Thinking about Allison’s comment. I firmly believe that every time a person shares of their creativity with those around them, they are making the world a better place. Creativity comes in forms as infinitely variable as people; it’s the giving and the opening of one’s heart and time to others that makes the difference.

The struggle is finding the balance of time and for whom. I have never participated in one of the knitswaps before; at this time of year, my knitting always became too focused on getting things done in time for my family for that, and to commit to doing more felt like it would be adding stress (I had enough of that already, totally self-inflicted) to something that should be done for joy. There was always this normal human sense of, I can never do enough.

I’m in a different place this year. My last kid is newly out of high school, my book was made official in Martingale Press’s catalog two days ago–“Wrapped in Comfort: Knitted Lace Shawls,” July 07, thank you, much appreciated–and I have a ton of finished projects, both beta versions here and the official ones at the publisher’s. I’ve learned how fast I can make things. I have a lot here on hand. I’m in, what is for me, good health. I think I’m finally beginning to let go of the fear that I’d end up leaving my future grandkids with no tangible bits of myself: my Grandmother Jeppson at one point knitted like I do, and yet I own not a thing she ever made. (Her ring, though, which Grandpa watched being made for her, as mentioned earlier. I treasure it.) One of the difficult things about writing my book was that I could not give away what I was making–well, actually, I did, the stories are about the friends I created my designs for, and then I went and knitted a duplicate of each for the book. Still. That’s months of work that couldn’t leave the house. And yet… I felt like I was knitting for all knitters everywhere. In hopes that someone, somewhere, might be inspired by a story or two to pick up their needles and go knit for someone in their lives. Cool.

So, at last, now was the perfect time in my life to participate, and I mean really participate, heart and soul, in that knitswap. To every thing there is a season. And so I dove into that Rabbit Tracks project, and got it done so fast that it left me thinking, why on earth didn’t I do this before? I could have! If I’d only let go of the stress. Planned a little more. Procrastinated a little less.

Like we don’t already all know that?

May everyone reading this be wrapped in comfort and wrap others in comfort this season, by whatever means works best for them.

I wrote this today over at KnitTalk (with a few editorial tweaks here for clarifying) in response to the comment left on the last post, which was also emailed to KnitTalk after Kit didn’t think it went through here. That comment was written by the person who received my Rabbit Tracks shawl in the mail, the white one that I posted about a few entries ago:

Kit, it did go through on my blog, Blogger just doesn’t know how to count, so it looks like the number of comments didn’t change–and wow. Thank you! Wow. I’ve been kind of overwhelmed all day. I’m so sorry for your loss. I wish I could come give you a hug, and I’m so glad you have stitches from me to keep you and your loved ones warm.

Let me tell you about that shawl. It’s the one I’m wearing in an earlier post on the blog, with my grandmother’s big turquoise ring pulled through. When I signed up for the knitswap, I told Margo Lynn that sure, I’d knit a quick scarf for someone, but it had to be in the US, because I currently am not driving and I couldn’t count on being able to get to the post office. I had to be able to just stick it outside for pickup without worrying about it (another reason to keep it small and lightweight).

Sure, no problem.

And then when the emails came in, Margo Lynn just felt strongly that I should be assigned to you. She told me she tried to make the feeling go away, but it wouldn’t, she tried for a few days, but it just was insistent, so finally she gave up and snailmailed me the customs forms, the info on how much postage for how fast a delivery, yadda yadda, so I could still just stick it outside. Then she emailed me and apologized profusely for not setting me up the way I’d asked.

I confess I sat on it for a few days. I was just going to make a quick lace scarf. No more. No biggy. Not something to get in my way much. But the scarf refused to go on my needles, absolutely refused. You’d said in your note she’d forwarded that you were getting married shortly, and my white baby alpaca is so very very soft–not to mention warm, which, being in California, I could only imagine you’d want in Canada for a wedding in the winter. Not that you have to wear it that day (something borrowed: you borrowed my time, perhaps? Very gladly offered, in any case.) But anyway. I wanted to make sure the pattern was something from me personally but not something that would violate the terms of my book contract by putting one of the shawls from it on any kind of public display before publication. So I used the simple Rabbit Tracks pattern that I have had up on my website for a few years. All well and good.

