There are some lovely reviews of Wrapped in Comfort up on Amazon, and I thank those of you who have written them. One, though, describes my shawls as all of them being half-circles. Not to quibble, but to explain, there is a half circle shawl, but this is more of what you’re going to find in there.  This is Water Turtles, the smaller version, done in fingering weight baby alpaca/silk.

My sister-in-law is running in a marathon to raise money for breast cancer, and so is for a brief time on my side of the country; yesterday she drove from Sacramento down here for a visit–not a trivial amount of driving time, and much appreciated. I had two shawls I’d been wanting for quite some time to have her pick one from in person. Actually, no, more than those, but those were the two I was sure she would like the best.

I hauled out a whole bunch of ziploc bags, started opening them, and she immediately loved the two I’d most anticipated she would. She picked the one made from this baby alpaca yarn, and I was pleased that she was getting one that was in a yarn that I’d dyed. She asked about the pattern, and I told her the story of the Water Turtles and gave her a copy of Wrapped in Comfort. Oh! She told me about her friend who had so much loved turtles. They had recently scattered his ashes…. There was a moment of pain and love in her face. And delight that she had somehow picked the turtle-related shawl, a way to hold him close to her thoughts and not have him be gone.

I was so focused on spending every last moment with her that I could that I utterly forgot the camera. Which is as it should be.

(Ed. to add: the photo is a bit hazy close up, and clearer to the view as you get farther away from it. As so much of life is, especially the parts involving loss. I rather like the photo. It fits.)

A detail edited out of Wrapped in Comfort for the sake of space: Dave’s astonishment at being offered a full berry box’s worth of strawberries at dessert. I had bought a case at a farmstand, my rebellion against New Hampshire’s refusal to give up the cold weather at Easter. He had never before considered a pint of strawberries and a person to be a one-on-one possibility.

I thought of that just now as I offered my son a large bowl, like this one, but full of sliced strawberries ready to eat, and his eyes got big as he asked, “All for me?” You betcha. Happy Fourth.

Photo by Renee, Saturday at Marin Fiber Arts; go to  http://www.revknits.blogspot.com/ for her blog.  This is what the Constance shawl looks like if you do it in a single-color yarn. It took me about 17-18 hours to knit it in this fingering-weight baby alpaca.

One note on the book: I did the smaller version of the Water Turtles shawl several times exactly as it is written in the book, a generously-sized example being Sandi’s shawl shown here: https://spindyeknit.com/2007/03/page/2/ While knitting the one that was photographed for the book, however, I skipped rows 30 and 32 in the yoke, making a slightly shorter yoke. Either way works fine.

I had to laugh at Sheila’s comment (thank you, Sheila!) Yesterday, as I was signing and had three stacks of books in front of me (sitting properly in a chair, no less, that should count for something, right?) a woman approached and asked if I were the author of (mumble, mumble, I didn’t quite catch it) and someone else explained to her that no, I was the author of “Wrapped in Comfort.” (You know, the book that was all over that table?)

Oh, well, then. And she hastily retreated. I got quite a laugh out of the ego check, while wishing I’d caught whose book it was she’d wanted me to be the author of so I could go tell them they had a fan. And if you read this, whoever you are out there, thank you; I quite enjoyed that, I hope you don’t mind my mentioning it.

Meantime, many here know that I’ve been on a quest to knit a lace scarf for every woman at my church–my “ward,” ie, congregation in Mormon-speak. I’ll never finish, because I live in an area where university students are always moving in and out, and that’s just fine with me.

But one old-time regular didn’t have hers yet. I wasn’t sure quite what to do there. She wouldn’t know about all these scarves popping up all over the place unless someone said something, and I didn’t know if… B is blind. Scarves, in our climate, are purely for decoration, and how useful is that if you can’t see it? Could it be a potential hazard, even; dunno. But I finally went out and bought some brushed baby alpaca yarn from Plymouth, figuring well, the softer the better, definitely, and something useful and warm would be the only way to go, for cooler mornings when she’s walking her guide dog. I could just picture her fingers deciphering the diamonds in the pattern, and wondered if it might convey something Braille-ish to her; I had no idea.

The needles were huge–13s–and the thing made my hands ache. It drove me nuts that it took me three weeks to finish the thing. Pick it up, do a few rows, bag it and go do something else more comfortable. Gradually it got there, though. Part of the delay I’m sure was that she had a chronic cough after a bad bout of pneumonia, and I with my severe immune problems had no desire to get too close to that.

