Grace surprised me with a box in the mail today: a shawl she had designed based on my patterns and that she’d named after me.   Wow. Thank you, Grace! I so totally did not expect that!

Joanne Seiff and I grew up on opposite sides of the Potomac River, fellow Washingtonians and email friends.  She has been working on a book, “Fiber Gathering,” a celebration of the various American fiber festivals, and a copy arrived yesterday.

I love that Joanne’s husband traveled with her and snapped the photos for the book; reading through and admiring the work of both of them is like watching them being happy together.  It makes me want to pull out my drum carder and spinning wheel and get back to work with my soft-as-cashmere kid mohair fleece in the closet.  (Let’s give the surgery recovery a little more time first before I use that carder, though.  And I’m not quite so sure about treadling the wheel either, yet.  But I want to!)

There is a Fishtail vest that was designed by Terri Shea, who, years ago, sent me a copy of the children’s book, “Love You Forever,” having no idea that I’d wished for a copy but hadn’t bought one because my kids were really too old for it; but I used to sing the little poem in it to my friend Lisa’s baby, Tara, whom I designed my Redwood Burl shawl for–Lisa and the by-now-teenaged Tara both, whose story I told in my own book.

Lisa’s family came from Michigan to Sam’s wedding reception five years ago, and I asked Tara if she remembered that song at all; she didn’t, which was no surprise, but someday I hope to sing it to her children.  And to my own children’s children.

Terry’s Fishtail is held together in Jeff’s photo by a shawl pin designed by–I don’t see it in the text, but I recognized it instantly–my friend Rosemary Hill.  (Wait–“Resources,” pg 160. There it is.) And there were other patterns designed by people I recognized from the Knitlist and whom I’d had a conversation or three with over the years.  Going through this book was like reconnecting with old friends.

Then there’s a picture at Estes Park, Colorado, at a spot I recognize: it’s next to where I snapped probably my own best-ever photograph.  A friend’s dad had lifted his hand up to a very large bird soaring near us, and it had come and landed at the edge of his hand. There was a backdrop of a single white cloud framing the bird as I shot the picture from below.  I will forever think of Estes Park with that breathtaking moment.

I can just imagine all the memories Joanne and Jeff created together as their book came to be.

Meantime, with all this gifting everybody’s doing, hey, honest, I really do knit too! Blocking, not so much, though, lately; it’s that stages-at-a-time thing again.

I got an email from LynnM saying that clearly my Sam was a sensitive and thoughtful child.  And she’s right; Sam always has been. Always.

She was five and a half months old, just barely starting to master where her limbs moved to, on the day of this memory.

We had recently moved, and as a new mom in a new place in a new part of the country, I was feeling isolated and lonely. I was sitting on the edge of the bed one particularly hard day, my baby in my lap, looking elsewhere, when suddenly I…What was that?… I looked down.

And there was Sam: she’d managed to take her pacifier out of her mouth and was trying repeatedly to put it into mine.  Out of the mouths of babes.

And that’s the other thing about her: she had a goal and she was sticking to it.  She’s definitely still that way.

I swooped her up in delight and a hug and great pride.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We got a phone call tonight: my husband’s cousin.  A car accident.   Gone.

Richard then reminisced over dinner about someone he’d known in his high school back in the day, a kid who at 15 drank, stole his parents’ car, and then crashed it while fleeing the cops.  Not a smart move.

The judge could have taken away his possibility of getting a license till he hit 21, as is often done, but the judge wanted to change that boy’s behavior and make a difference to him.  So instead, he sentenced the kid to volunteering in his local ER.  During the midnight shift.  Where he got to see all the results of all the people making the same kind of mistake he’d made, or their victims, in all the reality of what that meant.

The kid never drank again.

Anybody else do this? I find I tend to go through bursts of playing with my dye pot, where creating colors in my wool or baby alpaca is what I find myself focused on day after day. Or winding up balls of yarn for the sheer sake of winding and the sense of anticipation it brings–and that it lets me be engaged with a particular texture or shade or colorway for just a short time and then lets me go right on to the next.  Or times when, enough of all that, I need to sit down and knit and see something actually materializing and getting done!  But each phase tends to go in spurts.

It bugged me lately that I hadn’t been able to ball up yarn hanks all these months.  That I couldn’t expand my project possibilities into my whole stash; I was limited to the ready-to-knits.

Last week, I found the black cashmere (yay!) and got the first hank of it ready to go; I did it, but I had to take a good long rest afterwards.  This evening, I finished winding Amanda‘s Huarache yarn she gave me in Vermont last November, and I’m wondering which yarn to wind next after I finish typing this.  My arms and standing-up time are getting better at this.

But the groove in the record that my diamond needle keeps jumping back to?  (That’s an anachronism, kids, go ask your folks. Heh.)  Taking pictures of everything blooming, celebrating spring giving birth to life.

