I will be signing books at Green Planet Yarn in Campbell, CA on Wednesday, Oct. 1, from 6:30-8 pm.

As always, you can order a copy from Purlescence in Sunnyvale, CA (not the yarn store by that name in England) and I will gladly come in and inscribe it during Thursday Knit Night.

I will be signing books at Stitches East at 2:00 at Lisa Souza’s booth on Saturday, Nov 8, in Baltimore, MD, and plan to be there at Stitches pretty much all day Friday and Saturday.

I will be in Burlington, VT the following week…and we shall see.

If anybody wants to come early, I’ll be at Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s booksigning next week in Santa Rosa, CA on Saturday, Oct 4th. That’s Stephanie’s show, not mine, but hey, I’ll be there; I’m afraid I can’t promise how long my carpool will stick around afterwards.

And oh my goodness–looking at my picture files, I find that the shawl that I was working on while waiting for Stephanie to speak last year was the one I surprised Tina at Blue Moon Fibers with. I had totally forgotten it was that one!

I wrote this draft and expected to be able to come home from knit night and gleefully hit Post!, and I’m going to anyway, but it was Nathania’s night off and she wasn’t there.  Kay called her at home saying I had something there at the shop for her; Nathania put it to a family vote, and not surprisingly, the whatever nebulous thing it might be got voted down.  Mom time is not to be tampered with.

I said to Kay a moment later, we should have told them there was homemade chocolate mousse cake waiting here for all of them.  Kay asked if I wanted to bring the shawl back tomorrow?  No?  It’s burning a hole through your pocket?

Oh, you betcha.  So I left it there for discovery in the morning, and since I took a wrong-time-of-day bad-lighting picture before I left, I’ve got one for this post, and Nathania will probably find out the details here first.  Here goes.

Nathania (scroll down to the second to last picture) went to go visit her friend Tina at Blue Moon Fiber Arts in Oregon recently and came back exclaiming over some of the new colorways Tina was about to put out, wishing she’d been able to bring some of them home.

Which led to some behind-the-scenes emailing and scheming.  I thought I’d given it away when I mentioned this Geisha yarn in Oma Desala had arrived, along with the Potomac colorway Tina had concocted for me to play with in memory of our childhood homes near each other’s on the Maryland side of the river.  But no.

At knit night last week, I pulled two shawls out of my bag to show Nathania: one was the gray, not yet gone to its recipient, the other, my Geisha yarn shawl from awhile ago, where I’d used the full skein to see how much length I could get out of it. It totally swamps me, but then, I’m a fairly small person.

Both of those were in a particular pattern, I told her, that I needed to test on various body sizes–would she be willing to try this one on for me?  Sure.

She dutifully went over to the mirror with the Geisha; yes, it’s long enough, yes, it’s wide enough. Very nice.  She handed it back to me and the old pang hit me hard that I had knit a shawl for Sandi, I had knit one for Chloe, the other two owners of Purlescence, but I had not knit one yet for her.  And she would have loved it if I had, but instead, here she was, handing the shawl back.  Ouch.

I had wanted to for quite some time, badly, but what to make and what to make it of just hadn’t come to me at all.  I had to wait to see and I didn’t know why and it bothered me.  I had been looking for a yarn for over a year that would speak to me–and all I could come up with is I just felt, no, it’s not time yet. Something’s missing.

Till she took that trip and Tina and I started talking behind her back.  What Nathania didn’t know was I was having her try on my shawl to know how long I should continue this one for her.

And I knew now. This wasn’t just for me. This wasn’t just for her. This was to bring Tina into the circle of this shawl, too, in happy anticipation and love in together creating something to make our friend happy.

And all those times I’d wondered what pattern I would ever knit for her: as soon as I had the right yarn ready to go, I just knew.  She and her husband had met in a singing group.  They are musicians.  And so, to celebrate two people I adore having found each other and having chosen to live happily ever after,  I started with the Michelle shawl, named for my own daughter and knitted here in celebration of her daughters, to the end of the yoke; from there, I switched to the Concert Scarf pattern, repeat after extra repeat across, to make a one-of-a-kind shawl but at the same time one that anybody with a copy of “Wrapped in Comfort” can follow. The only change is that you’ll need one fewer stitch in the increase row before the main body, and there you go.

