So our kids pretty much grew up in northern California, with only the oldest remembering snow at our old house; she’d been not quite five when we left New Hampshire. Then she was off to college, to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, up at a goodly elevation and right by the side of a mountain. Her first semester, we got this phone call. Cue the Calvin and Hobbes: “It’s snowing. I’ve got my electric blanket set on Deep Fat Fry, and I am *not* coming out!”

Now the middle two kids are at BYU, and I didn’t want my younger daughter to shiver. Scarves and more scarves, till finally, she said, um, Mom, I really appreciate it, but I really don’t need more scarves.

When our kids are young, they take all our time. Now, it’s like I can take all that love gained over all the years, and radiate it further out. Everybody’s baby is my baby to admire, I’m not distracted with my own. Everybody’s joy is my joy.

And everybody’s a potential recipient for a good, soft, handknit scarf.

If you’ve read the story of my Strawberry Pie shawl on my website, you remember that I tried to doorbell-ditch a completely homemade strawberry pie on a friend’s doorstep when I was 18. So. Last week, while I was in the hospital, the doorbell at home rang, and my 18-year-old son opened up to find that FedEx had just doorbell-ditched a surprise package. From Scott. It was a copy of a favorite book of his to help make the time pass faster for me (many blessings on you, Scott, thank you.)

When someone goes to that much effort to get a book to you, you read it. Not that anyone had to twist my arm; I love a good autobiography. I love to knit, too, but knitting without music playing just isn’t quite the same… Note to my doctors, if any of them happens to read this–yes, I’m deaf as a post. I also have perfect pitch and was trained as a musician once upon a time before my ears got to this point, and when I’m home, all that background hospital noise doesn’t exist. It’s just me, my needles, and the stereo, and let’s crank it up, folks. (How many households are there where the kids get to come home and groan, “Mom, your music’s too loud, turn it *down*.” Lol!) So. After I got the book, I put down the knitting and lost myself for a day in “Winterdance,” a memoir by Gary Paulsen about his running in the Iditarod sled-dog race in Alaska.

We used to live in New Hampshire. I used to race walk every morning, four or five miles’ worth, before our small children woke up for the day. Let the hubby deal with them waking up. Time to exercise, time to myself to get out and enjoy the outdoors, time to not have anyone to have to keep an eye on but me. Yeah, and a few cars, especially when the road was only partly cleared of snow and nothing else was. Over our last 17 days there before we moved to northern California, we had 70″ of snow. (My brain’s going off on a tangent about the moving van driver who arrived in our five-degree March weather in a yellow short-sleeve t-shirt, came inside long enough to call the company and tell them he wasn’t doing anything but sitting in his nice warm truck with the motor running for however long it took, thank you very much, you guys go hire someone else to load the *&# thing: it’s COLD! …Yeah, dude. Ya think?)

I remember one particular morning when I bundled up in my 6’8″ husband’s down jacket as well as my own (I’m 5’5″) and braved a particularly bad cold front. Cota Road in Merrimack curved into basically a long circle, but halfway around I realized how nuts this all was. I went home, turned on the radio, and found out that the wind chill was running at minus 40. Yowsers.

So here is this Iditarod guy talking about how -20F is the perfect, nice warm temperature for the dogs going full bore. Minus 20 may be a whole lot of things, but I gotta tell you, cozy warm it ain’t, not in my book. I definitely needed a mug of hot cocoa while I was reading–but you just can’t get, say, Scharffenberger cocoa at Stanford Hospital. Although, someone mentioned there was a Starbucks in the cafeteria. A little hard to get there when you’re wired to the wall for a four-day EEG.

As those dogs slogged on across Alaska, I kept thinking, this guy needs two things: a GPS unit in case something goes really wrong, and qiviut everything: socks, sweaters, gloves, hat, you name it. Nothing warmer. Or softer, for that matter. At sixty bucks an ounce, I wondered how much the yarn for that getup would have set him back–and whether the dogs would have gone nuts at the smell of it on him.

Which got me thinking about the densely-shaggy musk oxen it comes from. They are survivors. Even with icicles hanging from their eyebrows, their fur can handle any wind chill factor. When danger threatens any of them, they gather the herd in a tight circle, wagon-train style, their little ones on the inside and the adults’ backs to each other, with faces looking any wolf right in the eye. Staring it down. You just try. Git!

I have lupus. Which is the Latin word for wolf.

And with my knitting, I am keeping thoughts of my friends in a tight circle around me, and with their own kindnesses large and small, they keep me centered.

First, the boring (to my non-knitting friends; you guys just go skip to after the gap) technical stuff: someone posted on KnitTalk today with the question of, how could she use the 200 yards of cashmere she’d just splurged on to get a scarf out of it?