Today I made it through all three hours of church meetings for the first time in three months.  (And then went home and slept three hours solid.)  Two weeks ago I’d gotten through the first meeting, last week not at all.

Today I got to see: that babe in arms was now walking, in that staggering “look at me!” way they do, with arms at stiff right angles as she toddled in glee at being able to. I laughed.  I could relate.

Those two newborns were now three months old and surprisingly bigger.  That baby over there in his daddy’s arms was now old enough to be smiling back at me and laughing at my peek-a-booing.

The woman who’d told me in great excitement that she was expecting her first, and I’d quietly thought, You are?  Where?, was now clearly quite pregnant.  Life continues onward.

Quite a few people made a big deal over my being back.

And I thought, as I did during Stitches and all the joy and all the greetings there, how, throughout January and the first part of February, I kept trying to remind myself that the day would come when I would be so glad to be alive.  It was something to try to convince myself of; I sure didn’t feel that way yet. But there was this sense of obligation to my family and to all the people praying their hearts out for me to keep on slogging through it all whatever may come, and to keep a sense of cheerfulness as much as possible.

The hardest thing I did physically and mentally during that time was to pull myself together enough to keep writing on my blog. To sound coherent. To type, at whatever angle I had to. To keep on being part of the great big world out there.  Grateful for each comment as I read them while utterly unable to muster the energy for giving back by responding.

It has been a weekend of much love and great joy.  I feel immersed in life again.  I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.  I owe much.  Thank you all for helping see me through.

Wind up the yarn into balls in celebration and forward knit!

Other than the newly-cast-on project to the right there that I’m knitting for a nurse, it’s been awhile since I knitted much in the way of reds; vivid reds and oranges make my balance funky, one of the weirder side effects of smacking my head hard twice against the headrest during my car accident.  (Rob, if you read that, thank you again.)  But I found myself drawn to the pinkish reds at Stitches, which are more my color anyway.

Sam and I went back today; I signed a few books, saw lots of friends, had a good time, and bought a very little yarn.  Sam was patient.  I missed a few friends I would dearly liked to have seen; next year, or hey, you guys, you can always drop by here on your ways back north.

I think I set a personal record for the least yarn bought at a Stitches event; the hospital bills tend to focus the mind. Two Silkie merino/silk skeins from Blue Moon that I bought yesterday, two in baby alpaca in “Foxglove” from Lisa Souza that I bought today.  I couldn’t leave without those. I called Tina Newton this morning and told her I loved her “Love” colorway.

Someone with another hank of it in her hands had stopped me in the line and asked if I’d knit with the Silkie before; yes, on Lene‘s shawl.  She asked if it stripes; I realized a half a heartbeat later that she was talking about socks, and I told her I knit shawls. Oh. We both laughed at ourselves over that, at tripping on our assumptions for a moment there: doesn’t everybody knit shawls? Doesn’t everybody knit socks?

Of course!

Two and a half hours.  Stitches West.  Disneyland for knitters, totally filling the large Santa Clara Convention Center near here.  I’m exhausted.  (I know, we all knew that was going to happen.) But I’m so glad we went!

First, before we left, though, another box arrived on the doorstep: they were so tightly closed up that Sam’s first reaction when we opened the box, was, what are these?  I told her, just give them a few hours.   They’ll open up very fast.  They’re daffodils.

They have already begun to and to perfume our family room.  Two dozen flowers in a hefty vase from Kelli, a friend of mine at Purlescence, the friend who already gave me her old camera.  Goodness! That LYS (that’s Local Yarn Store in knitter’s lingo, Don) attracts very giving people.

I debated what to wear this morning, and decided blue with Chris J’s socks to match would be just the thing. I hadn’t seen her in ages, and one could only hope.  Which is how, it turned out, I got to show off to Chris J how happy my feet were and to watch her face light up, which she’d totally earned.

Sam and I of course kept running into lots of people I knew, and very occasionally one or two she did, like Karen Brayton-McFall of the old Rug and Yarn Hut.  People stopping us and they and I throwing our arms around each other.  Over and over and over.  I was mentally thinking in the direction of some of the hospital personnel of two and a half weeks ago or more, you see why I couldn’t miss this?!  You see why I had to go?!  Some of the friends there I only get to see once a year, at Stitches.  I might admit that well, there were a few times I was really glad this person or that was wearing a name tag.

You might forget a person’s name. But you never forget how they make you feel. I felt well loved, and they I’m sure did too.

Rosemary Hill of designsbyromi.com came up to me and tucked her heart shawl pin into my shawl and gave me a hug.  I wondered out loud why she wasn’t wearing Muir (which I happen to particularly like); she was wearing jewelry she’d knitted,  wire earrings (free patterns at the links) and a necklace, which makes sense, given the recent release of her book on the subject.

