Twenty-five rows today–sing it with me: 9685 loops of pink on the wall, 9685 loops of pink, take one down, wind it around, 9684 loops of pink on the…

Yeah. I know.

One lesson learned, given that I’m someone who winds my hanks into old-fashioned balls and these hanks were made into cakes on the ballwinder at Purlescence: given the slightly wiry character of baby alpaca when it is spun into a yarn as fine as this laceweight, one should knit the cakes working from the outside. Not centerpulled.  I did the first centerpulled and it wanted to kink on itself constantly and it would not run smoothly through my hands; I was constantly stopping and rolling the ball on its side to try to work some of the excess twist out.

The second one, working from the outside in–rarely a kink. Piece of cake.

This is probably not news to those who use ballwinders and laceweight all the time.  But I have to quickly add how grateful I am to the folks at the LYS for winding them up for me: as I explained to Kathy when I bought these Saturday, knitting-wise, I’m at the equivalent of standing in the frozen foods section looking for the prefab meals.  I’m not lifting dyepots. I’m not winding cones’ worth by hand, nor even hanks.

Today is two weeks post-op. I might be able to stand and wind a hank now. Just let me finish up this big bubbly lump of pink first.

Tomorrow.

First it was an email. Then a phone call. Then: the prisoner escaped!

Kathy showed up from San Jose, the sweetie–I’m hardly on her way–and took me to Purlescence for some rather desperately-needed hanging-out time.  Not only that, she gifted me with hand-dyed yarn she’d bought as a souvenir for me from Sock Summit: a gradient set of five skeins of seacell/merino from Three Irish Girls, whose work I highly admire. (I voted for their Georgia Peach colorway that not only won in its Dye for Glory category, I ordered some.) And, two skeins of Double Bambu, on mini-cones.

Sandi and Kaye wound up a skein of their Purl Up and Dye merino, Purlescence’s own hand-dyed, and refused to ring it up for me.

Lisa came in, and Sock Summit stories started zipping around the room, to my great delight.

After two hours, Kathy looked at me and asked, Are you ready to go?

Not that I wanted to admit.  But she picked up on the fact that I was fading, for which I’m grateful–I wouldn’t have had the sense to kick myself out, I was having just too good a time being with friends.

I went home, crashed, and woke up with a new design idea bouncing around my brain that I can’t wait to try out. Creativity: it’s contagious. Thank you, Kathy, Sandi, and Kaye, and everybody, for that matter!

“Begin: the rest is easy.”

Right. So I began a new project today, got interrupted, snagged the mostly-silk yarn getting off the couch, came back later, looked at the mess and frogged it on the spot.

I avoided it the rest of the day.  Don’wanna.  Silk is so lovely but it’s a bit of a pain to work with–you have to watch those needle tips every second so it doesn’t treat them like being on a slide at a water park.  Whoosh and away and hey, now let’s go running!

My favorite cure for not feeling like knitting is Knit Night, Thursdays at Purlescence: the colors and the wool fumes will do it every time, and, best of all, there are the good friends to be found there. Who knit.

I began.  Again.

A few weeks ago, a customer at Purlescence asked me how I liked the afghan.

Afghan?

Apparently, uh, oops.

And then a few people on KnitTalk started mentioning it: Elizabeth had been gathering knitted squares from folks who wanted to wish me well and a speedy recovery, starting back in January when things were so very bad.  Elizabeth told me last week the result was now finally on its way.

I promised not to peek at her blog.

(Did you peek?)  That was really hard! (I didn’t, though.)

Today, the mailman went past. No box. Just like yesterday.  Just like the day before.  The UPS guy let me be disappointed just long enough, and then, tadaaah!

Wow.

And just, wow.

Sitting on top inside was a large ball of silk yarn from purlsyarnemporium.com, a lavendar pillow, and, wrapped in gray silk, a stack of cards and notes offering hopes for my return to good health and expressing a great deal of love, over and over, as I opened the envelopes.

There are ninety squares in this afghan.  Some knitters wrote; some let their stitches state plainly and clearly what they were feeling.   Some squares came with stories, some of them were the stories.

All the yarns are soft.  They match up beautifully together, and if you’ve ever tried to knit squares of different yarns to the same size, even just one knitter working alone, you know how hard it is to get the sizes to match. And yet, in Elizabeth’s hands and everybody else’s, these all came together just so.

