Stitches East! I had way too much fun.

Friday, Kate and her mom Deb found me. They’d decided to jointly knit me some lace socks, and settled on toe-up so that different gauges would be okay; Deb got them started, Kate carried on.

When I was a kid, I only liked the biggest box of crayons, because it had the One True Color of deep rosey red, nice and bright. It’s still my favorite, and it’s a blueish enough shade of red that it doesn’t make me fall down.  Guess what Kate and Deb just happened to pick out, out of all the colors in the world? And they fit exactly perfectly. I asked them if it would be okay if I waited till the next day to wear them, when they would match with the pink shawl I was going to wear. Sure. Meantime, I was wearing Kristine’s beaded socks, the ones you see on her lilacknitting blog page. I had at least six or seven people stop me wanting to know about those socks Friday. Not my shawl or my book but those socks, which delighted me. As I told Kristine, and want to say to Deb and Kate too and the others who have knitted me socks, some people wear their hearts on their sleeves. I do on my feet. They announce to the whole world that I am loved.
Karen of the Water Turtles shawl was wearing the one in the book and pushing me in a chair, and people were coming dashing up to us wanting to know where we’d gotten the patterns. Hey, I can help you with that one!

I’d been wanting one of Sheila Ernst’s new shawl pins, and when I tried to pay for it she waved me away. But–but! Sheila! She looked me in the eye and said, Knitters aren’t the only ones who get to give gifts.

Kate and Deb and Karen and I were towards the back of a large booth talking for ages and ages, with the LYSO occasionally popping into the conversation. We kept offering to move on, and she kept saying, no, I’m enjoying this! She read a story or two out of my book from my copy I was carrying around. We just couldn’t stop laughing as we all swapped stories.

Afton found Karen and me. Afton could get a job as a stand-up comedian–we laughed so hard and so often that, put it all together and Karen said on the way home that she hadn’t smiled so much in years. Afton made me the tam I had always aspired to make and never had. I love blues and greens, and it was blues and greens. I wore it till I got just too hot Friday, and Saturday till she told me it clashed with the pink and demanded I take it off. Aw, shucks, Afton, but I like it! She put her hands on her hips and mock-demanded like a mom who has raised twin teenagers (fancy that) that I do as I was told.

Saturday, Kathleen picked me up. She had no idea what was coming. Turns out she’d skimmed my posts about the Cunningham Falls shawl, noticed that it was for a Kathleen, and was jealous of whatever other Kathleen I knew it that it was for. Heh. She loved it. Karen marched her into Sheila’s booth, found a shawl pin that looked like it had been made expressly for that shawl, and Kathleen bought it in great delight. Very cool.

Rod and Lisa Souza are good friends of many years, and it was a treat to sit in their booth and sign books for them. You know, awhile back, I found a yarn on the web that was–well, it was the color of Kate and Deb’s socks–and I emailed Lisa the link and asked if she could dye me yarn that color. She did, and I found it. Cerise in the Sock! yarn, which takes the color particularly crisply. It went home with me.

Melinda at Tess Designer Yarns and I swapped a copy of my book for yarn, and I was so interested in her colors that I forgot to sign the silly thing. Duh… But it was one of those times where we both came away feeling like we’d definitely won.

I found the Blue Moon Fiber Arts booth towards the end of my second day there. (Finally!) I was not expecting what I got: the moment I showed up, the woman there that I’d talked to at Stitches West in February exclaimed, “We’ve been being yelled at all day because we don’t have that pattern!” motioning at the shawl hanging nearby. That Backstabber shawl on my blog awhile back? Tina had hoped to buy it from me. I’d turned her down. But as we were talking on the phone, come to find out she’d grown up two and a half miles from me. Private vs public schools, our paths hadn’t crossed then (I don’t think.) Anyway. And then I surprised her with it. And there it was in the booth. I told Kaci that it was fairly similar to my Bigfoot shawl in my book, if that helped any. (Well, that was as close anyway as she was going to get to having instructions for right now; if I do a second pattern book, it’ll be in there.)

Weatherly Mize also gave me a shawl pin, a treble clef that had lost the curl in its hair in the California dry weather, is the thought that tickles me when I see it. I wore Sheila’s and Weatherly’s together.

We had people coming up to us asking about our shawls. The entourage grew, till it was Karen, me, Kathleen, and Colorjoy Lynn in my shawls along with Afton and Robin, sadly shawlless. They got shawls from me before I figured out this circular thing… Lynn gave me a handmade kazoo that my father in law really wants one of too. Make some more for your shop, Lynn, because my Christmas list just got easier. She also dyed me some store socks and I have the yarn to make a shawl to match. And gave me a CD of her husband and her playing folksy bluegrass stuff that I can’t wait to get home to put on the stereo.

