The suitcase that put on someone else’s tag like a pair of sunglasses and went on vacation to LA to audition for the movies made it home with the audience giving it a standing ovation (ie, the kid got up out of bed at 7 am to answer the deliveryman.) The other kid changed his ticket and will be coming in tonight. Go Jetblue!

Last night I went to the last hour of knit night at Purlescence: my Sea Shanty poster from Chris Baldwin at http://littledee.net/ was just too perfectly Chloe, I had to go. I was one of the lucky people who ordered one the first day; they sold out pretty instantly. Pirates and knitting: what more could you ask for? (I forgot to take my camera, so I’m making do with two older pictures of her with her Kathy shawl.)

Let’s see how fast I can type before I give the computer over for the day to the kid with the take-home final.

I was going to take a photo for the blog of the suitcases lined up, and perhaps another as more get added in as my children arrive. Um, one problem with that idea: the suitcase didn’t come off the plane last night. Oops.

Before my younger daughter left for the airport yesterday, I described the captain I’d had and said, “If you get a chance, tell my pilot your mom said thank you,” and I described him. And thought afterwards, he will always be “my pilot” to me, whoever and wherever he is.

She got to the airport late, barely made the plane, the cockpit door was shut, and, as is more the norm these days, it stayed shut at the end. Ah, well; so. What was that about, Mom?

She had just flown on Jetblue. Flight 291. And tonight, so will my older son after he finishes his finals at BYU. So she was late and her suitcase didn’t get loaded on? It’ll probably come with his flight, since they only have one a day; I might get a crack at that photo after all.

But we got to come home last night from the airport with our child, and I have a heightened sense of appreciation for that small, everyday fact.

P.S. Update: Kristine had her baby! http://lilacknitting.blogspot.com/ to welcome Miss Lucy into the world–she’s beautiful!

So. Handmaiden’s new Camelspin yarn, wherein my fingers thought they’d died and gone to heaven–till I went back to Purlescence and discovered Handmaiden’s cashmere yarn. There are many grades of cashmere out there in the world, some of them apologetically asking for quotation marks around the word, but this is right up there with Lisa Souza’s handspun. Wow.

Silk yarns have a tendency to collapse and go limp and long as you wear the thing; this is 70 silk/30 baby camel, and I wasn’t quite sure how it would behave. It’s the perfect kind of yarn for one of my circular shawls, which hang in such a way that they stay on the body effortlessly and the stitch patterns stay open and beautiful. But even if I’d been willing to spring for two skeins, there was only the one in the shop. I didn’t know, then, if this would pull into a hopelessly long scarf, or, if I stopped it now, it would be hopelessly too short to be worn as a shawl stretched open across the back. Width or length. Which is it gonna be.

Only one way to get a good idea: do what I’ve told countless newbie laceknitters on the knitting lists to do. Rinse it gently in tepid water and lay it out on an old white something or other overnight, still on the needles. Not a true blocking, but it does show how the pattern comes out.

And then take a bad picture of it that doesn’t show the colors well so that the intended recipient won’t really quite see it before Christmas.

Stitch pattern: the instructions to the main body of the Michelle pattern in my book, plus one plain stitch each side. Fairly quick, very easy, 45 stitches, fingering weight, size 5.5 mm needles. Merry Christmas!

There’s a cliche that knitting blogs need a cat for a prop, and to help out, our daughter flew in last night with photos of our grandcats. Here’s Eve above, and Anya checking out the hot cocoa to make sure it’s warm enough to balance out the snow they had going on outside.

The phone rang about a half hour ago, and my husband took off.

When my folks announced they were selling the house in Maryland they’d lived in for 45 years or so and moving to downtown Salt Lake City, my first reaction was, huh? But seeing their beautiful new home this past week, I could see how perfect a move it has been for them. And this is the view out their new windows (click on it for best effect). Very nice.

It surprised me that, although it snowed a bit I think every day we were there, it didn’t feel that much colder than here in California. I’m used to it being a bit chilly and wearing two layers of wool around the house, but then, we have big picture windows too, and cold winter fog rolling over our own mountains nearby.

Which means there is a family standing outside, shivering as the firemen have been doing their best.

Red Cross dispatcher, hoping one of the volunteers was available to respond, asking for Richard. House fire. Would he go?

From the warmth of our home, how could he not?