Elizabeth’s mother did a square that I’m sorry to say the post office has yet to find.  The afghan came up one short. Elizabeth’s husband knitted his first item to make the last square. I don’t need to tell her this, but he’s a keeper.

This last photo is a shout-out to Robinfre, who’s been signing her emails with these words for all the years I’ve known her: she gave me my best laugh of the day!

And now I’m off to Purlescense for Knit Night–and where 37 of the 90 squares were knitted and contributed when I wasn’t looking.

(p.s. Ed. to add: Jasmin and Gigi with their Knitmore Girls podcast got the word out for the squares being collected at Purlescence.  Thank you!)

Yarn: Lisa Souza‘s Mardi Gras in merino, a gift from my Purlescence friends’ gift basket when I was so ill in January. Now I finally get to play with it.  My Carlsbad Scarf is a good pattern for showing off a busy colorway.

Thursday evening I ran off by myself to the once-a-month South Bay Knitters’ meeting at Green Planet Yarn down in Campbell.

Where half the room burst into clapping when I walked in, and the other half had no idea why I hadn’t been there since October.  I explained.  I got quite a few hugs, and Beth, the store owner, couldn’t get over how good I looked–the best she’d ever seen me, she said.

But I didn’t buy her rosewood needles over there that were calling to me.  I was trying to be frugal. (We won’t mention that silk cashmere  that did come home.)

Now, the last time that Stephanie Pearl-McPhee was in northern California, Jasmin and (formerly) no-blog Rachel (go see her new dress!) and I road-tripped together to see her. I took my knitting project and a backup, just in case; it was going to be a long day.

The bag with that backup had in it my pair of Holz and Stein rosewood size 5.5 mm (US 9) I’d used for all the size 9 projects in my book.  It was a particularly beautiful pair of needles, made from the leftover wood from making musical instruments,  a needle not sold in the US anymore, and that particular pair had been much loved for many years.

And I never saw it again.

It still hurts.

There was a pair of Destiny rosewood size 8s from Vietnam at Green Planet.  They had a beautiful grain, but the tips and joins weren’t quite what I’m used to.  And they just weren’t Holz and Stein.  As if I could ever replace that one pair anyway.  I passed on the idea.

Coming home, it having been a long and very busy day, I found myself suddenly almost doubling over in pain and nausea–only for about ten seconds, but it was a complete throwback that told me to definitely take it easy.

So of course today, feeling well and having an hour to myself, because I could and in reaction to that episode, WHILE I could, (after all, you never know), I ran back to that shop to buy those needles.  I did like the grain.  I’m going to at least give them a try.

Where Beth again couldn’t get over just how very well I looked.  And you know?  I realized on my way home, it’s a comfort to be told that.  Her delight may have been the biggest reason of all why I decided to try out her needles and made the trip back down there.  Because now I will always associate them with her caring.

That’s both an exclamation of delight and a note to self. 

Meantime, I was knitting something subdued and quiet and…suddenly I felt like, color. I need color! I put the one project aside and grabbed the Lisa Souza’s Mardi Gras merino that had come in the get-well basket from my Purlescence knit-night friends in January.  I’ve started it in the Carlsbad scarf, a simple pattern that is good for showing off an extravagant color display like this.

This is the yarn that, while I was in the hospital, I kept thinking how good it would look on that day’s nurse. Then the next one. And the next one.

There’s enough yarn for two scarves, and it’s a total toss-up where they’ll land, but at least this one will go to Stanford Hospital.

(Meantime, this Hercules amaryllis opened today, one of the bulbs Dad gave me this past Christmas.)

Sam flew home last night; Mom flew back in this morning.  My family’s taking good care of me for a little while longer.

Mom and I went to Purlescence’s Knit Night tonight, where I cast on my new Casbah yarn, started to knit, looked at it funny a moment, counted about forty-leven times, started another row, stopped, took it back off the needle, frogged, chatted, cast on, and started to knit again–but mostly we just chatted. (Hence the frogging.)  People time!  And we all flirted shamelessly with Meg’s cute baby.  When someone I didn’t know complimented my shawl and asked if I’d made it, I proudly told her, no, Mary did.

