is a powerful thing, and it does carry down through the ages, whether the person is present or no.

I have a lovely bit of wool here in its finished form, worth every minute of my time it took for it to come to be, to say so.

(Okay, this was actually funny, I had a mysterious ghost of a post when I hit publish–where did most of the text and one picture go? Cut and paste, let’s try again. Hey, up there, I hear you guffawing. This is what I wrote:)

Hey, Albert up there (don’t we all do that?) if you’re looking: it’s done. Not finished–it needs water, it needs the blocking wires to stretch it and show more clearly the pattern that is already there, in each stitch following along its proper path as it connects to the next one over, stitch by stitch, row by row–but the knitting part. It’s done now.

Thanks, friend.

First, a quick bit re knitting: finished last night, church scarf of the week. One strand Geisha kid mohair/silk/nylon by Blue Moon Fiber Arts, and one strand of laceweight Zephyr silk/merino in I think Ruby, stretching some leftovers by knitting them together and using a larger needle.

Now, on to the rest:

Travel. See the world through the eyes of others.

I’m writing this down for the sake of the old friend from very way back that I talked to yesterday; you know who you are.

My cousin’s daughter was in India on a trip, and along the way had a host family that was naturally curious about this young foreign woman and asked her personal questions.

And then couldn’t bend their minds around the concept of being single: “You’re *twenty-six*? Don’t your parents know any nice young men?!”

She was, I’m sure, caught off guard, and tried to explain the concept of marrying for love: you know, you meet someone, you find you like them, they like you back, you find you have things in common, you come to like each other in that way… She described herself as blathering on, I’m sure feeling very awkward in the face of their stunned disbelief.

“Don’t you have friends?”

“Sure I have friends! I like lots of people! It’s just…”

They threw a feast, invited their friends, and the host introduced her to all: “I now understand why it is so hard to get married in America. This is F. In America, she likes lots of people, but nobody likes her back.”

To L. May I say in the greatest of innocence, lots of people like you back. Always did, friend.

I walked into Purlescence last night and three of the regulars instantly stared at my head. Meg exclaimed in mock indignation, “Where’s the blue?”

I laughed a good one at that, telling her, “I thought of you when I wrote that!” Meg has beautiful blacklight-fading-to-royal blue highlights in her black hair. I’ve often told her how great I think it looks on her and have mused out loud about playing copycat or perhaps multicolor a la Lucy Neatby, but I rather like the combination of youngish face and graying hair with a good bit of length to it and don’t forget the Birkenstocks to complete the image, myself.

Speaking of which. I walked out of Trader Joe’s the other day and was accosted by a woman about ten years older than me, quite well dressed, well coiffed, calling after me from behind with a combination of disbelief and a tone of being not sure whether she should be outraged, “Hey! Lady! Your socks don’t match!”

“Yes!” I answered her. “They came this way. Aren’t these cool?” (I am SO my modern art-dealer father’s daughter.)

That stumped her a second, and then she looked like she wanted in on this new fad too. “Where’d you get them?”

“At a knitter’s convention in Baltimore.” One of the Stitches vendors (I think this was the one) was selling them.

That was one oddball thing past the point the woman could deal with, and she waved me away in disgust, exclaiming “Pffffft!” at me. Heh. My head might not be Neatby’d, but my feet like the idea.

Oh. Before I sign off. RobinH asked about the knitting. I put down the Camelspin project to do a church scarf. (Monica, it went back to Sweden with your friend, if it’s not the right color red for his wife, rat on them for me, would you? It’s a bit towards the rust side, the baby alpaca was probably originally light brown on the hoof. Thanks.) And I did a Concert scarf pattern for someone who doesn’t know it’s coming, so, shhh, pictures later, and…

I didn’t decide the edging on the Camelspin. So there it has sat for a week. I finally admitted to myself why it wasn’t done, and when Sandi and Kay asked me how I was last night, I told them I was a bad girl.

They looked at me like, right. You. Uh huh. Explain.

I grinned, and told them that I was knitting it up with the idea of the (still-not-entirely-sure-I’ll-do-this) next (knitting) book, but I kept feeling like the right person for it was about to show up and I was too cheap to spring for two skeins of that expensive yarn twice for the book–so I’d dyed up that merino/silk that afternoon to try to match it to try to head off whoever that was going to turn out to be.