I don’t usually put busy colorways with busy patterns, but here, it’s perfect: how they met and their love of music blends into the background of the overall fabric of their lives.  I’m really pleased with how this came out. And very gratified that, at last, I got to knit this shawl: to celebrate Nathania, for her close friend Tina’s sake, and to honor as well, with the pattern, the man who loves Nathania best of all and whom she loves best of all.

Hey, you guys: there’s some leftover chocolate mousse wheat-free anniversary cake waiting for you.

I got a note today from my son John, who is in Mississippi at the moment.

A year ago, the John who is the owner of Village Spinning and Weaving was selling silk yarn at TKGA that had been dyed by his local weaving group for fun for him.  I exclaimed over the price, and he grinned that yes, he’d gotten a very good deal on it.

I knitted up the one hank I bought into a Michelle shawl.  Weighing how many grams the ball was shrinking per row, I was able to figure out how long I could make it before I had to start in on the bottom edging.  I ended up with a shawl that was good for someone about my size but not a whole lot bigger.  I had not a clue who I was knitting it for; it was more like, well, silk is like type O negative blood: pretty universally give-able, allergies-wise.

The finished shawl has been sitting there quietly off in a corner for months, patiently waiting its turn. I’ve wondered who on earth it was for.  I had to wait for the moment that would tell me.

Our youngest headed off on a mission for the Mormon Church in December. They could have called him to anywhere in the world; they sent him to the one headquartered in Mississippi. (He came out okay in the hurricanes; thanks.)

I got a note from him today, telling me about a woman he’d met who has MS and whose husband is dying.  I can only imagine what she’s going through.  He told me he’d felt prompted to say something to her that had brought her great comfort, and he wanted me to know that it was all my fault: he reminded me of something I’d once said to him that I don’t even remember saying, that he’d passed on to her, about not being in fear and about the power of love and faith in our lives.  It had made all the difference.  He told me he felt that that moment was why he’d been supposed to come to Mississippi.

And then he just happened to mention that oh, by the way, Mom, she’s not a very big person, she’s about your size, and her favorite color is bright royal blue, and, like, maybe, you wouldn’t mind knitting a shawl for her, would you? She could really use to have something comforting like that to wrap around her right now.

I think this one will do.  And I think other-John’s weaving group would like to know what one of their hanks of yarn is going to, so I’m linking to his shop so the word gets around.

(Edited to add: here’s a better picture of it, though it’s a bit darker here than in real life. I beat the post office closing time by ten minutes.  It is on its way, and I hope it helps in the small way I can from way over here.)

Having a project I’ve been putting heart and soul into but I can’t quite blog yet, and feeling a bit antsy for a little more knitting around here, I thought I’d show off my daughter Michelle’s shawl.  I have most of the fullness arranged across the back in this picture, trying to show the pattern a bit better; it is wide and sweeping and drapey and gloriously shiny and soft.  It’s a simple pattern to work and took two skeins of Sea Silk.

When my tech editor for “Wrapped in Comfort” pulled this shawl out of its bag, she immediately emailed to ask if I’d be interested in selling it to her.  Given that she could certainly knit one, too, that was a huge compliment!  And one I’ve been grateful for ever since (not to mention, I’m claiming bragging rights on it for life. Thank you, Donna!)

I am heading up to Marin Fiber Arts in San Rafael shortly, hoping to be there noon or a little after; I have a knitting friend from my hometown who’s visiting in the North Bay, and Nina of “Wrapped” fame and I figured saying hi to Warren, the LYSO, whom RobinM of the comments and I adore, is a great way to get together while RobinM is here.  In case anybody up around there wants their copy signed.  If you can, come!

Technical stuff today.

Joansie asked how long it takes to make one of my shawls.  Depends on how often you do what I did last night.

But if you’re talking about one of the designs already tried, tested, proofed, printed, and out there?  Between, I’d say, about 12 and 25 hours, depending on length and stitch count; the faster-version Julia, 241 stitches,  with a short length, like I did with one skein of Casbah from Mary’s ball, totally feels like instant gratification.  (Use a bigger yarn and needles or a bigger pattern and a wider neckline by casting on at row 2 for a larger person.)  The larger Water Turtles pattern, which reaches 481 stitches, would take the longest of my patterns out there so far.  That would be a good one for doing with Jaggerspun Zephyr laceweight and size 6 needles (at my loose gauge) but again, if you use that fine a yarn, for big person or small, I’d start at row 2.