But today I finally had it fingertip length and ready to go, so I sat down by her for a moment and explained about going out and shopping for the softest yarn I could find for her. About noticing what colors she wore most often to church, and going out and matching them. I pulled it out of my purse, and her German Shepherd was instantly on his feet and all nose, right there–he’d never met an animal like that, show him more! B, however, as soon as she found out I was talking about a scarf, shook her head, saying, emphatically, “I don’t wear scarves.” End of subject. Class dismissed.

And you know? That’s perfectly fine. But the offer, at least, had needed to be made.

Her dog, however, was, I’m sure, quite disappointed.

I had a high school English teacher who never knew the impact he had on me and on my writing: if your name is Mr. Smith and you taught at Winston Churchill in Potomac, Maryland till you left to go get your doctorate, thank you, wherever you are now. One memorable moment was immediately on the first day of class, when he looked over the gathered students sitting quietly in their chairs after the bell had rung, and just kind of went, wow. Then he explained to us that when he’d started teaching, the kids didn’t come in and sit at their desks–that was too establishment. That was Not Done. It was the late 60’s, and they sat on the floor instead.

My friend Nancy and I were at Marin Fiber Arts today, up north of San Francisco, and at one point in the afternoon, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to do just to plunk down on the floor and pull out my knitting along with everybody else. This photo was shot as I was brought another book to sign, a bit after I’d done the others.

Mr. Smith would have loved it. And a very good time was had by all. I can see why my friend Patricia goes out of her way to come to MFA: it’s a well-stocked, wonderful store, with a huge selection of yarns that appeal to one’s sense of touch as well as one’s sense of colors, and Warren, the owner of http://www.marinfiberarts.com/ , is a peach.

I belong to two knitting groups, one weekly, the other held once a month at Commuknity in San Jose; last night, the latter was a booksigning event. My friend Robin showed up from Bethesda, Maryland! The others were all friends who’d watched the pieces of Wrapped in Comfort slowly coming to be, shawl by shawl, and it was fun to put the whole thing together on display at one time for them. This is a shot of just a few of them. You see that lovely gray-haired woman there to the right? She helped with the test knitting.

Gail, the LYSO, is looking for people to volunteer to teach Girl Scouts how to knit, so if you’re in the area and you’re interested, give her a call. Thanks!

I want to sing Martingale’s praises for a moment.

My final deadline re the book was mid-January. In late February, I went to Stitches West, ran into Ann Rubin, and knew exactly who that Barn Swallows scarf had been meant for all along.

When I knitted it, it had absolutely demanded to be made in laceweight in that taupe color that it’s shown in in my “Wrapped in Comfort” book. That is emphatically not my color, but nothing else would do. I did not know why. I did knit it again in other yarns, but it felt like, for the book, that taupe laceweight was what it absolutely had to be.

After I blocked it, I thought the edges would look more solid if I were to redo it with one plain stitch extra at each side edge–but then I would have had to spend hours looking at that taupe again, and frankly, I didn’t know any good enough reason to do so to motivate me, not in that color, and I just didn’t get around to it.

I wrote a caption for the main picture of each project. But the one for the Barn Swallows scarf never pleased me, never felt finished, never felt like I could rewrite it well enough, and I had no idea why.

And then I saw Ann. I recognized her from previous Stitches events as I gave her this wool afghan for her Afghans for Afghans charity; she didn’t recognize me, which was fine. One look at her and I knew that taupe was exactly the right color for her, that it would be absolutely beautiful on her. (If only I had known that, I could have anticipated specifically and been just peachy-fine knitting up that color again and adding those edge stitches!)

Had that scarf been a warm one, Ann would have felt morally absolutely obligated to pass it along to the people she serves in Afghanistan, and rightfully so; their needs are so much greater than ours. We have so much here. But it was a wispy little thing, a decorative little thing, a thank you for the work she does for so many people, encouraging knitters to give of their wool, talents, and time, helping those in need not just to receive physical warmth but human warmth as well: the tangible evidence that someone from around the world wanted to reach out to them and wish them well. And yet–it’s okay for her to feel thanked and reminded that people are grateful for her efforts, too. (That took some convincing from me, much though she loved the thing. She didn’t want to in any way put herself above the other volunteers.)