On our way out the door, Nathania told me, Hang on a second–and handed me this  lovely get-well card card from Michelle in Ohio and this cool little tote by Debbie R that would have been perfect tonight for my small project and many a doctor’s waiting room.

Good to be out and about, and spoiled on top of that!  Watch it you guys, I’ll be insufferable before you know it.

Thank you everybody for the support over yesterday’s post.

Meantime, Purlescence sent out an email today: three boxes of Casbah yarn had just arrived from Handmaiden.  A flurry of emails came in almost immediately via their Yahoo group: save me some in Forest! Don’t sell it all before my meetings are over! I wish I could get there! And the like.

Sam and I went over there, and then I added to the messages my, Hey, Jasmin, I left you a little; she responded that she got some already, her preciousssssss…

Actually, I just bought one skein.  Kevin wound it up for me as I explained to him that if I bought two, I’d have to save it for a shawl, but just one, it would get knitted up quickly into a scarf without fretting over too much planning. He laughed.  But you see, it’s also that I was being nice and not depleting the stock in the first two hours.

Meantime, with Sam leaving tonight, I had to get a picture to show off the baby plum tree that she thought of and instigated from afar and got her brother and sister to plant for me for Mother’s Day last year.  It’s just starting to bloom, and look at all those flowers already!  And the snails didn’t eat the blossoms, like they like to do on my Fuji apple; I’m assuming that’s because I put a copper wire on the ground loosely around the trunk last summer.

The Fuji’s still dormant for just a little longer and I think I’d better go get me more copper wire.

(Oh, and by the way, in case anybody’s curious, this is the only day of the year that is a command.)

When I was at Purlescence Thursday night, I showed them some of the yarns and the hat and Jasmin’s cashmere mitts that they’d all gifted me with in a big basket left on my doorstep right before I went into the hospital.  Jasmin’s homegrown oranges were at the bottom.

I told them that with those yarns, they’d given me hope and a sense of looking to the future while things were at their worst: because with each new nurse that came into my hospital room, I would think, ooh, (formerly) No-Blog-Rachel’s Dream Baby would look so good on her!  The Moobui would look so good on that one! Ooh, Mari’s Lisa Souza yarn would be perfect for me to knit for her!

I had over 40 nurses, and most of them I would knit for in a heartbeat and I dearly wanted to.  More than I could ever do what I wish I could do for them.

But that sense of anticipation, that desire to knit for them to tell them thank you, having yarn that was shared with me to make me feel better with and wanting to use it to pass the goodwill along–it did make me feel better. It helped get me through it all.

And I told each nurse thank you every chance I got. That much, at least, I could reliably do.

(Yeah, the cameras are still hiding out under the medical supplies or some such. Organizing is for a little later in the process.)

Mom called; I hadn’t posted yet today and she was concerned that I was doing okay.  (Yeah, Mom, I’m outing you, sorry.)  Message heard! Alive and posting!  Heh.

I wanted to go to Purlescence’s Knit Night last night, to the point that I deliberately kind of backed myself into it by calling them and saying I hoped to, and that if anyone happened to show up sick could they let me know so I could stay away?

When they heard my voice on the phone–actually, I had to identify myself, my voice is still raspy from that NG tube–the whole yarn store sent up a cheer.

That did it. I was going.

But by 7:30 I was also popping a hydrocodone to get me through it, and I avoid those and almost never take them till bedtime.  Oh well. I needed it.  My daughter, who I’ll call here by her nickname of Sam even though I obnoxiously still call her by her real name in person, did the driving.

We were about two blocks from home when she offered to turn around. I considered, and then said, no, let’s just go.  And go we did.

I stumbled in that yarn store door and into the arms and tears of my friends.  There were quite a few tears of mine going, too.  And then–

You remember Mary?  The one who made it so I could take back the shawl in the window and ship it to the woman whose husband had a brain tumor?

She handed me a circular lace shawl, warm enough for a lap robe as needed, absolutely exquisite.  I was blown away.  Later, home again, I laid it out across the top of the couch so it would again make my day this morning when I came out and saw it, and it did.  It’s gorgeous.  It’s Mary. It’s love made tangible.

Mary had lately had a project with a deadline, and she told me this other project–my shawl–nevertheless kept insisting it must go first. She couldn’t make herself get going on the deadline one till this other demanding one was satisfied and done; it just insisted it of her. And I was stunned.  And stunned that she must have gotten it done so fast. Stunned that I’d felt I needed to go that night, whether I was up to it or not, and here the shawl was and here she was and here I was and wow.

