Wait, Karin, here’s another lesson for you. I put down the hairdryer and went and blogged all that, came back in the room awhile later, and I’m not quite sure what the time lapse was, and it was still morning, but.

Let me say first in my defense that I am hearing impaired, that I am normally very careful because I happen to know that about me; there was a fan going on in the background that was hard to hear over. When I checked the shawl again after my blogging, it was hey! Bone dry now! Cool!

Maybe cool wasn’t the word. The shawl’s temperature was slightly warm. Wait a minute…I went to check the hairdryer, and burning my hand, dropped it fast. I unplugged it immediately as I realized I’d left it on the lowest setting that whole time rather than clicking it all the way to off, that I hadn’t been able to hear it was still going. The air being blown was only barely warming–no problem to the shawl. But the motor was well overheated.

Um. Oops.

But that first semi-blocking gave me the information I needed to know about how much it would stretch out, and it talked me into knitting another repeat of the pattern, so I’m glad I did it.

Risking burning down the house, not so much.

The work is done, the shawl is blocking, none the worse for any of that, I checked it this morning and even all spread out like that, the thing was still damp.

I glanced a thought towards the hairdryer, and thought, not on your life.

I have occasionally mentioned here and on the knitting lists my idea that if you want to get an idea of how your crumpled tin foil-y-looking stuff will look like in real life once your lace project is done, or if you simply want to like it better or show it off better while working on it, rinse it gently in tepid water, still on the needles, and lay it out to dry overnight to let the stitches settle into their natural patterns.

So, knowing this was probably a dumb move, I did that last night. With about 300 stitches of a thicker-than-my-usual yarn on one not terribly long circular needle (knowing full well I should be using two or one unusually long one), all bunched up. Okay, you can see the outcome already, and so could I, but I really really needed to know how long this was getting to be, having never put that yarn with that pattern before and knowing that some silk yarns have a tendency to stretch out when wet. The overall weight of the shawl affects the hang of it more than you could learn from a small swatch, which is one excuse for why of course I didn’t swatch it; the other being, I already knew it would fit when I was done, so hey. But I did need to know that length now.

Which is why I winced but took the hairdryer to it this morning. No, it’s not as long as I thought, no, I’m not done after all, and I do need to finish it today. No, I do not recommend potentially shrinking your shawl with a hairdryer, so I set it on low in penitence. Before I turned it up in impatience.

1. A bird’s-foot view:

Lene posted a photo she took of bird tracks that were probably made by pigeons, and it instantly hit me that if you turned them towards you and drew a circle around them, you had the Peace symbol. The Dove of Peace–I wondered, whoever drew the original, was that their inspiration? So I googled, found this, and have to think they did not make that connection. But it’s fascinating how well the two symbols converge.

2. Catapulted:

I was reading reviews of the Shake Awake, a silent alarm clock to put under one’s pillow, and had to laugh at one person’s descriptions of why it was such an improvement for her sound-sleeper hearing-impaired son: she said that before that, they’d had to throw the cat at him every morning to get him to finally stir.

3. Toucans help too:

I had a cardiology appointment this week, and if ever a doctor is likely to be suddenly interrupted and delayed, it’s a heart specialist. (It was just a follow-up to verify that yes, I’m fine there, my cardiac cough went away when that lupus flare did this past winter.) Definitely a bring-your-knitting appointment. As I waited, a very well-dressed elderly woman was wheeled into the waiting room by her attendant, who caught my eye, nodded at my stitches, and silently smiled at me.

The old one in her string of pearls and silk sat there in her wheelchair looking terribly bored and unhappy; it took me awhile to glance down from my knitting and notice that her lower legs were scabbed over in signs of old sores, many of them. Her shoes were perfect but her skin gave her away. She avoided eye contact. I noticed her attendant had pearl earrings on too, and I thought, you’re both generous souls, then; good for you.

I thought about it, then searched in my purse, looking for a particularly bright and cheerful one. And intricate. I wanted intricate. Something particularly nicely made. I found one, a toucan-looking bird, and just as the nurse opened the door and called my name, I reached across the small aisle between the seats and offered the old woman the finger puppet. A child’s toy? But an adult’s delight as well in the skill and pride that someone, somewhere in Peru had put into creating the piece.