Going back a few days again. Thursday night, Mom and Dad dropped us off in front of the skycap at the airport and wished me happy birthday again (it was my 49th) and hugged us goodbye. The guy was weighing someone’s oversized skis, but he told us he couldn’t take our bags, we had to check those in inside. I guess because ours were the standard sizes? I didn’t hear why. Okay, whatever. He let me sit inside his little heated booth while we waited for a wheelchair for me: airports and I aren’t on walking terms. It was snowingly cold out there, and I was grateful for his kindness.

Then as we were gathering our things up and putting our shoes back on at security, my cousin Amy, whom I had not seen for seven years, happened to step into view right there right then, on her way to being picked up by her daughter. AMY! Hugs and thrills at seeing each other. Out of all the places in the whole airport, and perfect timing, too… Hey, Lisa Souza, I gave her the Pacific scarf I made whose picture you put on your lisaknit.com website–it was perfect for her.

And then, as we waited at our gate, the plane we were to get on in a moment landed, its passengers disembarked, and two friends of ours, Christina and Kathryn, stepped off it together. Quite the surprise and delight all around. It is so mindblowing and so wonderful when you run into someone you know while travelling: out of all the physical space in the whole planet they could be occupying, and there they and you somehow are. And to have it happen twice in a half hour!

Now, when you fly Jetblue, you pick your seats when you book the flight, and when I did, all the seats close to the front were taken, as were most of the rest. We were assigned to be over the wing. But you can change your booking to an open spot online anytime up to check-in, and I guess someone did, or else they cancelled their tickets, because when we checked in those bags inside as the skycap told us we had to, the clerk looked at Richard’s 6’8″ height and my wheelchair and asked if we would like to be moved up to row 3 where there was more legroom and it would be easier for me. Well *yeah*!

And so it was that we were not over the wing after all. And so it was that I was seated where I could see out. And so it was that I was seated on the side where I would see that second jet–and did. And so it was that the writer on that flight, at least the one I know about, wrote about what that pilot did, and, today, printed it out and mailed it to Jetblue customer service to honor a good man’s heroic actions, hoping they would pass it on to him. And acknowledged to him on the scene what he so much needed to have be said that night.

I don’t know who cancelled their 3 E and F seats, but whoever you are, my thanks to you, too.

Sometimes all you can do is stand back and be wowed by the careful choreography of a quiet God doing good in the background.

Wednesday we checked our son John into the Mormon Church’s Mission Training Center in Provo, Utah, the point of our trip. In three weeks, he will be off from there to the Jackson, Mississippi mission, including parts of Louisiana–ya’ll take good care of him for me if you see him riding by on his bike for me, willya; thanks. He’s such a good kid, and his mother is going to miss him fiercely.

Then later that afternoon we went to Heindselman’s, a Provo store that has spinning, weaving, and knitting and crocheting supplies. I was delighted to see Alpaca With A Twist’s baby alpaca roving, my favorite.

Heindselman’s, it turns out, is the oldest continuously-operating yarn store in the United States; it began in 1904. The current owner (this is Ted, with Elizabeth in the background) created a biomedical invention that I’ll let him talk about, if he’d like to, that did very well, and then, since he could now go do anything he wanted, he chose to take on the old family business.

We got to meet Father Christmas http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695235971,00.html when he happened to come into the store.

There were dolls just to the left of Ted in the picture that he explained are Heindselmans: it is not only the family name, but also the word for the characters in the old fairy tale about the poor shoemaker who could not possibly finish the fine shoes in time that had been ordered to be done by Christmas. They are the little elves that came out at night and worked on them for him, unbeknownst to him.

You know, I can’t think of a more apropos concept for those of the yarny persuasions this time of year. There’s a certain knitter in Toronto with a Schedule who could really use some of those dolls right now, but I didn’t think to ask if any of them were for sale. Sorry, Stephanie!

I warned you. Okay, here goes.

Tonight we flew home from Salt Lake, and I have all these things to say about an absolutely wonderful trip and wonderful people and how glad I am that we got to go. I’ll get to it. But I have to get this out of my system first.

We were flying over the San Francisco Bay on our way towards landing tonight. Looking out the window, I saw flashing lights in the dark–in the middle of the Bay? Red. White. That made no sense. I was trying to remember, from all the times we’ve driven those two bridges we were flying past, what those could possibly be–except, we didn’t go past them. They kept being simply there. Weird. They got a little closer and a little clearer, a ghost and a shadow at first and then clearly and plain to see right there, a SECOND JET flying directly alongside us and underneath–we were seconds from impact. If not before landing, then we were going to land right on top of them. We were going to the same runway at the same time. Just at the point that I thought emphatically, God, You have to do something because this isn’t going to work, our pilot rammed our plane straight up and out of the way. My stars. I don’t know where air traffic control was, but I can tell you emphatically that it was not at our airport looking in our direction, that’s for sure.