Now, Mary, I want to tell you the outcome of that and of seeing and hugging all of you. I went home with a sense of lightness that had been too long missing.  That was the first time in two months I had been in any building or room that was not my home, Stanford Hospital, or my medical clinic (and almost exclusively Urgent Care there).  Now I had been among friends.  I had taken a risk, I had stepped out to see if my body could handle an outing, and I had been treasured and loved and wrapped in comfort.

Last night, for the first time in two months, I was able to roll over in bed. By myself.  All the way from one side to the other.  This sounds silly, but I can’t tell you how huge it was.  I felt like I had crossed some invisible line: invalid, that side.  Starting to not be an invalid, that side.  And I was there.

The silly thing is I can’t find my camera nor can I find the one Kelli gifted me with a few days before I went into the hospital–I feel like Rip Van Winkle here.  They’re there somewhere, right in plain sight somewhere.

But Mom, that’s why I hadn’t posted yet. I have this exquisite shawl I want to show off and no pictures!

Yet.

We got the unwanted message: Commuknity in San Jose was closing.  As in, really closing: their space would be available Jan. 1.

They had been waiting over a month for me to pick up two of my shawls they’d had for a show, and they’re further away than I had been able to muster the energy to drive to and I just hadn’t done it yet.  But I knew they needed to have one less thing to worry about and to have to keep track of under the circumstances.  So.

Richard took me down there today; I needed to be up to it, so that was that and we simply went.  Gail and Tom, the owners, happened to be right at the inner doors at the moment we walked in the outer ones (there’s a little alcove between), and greeted us with much emotion. Gail said, “I’ll go get your shawls” before I even said anything, allowing me to plop gratefully into a chair in the alcove.    I looked at the very long line of buyers and knew I could never make it that long, much though I would have loved to have given one last show of support to my friends, and when someone walked in the outer door, stopped, and coughed right at me, having utterly no idea what she had just done, that sealed that.  No way.  Too risky.  I had to get out of that exposure.

But not before Gail and I threw our arms around each other with her worrying about me and me sorry she was losing her yarn shop they’d poured heart and soul into.  It had been a well-named store.  Crum.

We were driving back up the freeway heading for home and Richard was saying how, chemo and Crohn’s flare or not, he felt cabin fever would get to me and that he needed to take me places at least on weekends till I was back to getting out and about on my own.  I told him I was wanting to knit a hat, and that after four years of knitting shawls and using lace and fingering weight and baby alpaca, I just didn’t have wool in worsted weight in the colors and softness I wanted.  And, I added–that’s the exit to Purlescence, by the way.  He swung immediately over to the offramp and to Purlescence we went.

Where nobody was sick.  Where we happened to catch the place at an unusually quiet moment.  Where my friend Mary happened to come in just then in need of a hug, and Kevin and Sandi got one too for good measure and Kay helped me find the superwash Cascade.

Where I supported my local yarn store, and there will now indeed be a hat.

Yesterday was the signing at Kaleidoscope Yarns in Essex Junction; I’ll add pictures in here when I get home.  My fellow bloggers came: Karin drove all the way from Albany, NY; Paula came from Massachusetts; Amanda and her husband and son and then Sue, who sometimes sends me New Hampshire pictures since we used to live there, came from New Hampshire; Joyce was missed; Kristine and Joan came from closer by, and my mind is being terribly ungracious and blanking on someone–I’m sorry!  Jill hosted us with warm smiles and homemade bread and cookies.  Books were signed, stories were swapped, and a great time was had by all.  I would add links if I knew how to open a second window on my daughter’s Mac.

It’s humbling in the extreme to have people–old online friends, to be sure, but still–take that kind of driving time and make that kind of effort to come to let us meet each other in person. I hope I lived up to their expectations, while feeling like, no, I really can’t do anything as wonderful at all as they did by comparison; but I am so, so grateful they did.  Thank you everybody, and thank you, Jill.  

Off to tour the Ben and Jerry’s plant in a few minutes…

 

My old Knitlist friend Soozie works at Inez’s Stitchery in Kensington, maybe a half mile from my in-laws’ house and yet I had never been; you have to go up a long flight of stairs, and I hadn’t really been up to that the last few times home.