Changing a manuscript so very late in the publishing process is, my daughter with a college minor in editing tells me, very expensive. But after I gave Ann that scarf, I knew exactly what I wanted to do and what that caption had needed to be all along and why it had felt inadequate before. Martingale put people over profits and immediately agreed with me. We changed it, and they added A4A to the Resources page as well. I must say, I think that new caption totally makes the book, it ends it exactly perfectly.

I don’t have a new picture of the afghan I gave Ann that day at Stitches, nor of the original scarf–which arrived back from Martingale the first day of Stitches, exquisitely perfect timing on their part–so, you’ll have to put up with this old photo.

How that afghan came to be is a whole ‘nother post.

(Actually, looking up those two words on dictionary.com, I’m thinking I should reverse them, but then it wouldn’t be a pun in English.)

That Monterey shawl I started in Sea Silk yesterday? Um… I moved it off my lap mid-row to attend to something else, didn’t notice with the stitches all bunched up, and you don’t have to be a knitter to see why I took it off the needles. I was long past where it could be fixed without ripping. I was on row 30. Now I’m on 12. I was going to try to rush it to be finished for my kickoff booksigning on Saturday, but, um, I think my knitting was telling me to chill out. Kick back. Relax.

For those who are coming, you’ll get to hear a few details that there wasn’t space for in the book. That stroll along the canal with Karen? I didn’t mention that I fell through a canoe. Yes. Through. It was very funny, and Karen was just shaking her head, going, Some people!

See you Saturday!

I got a delightful email today from a woman who’d just knitted her version of my Strawberry Pie shawl for her nine-year-old granddaughter. I immediately thought of the sweater my mom had made for me when I was nine, and I wish I had a picture, any picture, anywhere, of it, but it’s long gone.

My grandfather once requested that my mom knit him a cardigan. Being very proper in his dress, and needing it not to look too casual, he specifically requested a very fine knit and something that he could wear easily at work–which happened to be the hallways of Congress (when he wasn’t wearing his suitcoat.)

Mom designed an allover diamond Aran, the kind of cabling that Barbara Walker would describe as right-twist and left-twist, quite understated. I vividly remember that subdued green wool yarn and that pattern as it slowly, slowly appeared on Mom’s needles: she used to knit it when she was waiting for me at my piano lessons. With six kids and little downtime, it took her a year to do. I reminded her of it once, a few years ago, and she exclaimed, “I used fingering weight and size 2s?! I must have been out of my mind!” Yes, Mom; I remember you teaching me what the term fingering weight meant. I wanted to do that someday. I remember. She had had to buy needlepoint yarn to get the look she’d wanted.

The ultimate act of motherly love is that, because I totally fell in love with that sweater while she was making it, when she finally finally finished it and told me it was my turn next for a sweater, when I said I wanted that same diamond pattern, she actually did it. She must have been screamingly bored out of her mind with repeating that same thing after so much time, but she did it. She let me pick out a rosey shade. With a zipper in front. This was radically fashionable at the time, and with a big family, we rarely went for the latest fad–but lookatmenow! She did mine in worsted weight (there are limits, after all) and I was thrilled.

You know how teenagers sometimes wish they could tell their parents how to dress before they’ll be willing to be seen in public with them? Yeah, well. In my case, I loved that sweater, with Grandpa’s diamonds altered just so just for me, and I refused to give it up. I outgrew it. Badly. I refused to stop wearing it. My mom saw me sneaking it on one day when the wrists barely went past my elbows, and that was that–it just kind of “disappeared” shortly after. I was not happy.

I asked Mom a few years ago whatever happened to it, and she didn’t remember; oh, she’d given it away, she was sure, but she would only have given it to someone who appreciated it, she assured me.

Grandpa, meantime, wore that sweater for thirty more years, until his death at 95. It was always his favorite. His daughter had created it just for him, and it was just the right weight for wearing year-round. It’s one reason why I like knitting in wool and baby alpaca; with good care, one’s work can last practically forever, without the aging tendencies inherent in a cotton yarn.

It just now occurred to me as I was writing this why my Embossed Diamonds pattern that frames these pages must have so immediately appealed to me as it appeared out of my needles the first time. A similar-shaped stitch pattern. Huh. The things we learn about ourselves when we write.

As for that grandma who wrote to me, I am delighted she liked my pattern–and I am thrilled for her young granddaughter, who doesn’t ever have to worry about wrist lengths.

(Meantime, since every good post needs a picture, I’m putting the back of the book on top of the Sky Drama shawl shown on the front cover.)