One of the good things about lace is that a goodly part of what you’re creating is air spaces, so that a little yarn can be stretched a long way. Obviously, that’s more true with some patterns than others. This one is simply knitted with right side rows alternating between k2tog, yo, across, and the next one, ssk, yo across. I cast on an odd number of stitches, and one of the right side rows started with a knit one stitch, the other one ended with a knit one stitch. For specifics, go check out Donna Druchunas’s blog when she posts this picture of one of my scarves. For beginners: k2tog is, of course, knit two stitches together; ssk means slip the next stitch as if to knit, repeat with the next one, then put the left side needle into the fronts of those two stitches and knit them that way.
These two different ways to decrease slant in opposite directions and create a balanced effect. If you just do one of them throughout the scarf, you create a biased fabric that won’t hang straight.

Now for the story part: the backdrop is a handwoven placemat in wool created by my friend Robert, a handweaver who lives near Santa Cruz. Robert later wove me a six-foot-long navy wool blanket in the tradition of the Native American medicine blanket: with each passing of the shuttle, he was wishing me good health and well-being, at a time my lupus and dysautonomia were flaring badly last spring. When he finished, we met halfway between our homes at Karen Brayton-McFall’s shop, The Rug and Yarn Hut in Campbell, which I believe is where he’d bought the yarn for it. All those hours and hours of work! It was a tremendously humbling experience for me, and I was absolutely thrilled. It was a beautiful piece of work. Such a generous offer of caring for a fellow being. Mindboggling. I found myself running my fingers over the bumps in the fabric where the weft yarn ran over and under the warp, again and again, so different from the way yarn feels as it comes off my needles. Sturdy. Solid. Strong. It was the perfect representation of the man who’d made it.

That night, I had a blood-pressure crash that woke me up and I couldn’t move or breathe. I had had experiences like this before, but this was one of the very worst ever, and I wasn’t sure I could live much longer if it didn’t let up. Very soon.

And I was immediately angry (if you think I’m a nice person, just don’t wake me up at 3 am, it’ll totally blow my cover): You stupid body! After all his hard work! How dare you give out on me now! How could you make it so he’ll feel like a failure, that the medicine of his caring wasn’t enough, after he put heart and soul and time into wishing me well, someone he didn’t even know well!

As if anybody who ever died passed because the people who desperately wanted them to live somehow had failed them? Yeah right. Gimme a great big break.

But that shot of adrenalin from that anger kicked my lungs back alive, and I suddenly devoured air. I could breathe again!

I didn’t immediately realize it. But when I did, it was so obvious: I went back to Robert and told him that his gift had been powerful medicine indeed. The timing! If he hadn’t given it to me that day… I don’t know…

And ever since, it has been my knitting companion. Even when we had a massive heat wave this past July, I kept it under my toes on the footrest as I knitted away and then, when the evening San Francisco fogbank rolled in, I would move it up and pull it over me. Still do. Always will. My medicine blanket; how could I not thrive, with all that it means to me?

Weaving, knitting, cooking, walking through a park together, being a doctor, being a nurse’s assistant: it doesn’t matter how we give of our time and our hearts. What matters is that we do.

{The nurse didn’t get the cultural reference.} Attention K Mart shoppers! We have a blue head special on aisle f. Aisle f.

I exchanged a few pleasantries with a staff member yesterday, who then wished me “have a good day, sir.”
Ouch.
So today I teased a few long curls out of my dressing. Promptly a nurse showed up to rewrap my head in a new color and tucked the hair out of sight again. Thus the K Mart bluehead special. I took my cell phone {do you see the level of self defense rising} and went to my blog. Which, by the way, I can post to from here but I can’t sign in and I can’t enter any comments to. Anyway. I went to the photo at the top of the page and held it out to the next nurse that came in. She stopped herself in mid exclamation of “Oh, she’s pretty!” Realising that I was all but bursting out laughing that yeah, um, that would be me, thanks. She was wonderful the last two days, and she really admired the blue alpaca silk I was knitting up. So tonight as she was signing out from work she found herself, to her surprise, learning about rinsing lace and laying it out flat for the night for the diamond pattern to emerge. Oh, and scissors to snip the yarn ends. I know from three years ago that if I ask to borrow a pair of scissors in a hospital there will be a $90 charge for surgical scissors on my bill…and I just don’t quite love her that much. Syoy: snip your own yarn.
Man, it felt good to watch her dancing away happy. (Hubby updated to undo awful mobile formating and add phone photo as requested.)

So, I’m typing on my phone to my blog like yesterday, and he’s pointing my camera. I just got flashed and now I’m blinking trying to see the keypad.

