Two weeks now–I ought to have finished shaking this cold off by now. I’m almost there.

I have someone I promised a shawl to, but with a compromised immune system in their family, I don’t dare touch their yarn nor breathe on it till I’m totally over any germ. Which gives me an impromptu deadline: finish this one before I get better, because as soon as I am, I’m ditching this and diving into theirs.

Someone on Ravelry gave me a heads-up yesterday that Knitpicks had started a knitalong using my “Wrapped in Comfort” book. Cool! I joined it (how could I not!) and mentioned that I’d started this Michelle shawl on Sunday.

Oops. Wait. No, I’d started it Monday. But I can’t edit on someone else’s blog. Here, see, if you stretch it out to get an approximation of its future blocked self, I had knitted 14″ worth by Tuesday night–time’s a-wastin’. This is 7/2 spun silk, handdyed, from Village Spinning and Weaving in Solvang, CA, bought at Stitches West from some of the nicest people you could hope to meet.

Maybe one more day of this cold? I’ll finish this and get it out of the way in time. Hey, I’m as much a procrastinator as anybody–I’ll make my deadlines where I can find them. Back to work.

Shawl notes first: Wanda’s Flowers pattern from “Wrapped in Comfort,” Lisa Souza’s handdyed Petal yarn, 50/50 silk/merino and very soft, started Sunday and I finished the last four rows Thursday. I went down one needle size from the book, using a 5.5 mm (American 9). This pattern is not as wide around as a lot of my shawls, and at only 279 stitches across the body, it works up fast. (Don’t let your gauge stray too tight, though.) Shawl pin is handblown glass by Sheila and Michael Ernst in a flower design, one of their smaller and simpler pins. I had enough yarn left over from the one skein that I used that I could have done half a repeat more, one more flower’s worth going downwards.

Now. The rest of this post is in response to a query about my photographs. All I ever needed to know about photography, I learned in third grade. My daughter’s third grade teacher way back when, actually, who casually mentioned to me one day, glancing at an art project of my child’s, that oh yes, she had taught the kids that pictures are most interesting if you can divide them up into threes. The eye likes odd numbers of things, not even: she demonstrated. A tree, standing alone. Perfectly centered square in the middle? Boring. But put that main feature so that it’s taking up roughly 1/3 of the space, or 2/3, especially if it’s somehow on the diagonal relative to the frame, to somehow give it motion: interesting. Thirds up and down, thirds side to side, either, or, better yet, both. If you can’t do that, make it at least off-center.

When I thought about it later, I realized I’d instinctively gone by that basic idea for a long time, but nobody had ever put it into so many words for me. I’m sure my little sister learned all about that in her art lessons growing up, but somehow my piano teacher never said boo about it. Wait–come again, maybe in effect she did: all those piano pieces with codas to go back and play the beginning part again at the end? Thirds.

(Note that this amaryllis photo does not perfectly conform to what I just said because WordPress balked at the extra pixels.  There’s perfection, and then there’s real life.)

Alright, class, homework is to go shoot your best flower picture. Okay–there’s the bell. Class dismissed!

And Canada, we are NOT having a snow day tomorrow.

(This swatch’s worth isn’t a great shot of the colors, it’s still a bit damp in the blocking so I can’t move it near a window yet. It’s more a soft peachy-pink overall in real life.)

In the end, my pregnancy of this project only took two months; no back aches, no morning sickness, I’ve got nothing to complain about. I bought the superwash wool for it from my friend Karen the day she was closing up her shop for good, and I told her who I was going to knit it up for and why. She liked that. It gave her something to be happy about that day.

Which meant I felt obliged to make good on my word to her so that I could show it off to her and she could feel she’d played a part in the joy of the sharing. Which she had. I am debating blogging the little aside that the yarn was terribly splitty and thin and needed tiny needles and took forever and it was like knitting the world’s most monstrous sock for the tightness and it drove me nuts and hurt my hands. This baby was kicking me. Note that I did buy a competing superwash merino from Purlescence after I’d started and gave myself an out–I’m no angel. Heh.

And yet… Every time I stopped and really looked at the fabric that was coming out of my needles, I pictured it wrapped around Kathy’s baby. The Kathy in my book, my friend I grew up with, who’d just had her second baby. She told me that after the death of her father when we were in seventh grade, it had taken her awhile to learn to finally trust life enough to marry, to start a family. She was so glad she finally did. They had a little boy. And now they have a daughter, born near the time of my 49th birthday.