The old woman’s face totally lit up in surprise and delight, and behind her, her attendant’s did too. So did the nurse’s. I didn’t want to delay the office by stopping to describe where I get those from, that no, I didn’t knit it, so as the door closed behind us going down the hallway, I mentioned to the nurse. I figured, if the patient wanted to talk to her about it, she could tell her herself. If they had time. The nurse’s call, not mine; the important part had already happened.

It’s hard to be old and lonely. Saying to somebody that they are noticed, even just in a small moment, can make a world of difference to them, and the rest of us too. It was so easy to do.

4. Now she sees it:

My daughter had an eye doctor appointment and I don’t even remember why I came with and waited for her, but I brought my knitting and did. A woman, I’m guessing Chinese, was walking past, saw the work in my hands, and stopped on the spot and came over and sat down next to me. It is amazing what you can convey with pantomime: she had never seen circular needles before. I demonstrated how you use them just like straights, and that no, the circular shawl I was knitting wasn’t a closed circle, it was back and forth; I pulled out my book and showed her how it would look finished. Oh! Then she wanted to know how to do lace. I taught her on the spot. Ssk, slants this way, k2tog, slants that, purl into a yarnover this way. By the time I left, she had it and she was thrilled. I couldn’t ask her how long she’d been knitting, I couldn’t ask her anything not communicated with waving hands and needles. But there is a universal joy in sharing knowledge and in learning how to do something new. I can just picture her running to me, wherever she is now, with her needles in hand to show me what she’s making now.

5. It’s all your fault:

And if you bought ME a Shake Awake, this being California, I’d probably need that cardiologist, thinking the San Andreas was going off bigtime.

(Say that fast. Sorry, couldn’t resist the chance for a bad pun.)

Slipping back towards the bad old days: I made it through about a half hour at Purlescence last night. Someone brought in their dinner and I had to move quickly away before my stomach did violence to the surroundings from the smell of the food. My daughter, who’d dropped me off and gone to the nearby library, was hovering from a few blocks away and texted me that I probably wanted to go home now?

So I came home and collapsed. But not till I’d had a conversation with a fellow knitting Crohn’s patient about a new drug approved last month. There is? Really? Yay!

Hopefully, though, give this a few days and it’ll settle down on its own.

Meantime, Michelle had gone and looked up bluejays: they stay in pairs even when it’s not nesting season (I often see two) and they’re loud–until you get near their nest. Then they get quiet so as not to attract undue attention.

Oh goodness. And I’d had that thing squawk at me across the yard and finally get quiet near the apple tree after I flicked the hose towards it. I don’t think the water even reached it, but suddenly I wanted to go apologize to the baby birds. I will be the one who’s more respectful now (and curious as to where the nest is–I didn’t see it.)

To change the subject: when my husband and I got married, my parents were so happy and so glowing, you’d think they were the ones getting married! I saw the love mixed with the difference between being young and in love and middle-aged and in love, and told Richard I looked forward to the day when we too would have the time, experience, and maturity behind us like they had. I wanted to be them when I grew up.

And here, a generation later, I think we’ve done okay, and here we are looking at two of our own kids and their spouses with love and gratitude ourselves.

I didn’t take Jessie’s shawl to Purlescence. I figured it was too complicated to be an on-the-go project, especially when I was still at the stage of starting the main pattern and trying to keep track of the stitch count. After I got home, I picked it up and wondered if my fried brain could make sense of those jellyfish, Barbara Walker’s Showers pattern turned upside down.

And you know what? To my surprise, my laceknitting had become middle-aged. No angst, no worries, just do it. Why had I thought this was hard? Knowing which way to wrap the yarnover when the next stitch is a knit or purl is as natural now as breathing. Knowing what to do coming up to a double yarnover is like remembering that the green light means go. The purl through back loops of three stitches at once is a meandering knit along a beautiful country road.

I’ve always loved this pattern, and now we’re old friends, too.

Knitpicks.com has all their books on sale, 40% off; they’ve also been sponsoring a “Wrapped in Comfort” knitalong where I’ve been checking in to see if anyone needs any questions answered. Thought I’d mention.

Although, if you’d like a signed and inscribed copy, Purlescence is where to go.