A knitting friend dropped by and we knitted and chatted awhile. Nancy is the person who strong-armed me into spinning and dyeing lessons 12 years ago. It’s all her fault! She brought her latest acquisitions of roving to show off and a book on silk. The nurse came in to check vitals, and Nancy had her all but talked into spinning lessons by the time that nurse escaped. That’s my Nancy! We had a grand time laughing. All hospital stays should be so much fun {all the time}. Oh, and: I have one of those Halloween bowls with a hand that drops down on yours when you reach for candy. My eye and tactile candy is my friend Karin’s Lamoromere yarn knitted with Misti baby alpaca laceweight. I dyed them periwinkle in anticipation of needing a major project while here, and when I turn the bowl on, every time I yank a lenth of yarn the green hand grabs for it and cackles in this Addams Family voice, Happy Halloween!
Indeed.
(I added the photo when I got home as instructed, the hubby)

Bonnie didn’t want me to make a fuss, and I’m trying to honor that. But my feet have been very, very happy (and boy was I surprised when they showed up) for several months now.

Everybody should be so lucky. 

(This post is a few days late due to a crashed server, but thanks to the resident magician we are up and running again. The system, however, isn’t letting me put up more than one picture at the moment, so the other things I was going to post about will each have to wait their turn.)

Beaded socks.

If you’ve ever put a pair of handknit socks on your feet, you know you never want to go back to anything less. There is nothing in the world… Which makes me wish that I loved to knit socks, but if you hand me a lovely merino sock yarn like this, rather than knit socks on 1.5 mm needles, I’ll make you a lace shawl out of it on 5.5s. The last pair of socks I knit went to Brian, one of my nurses at Stanford Hospital three years ago, as a thank you for his being willing to walk in his patients’ shoes. Clearly, then, some situations will get even me to knit socks, but going through and coming out of critical condition is a bit drastic of a method.

So. Earlier this week, I was having one of Those Days, when everything expensive broke, and and and. And the mail came. With a package from Vermont, a beautiful card inside wishing me the very best of days. My first skeins ever of Socks That Rock, already knitted up, and beaded, no less.

I have never attempted beaded knitting in my life. As a knitter, I am totally outclassed, and, slipping these over my toes, I could not possibly be happier. I am wearing them to my appointed tests at Stanford next week, as a way to say to the staff when I check in, Take good care of me: for I am well loved.

Thank you, Kristine.

Today, UPS rang the doorbell: my new computer, with a monitor I can actually see on. I loved that Newsweek had an Annie Liebowitz shot of Bill Gates using a monitor like the one I was using–and even more when I noticed the caption said that picture was shot in ’94. Yeah, there was a reason mine was getting hard to read.

So, while my husband was getting the new setup in place, the doorbell rang again. The yellow DHL truck, bringing me my manuscript from Martingale for my review. I’ve been going through it, and there, on one page, was what to me was a hysterically funny note: “Alison. It says on this scarf that it’s 55″ wide. It’s really stretchy, but we could only get it to 8″.”

Five POINT five. I guess if I didn’t quite see the period I didn’t notice because I was so used to not quite seeing them? I can just see the looks on the editors’ faces! Too funny!

(Oops. Got that bottom twirly part backwards there.)

When I joined the Knitlist in ’98 or so, it was to ask a specific question: did anyone know of a lace design with a musical motif? A treble or bass clef, perhaps? Quarter notes?

I got no responses other than quite a few from fellow musician/knitters saying that if I found one, please tell them where? So I drove an hour up to Berkeley, to Lacis, where Kaethe Kliot had the biggest collection probably anywhere of lace knitting books–and she knew quite well what was in every one of them. When I ran my question past her, she thought hard a moment, then shook her head emphatically no. Then, in growing excitement, she told me, “But you could design one!” (Having no idea what a newbie I was.) She carefully explained to me exactly how one goes about committing a design in one’s head onto a lace chart, not quite believing I didn’t already know how to do that. Everybody knows how to do that.

I don’t do charts. I only barely did lace at all at that point. I was in way over my head and I knew it, so I nodded my head with what I hoped was enthusiasm as she went on. Her assistant chimed in with a few helpful tips. I went home with a lace book in hand–in English, not the German book that she assured me I could follow just as easily, once I figured out the unfamiliar notations; I threw in the towel after she mentioned there were errors in the German one, but that it wouldn’t be hard to recognize them. Get me out of here!

This past February, Rosemary Hill of Designs by Romi had some beautiful shawl pins on display at Stitches West, but I didn’t quite see–what, I wasn’t sure. Recently, she added some hammered metal ones on her website, and it was, alright, now we’re getting somewhere! I sent her a note: Rosemary. Is it possible you could do one of those in a treble clef motif? I thought, if I can’t knit one, maybe I could wear one anyway.

She thought that was a cool idea, and the result is that I, the daughter of an art dealer, am now the proud owner of the first piece of artwork (other than Lisa Souza’s gorgeous yarn) I ever commissioned myself. The first sterling treble clef shawl pin.