They named her Rachel.  After the grandfather she will only know through those who loved him, Ray. But that love is a powerful thing, and it does carry down through the ages, whether the person is present or no.

I have a lovely bit of wool here in its finished form, worth every minute of my time it took for it to come to be, to say so.

This Concert scarf is a little greener in real life, as is the pendant. I dyed the baby alpaca I used for it, adding green to what was a very light blue, and hoped it would match many a turquoise stone for her. I only wish I had handspun that particular yarn as well, but the lack of feeling in my fingertips makes spinning that fine a yarn a completely visual and very tiring task. Factory milled is still nice, soft stuff; I made the color my own.

I have for a long time aspired to own a piece of Frances Begay’s work. She is a gifted and well-known Navajo woman who creates jewelry the old way, selecting and then polishing her stones by hand, cutting and shaping her silver using 75-year-old traditional tools of the trade that others now pass on, nothing machined, nothing pre-cut. Turquoise and sterling from her hands is a work of finely-wrought art. As the daughter of an art dealer and as a handspinner, I appreciate the extra craftsmanship she puts into each piece.

I wrote to Frances and her husband a few times before I finally went ahead and bought this, and learned a few more details about how she goes about her work, letting her know how beautiful I thought it was.

Emerald Valley turquoise, greener than other pieces I owned (and then how it appears here), which I wanted. It’s large, and at 18 grams (I hesitate to say that; the sizes vary to match the stones), it’s quite hefty–my bluer turquoise pendant, for those who remember that post a good ways back, is 4 grams. Wearing Frances’s against my upper chest, it has a solid sense of presence, like the hug of a friend.

And this scarf is what I put in the mail in return, by way of thanking her, the price of the piece not reflecting at all how much I value what she made specifically for me after my order arrived. I like how the open zig zag areas of the scarf echo the shaping of the silver edging her stone, the more solid areas to the sides echoing the solid silver surrounding her circular coil. It seemed just the right pattern. Artist to artist. And now, friend to friend.

(Picture taken with my camera phone while that was all I had that was working. Pattern is the smaller version Water Turtles, knitted on size 6mm.)

I blogged awhile ago about the bright red cashmere yarn that Karen and her daughter Amy told me I had to buy when we were together at Stitches East last October in Baltimore. About my reluctance to buy something so expensive so very much not my color vs my internal struggle in thinking how perfect it would be for my friend Marguerite (but it wasn’t her turn!) and finally just going along with the peer pressure and buying it…not knowing that Marguerite had been diagnosed with breast cancer three days before and had told not a soul other than her husband.

Sometimes you find out fairly quickly like that. Sometimes it takes awhile longer.

The second day we were there, I saw some Fleece Artist merino fingering weight yarn that was just lovely, and had a hard time choosing between two colorways; I was only going to spring for one shawl’s worth. What I wouldn’t do now to have bought that bright blue and green in cashmere, too, though I don’t remember seeing any in stock there. So, sitting there debating and debating, I finally asked Karen, with the booth owner’s permission, to take one skein of each colorway and walk about 20 feet away from me. Karen walked towards a solid black curtained-off area, which made the perfect backdrop. As soon as she did, it was instantly clear: *that* one. Emphatically. Sometimes you need a little Claude Monet effect and to look at it from a distance.

Later, another friend saw a nearly identical merino yarn in another booth and nearly dove headfirst into it, much to my amusement. She totally loved it, exclaimed over it, fondled it–and then reluctantly put it back, saying something about budgets, it being the end of a day at the overload that is Stitches.

Heh. Guess what I had. I recently finished knitting it up, thinking how perfect it was going to be for her. I’d seen her reaction to it.

And then every time I went to the post office, intending to run multiple errands, I kept forgetting to take it with me. Dumb. I mean, really dumb. What was wrong with me on this one?

Wednesday afternoon at 4 pm I got an anguished email. Masses. I reminded her of Marguerite’s five masses, and how only one had turned out to actually be cancerous and that despite all that they had expected, it had not spread. I think everything’s going to turn out okay for her, too. If I have any say in the matter! Knitting as cancer cure! (Hey, it’s not biopsied yet. Might not even be what they think.)