I was standing in a local yarn store about two months ago, looking at the Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca Silk. I love that yarn. I love the kindness of the women behind that brand–I’ve mentioned here before that I once had trouble matching a dye lot and got a phone call from New York City at dark o’clock one winter morning as a LYSO there called me back the next day, having no clue that the person who’d inquired was on California time. My husband startled awake, grabbed the phone so I could sleep, and then woke me, grumbling, “It’s your New York City boiler-room yarn pushers. They want you to know they don’t have your dye lot.”

Busted.

When I told Blue Sky, they promptly checked, found they could match it themselves, and mailed me two skeins and insisted it was on them for my troubles.

So here I was thinking how I have such positive associations with that yarn, and I felt, buy the white. You’ll be glad you have it. Buy the white. I had nobody in mind, just a strong feeling.

I was going through my stash (again!) looking for just the right yarn for Jessie’s wedding present, and that Alpaca Silk leaped out at me and I thought, I am SO glad I have that! And then it hit me that that matched the thought I’d had in the store.

So did I immediately cast on? Was I satisfied? I confess no. I argued. I had cones’ worth of plain baby alpaca, less impressive looking, perhaps less soft, but already balled up and ready to go. I had this, I had that, and the Alpaca Silk would require prep time and I was tired. I went and watered my baby plum tree, it being about 8 pm, no UV to speak of, and then the apple trees. I splashed at the bluejay that scolded me that this was its territory (and it actually, for the first time in weeks, shut up. It’s been keeping my daughter awake at night, and it actually stood there on the branch above me, looking at me, opening its beak a few times and then not chattering anything. I do believe it finally gained some respect.) I avoided the yarn some more. I wrote a note to a friend.

It’s the writing that did it–when in doubt, write it out. It hit me that thinking that that was just the right yarn and then not using it because I didn’t want to roll it up into balls and I didn’t want to have to splice them were just such dumb reasons not to use a yarn that I knew felt right. Get real. And I only had to ball up the first for the night, the rest could wait.

I can’t tell you what a relief it felt to get going with what was then sitting in my hands, going, See? See? I told you so! at me.

I didn’t want to make a Wanda shawl from my “Wrapped in Comfort” book in white and have Jessie’s exactly match my sister Anne’s. I wanted her to have something more unique. I spent some time hashing out lace pattern ideas and swatches, noted the wedding date–uh, ain’t a whole lot of time there, folks–and decided I’d have to leave room for ripping and redoing and redesigning for later on on that one. The result is this:

I cast on and started following the directions for the Constance shawl, but in size 6mm (10) needles. (As always, remember that I am a very loose knitter.) Then row 6, I knit plain. Row 8, I omitted. For the yoke, I did the seaweed pattern of the Monterey shawl, and will continue with the Monterey from there; the original had 361 stitches across the body, this will have 292 (three more than the Constance because the jellyfish pattern is a 12+4 whereas the Constance is a 12+1.)

Got all that? Good. Basically, this gets you a less-full Monterey shawl on larger needles, fewer stitches, and less time taken, but in a wonderful yarn. It will have 13 stitches more across than the Wanda shawl in the Wanda yarn, and the Monterey is a mesh-type stitch with a great deal of give to it. It is emphatically NOT a beginner’s lace; it’s complicated and requires lots of attention, it aggravates occasionally especially when you’re not used to it, and it comes out absolutely exquisite in the end, especially knitted up in a yarn like this.

Which is why it feels like the perfect one to knit for newlyweds. Not to mention, it looks like they’ll be taking a job here. I can’t wait to show them the Aquarium in Monterey.

I wrote this a few days ago, and waited permission to post it:

We went to a celebration tonight, one like no other I have been to. She’d told me, when she’d called, that she wanted to “take a page from your book,” but she wrote her own here and I love her penmanship on the page of our lives that was written tonight.

After my hospitalization, I’d thanked my doctors and nurses individually, with knitting. She brought hers home en masse.

Marguerite had invited her medical team and just a very few close friends who had played roles in supporting her in her ordeal to come to her home as the time of her treatments came to an end. This was for the doctors, the nurses, the woman at the clinic who scheduled her appointments: she felt she owed much. She wanted to give back. She wanted to thank each of us for playing a role in sustaining and affirming her life in the face of her cancer, to have us celebrate with her her last week of radiation. Her teenage son snapped pictures of the small crowd, keeping record.

