Santa Clara Convention Center.  Booksignings: Pacific Meadows Alpacas booth 2:30 Fri, and, um, 3:00 Fri at Nina Price’s booth.  (Oops, someone forgot to get back to me and I didn’t know, but it’s okay, we’ll make do.)  Also, Saturday, 11:00 Lisa Souza’s booth.   I can’t wait!

Where on earth does that expression come from? “My foot!” to mean, yeah, right, buddy, uh huh, tell me another one. …Curious.

Silkie’s full name over at Blue Moon Fiber Arts–I had to go look it up to be sure–is “Silkie Socks that Rock.” You know, like how your mom yells your whole entire name, no fond nickname need apply, when she’s yelling down the block at you at the top of her lungs in front of your friends for full effect? “Come back here Archibald McNamara Hoosiername and clean that room right now!” (Thank you, Mom and Dad, for not giving me a middle name nor a nickname so my friends went through this but I never had to.)

So, just what did the Silkie do? Looks like a plain old innocent scarf to me. Socked its little sister? Never.

Specs: 73×13″, one ball Silkie, stretches easily to 16″ wide or so, Carlsbad pattern from “Wrapped in Comfort,” cast on 43 stitches, ie, one extra pattern repeat across.

Meantime, here’s one of Dad’s Christmas gift amaryllises this morning.

I’m the mom. That’s why.

Alright, Silkie, naptime’s over. Wake up. Time to finish the job.

(Pattern: the Carlsbad scarf from “Wrapped in Comfort,” with one extra pattern repeat, therefore stitch count is 43.)

Oh yeah? said the yarn. I am too.

I finished up the shawl in Lisa Souza’s El Dorado heftyish kid mohair/silk, a mix of the Julia and Constance patterns that I’d been hoping I could get ready for Lisa to hang in her booth at Stitches West this weekend. Done. I had two projects in mind to try to get done quickly after that, both of them with the best of intentions.

I have had a hank of Silkie balled up, waiting its turn, now was its turn, I knew exactly where I kept it, and why on earth couldn’t I find it? I spent a fair amount of time yesterday searching for the silly thing. I knew just who I wanted to knit it for and I wanted it done!

While I was searching my stash, this single, rather short ball of mohair that I’d bought from Karen at Royale Hare at Stitches a year ago leaped out at me. I tried to ignore it. But it assaulted my needles, beat my inner schedule up, and dragged me into knitting my Zinnia scarf pattern out of it. The color pattern is awfully busy for that zinnia, but it absolutely refused to be anything else. Flower power rules!

Yeah, my yarn bosses me around like that. What, doesn’t yours?

I just wrote this, thought, but it’s GOT to be in there!, walked in the other room, opened that bag again and searched for that Silkie where I’d searched over and over yesterday, and there it sat beaming innocently up at me. The scamp. Hide and go seek. Ollie ollie in come free!

In the world of the independents, Oregon has Powell’s Books, northern California has Kepler’s. I have for twenty years aspired to write a book that Kepler’s would want to have on their shelves. But when I talked to them over the phone a few months ago, they said they would only special order it upon request, which, when a bookstore is dealing with a first-time author they’ve never heard of before, is pretty standard.

Monday, I took a copy of my “Wrapped in Comfort” to show it to them in person. I mentioned the large first printing last June and that it had gone into a second printing last month; I mentioned the September story that talked about a gathering-together at the city hall plaza in Palo Alto. Clark Kepler asked, “A local story?” to confirm.

Yes.

His bookbuyer took my copy off to an Employees Only area to look it up on the distributor’s site, after I handed it to him with my fingers on the September page. He was courteous and polite as he took it, and when he came back, quite a few minutes later…

…he greeted me with the warmth of an old friend. He told me what a beautiful book it was. He said those shawls were works of art that ought to be hung on the walls like how they were pictured at full spread in the book. He assured me Wrapped would be in stock by the end of the week.

They had no idea the gift they’d just given me. That they’d just fulfilled a deeply-held aspiration of so many years of my life. They will not only carry it, but the one fellow who has looked it over so far is glad that they will. Now, at last, I can truly say I feel like a real writer.

Thank you, Kepler’s. Long may you prosper.

My friend Jasmin was putting in a bulk order for hand dyed roving to Crown Mountain Farms and asked if I wanted to go in on it. My mouth caved in to what my eyes and fingers wanted to play with, no matter what my brain had to say about it, and I told her yes.

She started in on her roving right away when it came. I went ooh, aah, watching her spinning it at Purlescence, and I could only wish; when I spin, which isn’t often anymore, my yarn is never as fine as the stuff I most like to knit up these days. The finer I want it to turn out, the further down my fingertips I hold the fiber at my wheel; with almost no sense of touch left at the tips, spinning like that is a strictly visual task. And one can only stare at a small spot for so long. I could make perfectly lovely yarn out of it, but there was no way this soft merino was going to turn into the lace shawl knitting I so much wished for.