About time for some knitting content around here. This is a scarf I knitted yesterday using just one repeat of the body of Nina’s shawl. I used one strand of baby alpaca I’d dyed in a bright light blue and one of Jaggerspun Zephyr merino/silk in royal–I liked how the two colors played together, and they grabbed me and wouldn’t let go.

It wasn’t till I was nearly done that I found I’d dropped a stitch at the beginning. Normally this would be a disaster–but since the yarn is doubled, the loops from the other color running through it will help anchor it in place so it won’t run. (I will, however, go back with a mending strand and tuck it a bit out of sight there.) One stumbles, the other keeps it steady and keeps the pattern going. There is so much poetry inherent in the simple act of wrapping wool around wood.

It took me awhile to figure out why those colors had so grabbed me: Nina herself is at Camp Stitches at Asilomar right now, at a gorgeous spot looking over the ocean. Sky and sea–and here I was, knitting the two as one without being consciously aware of why those two shades had wanted to dance together. Cool.

Meantime, my LYS got a case of 36 books in yesterday, and when I showed up for my knitting group last night each one had been sold or spoken for, and they were scrambling to go order more. Nina called to report that the LYS down where she is had sold out instantly as well. You all don’t mind if I brag happily, do you?

I signed onto the Knitlist for the first time about eight years ago, specifically to ask if anyone knew of any music-themed laceknitting patterns. I got lots of responses of no, but if you find one, let me know. (I am determined I am finally going to come up with one for my next book.)

We went to a concert a few nights ago; there were two superb pianists, one a dear friend of longstanding, the other his brother visiting him, and two grand Steinway pianos had been brought in just for the occasion. (How you borrow two Steinway grands, I’d love to know, but never mind.) The eldest very much carried off the staid, calm, older brother shtick, and Russ–Russ is a showman. Russ is someone who once demonstrated how simple it was to play Bach, at a concert I went to a few years ago, by holding three oranges in one hand, two grapefruit in the other, and playing a piece I knew well totally note-perfect. These two grew up playing in USO shows as kids, and they’re good.

So. If only there were a DVD. They started in on a Rachmaninoff piece dear to my heart: I was slated to play it at Peabody Institute in Baltimore at a Maryland State Piano Competition in the late 70’s when I was a teenager. (Something in C minor, c’mon, brain, help me out here on the title. BUM. BUM. BUHMMMM!! Yeah, that one. You know the one.)

Rachmaninoff had huge hands. If you’ve looked at pictures of me on this blog you know that I emphatically do not. An octave plus two? There was no way! My piano teacher, a onetime concert pianist and a quite-petite woman, told me, oh, just skip the notes you can’t reach.

I could not play that thing the way it was supposed to be played. I could not do that thing justice. It was supposed to sound bombastic, and the thing was impossible to do right. I argued, I practiced like crazy, and in the end I rebelled and refused to play it there.

So here Russ and his taller brother were starting in on that piece, and I instantly wondered how Russ would be able to reach those notes. The other, yes, but… Russ actually talked first about the size of Rachmaninoff’s hands, and traded some sibling barbs with his brother over the issue for the crowd.

They started off in unison, a huge sound on those two huge pianos. Then the showmanship kicked in. Russ made an act of getting frustrated over getting the BUHHHMM!s Russ’d, leaped up from the piano as his brother continued on, walked off the stage, walked back across it carrying a large wooden board and a circular wood saw–giving his brother bunny ears as he went past him–and disappeared off the stage to the other side. Sounds of loud sawing suddenly offstage; the big brother acted oblivious. Finally, Russ came back on with his board with, basically, popsicle-stick-equivalent fingers added on, and sat back down at that second piano.

It was the BUM BUM BUHHHHM! part again. Russ put that board over the keys and the popsicle stick pieces played the entire, superstretched chord perfectly. He put it quickly up on top of the piano out of the way, and continued. Back to that chord–grab the board–play!

It was hysterically funny. The older brother calmly pretended not to notice, but if it took an extra quarter of a beat for Russ to grab that board fast enough and get it down there, the brother, eyes on his own keyboard, kept right in sync with him.

I can just picture Rachmaninoff up there, going, BRAVO!!!

Try to live up to that performance! Hey wait–I get it. All I have to do is go knit a plain sweeping swath of stockinette, go borrow Russ’s circular saw, and whirr a treble clef stencil out of the thing. Done!