This time, when I went to the post office, there was no question and no forgetting. And maybe I see why I did before. The timing now was right, the comfort it could provide was perhaps more intense by sending it now.

Steve, one of the clerks, waved hi and then looked at my face and asked, “Having a hard day today?” That surprised me; I didn’t think it was showing. I took a deep breath, knowing that he would want to know (I’ve lived in this town awhile, I prayed for him during his recent surgery) and explained to him what was in the package and why, and pleaded, “Please get it to her quickly for me.”

Priority mail, cross country, and this morning, a day and a half later, I got her email that it had come.

Go Steve go. Thank you.

Made me cry.

I think she did too.

She won’t see this between the airport and here, and I’m not sure I’ll get a chance to photograph it later, so I’m sneaking a moment in to post this: this is the shawl for Ann, after finally blocking it last night. It’s not a new pattern, it’s my Peace shawl, but as two families prepare to come together, I really think it’s the right one.

She and her husband live in a warm climate, so it had to be lightweight. My daughter-in-law-to-be, when I asked her at Christmas what her mom’s favorite color was, said light blue, and I went all over Stitches West looking for just the right shade of light blue I wanted in silk. I didn’t find it. (The bulkiness and bother of my scooter while trying to get into booths may have played a part there, dunno.) But I did find this baby alpaca/silk wisp of a yarn at Ellen’s Halfpint Farm, and it leaped out at me. I turned away and left it there, came back later, and it was still calling out, Me! ME!

And so here it is. For Conway’s daughter-in-law and Kim’s mom. As I wait for the doorbell to ring.

I wrote in “Wrapped in Comfort” about using a doubled strand for strength in the cast-on stitches at the neck edges of my circular shawls. Lately I’ve been continuing that doubled strand for the first row as I purl back across the cast-on edge, and I like it enough that I wish I’d started doing that sooner. So I thought I’d throw the idea out there.

Didn’t get a lot of knitting done yesterday. Got company coming tomorrow.

Monday

Wednesday

Skipping right along to Saturday…

And what it looked like today after a rinse Saturday night, with a full blocking to follow.

Got it done, got it delivered. Okay, here’s the story:

Remember when I missed that second play date with Lyn?

An eye doctor who teaches at Stanford has a patient who is in my lupus group, who asked him if he would come and speak to us. He told her he’d be glad to. When he came, he clearly had spent many hours putting together a powerpoint presentation so we could see slides of what he was talking about, and written descriptions on more slides to help us remember the details.

At one point, he said, This is what iritis looks like–but you don’t have to worry about it, it’s very rare and only 4% or less of lupus patients get it.

I raised my hand and said, I’ve had it.

A few minutes later, he put up a slide of optic neuritis, again assuring us, But this is rare.

Guess who raised her hand slightly, with a slight nod of the head. He immediately came back with, That’s more common with MS, have you been tested for MS?

Spinal tap. Yup. Negative. I didn’t add that when the neurologist told me I had to hold absolutely still curled up afterwards for half an hour, I asked his nurse if I could knit; after hemming and hawing, she told me, well, that’s a new one, I guess so! So in the position I was told I had to stay in, I was holding my daughter’s sweater above my head, stitching away with it dangling onto my nose and thinking I must really be crazy to be doing this–but my Christmas deadline was looming… (My fellow knitters understand that one.)

Doctor V. said something about anti-inflammatories, and I shrugged, I go completely deaf on one dose of NSAIDs. Not an option. Oh. Steroids, then. Steroids don’t touch my lupus, I admitted. I told him, Remicade saved my life after my lupus spread to my GI tract, giving me symptoms of classic Crohn’s, but it gave me congestive heart failure; permanent chemo is it.

I saw the tears that leaped to his eyes, and I was suddenly glad I hadn’t mentioned the dysautonomia or the car accident to pile it on. I wanted to throw my arms around him and comfort him and tell him, it’s okay! Really, it is!

Because his tearing up had hit me right where I live. Someone knew. Someone who was a doctor, who knew what all those meant, who was there for me. It mattered to him. Thank you, sir, more than I can say.

At Stitches, I told Lisa Souza about that doctor and that day, and her reaction was to *give* me a hank of her silk/merino Max yarn she’d dyed in her Sky Drama colorway for me to go knit up for him as a thank you from her, too. To express her gratitude as well for his empathy and kindness in taking so much time to be there for patients he hadn’t even ever met before. For giving two hours out of his day, plus transportation and all that preparation time, answering every possible question for us. He’s a good one. She wanted to tell him so, too.