She didn’t speak very long, just a few words that said much; she let the music, and the very act of playing it, convey the rest of it for her. Her husband Russ was on his grand piano and two friends and one of her doctors joined in with their own instruments. Joyful music, lively music, a touch of jazz here, of Bach there, music that acknowledged the grief, music that returned to the underlying joy. Music that showed life honestly and in true celebration.

I can’t tell you how much it meant to me. To life!

Lene tagged me yesterday with the meme about picking up a book, turning to page 123, starting at sentence five and reading the next three. The first two books I picked up, I looked at and went, nah, so I turned to Rachel Remen‘s “My Grandfather’s Blessings,” knowing I would likely find something good there to share here.

Remen’s patient, who had been very afraid of her upcoming cancer surgery to the point of having put it off for months, had finally gone in to see the surgeon. He was Japanese, and he had made her a beautiful white paper crane, eight inches across. Remen’s patient told her, “The man who is going to operate on me tomorrow can make such a thing with his hands. And he made it for me. How could I possibly not heal?”

Remen writes, “I have wondered for years why some surgeons have far better outcome data than others who are equally well trained,” adding, “Perhaps some have found their own way to strengthen the will to live in their patients long before they meet them in the operating room.”

The surgeon had taken the time to create something beautiful–and one can create beauty with caring, it doesn’t have to be something physical–but he had given her a tangible, visual manifestation of his wanting her to be well.

Like we who knit do with yarn ourselves. There is great power for good in the work of our hands with our hearts.

(With thanks to Brynn, who, while in elementary school, made me this paper crane to wish me better while I was in the hospital. Five years later, I keep it proudly on display on our organ.)

“You can’t have it, Jessie, it’s mine!” Cheryl grinned at her teenager, who was stroking it. I had just given her a handspun angora scarf, simply done in a triangle shape: cast on three stitches and knit into the front and back of the last stitch on each row till it’s the size you want. It was before I knew how to knit lace. But spinning I could do, knitting I could do, softness in the face of Cheryl’s cancer, this was what I could do to cheer her on. It had been a few years since I’d made her a Kaffe Fassett sweater at my husband’s urging at his sister’s diagnosis, which was the first time I knew my husband got this whole knitting thing: Richard had even driven an hour away across the Bay with me to Straw Into Gold to help pick out the colors.

White angora this time. Cheryl beat the odds and continued on, as her doctors tried one therapy and then another. For eight years.

My in-laws left this morning to help out with the next grandchild’s wedding, and I found myself taking stock: finish the cashmere and silk project. Okay, I can do that today. Keep the second WIP off to the side–that purple one that’s mostly done can wait yet a little longer, because the person getting it has no clue and there’s no rush (even if *I* want it finished. I don’t like to let things sit like that.) There’s the ocean Sea Silk I bought for my mother-in-law that needs to get started, and the blue-formerly-Bare I’d like to dive into.

But. Most importantly. There’s the niece getting married in two weeks.

Jessie was in college when Cheryl finally passed; her dad had bugged out of his sick wife’s life about halfway through. (I debated long and hard about mentioning that here. One could write all kinds of outrage here and in the comments, and they would be soundly deserved by him, but not by his daughter.) If ever a young woman deserved some knitting from me in support and in celebration of her new happiness…

Whichever yarn in my stash wins out, I promise you it will be something exquisitely soft.

We went to a delightful wedding reception tonight; the groom grew up with my kids, and we got to meet the bride’s parents tonight, very nice people. Dan and Caitlin are like Richard and Kim: they bring out the best in each other. It was beautiful to see. (I teased Dan for a moment about his dandelion corsage, which startled him into checking real quick–no, it was a baby yellow chrysanthemum, honest, Dan!)

It was my first chance all day, and seemed clearly my last, to participate in World Wide Knit in Public Day. I pulled out my needles during a quiet moment, felt guilty, cast on about a dozen stitches, and stashed it quickly back in my purse.

On the way home, our daughter said she needed to stop at Kinko’s a moment. Huzzah! WWKIP Day, here I come!