Watching the airport passing below us was both a comfort and a now-what-are-we-going-to-do. We circled out over the ocean–with the pilot, I am sure, going, I hope you’re watching me THIS time, dudes!, and me wishing I had paid the least bit of attention to the over-water emergency instructions–and we headed back over the mountains, then the Bay, and gradually in for a landing again. I’m sure my eyes weren’t the only ones on my side of the plane absolutely glued to the windows. The Bay was mercifully clear and black as night the way it was meant to be this time. I’m also sure the people on the other side of the aisle had utterly no idea. The woman sitting directly behind me and I exclaimed over that other plane as we were getting up out of our seats at the end.

Sometimes, when you fly, the captain will greet the disembarking passengers with a ‘have a nice day,’ or a, ‘thank you for flying our airline.’ That seems to happen a whole lot less often than it used to, in these high-security days, at least in my experience. But our captain opened his door as soon as the first moment to do so presented itself, sprang out, and grimly nodded at each person getting off, greeting them without a trace of a smile, though his pleasantries showed that he was trying to for our sakes.

I was thinking that he looked about to give someone a huge piece of his angry mind, and richly deserved–but it suddenly struck me that he seemed to need someone else to know what we’d all just gone through. How close it had been. Not to be a bunch of oblivious travellers. And he needed to see the actual people he’d just gone through this for, for us to have faces. He needed someone to know what he’d done for us, some way of relieving the pressure of his emotions by giving some degree of voice to them before he exploded to the guilty entities.

I wanted to say “Thank you for saving our lives”: I am one who believes in directly acknowledging the heart of the matter. It’s part of who I am. Still, that seemed a little more than I quite thought I could say…but…

With the amount and weight of our overhead carry-ons, we waited for a break in the passengers, and there was suddenly a long one, so I had a moment to speak without getting in anyone’s way. I said as I got up to the captain, “That first approach was a little freaky with that other plane there–thank you.”

He looked me in the eye, hesitated, and simply quietly wished me a happy holiday in response. I looked straight back at him, and answered, “Thank you for making it so we’ll have one!”

The moment he and I both needed. It had been acknowledged. He knew I knew. He had done his job well when others had not, and he had delivered us to the ground safely. He is a hero. I do not know his name, but I will never forget him. To the pilot of Jetblue Flight 291, THANK YOU.

Okay, that’s not a post title you see every day, but it fits. We were visiting old friends last night who moved from our town to a beautiful home up against the mountainside in Utah four years ago; we were catching up, and on our way back out, there was a car stopped at a red light in a long stretch of empty road. Mark and Kelly can probably envision just where I’m talking about; there’s only the one light. Except, that other driver had pulled off into what would be, in California, the bike lane, and we wondered why–until we pulled up alongside him.

At the Monterey Aquarium, there’s a freestanding round tank in the walkthrough that is filled with brilliantly silver sardines. They flow along together in a circle, with a few mavericks hemming and hawing along the edges of the school, poking curiously in other directions, lagging behind, dashing to catch up, small children at play, it always seems to me. But if something disturbs the group–if a visitor taps on the window or peers in too close–there is a splash of randomness as some turn to the left, some to the right, and then somehow they all give a leap forward close together, a flip of the tails in perfect focus and a flash of silver as they swim in their new direction. After a calm-again moment, the ones who want to look around a bit more find their ways to the edges again.

Last night I was suddenly understanding why my husband had remarked recently that my camera was inadequate: there was no way it could capture that night picture I so much wished for. A few yards from where we were pulling up to a stop for that red light, there were seven or eight magnificent elk standing in the light snow, the peak of the mountain behind framing them. I have never seen elk in the wild before. It was breathtaking.

The light turned; as our car started up again, I mentally apologized to the fellow in that other car in that bike lane next to us, who had had, it had looked to me there in the dark, a large camera in his hands. At our sound and motion, the elks did exactly what those sardines do: they turned, some to the right, some to the left, and in so turning around they all somehow came closer together, and then they leaped forward as one. Not in a great hurry, and they slowed down as we pulled away, just, this is What They Do. Part of being an elk.

I came away with a sense of awe at the interconnectedness of the patterns, earth and sea. And of what the natural world offers to teach us of the strength of pulling together for each other.