I didn’t know why it was so important that I make what I did. All I knew was, it felt strongly that I was to make you a shawl to celebrate your marriage, and to wish you well in all of your life together to come. I knitted that thing in record time–three or four days. It felt SO wonderful, and that it was SO important. And I had not a clue why till today when you wrote.

My sweet husband, that tall cute guy who manages my blog when the computer drives me nuts, drove me to the post office after all to see the thing off. Turns out he found he was going to lose vacation days if he didn’t take them, so he took them and was available to help out.

And then I sat down with my needles and some red cashmere/merino yarn for three days, had my hubby snap a picture when I got done, and wrote that post thanking Margo Lynn for the knitswap. I’m hoping many people thanked Margo Lynn privately; I haven’t heard a whole lot, but then, I’m not the one to be thanked, she is, so that’s perfectly fine. Kit, your shawl happened because Margo Lynn listened to the persistent feeling that I should be given you as my knitswap partner. Her saying that she’d felt that, even after trying to ignore it–and I think it was important that she mentioned that part to me–is part of what prompted me to go ahead and knit what I knit. And then I tried to convey why I felt so good about the knitswap without saying too much, before you got your package.

I wish for all the world I could bring your fiance’s mother back. But at least I got the chance to send love from me, and by extension, from all knitters everywhere, to you and all those who love you and your mother-in-law-to-be. And your fiance. May your life together be long and forever loving.

All my best,

Alison

Margo Lynn is someone who suggested a knitswap, where those who were interested could knit something for someone else, and, in doing so, took it upon herself to arrange who gave to whom, with nobody doing a direct back-and-forth to each other. Thus avoiding comparisons and guilt factors from getting in the way: just a simple, knit unto others and enjoy the good feelings. Best of the season to you.

But did anybody actually knit for Margo Lynn? Hey! You! So I’m wearing the two not-quite-matching shades of red as a way of saying, if you don’t like the one, I can change it. My sweater was a more vivid orangey-red than the scarf yesterday, before it hit my dyepot. Or I can make your Marnie’s Scarf brown or black. Right now, in real life, it’s about the color of poinsettia leaves and Santa’s uniform.

Which fits the season. Go Margo Lynn for making so many people happy with each other.

(Technical notes: I added two stitches to the cast-on number of the original pattern on my website, and put one plain stockinette stitch at the beginning and one at the end of each row. I started off with a row of k2tog, yo, across, end k2, on the first right-side row, and repeated that for the last right-side row, to make a slight border at the ends which the original pattern doesn’t have.)

Little Dee is the best comic strip since Calvin and Hobbes left the scene. It doesn’t hurt that Vachel, the vulture, is a knitter. He’s also the snarky one (my kids may now commence teasing.) If you go to http://www.littledee.net/archive/20041101.html you’ll see Vachel’s pattern, which doesn’t work for a straight-line pattern, but if you’re trying to knit a vulture’s wing, it’s perfect.

I grew up in a contemporary house that doubled as an art gallery, with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the woods out back for the natural light to flow over the paintings and the hand-dyed handwoven wool tapestries. I have always liked being surrounded by color.

So that’s my excuse.

Reading Franklin’s blog about the moment he decided he was going to knit himself lime-green socks if he felt like wearing lime green socks, so there, I was laughing, thinking, the umbrella hat!

It was maybe eight years ago. We had the kids back in Washington, DC visiting both sets of grandparents and playing tourist. All the things that were just simply there and taken for granted for my husband and me, growing up, were things new and unexplored to our kids. So. Time to go see the museums, look at the pandas, and ride the Metro with them.

We were standing in line at the US Mint, and it started to drizzle. We’ve lived in California long enough now to become stupid and forget to pack any rain gear. It doesn’t rain in summer here. Period. It rains October to April and then forgets how for six months, and when it does rain, it’s always ocean-fog cold. So here we were that July, we were starting to get rained on, which is no big deal, unless you happen to have several thousand dollars worth of electronics in your ears that you can’t get wet. I took my aids out and put them in my purse, but that meant being deaf until my hair dried again; it was too short to pull back, too long to keep off my ears. I would miss anything they might say on the mint tour if this kept up, and it clearly was only going to rain harder. Great.