This time I went.  And of course Soozie wasn’t there, but the woman I met (forgive me for blanking on your name) was a sweetheart.  Then around the corner to the post office: a shawl needing mailing that was ready to go.  Done.

Then I called Karen, she came by, grabbed me, and we went to Swain’s Lock, our usual haunt at the Canal; we got there about 4:30 and walked a ways down the towpath and back.  It was hard to remember not to go too far; I do love that place.  There was not another soul in sight on that path.

Coming back, there were white swans glowing in the fading daylight in the quieter waters between the near bank of the Potomac and an island; I wondered at first if they were snowy egrets like mine near the San Francisco Bay, so we walked to the river’s edge to see more clearly.  Karen had called it from the start.  Swans.  One languidly reached down into the waters for a little dinner.  Glorious.

The flash announced that my camera had an ego that was just sure it could capture the scene.  Me, I’m not so sure.  Like my email at my main address, it will just have to wait till I get home next Monday before I’ll be able to see it.  (That’s in case anybody’s wondering why I’m not answering something you sent; sorry about that.)

We went to where I’d fallen through a canoe.  The last shards had long since floated out to sea.  I looked at that embankment and went, I stepped off THAT?  *THAT*?! (Oh, yes, it was definitely the place.)  My stars.  No wonder you were shaking your head, Karen!

I think she quite enjoyed my disbelief.

Occasional-commenter Laura came by this morning, and the three of us had a grand reunion.

Laura was a college friend of ours; she was the roommate of my husband’s cousin, and then her cousin married my sister.  Small world.  She grew up on the opposite bank of the Potomac from us, quite nearby as the Baltimore Oriole flies.  We ran into her randomly in Oakland one day about fifteen years ago and have stayed in touch ever since.  She and her family moved back home to Virginia a few years ago.

She surprised me with a copy–which she signed for me–of her delightful new children’s book, “Mrs. Muddle’s Holidays.”  Cool!  Thank you!

Later in the afternoon, my knitting friend Robin, who lives in my hometown and whose brother lives a mile from me in California, came by.  She took me over to Woolwinders, a LYS in Rockville where they had a Michelle shawl up on display. Cool!

A woman came in, Tina, who was gobsmacked by my Kaffe Fassett coat and asked and tried it on and twirled around in it.  She ran to the mirror, telling me how much she’d been wanting to make a Kaffe Fassett, scrunching it up to her face in sheer joy that such a thing of so much color existed.  I have to say, that coat looked much better on her than me–but not enough to get me to let her keep it, much though she would have loved that.  Then she found out who I was, and her excitement over that–she’d been checking my book out of the library over and over and had decided she simply had to buy it, and wow, here I was!  On a day she never ever comes in to the store, she said, but today she did, and she was just so ecstatic over the whole thing.

Let me tell you, I would happily spend the hundreds and hundreds of hours it took and write another book just for moments like the ones she gifted me with.  Many thanks, Tina!  And to Robin for letting it happen.

And to Laura for her own book and for staying friends through the years and the distances.

Tina twirled and hugged the coat one more time–and another and another–before she let us go.

Yeah, I’d say definitely yes, new friends are really cool too.

1. Stitches East, Saturday, Nov 8th, Lisa Souza’s booth, 2:00.  Lisa had 14 copies left, last I heard, and last year, every single vendor at Stitches East that sold my book had sold out by about noon on Saturday.  I have to tell you, as an author, it was very gratifying to see empty space where the copies had been, in between stacks of other books still there, booth after booth, although my regrets very much for the people who couldn’t find a copy and were disappointed.  If you have a copy already, you might want to bring it.  My plan is to be at the market all day (all afternoon, at least; we’ll see how I do with the jetlag) on Friday and Saturday.  Next week!

2. Kaleidoscope Yarns, Essex Junction, Vermont, 1:00 Friday, Nov 14th. Feel free to buy one there or bring your own. Let’s hope for no snow that day. They currently have it on sale at 20% off and will hold your order for me to sign for you if you’d like.

3. Knitpicks.com is selling my book at 40% off, $14.97 a copy and the potential for free shipping, through this Friday, Oct. 31st.  Yesterday they had it on backorder, but today it’s in stock and ready to go.

Thank you!