Jasmin had an answer to that. She asked me to bring a half pound of it back to her. I was stunned. I kept asking her, “Are you sure!? Are you serious!” I knew how much work that was! But twist my arm, heck yeah, and I handed over those eight ounces.

That was a week ago. Yesterday (that was a lot of work done fast!) she handed it back to me: in the form of three skeins, three-plied, (three plied! That’s way more work than two-plied!) fingering weight, 794 yards’ worth of that merino, enough for one of my shawls. In absolutely the most gorgeous colorway (well, um, yeah, I picked it out. “Oh Pretty Woman.”) Oh. My. Goodness. Thank you, Jasmin!

I have to add: my friend Nancy came over yesterday, before we saw Jasmin, and I told her, “You have to see this.” She walked into my living room, saw the amaryllises, and gasped out loud over Lene’s: “That one just towers over the others!”

Yeah, my friends tower over me all the time. It’s so cool.

I posted that and then took off to do the errand I had been going to do when he was getting out of his car and I was about to get in mine: I went to Nordstrom’s and bought him some chocolate truffles (shhh, don’t tell on me yet).

And came home to find out he’d gone to See’s and bought *me* some chocolate truffles and, somewhere else, some Valrhona cocoa for my morning mugs. They were sitting on the table waiting for me when I got home–he’d beaten me back.

I love that man.

(Edited to add up here: I used to tell my husband he didn’t need to do the big-bunch-of-roses-on-Valentine’s thing, I’m not so much a roses person anyway. His reaction was that he was being a good example to his sons of how they ought to treat their future wives.

So I said to him a couple of weeks ago, this will be the first Valentine’s with no kids around; you don’t have to do me the big roses thing.

So he brought me a small roses thing. Knowing I would instantly crack up. And I did.)

Ten minutes later, whom should I happen to cross paths with in the driveway..

With no skunks.

I gave him marshmallows this morning, saying we could toast them over an open fire, ie the gas stove. He laughed.

Twenty-seven years.  Have s’more.

My husband and I went camping in the Shenandoah Mountains in Virginia on our honeymoon. Borrowed his folks’ trailer for it; we did it civilized style, y’all. Even if his grandmother got his little sisters to sneak open the camper and throw rice inside the sheets beforehand.

We were toasting marshmallows over a campfire one night–I mean, isn’t that one of the reasons people go camping? The marshmallows? You’ve got to find just the right stick for it, you’ve got to get the fire burning down to just so. There’s an art to it. Besides, when you’re learning all about this new person you’re now married to “for time and all eternity,” and he’s 22 and you’re 21 (and a half–don’t forget that half) and you’re just starting your way into life in the first place, really, who knew that he had the patience to hold that stick there like that, waiting and holding his high, turning it slowly like a spit till the entire marshmallow was (for him) just the right shade of medium brown all over and an even temp throughout? But why would you want to do it that way anyway? Isn’t the glory of a campfired marshmallow having it burn to a satisfying crunch on the outside while totally melting on the inside? Heh. I could not only cook but also get to eat half a dozen of mine to the time of his one, easily.

It’s all about the marshmallows.

Yeah, the skunk agreed with that assessment. And also Richard’s way of cooking the things. It sauntered out of the woods, came up between us while we sat there frozen in place in disbelief–reached over, grabbed his perfect marshmallow off his stick from right over that fire , and sat back to savor every last slow bit of it. Taking its time. The way a marshmallow ought to be enjoyed.

With its tail caressing my new husband’s arm.

He had this look on his face, turned towards me, pleading with me with every molecule in his being, Please don’t laugh. PLEASE don’t laugh.

It was all I could do, but I managed not to laugh. Or move, either.

It finished up, it ambled off happily, then it called its friends and threw a party. Bunch of gate crashers. By the time the four skunks we could see were dividing up the rest of the bag on our picnic table, we were well out of range, following their antics with our flashlights.

I’m sure nobody sells skunk-shaped chocolates; I may have to get my sweetie a bag of Campfire marshmallows for Valentine’s. He’ll know why.

Linda W’s comment about her possums with the bubble-wrap butt bows had me spontaneously bursting out giggling the whole rest of the day. Oh my goodness. I can just see it.

A note first about this picture: I never let my kids hit each other growing up, and no she didn’t; twelve years ago, my kids were play-acting whack-a-mole together on that redwood log. That thing was big enough for a tall 11-year-old boy to stand up in, and as soon as I lifted the camera, his sister gave us a variation on the classic give-your-brother-bunny-ears shot. Ergo the caption.