While she was printing out some materials, I looked around: one guy looked sound asleep, waiting for his stuff to be done, another looked grimly busy, two were semi-oblivious, and one caught my eye, noticing the oddball with the yarn by the windows.

My husband came over a moment to where I had cast away those cast ons and started over and knitted from there, and I explained what the day was all about. He rolled his eyes. “No, really! It really is being observed worldwide today!”

He came back with the perfect answer for a man married to me: “I didn’t know it was a closet sport.”

Or, ask and ye shall receive. I can’t believe it. Now to figure out if I can somehow help straighten out the stalk-that-will-be-a-trunk so it doesn’t take out the fence–it kind of leaned against it while trying to reach some sunlight amongst the plants in the box there. See those big leaves on the left?

I’ve wanted a fig tree for years. Not a completely practical thing to want. It doesn’t get hot enough here long enough for them to get terribly sweet in our microclimate–same with oranges, which can come out tasting sourer than lemons unless you’ve got the right exposure, and maybe heat reflecting off the side of a house or fence. Still. My friend Marlene used to live down the street, and she had a fig tree leaning over the fence from her neighbor’s yard: she loved it. She loved the shade and being able to reach right up and eat a fig anytime, and she was terribly upset when the neighbor declared it had to go, that they were cutting it down.

Those figs were good enough to make Marlene delighted with them–hey. So I wanted a fig tree myself. Look at those leaves, and you can see why, when they’re toweringly tall, they tend to dominate the postage-stamp yards around here. I grew up in a house in the woods, and those huge leaves, so different from what you see in California in general, really appealed to my inner forest.

I went outside just now to photograph the lemon tree, laughing over the silly bluejay that tried to argue with my father-in-law that he was trespassing in her yard and to get away. I was going to share a good laugh over the bird.

And I saw the fig tree up above the six-foot-tall fence. None of us had any clue it was growing back there. We certainly didn’t plant it. The bird, instead, got the last laugh, and I am delighted.

Now is it easier to see? The Constance shawl, after I listened to the galloping horse whinnying “Neigh!” Reknitting from the double-wound tube was enough of a tangle when I first picked it up yesterday that I knew I had to get past that point before I put it away in the ziploc again for the night. So I did, with no problems after that initial moment.

Nancy’s penguin trying to claim credit for the blue ocean of Bare yarn.

Diana trying on my mother-of-the-bride Camelspin-yarn shawl at Purlescence’s knit night last night. The pattern has memories of strawberry picking with my family, growing up, and the wide, flowing Potomac River knitted into its stitches. I have a tradition of always dipping a toe into the water along the banks of that river every time I fly home. Now I can take it with me without having to crash through the canoe.

The pelicans we saw going to the post office yesterday.

“Is it fragile?” the clerk asked.

“Lemons from my Meyer tree for someone who misses California,” I answered her. She loved it.  We just hoped the box doesn’t start leaking juice before it arrives. We put it inside one of their all-weights-fits-one-price box (good thing!)

It took me five hours to make myself get to it. I snuck glances at it, wondering if maybe it and I could still be friends. Nope. It was definitely a tadpole. The in-laws were up at Dad’s sister’s for the day, Aunt Mary Lynn showing them where the major fire three weeks ago had missed their home in the mountains, and as they drove up there, fire trucks raced towards the new Bonny Doon fire.

I had nothing whatsofreakingever to complain about.

I wanted to get it done while they were gone. The rip, rip frogging’s not so bad, it’s that last little bit. Tinking the last row back onto the needles, hundreds of shawl stitches curving and overlapping into chaos, with the silk mercilessly slippery–but the cashmere strand helped steady it. I wound them round the empty end of the silk’s tube. I alternated leaning on my elbows, lying on the floor, hunched way over, trying to make the task more comfortable. I needed the slight friction of the rug’s surface to try to hold it more still to cut down on any one stitch’s running away from home. Lifeline? Me? On a simple pattern? My pride would have guffawed. That’ll teach me.