Purlescence got a new shipment of Camelspin in from Handmaiden.  Mine!  And away we go.

I love the way the frog-faced gladiolus is waving its hands as it talks.

I’ve never been quite sure what to do with this one.  It’s a fair bit brighter yellow, pink and green with a little blue in real life, with the yellow fairly dominant.  (If you embiggen it the colors come out truer.)  The yarn is Fleece Artist’s Merino 2/6 in Sorbetto, machine washable, totally practical for, say, a mom with small children to try to keep up with, and at the time I got it, I didn’t think I could do anything shawl-ish with one 350m skein of sock yarn.  Now I know I can, but this was already knitted by then.  I used the lace pattern in the main body of the Michelle shawl, six repeats across with one extra stitch at each side, and got a nice length out of it.  (Cast on 39 on size 6mm needles, American size 10…)  The eye is more pleased with patterns in odd numbers, but this was visually busy enough that one would never casually notice that it was done in an even number of repeats.  It’s a good use of the yarn; it made a nice scarf for wrapping multiple times around the neck to keep out the cold.

Of which, however, there is not a whole lot in northern California.  A short wrap to tie in front against the chilly fog would be much more the thing for around here, and I’ve long debated frogging this and reknitting it.

Except it’s a perfectly nice scarf and there’s no good-enough reason to waste the effort.  Yarn can always be replaced with more.  Time cannot ever.

It’ll find its rightful home in its rightful time.

Laura, you got it.  The Julia.  It’s in the book all ready to go for you, and you can do your choice of yarn types/sizes in two gauges/sizes.  The whole thing is six stitches long, repeated forever. (I know–you said counting to four was your limit.  Heh. I don’t think you have to count with this one, though, so it’s all good.)  Purl straight across the back every time.  If you want to, when the boys are in bed, you can do the zig zaggy optional bottom edge.  Or not.  Me, I finally bought a Weight Watchers scale so I could measure grams so that I could figure out how much yarn I was using per row and thus when to start into the bottom edging and have enough if I knew I was running short.  (Note the lack of bottom edging on this one.  I like the seashell effect of leaving it plain, too.)

The larger-stitch-count Julia, by the way, is the pattern I used for the Knitpicks merino yarn you dyed and totally surprised me with at TKGA a year ago.  It’s a little thicker than most fingering weights I use, and this is how it looks knitted up on my size 9 (5.5mm) needles.  Funny that you should ask for plain and simple, and, hey, looky what I knitted last fall!

Oops, I need to snip that end in back.

One time when we had an earthquake about the size of yesterday’s, I was at the funeral of a 95-year-old friend and the bench I was sitting on suddenly jolted upwards hard while the chandeliers were swinging wildly overhead. I figured it was Al waving goodbye–I could just picture him laughing.  (And I was grateful for California earthquake codes.)

Thank you to those who’ve been checking up on us, but no, we’re an eight-hour drive north of where yesterday’s quake was.  You know why the US Geological Survey folks put earthquake predictions in 30-year increments?  Because 30 years is the length of the average mortgage.  They want people to realize that it will happen in their time–and we’ve definitely had a few, but nothing worse than superficial cracks in the chimney grout so far at our house.  The kid across the street can you tell you, though, about being swooshed out of his swimming pool during the 7.1 Loma Prieta.  Well, no, wait–after that one, our kitchen cabinet doors in a modern-circa-1950’s sliding style fell down at our heads rather than slid across every time we tried to open them: a good incentive to remodel.  Which we did.

Meantime.  This is the Constance shawl from Wrapped in Comfort, with a slight modification in the yoke pattern: I changed one pattern row from k1 *yo k1 sl1-k2tog-psso k1 yo k1, to a pattern row of, *k1, yo, sl1-k2tog-psso, yo, k2.  In other words, I switched places on the yarnovers and single stitches next to the double decreases–not a big difference, and simply for my own amusement.  I was using one strand of a fine laceweight cashmere and one of a fine laceweight silk from Claudia’s Handpaints (but not painted) that I bought at Purlescence.  (Where, by the way, you can order a copy of the book and I will go in and inscribe it for you if you’d like.)