(Note: if you want a copy of the CD, contact Russ at skipthesefourwordsrussell@thehancocks.us , skipping, of course, the four superfluous words in the addy.)

If I had designed this, it would have had two more words added at the end, and then it would have been the utter truth, at least in my experience: the words, “for others.”

Today’s the day! Martingale is releasing my book, “Wrapped in Comfort: Knitted Lace Shawls” today. At last. I wrote it, I knitted every stitch (and then some), and they put it all together into a beautiful book, absolutely beautiful; I can’t tell you how pleased I am with what they did with it.

So, a little while ago, after trying to figure out how to knit a thank you without asking them the relevant questions, I finally sent off a note, cc’d to my two editors: Tina, you go ask Mary her favorite color for me. Mary, you go ask Tina. Color, and also shape. Don’t tell the other I asked, okay? It’s a surprise.

They told me they’d laughed and figured there was no way out of this one. (I just need to get myself to the post office. They’re done.)

One said pink. I can do pink, definitely. The funny thing is, when we went to take this picture, I didn’t even realize, when I picked up that little bunch of buds that had fallen off the bush there, that I was holding it as if to knit it. Hey, if there’s a way to knit a bush, I’ll figure it out.

Martingale didn’t pose any of my circular shawls quite like this, preferring to make sure you could see each one as clearly as possible–the shaping, how far around it reaches, etc, but this is how I tend to wear them. The smaller ones, or when the temperature warms up, I wear V-neck and open down the front.

One of the things I tried to do with the book, in giving the weight of the yarns used, was hope that people would feel comfortable using whatever brand and whatever fiber they personally have fallen in love with, rather than what I did. Take what you love and go play.

The photos: my Blue Moon Geisha-yarn shawl held up to Stephanie, sock style.  Or, at least, it’s there in my drafts.  Hmm.  Anyway.  Stephanie looking for her pattern as I put my knitting bag down; I’m wearing the Michelle pattern from my book, done in Sea Silk in the Teal colorway, which knitty-noddy.com had custom dyed by Handmaiden after I requested it. Laura in Alameda with The Sock. Stephanie arriving.

Okay, here goes. The bookstore had everybody waiting in line outside for hours, but I told them, I don’t do outside–I’m an indoor cat. Right now, my lupus goes after my eyes when I’m in sunlight. Oh, well, no problem. They let me wait inside, which was very nice of them, and all was fine.

Stephanie greeted me with a smile when she came in, and then the biggest hug when it got to my turn in line. And then several more hugs before she let me go. It was so good to get to see her again–a huge shout-out to Jasmin, who drove (three hours up, two hours back), and Nancy, who rounded out the carpool. And Patricia and later Faye, who met us there.

I knew it was Stephanie’s booksigning, not mine, but I also knew how excited she’d be: she had cheered me on during the process. So I showed her my author’s advance copy of my book, and she was exulting, YOU DID IT!!! She flipped through it, asking if her shawl was in there; it is. The Monterey one there, I’d knitted that pattern up for her; she hadn’t been allowed the time in all her booktouring to go see the Monterey Bay Aquarium, so I’d knitted the Aquarium into a shawl and given it to her. I showed her the original jellyfish-and-seaweed one in the book. She was exclaiming, Oh, cool! Look at this!

At one point a little before that, while she was signing and I was waiting for the pre-boarders to finish up, (she always lets the moms with little ones and those with physical needs go first), my friend Laura in Alameda, who’d been part of the standing-room crowd, found me. Laura is a friend that, four years ago, I knitted her a cashmere lace scarf and gave it to her at Stitches: her reaction was to crow, “I get to say I knew you when!” I thought that was so funny! But she believed in me that I would write that book someday that I wanted to, long before I completely believed it would ever happen. We’d been trying to meet up again ever since, with one failure after another. I had no idea she was coming yesterday. So here Laura suddenly appeared out of the crowd, coming over as I stood up in wonderment to greet her, and we threw our arms around each other in thrilled exclamations. Stephanie watched with the very happiest smile on her face: our happiness was her happiness. I adore both of them. And then when Laura was having her book signed, Stephanie recognized her name, and exclaimed, “You’re Laura in Alameda? I know you!”

I got to see Rosemary of designsbyromi.com, the person who, when I said I wished I had a shawl pin that looked like a treble clef, immediately created one. Guess who got the first one? And then she insisted on holding my book while I snapped her picture. Wait, this was Stephanie’s booksigning, not mine!

And a good time was had by all.