One of the hazards of going to Stitches in a wheelchair and having your friends egging you on every time you admire a yarn and having them stuff it behind you out of your sight as you buy it is that when we got home and they put it all together, I was gobsmacked at how much yarn I had mysteriously accumulated. That’s a whole rollaboard’s worth! But oh, am I going to have fun.

The lady at Maple Creek Farm watched Karen and me: I had Karen hold two skeins I couldn’t decide between at a good distance from me, so that the colors would pop out and I could see them better, distanced from all the ones they’d been nestled among.  We did that earlier at a booth selling Fleece Artist; from 20 feet away it was a no-brainer: the blue and green (go Afton!)  At Maple Creek, I still liked the rose and the purple both.  I finally bought the red–and she GAVE me the purple!

Karen and Kathleen and Lynn and I went out to dinner and talked till I dropped. I didn’t even read email, I just fell into bed when we got home.

While I’m trying to catch up, (and I’m sorry I can’t do photos on this laptop) I should also add about Thursday. Bev and I spent Thursday touring old spots. She hadn’t seen our high school since it had been torn down and rebuilt. We went past her old house. We went past my folks’ old house, and totally delighted the contractor by loving the remodelling he was doing on the place. You never know what reaction you’ll get, I’m sure, from a previous owner, but it was well thought out and beautifully done; I told him I wish my folks had done this years ago, it was beautiful. And where the neighbors on both sides had planted ivy that had met in the middle and was decimating the native flora, he had pulled it all out. Every bit.  Off the forest floor, off the tree trunks.  Bev admired the view out the living room window out over the woods, and I mentioned the box turtles that had been in the woods and the family of foxes that had lived under the deck. Bev took it all in, and said, “It’s coming back!”

The man was just floating on air at that. Yes. He was taking good care of it all, and we were seeing not the machine marks on the ground that he’d had to bring in for that ivy, but we saw what he’d done and why. Because we loved those woods. All of us.  It was a joyful moment.

I had plans of what I was going to knit on the plane. But sitting in the airport, I bagged it, grabbed Laura’s handdyeing project, balled the first ball and cast on. I read through the first hop but knitted through the second, getting past the yoke and into the body of the next shawl: the Julia, good, mindless airplane knitting.

While we were waiting our turn to disembark at last, the boy who’d been sitting behind us mentioned to me that he used to “do that,” pointing at my knitting, and saying how much he liked those colors.

“Oh cool! I learned when I was ten.” And then to show him with a grin to watch out where that might lead him, I held up my book, opening it up and telling him I’d had a bunch of my friends sign my copy for me. He thought that was just totally cool!

And you know what? He’s right. I can’t wait. I have two pens. Baltimore! I’ll sign yours, you sign mine, if you’d like.

Meantime, good thing for the kid still at home; he’s FedExing my inhaler… No wonder the airline didn’t give me grief over it. But I didn’t forget my yarn or needles, the important stuff. (Yeah, yeah, I know. Oops.)

More when I figure out how to load pictures from here.

I finished it in time! This is the Bigfoot pattern, but with the variant that I continued the Rabbit Tracks pattern all the way down the body of the shawl, not just in the yoke. Since I was knitting it in black, it was way easier to tell where I was if the second pattern row was five stitches across a repeat rather than eleven.

My friend Karin (watch the e’s and i’s in this post to keep people straight) had a half-pound hank of black baby alpaca yarn she’d bought from the farmer who’d raised the animal, and she felt it needed to go to me.

I thanked her, told her I felt there were a lot of people who needed yarn more than I did, and that my eyes just didn’t like to knit black–but a few days later she came back to me with the idea, saying she just still felt it was meant to go to me.

And so it arrived in the mail awhile ago, lovely, very soft stuff, so much of it, and I was just in awe that she would offer it up like that. It was definitely black. Looking at it, I just had the feeling that I would be glad I had it in spite of my reservations, and that Karin was right, I would find just the right person for it–and it would tell me when.

In anticipation of my trip, I asked my friend Karen of the Water Turtles shawl fame what color shawl to knit for her daughter.

Black, Karen answered. Definitely black.