Just then I noticed that the street vendor hawking his wares to his captive audience in that line, standing a little forward from us, had umbrellas in his lineup. Only, they were hats, too. You open up this small vivid multi-colored half-beachball thing and instead of a full handle it goes to a tight elastic band to put around your head. Look, Ma, no hands! And it was all of two bucks. You won’t go broke.

“Mom, NOOOOO…!” wailed the first teenager to realize what I was thinking. Then the next. Then my husband pitched in, going, “Tell me you’re NOT going to wear that!” But I did. A dollar bill and a few quarters and the deed was done. Cheerfully mortifying one’s teenagers over things of absolutely no consequence is one of the jobs of a good parent.

Nowadays, I pull it out every Halloween, the world’s easiest and most cheerful costume: Mary Poppins meets Jerry Garcia. (Picture later, now, where is that thing?)

Here’s what a little water and wire can do for a little baby alpaca. Pattern on my website, with notes in the 11/30 post.

So. I heard from Evelyn at Knitty-Noddy after I wrote that last post. Whether the 939 page views my stats claim my website and blog got yesterday had anything to do with it or what, I dunno, but. Come next Friday or so, she will have her next special order of Sea Silk in Teal arriving. Hey, y’all: enjoy. Shoot a picture for me of whatever you make with it, wouldja? Thanks!

Months ago, I took a rather expensive chance on a yarn I’d heard only a little about but was quite curious about, where the only way I could get near any was to order it online. I can’t say sight unseen, since there were pictures; how about, touch unfelt? And that is how the two-skein shawl in my book for my younger daughter came to be. Which also means that it’s off at the publisher’s at the moment.

I looked at Knitty Noddy’s website a few weeks ago, and went OOOH!!! I had been wishing severely that there might somehow be a Sea Silk colorway that was a relatively solid-shade teal. (It didn’t exist in Handmaiden Yarns’ dye lineup.) And that I could justify it in our budget right now if there were. Well guess what. Turns out Knitty Noddy had special-ordered some to be created just for them, and there it was right there on my screen. Exactly what I’d wished for. They had four skeins left. It’s that Constance Harker “Color is everything” quote again: I don’t usually go wishing hard after material goods, but this one was really getting to me. But I’d told my husband I would hold off on buying more yarn for the moment, since I certainly have enough baby alpaca and wool to keep me happy.

Given how fast Sea Silk stocks tend to disappear–which I understand now–I knew those skeins would be gone in no time. There’s nothing else I’ve ever felt that feels like this stuff when you’re knitting it, all those hours it’s running through your fingers, and later, when you’re wearing it: nice. Verrrrrry nice. It does smell strongly of silk, being 70%, in case that stops anybody. But anyway. (Repeat the mantra: I have enough yarn to keep me happy.)

So there I was looking at this, my colorway dream come true in my dream yarn, and said to my husband that there wasn’t anything else on earth he could possibly buy me for Christmas or birthday that I’d enjoy more than two skeins of that teal to go play with. That was it. He thought about it, and said, Okay, then, I guess, go ahead and buy it. But no knitting it before then!

Long as I had him agreeing, I said, okay, that’s for Christmas; how about the Sea Shore colorway–just one skein for my birthday? That got me a bit of a growl, and then a, sure, go ahead. He saw the $100 total and winced, and then the deed was done.

So. The box came. I was home, he wasn’t. I…yeah, I did, I opened it, fondled it, and oh-so-dutifully put it back. Just to check out that shade, you know; after all, monitors always differ a bit, you know. Said to him later, how about if I wind it into balls so it’ll be all ready to just zip away with it come the day?

No! No fondling! WAIT. You’re just going to have to wait.

Well, so I sort of wait; I take it out about every third day, pet it some more, and then stuff it back into the box out of sight. Nope nope nope, can’t knit it yet. Back. Nope.

But you know, right now I’m really glad I was born a week early rather than a week late. Thanks, Mom! If ever a yarn deserved to be knitted at the beach, too, while we’re at it… Half Moon Bay on my birthday with that Sea Shore Sea Silk, dear? A romantic lunch or dinner on the… (You won’t mind if I bring my needles with us, right? I’ll need to wind it up; do you think you could hold your hands out while we wait for the main course? I just don’t want to trip the waitress up by putting it around the back of the chair leaned back from the next table over there.) Dear? Dear?

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.