One note in response to a comment the other day: handpaint yarns go well with simpler lace; lots of variations in the colors will visually overwhelm the stitch pattern. The Monterey shawl in my book is one that I would very much recommend a solid or near-solid-color yarn for. It is complicated enough to work without having the jellyfish look like they got put in the blender while you’re trying to piece them together.

You remember the Dr. Seuss story of Bartholemew Cubbins and his 100 hats? He kept taking his hat off to the king as protocol required, only to have an identical one appear on his head, over and over. Finally, as the count got close to 100, the hats started changing and becoming more and more unique and more fun to see what might be coming next.

I think every creative person can relate to that one. You have to put in the practice time before you can play the instrument like a pro, but then you can really take off with it. (I am remembering a neighbor mom, who, when I was a teenager, often hired me to babysit her 10-year-old while the kid practiced her violin and their poodle howled non-stop. Smart mom.) You don’t start off with the stradivarius. Although, the Julia shawl, for instance, while aimed at beginners, is a beautiful rendition of Chopsticks (not to mention a simple carry-around project for anybody).

I’m hitting the Cubbins factor, and have started branching out more. This one is a wedding present for a dear friend and his bride. I can’t wait to finish it and pull it through my ring, so I can go, tadaah: a wedding ring shawl! If by wild chance there’s any problem, then I’m glad my husband wears a size 12; no one said whose wedding ring it had to be, right? But I’m sure it’ll go through mine. And the bride’s, which is what matters for that oh cool! factor.

Almost done. I can’t wait!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Congratulations–you picked the hottest day on record in Washington, DC!”

“You’re marrying that Hyde boy?” (This from a sweet, elderly woman about 4’10.” The groom was 6’8″.) “I’ve looked up to him for a long time!”

(Spoken in a grinning aside to the groom by a friend of his grandparents:) “I unlocked the back door on the north stairs. Got it? The North. Stairs. You can bolt.”

My father-in-law and my husband each have one crummy tooth that has cycled through numerous crowns. Dad Hyde is the practical sort, and hey, he’d paid for that gold, so he collected the ones that came out and always wanted to go create something out of them. Richard and I were students when we got married, with absolutely no money, so here was his dad’s chance. He melted them down and recast them and voila–our 20k wedding bands, done, at the time gold was hitting an all-time high of $360/ounce. (Our bands are silver now and so is our hair. Wait–I can just hear Richard reading this and guffawing, “Speak for yourself!” Can you hear me going, “You do too, look back here, if I stand on my tippy tippy toes I can see plenty of gray, trust me…”)

Today is June 27th, our 27th anniversary being in ’07, we created a family of six, and when I checked Amazon Saturday, I must have looked at just the right moment; their numbers tend to dance around a fair bit, but my “Wrapped in Comfort” book was listed as #2007 in their sales rankings. Somehow that coming together of numbers just pleases me, like a well-balanced lace pattern.

So my Richard gifted me with some superb hot cocoa mix today that a cafe in our downtown area sells, by a couple who owns the cafe and the plantation their cacao beans come from. Superb chocolate–with a connectedness.

Simple celebrations .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wrote in my book that some day I was going to have to knit me some kind of a penguin. At the booksigning at Karen’s, Nancy surprised me with an absolutely adorable felted penguin with a handspun scarf that she’d been working like mad on all week. She tells me I have to come up with the perfect name. Any ideas?…

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

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

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

See you Saturday!

I write this site to try to create a place of safety from the pressures of the world, a place where people can grab a chair, their knitting, if they like, and relax and find themselves among friends.

My book was released last Monday. By Friday evening Amazon had reverted to its “This title has not yet been released” page, at the same time some people were getting theirs–from Amazon. After there were a few posts of “Mine came!” on the lists, I got an email from a woman who had pre-ordered in March, after Amazon had told her it was not available yet, asking, did that mean she didn’t pre-order early enough in the line-up to get hers?!

I’m assuming Amazon assumed x percent of the pre-orders would be cancelled, didn’t stock enough to cover the initial demand, and simply ran out. It’s just knitting, after all, and really, how much interest could there be in that? And lace, at that.