Using a silk yarn with a cashmere yarn made for a far different effect than if I’d bought a blend: the silk sparkles and twinkles prominently around the visually quieter cashmere, a very pretty effect. The separate silk strand was a little slipperier to knit than a blend, and the doubled strands in such thin yarns looked a bit messy on the needles–but blocked! This is part of why I launched into the project I reknit yesterday–I like how  two laceweights play together, how they look finer, blocked, then a fingering weight of the same overall weight, and I wanted to play with the idea more, adding differing colorways to the idea.

Oh, and, since I was using finer yarns than the original Constance called for, and since the Constance is one of the least full patterns in the book, I widened the width by using the template for Tara’s Redwood Burl shawl (minus the two extra stitches at the end of the row on the Tara) and swapping in the other lace patterns.  361 stitches.

The recipient for this one is quite petite, someone who actually makes me feel tall (and that’s saying something); I think I got it a good length for her.  I’m going to show it off at Purlescence tomorrow night, and then it goes to the grandmother of my new daughter-in-law.

Amanda (scroll down to see) let me buy one of her very first colorways she dyed up for her then-new Etsy shop.   It’s brighter than this in real life, a very cheerful shade; the flash mutes it here.  The shawl pin holding it on the wheel for me is handblown glass, a gift from my old friend Sheila Ernst from when I saw her at Stitches.

And then that yarn sat there in my stash, patiently waiting its rightful turn, with a false start I finally frogged.  Till Amanda wrote a post about how her business was doing that sparked my pulling that gorgeous green out of the stash and casting on to see how far I could stretch my one little skein to go.  Normally, I would have used needles a size or so smaller, and I would have cast on more stitches, but I needed all the length I could get.

It was good to see it back where it belonged.  Her picture (note the beautiful brunette) is way more fun than mine.

Specifications: size 10 needles, the faster-version Julia from Wrapped in Comfort through the yoke and increase rows, then the Michelle shawl through the main body.

There’s a reason redwoods are so tall: they live along the ridgeline of the California coast, between a near-desert climate and the ocean and where heavy fogs roll in at night.  They are designed to pierce the fog with their height, causing water droplets to condense and run down their trunks and water them–which is also why they have very shallow roots. They typically reproduce by having new ones shoot up from the roots, with the new ones joining in to help form a wide underground lattice of roots that supports the whole community of redwoods together.

Which is also why my treedling might actually make it.  There was no depth to the bit of earth it was clinging to when I pulled it out, probably no broken roots.

All that said, I gotta say, “bonsai redwood” to describe it is one of the funniest ideas I have heard in awhile.  Totally nonpsychodegradeable.  Thank you, Carol!

(Oh. Right. The shawl.  Tailor of Gloucestor alert!  Heh.)

Specs: One skein Casbah from Mary’s stash, size 11 (7mm) needles, Faster-version Julia shawl through the yoke, then I switched to the Michelle pattern for the body, it being a 6+1 lace pattern as well, both of them in “Wrapped in Comfort.”  This did not make a very big shawl, the Casbah being a thinner yarn than the original mohair, but it’s good for a small person.  Lying flat, it’s 19″ long.  It’ll stretch out a bit held up when it’s dry.

Kristine sent me a link to a chocolate-chunk cookie recipe with feves by Valrhona in it–oval shaped bits of dark chocolate, available from Whole Foods.  I wrote back that I was embarrassed to say I actually had some in my cupboard.

And we’re off to the races with another story…

Years ago, I really got into baking cheesecakes, back when the kids were very little; so much so that I bought a copy of “The Joy of Cheesecake.”   And in it, I found, at a stage when I was reading Dr. Seuss to my kids, a recipe for Oobleck Pie.

Avocado lime honey cheesecake.  With wheat germ sprinkled on top.

It was almost impossible to buy a good avocado in New Hampshire, where we were at the time, so my hubby and children were spared; I didn’t try it.