The Carlsbad scarf and story in the book that mentioned my eyes? Her silk in Sky Drama.

And so I made another Carlsbad scarf for this good man’s wife with Lisa’s generosity. It had to wait till all the Stitches knitting was done, it had to wait till the Lunasea Silkie for Andy got finished, but at last I got a chance to get to it.

And it is now where it needs to be. Being a tangible reminder of our gratitude–Lisa’s, mine, every patient’s in attendence at that lecture–for an eye doctor who truly sees and who was willing to give so freely of himself.

Thank you, sir. My best to you and your family.

I have to write here my reaction to Channon’s comment:

Warrenton! I was at what was supposed to be a five-day-long girls’ camp in Virginia that got evacuated during Hurricane Agnes.  According to Wikipedia’s dates, I would have been thirteen; memory says I was twelve.  Anyway.

We got as far as Warrenton on our way home on a bus before we got told we weren’t going anywhere else, all the bridges were underwater. The person who had all the food in her car had made it home, but the bus behind her, unknown to her, had sunk in the mud when it had come to pick us up and had been delayed by having to be towed out of it–and a tow truck big enough to haul a bus stuck at an out-of-the-way location took awhile to find, while the rain kept piling up. So there we were that night, no food, no place to go, no way home. The Mormon Church in Warrenton, with a brand new building, took in all these muddy kids, and we slept on their floor for a couple of days till the waters receded enough to let us go on. Someone that the adults knew from church back home in Maryland was also stuck in town, and he let the kids go to his hotel room, several at a time, so they could use the shower and feel human again.

The camp counselor showed up at McDonald’s the first morning and ordered, “Sixty-five Egg McMuffins to go, please.” After that, the people at the church took over, bringing food. They weren’t a large congregation, and there were an awful lot of us. We were there for, if I remember right, two nights.

And so you see, I have a very soft spot in my heart for the folks in Warrenton, Virginia. Good people.

Meantime, here are a few more Stitches photos from my friends.

Lyn.

Jan.

Jocelyn.

Nancy.

Catie.

Vera.

I don’t have pictures of everybody, so if anyone has more, shoot me an email, would you? Thanks.

This is Cris in her Julia shawl in Jade Sapphire cashmere that she wore at the banquet Saturday night.

Meantime, a few weeks ago, when I couldn’t get the computer to accept my camera card for https://spindyeknit.com/2008/02/berry-time-for-bigfoot/, it was a warning sign that the computer itself was about to blow. Which it did. (This is the WIP I was trying to show.) I quietly posted from a different one for a little while till the hubby fixed it, and laughed that, oh, well, maybe I was supposed to leave this shawl more of a surprise than that.

Which it was.

Lyn used to manage Creative Hands, a yarn shop in Belmont. She moved to North Carolina after living here for forever and was sorely missed by her friends when she left. She came back this month to see a new grandchild and to hang around for Stitches, and you know the amount of time spent with an old friend is never enough.

Meantime, I had this Lisa Souza alpaca/silk yarn that was lovely but that was a bit towards the gray side for me. And yet it leaped with glee onto my needles two weeks ago and announced which pattern it wanted to be when it grew up, and it felt so joyful to finally be letting it become itself that the knitting worked up very quickly. I had a great sense of anticipation as I played with it, wondering… Who?…

Lyn set up a–well, a play date is the best description I can think of–at Creative Hands for people who wanted more time to visit with her. Two, actually, and I got to go to the first, but for the second, I just couldn’t make it. There was an eye doctor who teaches at Stanford who had volunteered to speak that day to the lupus group I attend, and it was imperative to me that I be there. Crum.

But that disappointment helped clarify what I needed to know, and then it just felt so obvious: that Berry Poppins colorway, how the pink and the purple melted into those soft fibers, those were exactly perfect for Lyn; I’d seen those colors on her many times. She loved handpaint yarns. And I knew.

Nancy Weber, who used to work with Lyn at the shop, was in on it with me. I was trying to figure out the best way to get it to Lyn but I kept missing her at Stitches. After we took our seats at the banquet, my last chance before she flew home, Nancy said, “Here.” (Since I just wasn’t very mobile.) And she took it over to Lyn’s table as if she were at a bar, telling her, “The woman at that table over there wanted to offer you this.”