You know what the largest user group of bloglines is? You got it. Knitters.

By yesterday Amazon was shipping again. Meantime, over the weekend, chapters.ca likewise posted it “temporarily unavailable to order” (maybe it got held up at Customs, let’s not be too full of myself) and a large online vendor of knitting supplies had, like Amazon, gone from shipping to “not yet been released.”

The funniest was a guy who was scalping copies at $52.

I dunno how word got out so well or how you all did this, but I have to tell you, you’ve been making me feel like a little kid on Christmas Eve. Thank you thank you thank you. I can only hope it lives up to your hope. I cannot tell you how wonderful it feels right now to be getting multiple reports from yarn store owners of opening up cases and selling out on the spot. Y’all don’t mind if I bask a bit, do you?

“On the cover of the Rolling Stone.”  (Everybody keeps asking me who the models are.   I should ask.  I don’t know.)

“Gonna buy five copies for my mother!”

I’ve been asked about booksignings.  The kickoff is to be at my friend Karen’s shop, The Rug and Yarn Hut in Campbell, CA, next Saturday, June 23; we’re scheduled there from 1-3.  I will be showing off shawls and talking about the book and reading some stories from it.  I will try really hard not to be  screamingly nervous on my first try at this author stuff, but if I open my mouth and absolutely nothing comes out, I’m sure my friend Nancy will jump forward and read it for me.  Thanks, Nancy.  Then, Commuknity, in downtown San Jose, 6:30 Thursday, June 28.  On June 30, Saturday, I’ll be at Marin Fiber Arts in San Rafael at 2 pm.  (I’m not sure yet how to post these in the sidebar, so I’m putting them here for now.)  Purlescence Yarns in Sunnyvale, CA, at purlescenceyarns.com , has offered to ship copies that I’ll inscribe for people who buy from them–they will start taking orders after their copies come in.

I’m planning on going to Stitches East in October, for that Friday and/or Saturday: my husband and I are from Maryland, and it gives us an excuse to go home for a visit.  Rhinebeck the week after is being debated.  I expect to be at TKGA in Oakland in September.

I have a huge request to make re booksigning events: I’m on permanent chemo and am extremely susceptible to catching anything, and anything that wakes up my immune system wakes it up to fight me.  So I’m asking that people err on the side of caution for me re colds and the like.  (I hate having to say that!)  Thanks.

Alright–on to the book!  (Hurry, hurry, mail system, get those copies out there!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

And a good time was had by all.

I was expecting my author’s advance copy today. The doorbell rang, I thought, oh good! But when I opened the door, instead, I found this:

I thought, Richard had flowers delivered for Mother’s Day? Huh. Well, that was nice of him (hmm). But then I read the tag: it was from my editors at Martingale, telling me congratulations on my book. Cool! Thank you!

What they didn’t know, was, the local florist they’d ordered it through was a car mechanic who loved flowers and started selling a few on the side; not your usual auto-repair-shop look. Gradually they took over and booted the cars out, and there you go. The guy is one of those really nice people that you hope does really well, so, having my flowers come from him just totally makes my day.

Eventually, the doorbell rang again:

And my son grabbed the camera and started snapping. And there you go. Thank you, Martingale!

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, on her well-loved yarnharlot.ca blog, asked today why publishers don’t often offer charts and text instructions both; was it cultural? The expenses involved?

The cost is a huge point; every page adds up. On the other hand, offering both greatly expands the audience, given that people tend to feel passionately about the method that they prefer.

When I first contacted Martingale Press, I told them upfront that I had visual memory damage, and that one of the effects of that was that my instructions were all going to be line-by-line; chart symbols were scrambled scribbles to my brain, but text, no problem. (To me, following line-by-line is like reading music, just moving the hands in another language.)

Martingale said sure, text is fine.

But after some time and some discussion, they felt they really did need to add charts, and that my instructions were short enough that they had the space. They asked Donna Druchunas, author of Arctic Lace and The Knitted Rug, if she would be willing to draw up those charts. She did. I will forever be grateful to her for that, and to be able to tell knitters that my “Wrapped in Comfort” book is accessible to both styles.

One more month and it’ll finally be out!