Now, I would never have had any black yarn in my stash had it not been for Karin’s gift. It turns out that Karen breaks out in hives if she touches wool, a true allergy, not just that the stuff is itchy, and she mentioned that her daughter was allergic too. But they have no problems with baby alpaca.

Heh. Guess what I had on hand to play with.

Karin was right. This yarn did find where it was meant to go to, and with her help it’s about to arrive there.

(Okay, back to packing.  And yes, I know I’m blowing the surprise here, but a few days of anticipatory happiness on the recipient’s part makes that worth it, I decided.)

I should have added: I will be at Lisa Souza’s booth at 1:00 on Saturday to sign copies of “Wrapped in Comfort: Knitted Lace Shawls” at Stitches East in Baltimore this Saturday. I will be around and about the place both Friday and Saturday.

So.  I was in Purlescence, a few months after they opened, and they had just a few skeins of Claudia’s Handpaint Yarns silk in stock.  There was this one that had white and green and turquoisey blue and a bit of gray that jumped into my hands.

I put it back.

It jumped into my hands.  I put it back.  It jumped into my hands. It was very insistent about it.  The price made it something you don’t necessarily buy on a whim, but something about it was very compelling, and so, I asked them to ball it up for me, and that was that.

Just as they were finishing up with the swift, I noticed a hat knitted up on the counter, and Nathania told me that it was from the same custom colorway, dyed by special request to go with the team colors of the San Jose Sharks.

And my inner reaction was a squirm–I didn’t really like how that colorway had played out.  I wanted it more green than that.  It wasn’t how I’d pictured it.

I can’t tell you how many times after that that I wished I hadn’t had them ball it so that I could still exchange it.  The store’s doing well, and they got more colors of that silk in stock, including some absolutely glorious green and some royal blue and some pink mixture and some–okay, I’ll stop now.  And here I was with my Sharks-bitten ball.  It was perfectly nice, but…

Till the day I put it with that Jaggerspun Zephyr in Peacock, and hoped the two would turn out how I pictured they could.  I was a little worried:  what if it didn’t live up to what I wanted either?  Would this work?

You know the rest of the story.  There is absolutely no doubt in my mind it was meant to be for Kathleen all along, that it was meant to look like this all along, and to say I am pleased does not begin to describe it.  I can’t wait to fly across the country to see her next week and hand it to her in person.

I have it kind of bunched up in the picture to cover up the peach skirt that doesn’t go with it, but don’t let it fool you–this is not a tight shawl.  It is sized to fit a woman who is generous in body and spirit.  If you see her at Stitches next Saturday, feel free to tell her Alison sent you to say hi.

Down to the last few inches on that first ball of Zephyr, time to attach the second.

In elementary school, it seems like the girls divided off into the horsey set and the making-fun-of-the-horsey set. I was one of the ones who loved them and learned everything I could about them. I practiced till I could even draw a halfway decent one (and not much else.) I told my mom I was going to live on a farm when I grew up, where nobody could tell me I couldn’t have a horse if I wanted a horse. It was going to be a palomino, with long, flowing blond mane and tail. Mom smiled and said, Well, if that’s what you want to do when you’re a grown up, then, you will.

KC was also one of the horse lovers. She got riding lessons while I got music lessons. She even took me along on a ride once, in high school. Heh. That horse knew I was all nervous eagerness and no sense–it tried to scrape me off on an overhanging branch to ditch me, and I was so bow-leggedly stiff trying to keep it from killing me (with KC shouting encouragements and directions) I could hardly walk straight for a week afterwards. That left me with a new respect for what I’d wished for when I’d been little.

After high school KC bought a horse. She actually bought a horse. She kept him all the way to his old age, and now, finally, he’s gone.

I’m knitting her the Water Turtles pattern, but I wanted to make it a little different; the original was for Karen, and she and Karen were close friends from childhood on up, but she deserved something more individually her own. Okay, so I changed the k1 yo k1 yo k1 rows to yo k3 yo. There’s a little personalizing there. I got to the end of the yoke, and then went flipping through my Barbara Walkers. Nothing grabbed me. I sighed, went back to the first volume, and started in again, a little bored. I need a 10+1, or maybe a 20+1 pattern here, maybe I should go grab the Barbara Abby volume or something, c’mon universe, help me out here a little.

Got to page 209–and burst out laughing.

Sometimes something becomes so ordinary that we don’t really even see it for what it is. That second time through, I happened to truly notice the name of that pattern that I knew so well that I’d just dismissed it without a blink.

Horseshoes.

Horseshoes!