Lyn, stunned, opened it, stood up in slow motion, came over and threw her arms around me, wiping tears and saying it would be a comfort to her when she went back to North Carolina.

Which is exactly what I’d wanted. For it to be a comfort and a reminder of her friends’ caring.

Who were all about to pull off something major themselves for my own sake, and I just truly had no idea either till it happened.

 (Edited to add later: actually, he said “Wrapped in Comfort by Alison Hyde” over and over, but it sounded too full-of-myself to write my own name over and over when I posted this.)

So many stories. SO much to say. My goodness.

Someone came up behind me yesterday at the show, brushing a hand lightly on my shoulder to get my attention as she stepped in front of me and beamed, “I love that book! I see you got the yarn to make the same shawl as the one in the book!”

Oh my goodness. Um, yes. I burst out laughing, and then thoroughly enjoyed myself as she exclaimed “Ohmygosh you’re the AUTHOR?!”

But the best part of all was at the end. They had been going to surprise me. But then they realized they’d better make sure I was going–and actually, I had had no intention till that point, I knew that three days of Stitches was absolutely going to do me in (it always does, but my goodness, what a way to go), and then the evening banquet on top of that? No way.

But I had to attend when they ratted themselves out and let me know what they were planning.

The dinner was followed by Rick Mondragon of XRX, the sponsor of Stitches, and someone whose name I just couldn’t hear MC’ing an event that included having knitters parade down a catwalk with their creations.

My scooter is not compatible with holding a cane, so I hadn’t brought one. I know, my husband’s been telling me I need a collapsible one that fits in my purse, he’s right. Anyway, the scooter was dying the death again by evening, and I managed to get it into the banquet hall and plug it in, found myself a spot and sat down and was joined shortly by my friends.

When it came time for the runway, they were calling people up alphabetically. Jocelyn sent a note up to the stage. A moment of off-mike hemming ensued. Okay.

So then, at pretty much the end–I don’t think anyone paraded after them, I think we became the grand finale, but then, I was pretty distracted by then so if I’m being egocentric by saying that, I apologize–ten friends from my knitting group went up together. They did the police lineup thing together on the stage.

Another friend gave me an arm and helped me over to a temporarily-empty seat near the end of the runway so that I could see better. My left side kept trying to collapse, and I was unsteady, to say the least. My friends weren’t going to let that stop them. They had already agreed I was to be moved over there, and move me they did.

And then Rick had the ones on stage parade down, one by one, as he called out, “This is Fae. She’s wearing the Julia shawl in Lisa Souza’s merino in the What-A-Melon colorway from ‘Wrapped in Comfort.’ …This is Cris. She’s wearing the Julia shawl in Jade Sapphire Cashmere in black from ‘Wrapped in Comfort.’ …This is Jocelyn. She’s wearing the “Peace of Mind” shawl in Sea Silk from ‘Wrapped in Comfort.’ …This is Vera. She’s wearing the Bigfoot shawl in (mumble, sorry) from ‘Wrapped in Comfort.’

And on and on. Lyn raised her arms high as she twirled at the end of the catwalk, showing the full scale of the circle and the effect of the pattern. The crowd cheered.

When they were done, Rick had me stand and be acknowledged. I was fighting tears. Wow. Someone I did not even know was kind enough to tell me afterwards she had been, too.

And then the one friend close by stood, took me by the arm, and helped me stagger back to my own chair.

And then those women in their shawls came off the stage, went straight to the back of the room, grabbed me, and took photos with multiple cameras of all of us together. (Although the one in the zinnia scarf escaped.) I was throwing my arms around them, and there were more tears. How can you thank your friends enough when they… What I wouldn’t have done to have had Richard see all this… Rick was so wonderful in letting us put on a display from a book his company hadn’t been the ones to publish…

Wow.

At the end, I got my scooter back and got someone to flag Rick down for me as people were leaving. I thanked him profusely for what he’d let happen. There was a genuineness and a warmth in him as he responded.

And I said gratefully to Nancy as she drove me home, and Lisa, who’d manned my camera for me, that that was a once-in-a-lifetime event.

And to think I’d almost missed it.

Which is exactly what I did as I wrote last night; it was late and I was cheerfully exhausted. I had such a good time at Stitches!