But while I was avoiding the whole thing, I got out the Knitpicks Bare merino/silk that had been sitting there staring at me a couple of weeks while the wedding was going on. Ran my hands down its length, pleased again at the texture of it. Nobody home but me. I can stink up the house (*I* think the dyepot in action smells of creativity and possibilities and oh cool.) Jacquard Acid dye in navy, not too much, and at first, the yarn turned a deep purple. I really liked it and debated snatching it out of the pot then and there. I’ve done that before, although knowing that the half hour of simmering is what sets the dye. One time, I grabbed a yarn out of the pot right after it hit the water, set up a dyepot of plain water, and made it do its time in that–it cost me a little of the depth of the color, but it stayed the same overall. Next time I’d probably snatch it out and zap it in the microwave for the rest of its heat, now that I’ve finally dedicated one large glass bowl to the dyezone.

Anyway, I let it go its full time, and the purple gave way to blue, with a little brownishness exhausting out of the pot when I was done. I’ve seen that before, and it makes me want to tour a dye factory and go do research.

Going to a brief doctor’s appointment, I grabbed a UFO on my way out the door. Got that project closer to being done, and I was glad to have it back on current-project status.

So it was a good and productive day. And then I glanced at the clock, remembered when the folks were expected back, knew I didn’t want them to watch me being uncomfortable with my butt high in the air while leaning on my elbows, growling at the silk running away from the tips of my needles, stitch after stitch after stitch, thought again of Diana’s words which rang so true for me: “I’ve seldom regretted frogging, but have occasionally regretted letting something be. not always, but occasionally.” And I frogged the bleeping thing. I did it. It’s done.

And then, as the Bare dried, I knitted the other WIP a little more just to show the silk who was boss.

When I was a kid, Where’s Waldo hadn’t been dreamed up yet, and if you finished reading your book while waiting for the dentist to finish working on your sister so he could get to you, what you could find in that office for entertainment, well, let’s see. There were parents’ magazines and there was the little kids’ magazine to stave off boredom–but it was definitely for little kids and was felt as an insult to anyone over nine. BORINGGGG. Holiday, I think it was called. I well remember the “find what’s wrong with this picture” page and wishing it had something at least challenging on it.

So. Yesterday I picked up my knitting and tried to make up for lost time from Monday’s mess. I was pleased with myself at how much I was getting done while still playing hostess I think okay.

My brain must have been on Holiday.

It hit me. The whole day’s worth of knitting. Right there in front of me, the whole time, the whole day, every time I’d picked it up and put it down, and I hadn’t noticed.

The diamond I’d been working on is the one that would be at the center of the body of the shawl.

What would you do? Would you continue the one center diamond as a solid, then from there turn the diamonds upside down and continue with the open-mesh part pointing down now rather than up? Kind of like a fair isle, with a solid Charlie Brown zigzag across the center and then matching zig zag openwork lines above and below, marking definite horizontal lines across the body of the shawl? Or do I frog it and go do the Constance pattern as it was meant to be.

Opportunity, or, oh crud. Note that frogging two strands is always fun when you have to figure out how and what to wrap it around as you undo, but note also that it is well worth if it needs to be reknit.

I think there’s a jumping amphibian in my immediate future.

Gotta love that skylight view through the bathroom. A cacophony of crows indeed: they added their touch to the day.

Two toilet removals, many hours, much mopping, much laundering and folding of towels on my part and $634 later, the deed was done.

This morning my shower backed up. Could have been worse.

Michelle missed all the excitement yesterday, and went out to dinner with her friends almost as soon as she got home from work. So much for the easy way out for the rest of us: I hit the wall in the middle of cooking dinner with my mother-in-law, went in the other room and quietly told my husband that if I stood on my feet one more second I was going to barf. Which is what happens when I overdo. He’d had a long day too, but he instantly leaped up and took over, bless him.

I was far too tired to even knit.

I had gotten out the leftover brown rice and the Chinese hoisin sauce to go with the stir fry, hadn’t found the sesame oil, looked in the fridge, had seen the giant jar of pineapple mango salsa from Costco and thought, well, we gotta eat it sometime, and since I didn’t use sesame–I’d dumped half of it in. The more the merrier. Fruit. It’s good for you.

Richard went in the kitchen where the veggies were cooking away and the meat was ready to go in. Grabbed the hoisin sauce, cooked the meat, threw the rice in with the rest. One pot. Done like dinner.

And didn’t understand the funny look on my face when he presented it at the table in a color I wasn’t expecting.

Actually, it was surprisingly good.