I mean, come on, how could anything have been more perfect. And now, as I’m knitting along, the variegations in the colors make the horseshoes less overtly obvious; they’re there, and you can see them, but at the same time they become one with the trees and the sunlight shining through and the blue of the water and sky splashing down.

Like the memory of riding her beloved gelding through the woods on a glorious fall day.

I didn’t hear back from Johnna, which surprised me. I saw her before the main meeting at church started today, wearing a black dress, and thought, Oh perfect! That will look great with her new shawl! I headed to the back of the chapel to give it to her.

“You finished!?” she exclaimed as I handed it to her. And then, to my utter bewilderment, she burst into tears.

It was May when Johnna was working behind the scenes playing graphic artist and overhauling my website in anticipation of my book release, working on it till 2 am on at least one night I know of, when she had to get up at 6:00 am. Wow. I really, really owed her that shawl. I knew that, I kept wanting to knit her one, I kept going through my yarn and looking in yarn stores, going, ehhh, that’s not it. I wondered what was wrong with me that I hadn’t gotten it done already. I finally thought, alright, enough of this, and had her come over; she discovered the most perfect combination out of my stash that I hadn’t even thought to put together–that Lisa Souza silk and that cashmere/merino blend I’d dyed–and I got to work. At last. About time.

After all this delay, part of me kept thinking, finish it after the trip East. A few more weeks at this point won’t make any difference. I did put the Scharffenberger-cocoa shawl on hold; but Johnna’s refused to go in the corner for long, even after the goofs and the rip-backs. It had to get done, and now. And so I did.

I had no way of knowing. Johnna was hundreds of miles away last week as her grandmother slipped away from this life. She stayed there for the funeral, and then finally came home.

To be handed a gloriously soft shawl, the silk radiant against the cashmere. The Peace shawl. Just for her.

The timing.

I brought my author’s advance copy from May with me to TKGA yesterday. When people asked me to sign their books, I said sure, and asked if they in turn would like to sign mine. They didn’t have to say anything in there if they didn’t want to, but I thought it would be cool if they did.

Most who did hadn’t really seen the inside of Wrapped in Comfort yet other than a brief glance-through at the booth, and the notes were nice ones along the lines of “looking forward to knitting the patterns.” A number of old friends poured love into their words as well. (Gracie Larsen, I am SO looking at you right now. I had great fun telling everybody this book was your fault.) I told everybody pick a page, any page, anywhere that suits you. Given that that copy was the one I received before I knew how my three years of work would do out there, it was a copy of hope and of holding my breath–which I imagine is about how the people buying it felt yesterday: that it would live up to what they hoped out of it, especially given that they were paying full sticker price there.

(Heh. I noticed a certain large discount online knitting-book seller was at backorder this morning…)

I told my son about it when I got home, and that I planned to take it to Stitches East, too, that that had been just too much fun. He went, “Mom! You’ll run out of space in there!” Well, then, cool. “But they’ll have to, like, write across the models’ noses!” In my dreams, hon. In my dreams.

It was about halfway through before I realized I’d probably picked up the idea from the copy that Martingale sent me that everybody there, from the CEO down to the shipping clerk, had signed for me. A way of honoring every person’s role as being essential. Go Martingale!

P.S. The cushion? It was a valve job. It had been left open. It’s fine.

P.P.S. The backdrop? An afghan made by members of my knitting group, square by square, as a congratulations on the book coming out. Knitters are such cool people.

P.P.P.S. (Technical stuff alert): To the woman who asked me if you could use laceweight with my patterns, a question that had so many answers that it all came out garbled: I had just been in Gracie’s Lacey Knitters Guild booth, where they were calling Jaggerspun Zephyr fingering weight. Zephyr is, I’d say, a heavy laceweight. I’ve used yarn as fine as that on the larger patterns and it worked out to a lighter, different effect than my more-typical fingering weight shawls, but it looked and fit fine.

TKGA!  I had a ball.  And a good laugh: my wheelchairs–and it doesn’t matter how many of them I collect–are allergic to knitting conventions.  Period.  I have this 250 lb monstrous one I inherited, and its batteries have died on me twice now–and only ever when it was the start of Stitches.  I was very generously gifted with a red scooter after that last time, when my friend Sandi, a co-owner of Purlescence, found out: it was far easier to transport, it separates into pieces and comes together as a jigsaw puzzle, it weighs 101 lbs assembled, and it can fit into other people’s cars.  Perfect.

So that’s what we were going to take today, with four of us carpooling to Oakland in a Prius.  The hubby charged that scooter up last night, just to make sure it was well juiced.