I still need to work out that lace design. I still don’t do charts. But nowadays, if I wanted to enough, I could knit that idea to match that pin. Meantime, though, I can now wear my announcement of my love of music along with my knitting. (Um, pardon me while I turn that twirly thing back around the way it belongs…)

Postscript–Kaethe Kliot, of the WWII generation, has since passed away, but Lacis lives on.

Technical info: the yarn is Kidsilk Haze, aka Cracksilk Haze among quite a few knitters (nice stuff), knitted on size 5mm needles. I was once given ten skeins of it in a light dusty purple, and for this particular shawl, I overdyed two skeins’ worth with Jacquard Acid Dye in Crimson.

Now, let me tell you about that persimmon/coral scarf there, and why I made it the color I did. I hopped out of bed one day last week and set up the dyepot on the stove before I did anything else, having figured out just what I wanted it to be. I couldn’t wait to see it become what I was picturing!

I didn’t already tell the story because first I emailed my brother and sister-in-law to make sure I’d gotten the story right. Which came back very funny: no, SHE did this, I did THAT. But the core of the story was right on. And it is this:

My parents had long since given up on my younger brother ever getting married. And he didn’t want to be bugged about it. So it was a complete surprise to them when he phoned them to tell them what the girl he was going out with (Mom: he’s dating?!) had done.

They were supposed to have a date one particular evening. But, it turns out, Bryan’s apartment building just happened to be on fire. Larisa showed up at his place, looking for him, couldn’t find him in the crowd milling around, so when the firemen weren’t looking, she dashed past them to run into his place to save him. She saw no sign of him and came back out, and finally, very gratefully, I’m sure, found him–he was busy trying to find out what had happened to HER, meantime.

And Mom was saying, he has to marry her! Nobody else could possibly live up to that story!

And, actually, yes, they did get married. But just before their wedding, it was his birthday, and I, living near the redwood forests, found the perfect birthday card. It was a picture of a small boy looking up in complete awe at a giant sequoia. Open the card, and there were the words, “It’s your birthday. Time to count the rings.”

So you know who that diamond pattern scarf had to be for (although I still gave her her choice; she did pick that one.) I dyed it the color of the soft flames crackling in a fireplace on a romantic evening in their dream home they recently finished building. I’m a month or so late with it, but hey, you guys: happy anniversary.

The yellow is what I started out with for all of these. And now you see why, when we bought a new car several years ago, it frustrated part of me that, not really loving any of the colors it was available in, I couldn’t just dunk it in a pot with some simmering water and fix that. I prefer being in control of the colors that represent what I like.

Sorry for the delay on pictures there; Picasa, the picture arm of Blogger, just wasn’t behaving for me and was waiting for the resident expert to come play with it. Hey, Richard, Picasa es su casa.

*WIP=Work in Progress. You know, one of those highly technical knitting terms.

Going through the closet looking for something else, a very-long-utterly-forgotten ziploc bag tumbled down in front of me, a close-out from a yarn store going out of business over a dozen years ago. It’s purple. Angora. I instantly recognized the tag in it: why on earth do the French use a sketch of the rear end rather than the face of the bunny? (No, wait. Please. Do not answer that.) You got it–my very own Boule de Neige. Ten skeins’ worth! Too funny.

I had knitted everything I was going to knit from that mothy box of yellow angora. I thought. I only had a few rolled-up balls left that had anything more than just a yard or two, and why bother with the stuff anymore, when knitting it had been so demanding: it was like a two-year-old. I couldn’t take my eyes off it for a second, or a broken ply would sail through my fingers. I should just toss the leftovers, quick, before anything hatches from it and infests my stash, I was thinking.

But today was a day where I came home from the doctor, eyed that yarn, and needed to create something positive out of–everything. The yarn, the day, everything. The doctor had been warm and kind, for which I am very grateful. Time to go make something warm for the sake of kindness myself.

It wasn’t much, it wasn’t big, it wasn’t the right color–but it’s the right color now. Boiled. Bugfree. Exquisitely soft. And tomorrow it will be ready to go make somebody happy. I look forward to finding out who.

Technical info: I knitted this scarf and then added Jacquard Acid Dye in Pink. It’s a vivid dye, so it didn’t tone down the brightness of the original yellow as much as the other colors did. As usual, I threw in a small ball of extra yarn so I’d have some for any future hole repairs in a matching dye lot. (This is a hint to my sisters: hold onto that ball when you get your scarf! The way to mothproof your woolens is to have angora nearby; the moths will go after the angora first every time.)

I took the pile of scarves to my knitting group tonight. I can show off all the pictures I want here, but there’s nothing quite like having a room full of knitters swooning over the feel of the things.

Didn’t turn out too camo-green in the end, I’d say.