I was in the middle of working on a post, and I’ll get back to it, and I’m throwing a gratuitous photo into this one of a Wanda’s Flowers shawl from “Wrapped in Comfort” because ’tis the season and it’s a really great book and I need people to buy lots of copies and you’ll love the stories and the shawls in it if you do, etc etc…

But I just had to laugh: the editor of Wired magazine spoke to a Silicon Valley group yesterday and talked about some of the latest and greatest high-tech stuff, and one item thrown out there had no context given to it–just the idea of it was apparently expected to excite the audience into thinking, oooh, cool!

And I just have to ask: who thought of this. Who would buy this.  WHY?  An electric mascara applicator.

To paint eyelashes on your VW Bug to make it cuter, or what?

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…

 

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.

Okay, today I’m remembering to take my camera, even if I can’t make use of it yet.

I wonder if anyone else noticed–that last post, I finished writing it, got up from the computer, and it hit me almost immediately that that second to last paragraph was a perfect metaphor for the hopes of people around the world for how the United States will do after Tuesday’s results.

Anyway, back to yarn. I got some to play with, oh definitely, but no way to show them that I know how to do on this computer.  I did quite enjoy one woman seeing a copy of “Wrapped in Comfort” on my lap and exclaiming, “Oh, I LOVE that book!” Karen, wearing the large Water Turtles shawl in its pages and standing next to me, answered, “She wrote the book!”

The woman’s delighted exclamations made all three years of effort worth it just in that moment, I tell you.

I heard recently from someone who didn’t quite see what my shawls were about; she thought that when I said circular, I was just referring to the needles used to knit them.  I realized I hadn’t really shown much of my work lately.  So I thought I’d show off some old pictures and try to show the v-neck styling a little better.

The red is the Peace shawl for my friend Johnna. The lilac is the Bigfoot shawl, done in Jade Sapphire’s 4-ply Cashmere; this yarn is about double the weight of the original,  Frog Tree laceweight, but it was exactly the color I was looking for at the time, and the right color and a super soft cashmere–it was hard to go wrong. Somehow this photo seems to me like a Niagara Falls of stitches.

Then we’ve got the Constance, the picture cropped to fit into the blog.  Done in two strands of fine laceweight together, one a silk, one Misti baby alpaca.

Next up is the Michelle shawl, with about 2/3 of it showing, done in a handdyed silk.

Next we have the Wanda’s Flowers shawl, which, like the Constance, is one of the narrower shawls in “Wrapped in Comfort,” done here in one skein of Lisa Souza‘s handdyed sportweight baby alpaca and easily adaptable to heavier yarns.

Next up is Kathy’s Clover Chain shawl in baby alpaca I dyed to match the clovers she and I used to string together. Note the shadow of the amaryllis in the background.

And then, since I can’t wait for my favorite flowers to start blooming again, I’m borrowing one of last season’s pictures in anticipation. Note how the leaf is waving hi.

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!

I showed this awhile ago in its earlier stages.  There was a lull in the knitting with that flu bug.  But now it’s done, blocked, the ends run in, and ready to go.

I wanted a one-off, something unique but familiar.  So I knitted the Kathy shawl through the yoke and from there in the Nina pattern, and I really like how they played together.

I love the arbors in Nina’s done in red: they remind me of the climbing bougainvillea that so surprised me when we arrived in California in March ’87.  We were coming from New Hampshire, where it had been snowing and snowing and SNOWING and snowing, five and a half feet’s worth in 17 days after a whole winter of the stuff.   The kicker was when my little girl wanted to play on the swingset: I looked out the window from the second story and challenged her wryly, “Try to find it first.” You could just make out the top bar.

Then we arrived here where it was in the middle of springtime, with these gorgeous flowers skipping around fences everywhere in cheerful red and bright fuschia, just an explosion of nature singing “I feel pretty!”

Which, you know, is actually how I’m hoping the recipient will feel when she puts this on.

Concert scarf pattern, shawl-ified.  Yarn by Tina.  Swirl effect by Nathania.  Smiles by little Ellie to everybody she can see to wave hi at (unless you lean in too close, in which case she wants her mommy only, which is totally normal at nine months).

Nathania’s outfit and the print in Ellie’s are the same shade of lavendar, and it always cracks me up: they always match. Just like I used to dress my babies in clothes the same colors as the ones I had on that day, every day, without noticing for the longest time that I was doing that.  Even after I did notice, still, most often I’d be halfway through the morning before I would realize that I’d done it again.  It was as normal and natural to do as singing.  Or cracking bad puns.

(Edited to add the answer to Joyce’s question up here: the Concert Scarf is a 12+6 lace pattern +6 edge stitches. I started the (where are my notes I was sure I wrote which one down) one of the shawls in “Wrapped in Comfort” that had a 6+1 lace pattern in the yoke, and then since 12+6+6=24, fudged it by I think I added one stitch to each edge.  I did the edges of the Concert Scarf pattern at the beginning and ending of each row, with the repeating part over and over between.  Nathania and her husband met in a singing group, so I wanted that pattern in her shawl.)