Now, then.  In those same woods as that picture. On the subject of raccoons…

There’s a state park in the Santa Cruz mountains not far from here, Big Basin, with one of the last local old-growth redwood forests in the area. If you make the mistake of taking the shorter route there, you get there via a long, hilly, insanely twisty lane-and-a-half-wide road, not for the faint of heart nor stomach. (I thought loudly at my husband but did not say, Barf bags in the car are from YOUR side of the family. Dear.)

We noted the “Do not feed the wildlife” signs wryly as we checked in and picked a campsite; good luck with that one. We were unloading the minivan and starting to set things up. A couple of us were putting the food over on the picnic table while others fussed with the tent when a raccoon, bold as you could ask for, came out of the woods and jumped into the back of the van and got shooed away by an indignant child. Another ‘coon snatched the bag of potato chips that had just been put down at the other end of the table from me, as I spluttered, “But I was standing right here!” while it took off with it. I was suddenly glad I’d bought the type I had.

Jalapeno flavored.

When Purlescence got a shipment of Blue Moon’s Silkie merino/silk in last month, I went through their basket and dithered between the turquoise and the purple colorways. Turquoise or purple. I love purple. But, for reasons I couldn’t put my knitting fingers on, the turquoise is what came home with me.

When it was just an unkempt blob of stitches on my blog, Lene commented how much that turquoise reminded her of her beloved ocean that I knew was so much a part of her growing up in Denmark. What she didn’t know, was, I had spent over a year wishing she would let slip somehow what colors she liked best.

She’d sent me that amaryllis and I had her return address. Heh.

When I was growing up in a house in Maryland set back in the woods that ran alongside a ten-mile-long watershed preserve, one of the signs of spring was having a pregnant raccoon fairly often at the back door at dinnertime, nosing around the dining room window while we ate a few feet away, ready to saunter inside and swap recipes with Mom.

I remember the ugly rat-nosed possums that fell into the trashcan, and, unlike the raccoons, who had so kindly lifted the lids off for them, couldn’t always hoist themselves back out. Dad would tip the can over, give its metal bottom a good thwack with a broom (we had a genuine Fuller Brush Man model, with a metal handle), and go back inside. You couldn’t scare the thing out, he’d learned, it just faints on you and there it is; you’re certainly not about to stick your hand in and pull it out, either. But you want to teach the thing that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. So, a booming thwack to reverberate in its ears a moment, a retreat, a wait for it to come to, and a hope that you made it a sufficiently unpleasant experience that it leaves.

Maybe after it’s eaten its dinner in there. All in good time, my dear man, all in good time.

We occasionally, somewhat despite our parents’ common sense, opened that back door and tried to feed the mom-coon out of our hands. It was so cute; what we really wanted to do was pet it. But there was a particular one that liked the smells that were behind us better than the stuff we were offering, and tried to slip quickly past the two of us kids sitting on the stoop and zip right on in and help itself. You know how moms are. They’re used to being in charge. We jumped quickly together to block it, and it thought better of it, but only quite reluctantly. It turned back around towards us, ready to make another attempt. That got us an, “Okay, kids–time to close that door!” And that was the last time I remember us trying to do that.

While my computer is being a cat arching its back and hissing at my camera, one of my readers sent me a picture of the friendly animal she’s got in her back yard that comes peering in the window hoping for a meal. Tunie has named him Rupert. Just don’t open the door, ‘k?

After posting about Bigfoot’s name the other day, I grabbed some Lisa Souza’s baby alpaca/silk in the Berry Poppins colorway and cast on. It has been flying off the needles. I don’t know why, I don’t know who it’s supposed to be for, but there’s this great sense of anticipation that feels like I’m about to find out, and that I have to have it ready for when I do.

Curious. And I would show it to you, too, (it’s about 14″ long so far), except my computer is dissing my camera card. So here’s a close-up of an Appleblossom amaryllis that I shot yesterday.

Lene’s amaryllis still hasn’t quite yawned and stretched all the way open yet. Slowly, slowly. It’s 64 degrees in that room in winter (brrr, and lots of afghans in there), which means the amaryllises grow in slower motion–but they stay blooming longer. A good spot to curl up with a good book.

At Stitches West two years ago, I bought a huge hank of alpaca laceweight from Lisa Souza in her Shade Garden. I knitted it up into two shawls: for the first, I ran it with a strand of merino in lilac for a one-off for my friend Kristine at http://lilacknitting.blogspot.com/ which you can see me trying on if you click on “My Books” at the top of this page. The other, I ran it with a strand of light blue Baruffa merino fine laceweight and knitted it in the Bluejay pattern. (Lisa has since changed to a finer-micron-count baby alpaca laceweight, and I can’t wait to look over her stock at Stitches again in two weeks.)

Diana tried the Bluejay on for me last night. She was going, “This isn’t even fingering weight!” even with the two strands together. True.  It seems to me, the finer the yarn, the more formal-looking the shawl, and that’s the effect I was going for.

See you all at Stitches! I’ll be signing books Friday and Saturday afternoons.