Sandi guffawed, exclaiming, “I’ve done that!”

“You HAVE?!”

Oh good, I’m in the best of company. As for the berry Camelspin, it’ll go where it’s supposed to go. Having faced up to it by my friends having asked just the right question I needed to be asked when I needed to be asked it, if I’m meant to get more Camelspin, it’ll happen.

That merino/silk, on the other hand, while it’s lovely and soft, just isn’t quite the same. The recipient will get the one she’s supposed to.

(Picture taken with my camera phone while that was all I had that was working. Pattern is the smaller version Water Turtles, knitted on size 6mm.)

I blogged awhile ago about the bright red cashmere yarn that Karen and her daughter Amy told me I had to buy when we were together at Stitches East last October in Baltimore. About my reluctance to buy something so expensive so very much not my color vs my internal struggle in thinking how perfect it would be for my friend Marguerite (but it wasn’t her turn!) and finally just going along with the peer pressure and buying it…not knowing that Marguerite had been diagnosed with breast cancer three days before and had told not a soul other than her husband.

Sometimes you find out fairly quickly like that. Sometimes it takes awhile longer.

The second day we were there, I saw some Fleece Artist merino fingering weight yarn that was just lovely, and had a hard time choosing between two colorways; I was only going to spring for one shawl’s worth. What I wouldn’t do now to have bought that bright blue and green in cashmere, too, though I don’t remember seeing any in stock there. So, sitting there debating and debating, I finally asked Karen, with the booth owner’s permission, to take one skein of each colorway and walk about 20 feet away from me. Karen walked towards a solid black curtained-off area, which made the perfect backdrop. As soon as she did, it was instantly clear: *that* one. Emphatically. Sometimes you need a little Claude Monet effect and to look at it from a distance.

Later, another friend saw a nearly identical merino yarn in another booth and nearly dove headfirst into it, much to my amusement. She totally loved it, exclaimed over it, fondled it–and then reluctantly put it back, saying something about budgets, it being the end of a day at the overload that is Stitches.

Heh. Guess what I had. I recently finished knitting it up, thinking how perfect it was going to be for her. I’d seen her reaction to it.

And then every time I went to the post office, intending to run multiple errands, I kept forgetting to take it with me. Dumb. I mean, really dumb. What was wrong with me on this one?

Wednesday afternoon at 4 pm I got an anguished email. Masses. I reminded her of Marguerite’s five masses, and how only one had turned out to actually be cancerous and that despite all that they had expected, it had not spread. I think everything’s going to turn out okay for her, too. If I have any say in the matter! Knitting as cancer cure! (Hey, it’s not biopsied yet. Might not even be what they think.)

This time, when I went to the post office, there was no question and no forgetting. And maybe I see why I did before. The timing now was right, the comfort it could provide was perhaps more intense by sending it now.

Steve, one of the clerks, waved hi and then looked at my face and asked, “Having a hard day today?” That surprised me; I didn’t think it was showing. I took a deep breath, knowing that he would want to know (I’ve lived in this town awhile, I prayed for him during his recent surgery) and explained to him what was in the package and why, and pleaded, “Please get it to her quickly for me.”

Priority mail, cross country, and this morning, a day and a half later, I got her email that it had come.

Go Steve go. Thank you.

Made me cry.

I think she did too.

With the old Godspell song playing in my head, thus the post title. Here are two amaryllises, taken last night.

And today.

My project, meantime, completely stalled out for the day and I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t want to work on it; finally, it hit me that, I was nearly done, I knew who I wanted to knit for next after I finished it, and I had not a clue what to make that person. I was avoiding not knowing what to do. So I went off on an errand this afternoon, I think not for the errand’s sake, really, but rather, to get away from the house and the problem for a moment, and by the time I got home, I pretty much knew. I went through my stash, and one ball after another, one color, one texture, then another, confirmed that yes, that one. No, not that: almost, almost, but go back to the first, yes, that feels right.

Now I know. It feels like such a relief. Back to work!