Guess what had a dead battery in the morning?

At the last Stitches, with the dead black chair, I brought my manual one.  And forgot to put the feet in the car.  Today, with the dead red chair, I brought my manual.  And in the busyness of everybody doing everything at once, we–you knew this was coming–left the feet home.

But at least that manual is really really comfortable, other than that, because I can use my thick air cushion with it.  Now, I inherited it from my friend Lynda, (her story’s on the site but not on the blog), it’s designed to be sat on all day and still be comfortable, but it’s getting up there in years.  I was always afraid it might get punctured, and the cover was getting pretty ratty, so I priced out a new one.

Two. Hundred. Fifty. Bucks?!  For a simple cushion?!  That’s as much as the chair!  Thanks, I think I’ll keep mine.   But I’ve been afraid for years of anything happening to it.  (Update 5/24/09: my medical-supplies catalog wants $700 for it. Just think. $250 was a bargain.)

We had a grand time,  and I signed books at Pacific Meadows’ booth.  Loading everything back into Jasmin’s Prius, I was horrified to find my cushion half deflated.  Oh no!  Maybe, maybe (I hope) the air valve was open.  Maybe it’s not damaged.  I don’t know yet.

But what was funny was the other womens’ reactions: “Oh.  Is THAT what that was?”

What what was?

“We’ve been hearing that, and wondering what that sound was.”

I had just spent the whole day happily playing proud author, showing off, signing books, and being perfectly deafly oblivious to the fact that I was sitting on a giant whoopie cushion the whole time.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite spots in the whole wide world was Cunningham Falls State Park. We would picnic by the creek, noisy water over rocks in the quiet trees, and then take a hike in the woods, Mom and Dad telling us about the birds and animals in there. I remember looking for beavers, but the beavers weren’t dumb, and none of them ever showed their faces for six young kids scrambling happily around through their territory.

A few years ago, I was back visiting for my parents’ 50th anniversary. My old buddy KC started talking about Cunningham Falls. It was a few miles’ hike to get all the way up to the waterfalls in the hillside well above the picnic area, and I told her sadly that there was no way these days. I used to racewalk four miles or so a day, back when my kids were little, but the old gray mare she ain’t what she used to be no matter how she might feel about that.

Heh. KC had a way around that. She lived out not far from there these days, and knew the roads better than I ever did. This one state road, if you turn the wrong direction, you have highly armed personnel extremely interested in what the *$# you think you’re doing there. (I am told that one of my in-laws goofed and found that out once.) Uh, yeah, a certain presidential retreat in the mountains of western Maryland, made famous by a certain peace accord back in the day… Don’t go there.

But. Go on up the road, up the endless hill, way past the entrance to the state park, on the other side from that retreat. You’re still in the park. There’s a cutout from the road, made into a small parking area: handicap only. There’s a raised wooden walkway, and nobody seems to know it’s there except the occasional passing car. (And out in the middle of nowhere like that, there aren’t a whole lot of those.) You hang your out-of-state placard, figuring nobody will mind that it says California, you get out, you read the Park Service sign explaining a bit about the area, and you walk or wheel–I’ve done both, now–down that slightly-raised walkway (up so as not to disturb the tree roots, and planked so a wheelchair can get through), and shortly you come to where, at a turn in the path, the falls suddenly surprise you, coming up right there in front of you. Water, tumbling and splashing down a long granite face. Usually, nobody else is there. Just a quiet bit of glory-of-this-earth all to yourselves.

The woods are deep green, with splashes of white sunlight on the path and bits of ground showing here and there between the fallen leaves. Gray rock above.

I found this dark green Zephyr silk blend in my stash, and a ball of Claudia’s Handpaint silk in white/turquoise/teal/deep gray. It instantly said “KC!” at me; I wasn’t sure why, till I swatched a swatch, liked it, thought, okay, and started in on this shawl. I wondered if she liked variegated yarns; I debated starting over with a plain color.

But it wasn’t too many rows before the yarn was telling me why it was what it was, and why it needed to be for KC. Cunningham Falls. A way to get through, a friend finding the path I didn’t know was there, bits of light coming through alongside moments of looking at the dark, acknowledging it square in the eye: loss and love, lived with, and it’s okay that it’s like that. And always, the growing, living green of the trees.