Gracie Larsen of the Lacy Knitters Guild asked me to come sign books and we agreed on 2:00 pm Saturday.

Sam used that as a carrot to get me to let go and give in to being tired and go home, on the grounds that I’d miss out totally on tomorrow if I overdid it today.  “You’re more tired than you think you are.”  Wise woman there.  She was right; I knew as soon as I stopped moving I would be ready to crash.  And so we came home.

And a good time was had by all.

My doctor and her nurse are both people who could teach that other nurse and would do so gently; they’re not in today, so I’ll call them again tomorrow.  You all of course are right, I do need to speak up.

I woke up this morning rather in need of being cheered up, and it turned out the UPS man had already arrived bright and early: delivering chocolate. Lake Champlain chocolate, and I already knew how good it was because I’d been to their factory store near my daughter’s home in Vermont in November.  Wow. Thank you, Amy!  And such timing.  Much appreciated.

Sam and I went off on an errand and came home to a shawl from Nancy, hanging on my doorknob, for me to gift to one of the people who’d kept me here.

I have just the person in mind. And I have nothing of my own ready to offer her. This is perfect, as are the colors.

Yesterday, while we were at the clinic, I saw a familiar face, someone who was also on their way to an appointment: it was one of the gastroenterologists who’d treated me in the hospital.  We both did a double-take and then our faces lit up in delight just before I stepped onto an elevator.  When my appointment was over, there she was again at the pharmacy with her husband.

And she was clearly in great pain.  Having a hard time standing.  He was supporting her and helping her and most of the time she sat while he dealt with the pharmacist.  My heart went out to her; I reached into my purse, found the most perfect finger puppet–a bright, handknit, multicolored toucan bird–and Sam took it over to her for me.

Her face lit up, and she asked from across the room (there was a kid coughing near her, so I didn’t want to get closer) whether I’d made it? I told her I get them from a women’s cooperative in Peru.

Cool!  She loved it, and it was fun to see her face brighten.

Her husband waved goodbye when they left, while I was wishing there were more I could do.

And now, thanks to Nancy, there is.  Healing wishes from a person she knows and one she doesn’t, very representative of what I have received, now to be passed along to her.  Perfect.

And then! The mail came. With a box I was not expecting.  From Lene.  That red box at the base of the flowers has on top of it a bar of handmade soap with a musical score imprinted in it.  Sam laughed as I squinted hard at it and tapped it out on the piano; whoever chose the music chose well, and I’m struggling to remember the name of the tune or where I heard it or played it before.

Wow.  Thank you, everyone!  I’m pretty blown away.  And I can’t wait to pass that feeling along to that doctor!

Here’s the picture of Jasmin’s first gift of six. More pics later.  I’m throwing in one of the latest amaryllis to open up because it was a day that needed the distraction of pretty flowers.

One of the side effects of wearing hearing aids is it seems like the ears are always trying to flush these foreign objects out, so the wax tends to really build up. Which, when you’re deaf enough already, is a problem.  I’ve had the left ear plugged up for awhile, and I was astonished and delighted at the astuteness of one doctor (I think he was a resident), while I was at Stanford, who told a fellow surgeon to speak closer to my right side, that I could hear better there. I had told nobody, and here he’d figured it out! Good for him–that level of attentiveness on his part will serve him well as he goes forward.

My family practitioner has been off every time I’ve called for an appointment, but with Stitches so close, and given how noisy the packed convention center always is, I didn’t want to put it off any longer.  Today I simply went with whoever was available, thinking, it’s just earwax, I mean, c’mon.

The nurse I got had clearly only ever been given the most basic instructions. She didn’t prep the ear with softener and wait and then rinse, she simply took her squeegee bottle and proceeded to try to carve Mount Rushmore out of the inside of my face.  Not realizing that when the patient is in that much pain, you’re not doing it right.  I made her stop after I suddenly had what must have been blood going clear down my eustachian tube.

Well! Look! The wax is all gone now, sure, we can stop!

The doctor came in after the nurse left, was horrified when she looked, and gave me Cipro drops and told me emphatically to come back if that didn’t do the job. At home, I crashed and slept for hours.

I can’t wear that hearing aid till things heal up somewhat.  Friday, though, I will, regardless.

I’ve been debating endlessly with myself whether I should mention the episode to my own doctor, not wanting to scold someone who didn’t know her job better but definitely wanting her to know better how to do it for the sake of the next patient.  Who, I assure you, will not be me.

I went for my liver scan early this morning and got sent home.  At three and a half weeks, my surgery was too recent for the metal stapling inside not to be at risk from the MRI machine. They told me it needed more time for scar tissue to grow to hold it in place. There’s a chance of needing a second surgery to get rid of more tissue in a few months; let’s not up the odds of it.