When I was working on knitting for my book, just about everything on my needles was focused on that; I was making one shawl for my recipients, one for the publisher, shawl after shawl. Maybe that color would look better, better go make another. After I shipped everything off to Martingale, it was a relief to be able to just knit for the sheer joy of it, to be able to give my time and skill away for the love of it without having to put any of it off to the side.

And after all those shawls, I wanted some near-instant gratification. Now, if anyone had told me when I started out that I was going to end up knitting a lace scarf for every single woman who comes to our church, I would have run away screaming in protest, no way! But, starting off with a scarf or two and gradually coming to realize that I’d come to the point of no return where I couldn’t leave anyone out now, over a year and a half, that’s exactly what I did. Everyone. Except for the blind woman whose guide dog was far more interested in that exotic animal he could smell in there than she was; a scarf was the most impractical thing in the world, and she let me know it. You could just see the dog exclaiming “Dang!” with a snort as I put hers back away. That’s fine, I actually kind of expected that. I couldn’t leave her out, though, I had to at least offer.

So I was done (which felt weird). And I stopped. But living in a college town, people didn’t stop moving in and out, and the end result is, it’s been several months since I’d made the last scarf, but there were half a dozen or so new women here. Time to get back to doing at least one church scarf a week and play catchup. It’s not like I don’t have the yarn…

So, yesterday I walked up to a newly-married couple whose names I ought to remember and don’t, and said to the woman, “I *think* this is the color you were wearing last week,” as I pulled one out of my purse. “I was playing with some yarn this week.” I had the ball band tucked in there so they could read what it was made of if they were curious, without my having to play puff-it-up at them.

She and her husband were instantly surprised and delighted, and as she pulled it out of the bag, their faces were in perfect happy synchronicity. She put it on and kept it on. Elann’s Baby Cashmere, one skein, 19 stitches till it ran out, made up into what my mom calls a “yarn necklace.”

I went to my own seat, thinking at myself, remember that. Remember those expressions on their faces. THAT is why I do this. Get a clue. Do it again.

(p.s. After I did that, Jo kept trying to get my attention so she could wink and smile at me. Go Jo!)

I heard the car and sprang our front door open to greet them. We got to meet our son’s future mother-, father-, and brother-in-law. You know how, some people, you meet them and you instantly love them? There was an intense and immediate sense of belonging that only grew better as we talked. They didn’t have very long, though, with a family celebration to get to, so I brought over two things.

First, I showed Ann the Camelspin project I was working on and told her she had her choice, I wanted to make sure I got the color right, sorry I hadn’t gotten this one very far along yet. She went “Oooh!” at it.

Then she opened the bag with the shawl. And that was the end of that question. That one. Wow. And Ann, if everybody reacted as speechless and thrilled as you did when you put that on, there would be more knitters knitting for more people in this world. THANK you!!

And then, with it wrapped around her, she forgot her coat and had to come back awhile later to retrieve it. I wondered about what else I could quietly snatch so I’d get to see her yet again before they flew home, but I behaved myself and didn’t.

My son is one very lucky man.

She won’t see this between the airport and here, and I’m not sure I’ll get a chance to photograph it later, so I’m sneaking a moment in to post this: this is the shawl for Ann, after finally blocking it last night. It’s not a new pattern, it’s my Peace shawl, but as two families prepare to come together, I really think it’s the right one.

She and her husband live in a warm climate, so it had to be lightweight. My daughter-in-law-to-be, when I asked her at Christmas what her mom’s favorite color was, said light blue, and I went all over Stitches West looking for just the right shade of light blue I wanted in silk. I didn’t find it. (The bulkiness and bother of my scooter while trying to get into booths may have played a part there, dunno.) But I did find this baby alpaca/silk wisp of a yarn at Ellen’s Halfpint Farm, and it leaped out at me. I turned away and left it there, came back later, and it was still calling out, Me! ME!

And so here it is. For Conway’s daughter-in-law and Kim’s mom. As I wait for the doorbell to ring.

I wrote in “Wrapped in Comfort” about using a doubled strand for strength in the cast-on stitches at the neck edges of my circular shawls. Lately I’ve been continuing that doubled strand for the first row as I purl back across the cast-on edge, and I like it enough that I wish I’d started doing that sooner. So I thought I’d throw the idea out there.