Hmm. My usual take on shawl lengths is that the heavier the yarn, the longer it ought to be knitted to come off feeling like the proportions are right.  This is a fingering weight baby alpaca (what else?)  It seems to be about 20″, maybe 21″ long; I’ll know after it’s blocked.  Each repeat is 3 1/2″, and I’m thinking one more repeat.  If I left it as is, it would come out like how the pink Julia shawl looks on the model in “Wrapped in Comfort.”

I’m thinking yes, one more repeat. I would put it onto two circular needles to hold the stitches over a greater length, dampen it down and let it dry to get a more precise measurement before stopping, but I have lost my other pair of size 9 Holz and Steins.  Let me repeat that.  I lost my Holz and Steins.  The rosewood 32″ circs I knit every size-9-needle shawl in my book on.  The not-sold-in-the-US-anymore, best-tipped, best needles on the (not on the) market, made from leftover wood from making musical instruments, irreplaceable Holz and Steins. The last time I definitely remember seeing them, I packed them in my knitting bag along with an extra ball of yarn to go hear Stephanie, just in case I should run out of my Sea Silk project.  (Fat chance, especially with my then-sore hand, but knitters understand.  That extra ball of yarn happened to weigh a pound.  Of baby alpaca.  Of course.)

I am writing about my acute sense of loss in the hopes that Murphy will smack me upside the head and instantly taunt me by finding them.

Meantime, I thank you all for the respectful discourse on my Why Vote post.  I photo’d our holly bush and captioned it “prickly subject,” and I’m pleased and relieved at the reception the post has gotten, even from those who quite disagree with me.  I think I’m going to keep it to that one entry and just let the comments continue, should anyone feel so inclined.

I am knitting again: one row across, rest.  The hand’s doing reasonably well.  What is coming off my needles as I go is so compelling to me that it’s hard to make myself take those breaks.

One of the things I did in Wrapped in Comfort was to give the stitch count for each lace pattern within each shawl, so you could swap out other ones if you want to just use the pattern as a template, or so you could do so many repeats across and make a scarf for a faster project to test-drive that lace pattern.  What I’m doing right now, just because I was curious how it would play out, is, I did the Kathy’s Clover shawl through the yoke. That’s a 10+1.  Did the increase row.  Then I flipped the page to Nina’s Ann Arbor; that’s a 20+1, and 381 for the Kathy divides into 20+1 with no group of ten left dragging.  It worked.  This also gets me a slightly smaller-around finished product than if I’d just done the Nina’s, 381 stitches vs 421.

My record is two of these shawls in a week.  One is a more leisurely pace. We’ll see how well I keep it up, but fingering weight yarn and size 9s, it really won’t take long.

(Edited to add: Knitpicks has books on sale, and you can get it there for cheaper than the used copies on Amazon.  Just sayin’.)

Thank you so much to everybody for all your support and kind words.  They will be monitoring Michelle’s counts carefully; she’s doing fine.  And Richard feels good about how he did on that test.

We went!  Gigi and Jasmin aka The Knitmore Girls and No-Blog-Rachel and I carpooled up to Santa Rosa to see Stephanie. We left early and came home late and had a blast.

Stephanie gave her talk; the bookstore sat me where I could lipread, which was wonderful, but I’m afraid I still missed far too much.  But what I did hear was thoughtful, inspiring, insightful, and very, very funny.  I love that one of our own got Barack Obama to hold her sock on her needles.

Stephanie announced it was time now to sign books–and then instead, came around the table and first threw her arms around me.  Then she turned back around the table again to her seat and started, pre-boarders first.  We hung back and visited.  When it was my turn, she asked me to grab my book for her picture to be taken with, and I went for hers while my friends went, No, she means yours, silly!  I’m not convinced, but either way, look what picture I got!  I had to crop it way down to get WordPress to take it.  Hmm.  Given a choice between slicing her off at the forehead or slicing my book, um, yeah, I don’t think that would be the help with her hair she was talking about.

Laura came!  She told me she always keeps spare needles and yarn at the hospital where she works, just because, well, you never know, right?  (I see every knitter reading this nodding yes.)  She’d recently had a patient who’d been brought in under emergency circumstances, no chance to pack, whom she was talking to–and…

…Hang on a second.  Stephanie, in her talk, mentioned the satisfaction of knitting a particularly nice pair of socks while at the same time knowing that most of it was going to spend its life unseen inside some shoes.  I’ve got an answer to that: Laura’s patient saw a flash of color as Laura was leaving the room, and called out after her, hoping Laura would hear. She did.