When I came home, Richard astonished me by being up, getting dressed, and announcing he was off to work now.  Wow.  He *does* feel better–yay!  He just arrived home again, needing those pain pills now, but at least he was able to get some in-person time in and he can telecommute from here.  Having seen him the last three days, I am gobsmacked at how well he’s doing.  Wow, and my thank you for the prayers said and the Thinking Good Thoughts in our direction.  (I very much believe God counts those too.)

Last night, while we were eating dinner, the doorbell rang: it was Kaye from Purlescence. I hadn’t gone to Knit Night last Thursday because people there had colds, (they emailed me to warn me) and Jasmin had brought more of her handknit socks for me while I wasn’t there. So Kaye was bringing them to me.  Wow. I definitely do not live on her way home; how many LYSOs…  And how many people give away handknit socks like that!  Thank you, both of you!

I laid out the bounty and Sam admired.  I told her it wasn’t fair for me to have all these Jasmin socks and her none, particularly since she lives where warm wool socks are such an essential in the snow anyway. In the end, of the four pairs and the Jasmin socks I already owned, I was able to talk Sam into claiming three, though she could have taken more, and she very proudly showed off her happy feet this morning.

My feet were already beJasmined too.

I like the last one down on the right…

http://www.tundracomics.com/content_sub1.asp?SUB1_ID=40&SUB_ID=50&CAT_ID=45

I didn’t blog this yesterday because I wanted to know the outcome first, or at least more of it.

Yesterday morning I looked at my husband and told him, Call the doctor.

He shrugged me off.

What is it with men and calling doctors?

An hour later: Call.The.Doctor.  Or maybe I will if you don’t?  He let me hand him the phone at that. An hour later, he handed it back, not having called, and I thought, well, I can’t make him.

Finally, about 2 pm, he suddenly appeared in the hallway in his bathrobe and croaked, “Urgent Care!” I lightly touched his back as I answered him, and he winced hard.  “Is it your kidneys?” I asked him.  Sam hurriedly hustled him out the door, both of them telling me to stay home and not be exposed to all the things that would be coming through the doors at the clinic. They were right, but I didn’t like it.

So all I could do was wait for the phone to ring; Sam called before they did the CT scan.

They got home hours later.  It was a kidney stone, lodged up where they couldn’t do the ultrasound treatment on it, at least not yet; tomorrow he sees the specialist.  The IV they gave him with morphine made it so he came home feeling a whole lot better than when he left, and he’s to stay on morphine till he gets to the doctor.

My mom mentioned to me that she and Richard (with Richard later confirming it was true for him, too) had spent all that time watching over me in the hospital and had not had their usual amount to drink while they did so; only during lunch and dinner at the hospital cafeteria.  Here people were telling me I was going to have to drink a lot more often once they sent me home to keep from getting kidney stones, because of being an ileostomy patient, but Mom and Richard didn’t think to make sure they got enough themselves.  Goodness.  Poor guy.

I can’t tell you how glad we are that Sam’s here! Can you imagine me trying to drive him to the clinic with that right leg of mine?  No way.  I definitely have incentive now to work on strengthening those muscles. You never know, and she’s not staying here forever.

Hopefully they won’t have to do surgery on him and this too shall pass.

What I didn’t mention yesterday was, Sam offered to take me to Coupa Cafe to celebrate my being able to eat chocolate right after my Dr. R. appointment on Wednesday, and I just wasn’t up to it; I went home and crashed.  So when she went out with an old high school girlfriend in the evening, she came home with a cup of it for me anyway because she wanted me not to miss out.

Good stuff!  And then I really wanted to go there.  Friday, going off to see the surgeon, I was able to swing my right leg into the car without having to pick it up and toss it over for the first time in forever.  I can’t tell you how good that felt.  Then my surgeon was exclaiming at how well I looked as I thanked her for making that possible.

That did it. I was taking Sam to Coupa Cafe on the way home to gift her back and to celebrate.

She found a parking space in the next block and across the busiest street in downtown.  Now, just a few days earlier I could never have done this, but I made it across that street in the time of the walk signal.  (Defensively, with a smile, eyeballing the impatient driver halfway in the crosswalk who’d nearly run the light and who looked ready to gun it when it changed, ready or not.)  When I told my legs to move they actually did, even if the steps weren’t as big as I told them to do.

We walked up the block, got ourselves a table, and had a grand old time.  A little mango mousse cake may have been involved too.  (I just now finished it off.)

My knitting still feels slow and awkward, but I’m up to being able to do 40 minutes’ worth at a stretch now.  And I am slowly, gradually turning back into being human.  Stitches West next Friday afternoon, and hopefully Saturday too, here I come!

p.s. Just for fun: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1151ap_obama_basketball_parents.html The Obamas went to go watch their daughter play basketball at the elementary school my husband went to.  I like that!