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.

When there’s a huge push to get a project done fast, and you do it and you succeed, somehow for a little while after that, other projects feel almost like a letdown for a day or two.  I picked up Johnna’s shawl–c’mon, let’s get going again–and saw I had 1000 stitches to have to rip out, that there was a botch back there and just too big a botch to fudge it gracefully.  You know, I honestly don’t usually have this sort of problem!  Eh.  But that’s the good side of knitting: you can always re-create it to the way that you demand that it live up to.

Meantime, the Fleece Artist Sea Wool  is singing a sheepy mermaid song to entice me to jump in.   I find the kelp content is good for the merino as well as their Sea silk: I wish you could see it in person, ooh, doesn’t this feel wonderful.  My apologies to the sock knitters out there, and I do love handknitted socks, but there’s no way I’m turning this into footwear when it could be beautifully draped across a friend’s back.

Okay, that did it, I think I’ve got my knitting momentum back.

So. Sunday night we got an email from Dave, familiar to those who’ve read my book as Dave-and-Wanda Dave. He was going to be in northern California on business and wondered if he could stop by Thursday night for a visit on his way back to the airport? Well YEAH! I asked him if he would mind going and asking Wanda her favorite color?

Note that the original shawl I knitted for her was in a color that was a total guess on my part. Blue is a pretty safe bet for most people, but there are all kinds of blues. White would have been good, too, but at that particular point in my life I couldn’t bear to knit any more white stitches for awhile.

Purple, he emailed back a few minutes later.

I did not have enough purple yarn in the right weight. And every single store in the Bay Area that sells Blue Sky Alpacas AlpacaSilk (which is an exquisite yarn) was going to be closed Monday. Every one. My stash and I were on our own.

I had some lightweight baby alpaca and what was once a full pound of Jaggerspun Zephyr silk/merino (thanks to my friend Karin, who used to own The Periwinkle Sheep.) Together, those would give me close to the same weight, and I could dye it when I was done. I did have purple dye in the stash. And so, as I blogged, the race was on.

I showed a picture of some of those rows I frogged. What I didn’t say was that after that I made another brainless mistake and had to frog it again. So I started 11 pm Sunday night, but in effect I might as well have started Monday.

I alternated knitting with icing my hands and was able to keep on going, hour after hour, Monday all day, Tuesday all day, then Wednesday I was the speaker at a lupus support group meeting and didn’t get to my needles till mid-afternoon. At about 7:30 pm the shawl came out of the dyepot.

I figure, Wanda knew what I was up to the moment she was telling Dave purple. And that’s fine. I love the way the silk in the Zephyr took up the dye a little more slowly, and so came out a little lighter than the baby alpaca and the merino fibers: it shimmers against them. I love it. White is nice, but purpleifying it brought out the best in it.

And I got to give it to him in person. That is SO cool.

(Now, did anyone get my visual pun on that metronome? Given what Dave did for us in the story I wrote in the book, I had to reference the piano while anticipating his coming.)

The clock is ticking…

By the sweat of thy brow

Shalt thou eat thy bread? (sorry dinner was late, hon…)

All the dyes of thy life.

The first full pattern repeat of four and a half I plan to do in the bottom section is nearly finished. Note that this morning I had barely begun–I was at row 14 at 72 stitches. For anybody who might ever think my shawls look like they take too long to do… (Note, though, that I have no toddlers yanking my needles out of the stitches, bosses intruding on my time, nor cats batting at the yarn.)

Okay, back to work!