Only another knitter would have instantly realized that those were handknit socks.  Only another knitter would have realized that that means either Laura was a knitter, or Laura was dear enough to a knitter for that level of effort and that if so, that knitter also knew Laura would appreciate them.  (Laura had made them.)  Only another knitter, or perhaps someone deemed worthy to be knitted for, would get how dire the patient’s need was.  Yarn!  Oh, please, anything, do you have any?  Laura ran down the hall and got her size 7s and some Encore and gave her patient a promise of more in that dyelot as needed.

Now that’s my kind of medical insurance.

(Hey, Jasmin–I wasn’t really kinnearing you. I was just being a klutz as I turned off the camera, and guffawed when I saw the result.)

I will be at Copperfield Books in Santa Rosa tomorrow to see Stephanie, and this time we’re not getting caught in traffic on the way.

I will be signing books, hanging out, and generally making a cheerful nuisance of myself at Kaleidoscope Yarns in Essex Junction, Vermont, on Friday, Nov. 14th, starting at 1:00 pm, and signing any copies on order as well as for those there in person.

Twenty-one years ago, after our moving van got done unloading our belongings, billing for 3333 miles for the trip from New Hampshire (a memorable number, that), the elderly retiree across the street sauntered over to introduce himself by way of saying, “I saw them taking a snow shovel off that truck.  Whaddya think you’re gonna need THAT here for?”

He was right. It made a lousy spade for our new Californian garden, and I know because I did try it once because that’s all I had. I figured, well, if it ever does snow, I’ll rent the thing out for a hundred bucks an hour.  Not a snowplow in hundreds of miles, I’ll make a killing.

My husband’s offer letter on the job here promised, in writing, “No home delivery of snow.”

I could get all wistful and say I miss real weather and that I’d be hoping to make snow angels for nostalgia’s sake while we’re back in New England, but you know?  The last time I said any such thing about visiting the East Coast, my flight was the last one allowed down at Dulles airport–five minutes ahead of the tornado that likewise touched down at Dulles airport, and we skidded sideways for a moment there on the runway.

Boring weather isn’t so bad after all.

Besides.  I wear Birkis now.  Snow angels in Birkenstocks is just too Calif—well, now, wait a minute, this IS Vermont we’re talking about…

I’ve done a number of booksignings around here where people knew me well already and it mostly seemed an excuse for friends to come see each other, where I didn’t do the typical author read-from-the-book thing; it would have meant interrupting lots of conversations to get started and people were clearly having a fine time already, which to me is the point of any get-together.  So we kept it informal.

Last night at Green Planet (where I utterly forgot to pull out my camera, this is an older photo), Beth introduced me and it was a more formal set-up this time. I both keenly enjoyed it and felt I rather flubbed it; I tripped over myself, forgot names, was a bit of a ditz…but I have to say that it was definitely great fun.  With my deafness, I kind of wanted to ask Beth afterwards whether the questions asked and my answers had had connections to each other often enough.  Heh.

Beth had draped a shawl across the back of each chair and encouraged people to try them on.  One woman asked, when I said I’d knitted one shawl for a friend and then a duplicate for the publisher, over and over, “How do I get to be your friend?”  I was totally charmed, and thought, well, hon, that was a real good start.  And what was your name again?…

Except, today, don’t expect anything any too soon.  I hit my left hand on the edge of the metal towel rack on the shower door this morning, hard.  I’m usually pretty impervious to pain, but wow.  The doctor told me to gently exercise my hand, demonstrating hand-moving motions, and I immediately chirped hopefully, “Knitting?” She laughed; she got it.  She has knitters in her family.  She allowed as how it would set back my recovery if I did too much of it, and she will call me with the x-ray results when we find out if I broke it or not.

I finished it!  Maybe.

Sometimes you just go back to old favorites: this is the Michelle shawl from “Wrapped in Comfort.” Curious–I did one fewer half-repeat in the main body than in the one in the book, and the effect with the edging came out completely different.  In the book, the edging and the triangles above it form a perfect diamond and the lines are flowing in a connected continuation.  Here, the edging is set apart, more distinct from the body.  Such a small change, and yet it’s so different, and it totally fascinates me.

Here’s what the shawl looked like last night and this morning. I’m debating re-blocking it with my wires to sharpen the points or to rinse it down again and round it out instead.  Haven’t decided.  Baby alpaca is drapy by nature, silk tends to sag…but I do like points.

Stray thought: I never thought I’d see the day when I would totally agree with–Newt Gingrich. Wow. Thank you, Suburbancorrespondent, for the link re the $700 billion bailout idea: I do like my radio in closed captions.

The silk that Claudia dyed that Sandi gave is turning into a Michelle shawl; the second strand is Misti Alpaca laceweight from my stash and my dyepot.  The knitting started off a bit slowly, till my husband told me I was going to have to get me a ghostknitter.  I don’t *think* so!  Back to work!

I’m suddenly picturing Wall Street multimillionaire welfare kings being handed some needles and some Red Heart (got to be frugal, you know, yes, it has its uses, and no, guys, you don’t get qiviut this time) and told to chill awhile till something intelligent gets worked out.