(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 got a letter yesterday with photos: Sarah had taken the scarf I’d knitted her to the studio of a sculptor in Houston, a place next to the freeways that the locals have dubbed “Mt. Rushhour.” She wanted me to see Abe Lincoln, Jack Kennedy, and Ringo Starr (squint near the bottom on that one) decorated with her scarf.  Abe really needs to do something about that twitch.

I laughed myself breathless at Laura’s comment yesterday, then decided I really did have to get pharaohly well past that ripping point. I took it to the knitting group at my LYS last night, Purlescence, and as soon as I pulled those reds out of my bag, I got this “Oooooh… Niiice!” from several people. Nothing like a little pier pressure (thank you, Niki!) So, on that note, I did get that shawl finally beyond the point of constant return.

Meantime, here’s Chloe, one of the LYSO’s, with her Kathy shawl, draped skirt style.

So. Johnna’s shawl.

As I said earlier, I had to frog a thousand stitches or so. It’s always a relief to get the knitting past that ripping point and go on, and I did and I got well beyond it. When I got to the end of the pattern repeat, I spread out the scrunched-up stitches on the needles, looked at it, and went, whoa, waaaait a minute here…

…I’d restarted it on the wrong row. No, I couldn’t simply make that the new pattern and repeat that and have it look good. 4235 stitches. Rip.

It has been on timeout for a couple of days now. I punished it by knitting something else: I needed immediate gratification, and I needed it right now, so a couple of lace scarves for a couple of people, and a couple of go-rounds with the dyepot for those sweaters: some creative non-knitting helps out too when your project declares, like an elementary school child during recess, that it is Not Your Friend today.

I woke up this morning thinking how much I liked how the silk and cashmere played together in that red, and how much Johnna was going to enjoy it. I’ve almost psyched myself back into it. Just let me finish this post. (A little online peer pressure can be a very helpful thing.) We’ll see tomorrow if I succeeded.

I kept hearing a woodpecker today, and couldn’t quite find it. Whether it was ringing the apple trees or trying to insert acorns in our foam roof, I’m not sure.

A few years ago, one of my daughters’ friends handed down a cashmere T that her mom had bought her. When you are a teen, it is the kiss of death to an article of clothing to have your Mom pick it out, even if it’s something you instantly would have snatched up if you’d seen it first.  No, to the moms, it’s not fair.  And yes it is–you did it to your mom too.  So. It ended up over here, and neither of my girls really wanted it either.

I was talking to my brother three days ago, and he laughed at my wondering out loud if I could shrink it enough to make it fit his small daughter: “That would take a lot of washings and dryings!”

Hey. Issue me a challenge like that. Guess what I did. But then, it all came back down to that color. If I were to describe what it was, it would be something like a three-year-old wailing to their mommy that they’d dropped their ice cream cone in the dirt. I went through my stash of dyes, telling them to inspire me. The pink did.

I set it outside to dry when I was done, hoping to beat the 5:00 post office closing. I almost made it, too–but the funny thing was the bird that came at it while it was out there. I grabbed the camera, but it could fly faster than I can point.

Now, Stephanie has her squirrel nemesis (her yarnharlot.ca post today had me in tears, it was so funny. Who was that masked bandit?) For me, it’s the birds. Fer cryin’ out loud, it’s not even nesting season! Is it the wet wool smell that first catches their attention? The colors? If you’ve read my book, you know they like blue. They do seem pretty omnicoloriverous. I once found a bird’s nest on our roof: old brown twigs and dead leaves impressively artfully woven with fuschia-pink wool for their chicks’ nursery. (Hey, lady, mind putting some blue outside next time, too?)

So of course I had to let Nancy’s penguin peck out a few keys on the piano with it.

Happy birthday, Patricia! I used the orange background in your honor. And happy first birthday to my blog. Shall we make a wish together and blow out the smoking knitting needles?

Note to anyone who’s ever gotten something knitted from me: moth holes happen. Ergo, I figure the way most likely to be successful in getting someone a leftover strand of matching yarn, however much later, is to have it be there in the first place. Thus, I weave the beginning long-tail yarn end all the way across the back of the first row, if it’s a scarf, or, if it’s a circular shawl, across the bottom of the shawl after the cast-off before breaking the yarn. I find, when I’m doing the cast-on tail in, that that is one of those times it helps to be someone who knits by grabbing the yarn each stitch: I work four fingers at a time on the right hand to grab and flip it while knitting. My left hand mostly works to keep both needles held in place. Mozart in merino.  I also use a sewing needle and work the ending strand over the back of the cast-off row on a scarf or stole, so it has two lengths there for repairs.

All those years, my folks thought they were paying for piano lessons.