Kevin at Wagtail Farms in Australia and I emailed back and forth a bit in the last week or two; I had that Julia shawl I’d done from a single skein of his kid mohair. Would he like me to bring it so he could display what one could accomplish with his yarn? Sure!

What he wasn’t expecting was the questions he got from me last night: did he have anyone back home who would love that deep teal color? (He was clearly wondering, where are you going with this?!…)

It took a few minutes for it to really sink in. But when it did, I got to see the love in his face for his sister and for his mother as he debated out loud which of them to give it to; his mother seems to have won out (I hope I’m not causing trouble by saying that!) I can understand that; honor thy mother is half of one of God’s top ten. He tried one more time–don’t you want to come by Sunday and pick it up? Nope. He talked about offering yarn in exchange, and I was fine with that, but really, I’d already been paid. He loves his family. I got to see him glowing with that love. How many times do we let strangers in to see what really matters to us? I feel pretty privileged. How could I ask for more?

Dianne’s Creatively Dyed Yarn is at booth 930, and her daughter is just as nice as she is. Go tell them I said hi. I was wondering if she’d remember me–hah. I walked up, and she dropped everything and exclaimed, “ALISON!” when she saw me, and threw her arms around me. I got her back for it, though, when I opened my bag–and she was wearing a shirt that exactly matched that scarf. She got me back, though, when I tried to pay for some really really gorgeous merino she’d dyed. Fine, be that way–I’ll knit it up and put it in the next knitting book. So there.

People who don’t knit miss out on so much!

Oh, and–we’re four for four (or is it five for five) on the Stitches/wheelchairs saga. We got the silly thing charged okay, and then I couldn’t get it out of the minivan. But I didn’t drop it on my foot this year.

Kevin at Purlescence gave me his cell so I could plead for help if need be tomorrow.

People who don’t know people who are knitters miss out on so much!

Karen at Royale Hare, as she was stroking her new mohair scarf from her yarn, admitted she’d seen it on my blog and wished… Not that she would ever in a million years have told me that. But she was the perfect person for it. And I would never have thought of it if that Silkie hadn’t played hide-and-seek, so that the Fitch Mountain Frost could get a chance to leap out of my bag at me while I was searching for the Silkie.

Speaking of which, Kaci, where were you? Your Silkie’s coming home in a few days. You said at Stitches East that you liked that colorway too. (I figure by the time you might read this, you already know.)

Oh, and–I told a few people that everybody seemed to be sold out of my book. My bad–Lisa Souza has a whole ‘nother case. And Pacific Meadows Alpacas had a few copies left as well. Nina Price will have some too. Phew! I was afraid we were going to have booksignings with no books left!

I met Dianne, the owner of Creatively Dyed Yarn, at Stitches East in Baltimore last fall, and she was one of those people you just instantly adore–she could have been selling dried paint chips and I’d have bought some to cheer her on in her endeavors. So when I read on Ravelry that she was going to Stitches West for the first time, and taking her family on a road trip to see the country along the way, I was thrilled to know I’d get a chance to say hi to her again.

She was re-creating, though she had no idea, part of the trip my family had taken when I was ten when my mom taught me how to knit. We kept running into another family doing the same sightseeing on the same schedule, state after state, and their ten-year-old daughter Cathy became my pen pal for three or four years afterwards, from Weston, Massachusetts, and I wonder where she is now; we randomly ran into each other for the third time in the middle of the underground in the depths of Carlsbad Caverns, before they turned out the lights. (That’s your cue to go run buy my book for the rest of that story. …Moving right along…)

That day in Baltimore last fall, I bought what were I think the very last two skeins of the 70/30 wool/seacell Sea Wool in Dianne’s stock–it had sold fast. I looked at it on Tuesday, after I finished the Silkie, and went, well, YEAH!

Then the question was: do I knit the Carlsbad, then? Nah, just did. The flowers from the Kathy shawl?… Nah, a bit too variegated for the lace pattern (although, looking at this, I’m thinking maybe it wasn’t, but too late now). And then I decided: I did the stitch pattern from the Michelle shawl, my Sea Silk one, seaweed for seaweed. It fit. Don’t rat on me, and I’m not linking till I see her tonight. Heh.

Technical stuff: cast on 27, do four repeats across of rows 14-20 with one extra plain stitch added at each side to stabilize the edges. Start early in the day. Repeat till bedtime.