Didn’t get a lot of knitting done yesterday. Got company coming tomorrow.

Another notice-the-caption post. Only, I haven’t mastered playing music and knitting at the same time yet; thank goodness for CD players. Amazing how much faster the stitches go with, say, Michael Brecker dancing along on his sax.

Purlescence got a shipment of Camelspin silk/camel in, and for three weeks running I kept going over to that Berry colorway, fondling its shimmery softness and then reluctantly putting it back. Knitting is such a tactile as well as visual obsession. Each week I would come in for knitting night and be relieved that it hadn’t been snatched up yet. Finally I gave in, and last night I cast on. It rated a new pattern designed just for it.  I find there’s something about it–I don’t know yet what its story is going to be–but there’s this great sense of anticipation like it’s going to go to exactly the right person, I just don’t know who that is yet (I have my guesses, but I’m waiting); it feels a wonderfully happy thing to be finally knitting it, like it had been waiting for that part of the process all along.

(This one feels like a family photo where you’re trying to get all the kids to lean in together for the shot rather than away from each other; c’mon you, don’t hide behind that one.  And no bunny ears.  Okay, okay, hold it…Cheese!)

Sid Schwab over at http://surgeonsblog.blogspot.com/ and his fellow doctors are talking about hospitalists and the changing roles of surgeons in the healthcare field.

I had never heard of hospitalists until the first one visited me at Stanford, five years ago. I saw several: the first one was warm and kind, but one was a young guy who refused to make eye contact with me; he simply mumbled a few things and beat it as fast as he could, leaving me feeling like he couldn’t wait to ditch the scene–I was an interruption and a bother and definitely not his patient. If this was what hospitalists were, I was upset at my own family practitioner for not showing up when I needed the comfort of her presence.

But the first hospitalist, Dr. C, made up for it. He came back. He saw me when I was too ill to sit up in bed for more than a minute or two, and again when I was doing somewhat better as the then-experimental Remicade gradually kicked in. He also happened to show up at a moment when I was trying to walk across the room and he was shocked to see how far gone my muscles were from the prolonged Crohn’s flare. He was determined to help me turn that around.

My older son, home from college, needed a doctor appointment about six weeks later, but had outgrown the pediatric department at our clinic and hadn’t yet picked out another doctor to go to; how do you know, when you don’t know them… He did know he wanted a male doctor and that my family practitioner therefore wasn’t going to do it for him. His dad’s doctor’s practice was full.

So they simply assigned him to whoever had an opening. The kid got off the phone and told me who it was, and I exclaimed, “REALLY! Can I come with you?” So the guy *did* have some regular patients as well as his hospitalist practice! I promised the kid I’d sit in the waiting room with my knitting, if only he would let me come in with him for the first minute or so.

Dr. C. opened the door and there was a moment of utter confusion in his face: the first thing he saw was a gray-haired woman sitting just inside the door knitting away on some lace, not the 19-year-old man his schedule had said. (He had not seen me as a knitter before; I’d been too ill to hold the needles.) And then it hit him: “It’s YOU!” Hair neatly combed and in place rather than askew, nicely dressed rather than in a hospital gown, doing just fine now, thanks–“LOOK at you!!!” He about danced on the spot, he was so excited. He just couldn’t get over it. Wow!!

I got a chance to tell him thank you for taking good care of me. Then I left the examining room and let him take care of my kid, who needed a physical, nothing exciting there.

And then to my surprise, he came out with my son when they were done and exclaimed over me some more; he needed to express again how very glad and very relieved he was to see me looking so well. Again, he exclaimed in delight, “LOOK at you!!” I noticed that even the receptionist was beaming; he was thrilled, and it was contagious.

Yeah, hospitalists are okay.

Me, my reaction to all that, was, I went home, picked up some laceweight merino, and knitted a thank you scarf for his wife. Wedding-ring fine, meaning you could pull it through a ring when I was done. Nothing less would do. And later, a handspun, super soft hat for their baby who arrived not too long after.

Monday

Wednesday

Skipping right along to Saturday…

And what it looked like today after a rinse Saturday night, with a full blocking to follow.