We moved to California, and a few years later I found myself with a lupus diagnosis and doing swim therapy every day at a local indoor pool.  You had to have a doctor’s prescription to use the place.  It made for a close-knit community, where people tended to know each other and look out for each other.

Which is how one guy who loved to cook got told about the Oobleck Pie, and decided that that was just too weird: he had to try it.  I don’t think I told him about the wheat germ when I gave him the recipe.  Some things go far enough as it is.

So.  He actually baked one.  (No wheat germ.)  And then he brought it to the pool and handed it to the staff in the office, intact, unsampled, beautiful, slightly green at the gills, and whole.

I, totally unsuspecting, walked in the door, went to check in, and one of the lifeguards grabbed the thing from the desk, shoved it at me, and said, This is your fault. You have to take the first piece.

What, no wait an hour after swimming?  You guys trying to ground me from doing my laps?  Heh.

The first bite was a shock.  You know what’s coming but you don’t really, and then there it is.  After that, after you get past the “but I wanted cheesecake” mode, it’s actually, kind of, um, good.

Oobleck, for those who don’t remember, is the green sticky stuff that King whateverhisnamewas ended up with after telling his magicians he was tired of the same old stuff, rain, snow; he wanted something new.  They chanted and eye-of-newted till the oobleck filled the skies, superglueing everything and everyone it touched to everything else it touched.  This quickly became a massive, kingdom-wide problem.

And it stayed that way till the king admitted he’d made a mistake and said he was sorry.  At which point the sticky Oobleck gunk all magically melted away.

My sweet husband and I were at Flea Street Cafe for I think our anniversary, several years ago, when Jesse, the owner, came over and chatted a moment.  She had angel food cake with lavendar flowers in it on her menu, and I told her about the Oobleck Pie.

She really wanted that recipe.  I went home and mailed it to her.

Whether she ever used it, I don’t know, but if she did, it was probably from avocados and limes she grew herself and honey from a local beekeeper.  I love California.

Oh, right. The purple shawl.  I promised.  Here goes.  Twinsies.

Here is the Knitpicks Bare merino/silk, reblocked to a smooth edge. This is the smaller version Water Turtles shawl, 24″ long laid flat, about 27″ long on, 880 yards/200 g, with 16 g left over, dyed in Jacquard Acid in less-than-full-strength Navy.

After I finished it, I picked up the long-neglected purple Maple Creek Farm merino/bamboo shawl that I’d started during the weekend of my son’s wedding–it kept getting put aside for projects that needed to be fast-tracked, but it was so close to being done.  I decided, just spend one single day and let it be done.  I’d forgotten which pattern I’d been knitting it in…

Smaller version Water Turtles. Huh. Well, it might make for slightly repetitive knitblogging, but whatchagonnado.  I knitted it down to the very last five grams, and it’s ready to block too.

Let’s have a do-over on the blocking here.  I picked this shawl up this morning (deliberately) before it was bone dry: I’m going to rinse it again and smooth out the bottom edge rather than trying to have the pattern end in points.  Knitpicks’ merino/silk heavyish fingering weight was a bit too bulky for that.   The points just weren’t crisp enough for me, and as I ran the wires through last night I was pretty sure I was going to bag them later.  But I wanted to see first.  A rounded edge is easier to maintain anyway, and it’s not something any recipient should be having to worry about.

I was so sure this one wasn’t going to stretch past maybe 24″, but sometimes yarns surprise you. Blocked, held up, it’s 27″, and I had enough yarn out of my two skeins that I could have gotten it to 30″.  Size 9 (5.5mm) needles.

A side note: the fireworks last night probably worked out well for parents of small children needing to go to bed.  They started an hour early this year, given the extra darkness.

For Jessie and Jeremy. The picture refused to shrink and felt in the Adobe wash, so I had to cut it with the Picasa scissors. The front edges of the shawl are folded back on themselves.

Thank you to those who emailed: my Crohn’s is settling back down like we told it to, and in time for their wedding, too. Isn’t it nice to have an obedient disease like that?

Specs: Monterey pattern using Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca Silk, a heavier yarn than used in the original, so I swapped out the pattern and used the Constance pattern from “Wrapped in Comfort” as a template to get a smaller stitch count. Size 10 US (6mm) needles, four skeins, using 14 g of the fourth 50g skein.