My sister should have it by now. This is the Wanda’s Shawl pattern from my “Wrapped in Comfort” book, in Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca Silk in an unusually bright and clear white. I wrote that it takes five balls, to make sure nobody runs out, but I used every last bit of four balls for this and had enough.

Got to my folks’ place last night, and woke up to a wide view of the mountain covered in snow, right there outside the window. The pine trees are holding up armfuls of soft white and it is truly gorgeous. I’m not sure yet how to get a photo in from here, so I’m posting a saved one of that shawl. Okay, time to go rejoin the folks. More later.

I know, I know, you’ve heard the phrase before: “for those who’ve read my book…” you get to meet someone just a bit more.

I got an email last night from Nathania at Purlescence, saying someone had brought in a gift for me, would I like to come pick it up? So this afternoon John and I went over there, wondering what this was going to be about; walking in their door, I exclaimed to her, “Your amaryllis is gorgeous!” thinking, cool, they’re decorating the store with my favorite flowers! Or maybe someone had brought it in as a pre-baby present–Nathania’s only got a few weeks left before she and Kevin get to hold their Christmas baby.

“That’s your gift. Do you know a Sue B?”

I was boulevers’e. Well YEAH!!! That’s the Sue whose story starts my book off, the waitress we love so much who can tell you what our preschooler used to order for dinner twenty years ago!

There was a thank you for her baby alpaca lace scarf in handwriting that Steve Jobs ought to take note of and preserve as a font. What she didn’t know, was, her gift made it so John got to come into the shop and have all these people he knew there congratulate him on his mission and wish him well, a chance for them all to say goodbye to each other for two years. The timing was absolutely perfect, and they totally made his day there as well as the flowers themselves.

So now I get to take Sue’s gift and share it with everybody here. (Sorry I took them away from you, Nathania, I’ll make it up to you, I promise…) These are gorgeous, Sue, and I love that you did this–thank you!

See you at Heindselman’s Yarns in Provo next week! At 4:00 Wednesday, a few hours after I wave goodbye to John at the MTC. Have author’s pen (not to mention kid), will travel.

I was starting to pack for the trip, going over things and wondering: do I have any good shoes that actually have an enclosed heel? Been too long. I could just picture myself flicking Utah snow up into the backs of my legs as I walked with these. Went looking, and found a pair of uncomfortable pumps (they all are. It’s the nature of being 7 EE) that I think I’d bought for and then hadn’t worn since my grandmother’s funeral at 96…meaning, in ’96. Old.

A friend of mine came over yesterday, dashing through a storm and on up to the door, and as I opened the door, was going, “You can really tell it’s winter out there!”

I tried, I really tried–but it didn’t work, and I burst out laughing in spite of myself: “Shovelling 72″ in 17 days!” I responded. (Where we’d moved from in New Hampshire.)

“Well, for *California* it’s winter out there!”

Ah yes. California winters. Where the–well, you go look at this. Christmas lights in palm trees. You tell me if that’s nonpsychodegradeable or not.

Note to self: if you want to keep the tips blocked into points, do not pick it up before it’s bone dry.   Let’s go dry it again, now, shall we?

A stray thought (where did I put those Holz and Stein size 8s!)

Ya know? I used to have a mind like a steel trap. But I think now it’s a Havahart, and sometimes the doors get left open. ‘Sokay, just means rummaging around through the stash looking for whichever UFO it’s in, which you know means inspiration for the next cool project is going to strike as I go through that stuff.

Blogging with pictures saved by the geek! Go Richard! (Yeah, and somebody taller than me had reset my camera to a setting I didn’t even know it had. Heh.)

Okay, for fiber artists, you can skim past this first little bit, you already know this stuff: there’s a great myth out there that you handwash wool or cashmere sweaters in cold water. Balderdash. There are three factors that contribute to inadvertent felting: water, temperature change, and agitation. Cold water can shrink up a sweater just as fast as heat can. Sweaters should be washed ever so gently in tepid water–and yet, you can do it in a washing machine, IF: you put them in after the water is already in, you don’t let it agitate, and you don’t let any water spray on them during the spin cycle. But you can use the machine for soaking and spinning out, making sure you take them out of there while it’s filling up again for the rinse cycle.

So. Being raised by a knitter, my kids have each gotten that lecture. Wash them in the sink or the machine, I don’t care, but remember, tepid water, etc etc.

I was cleaning out the laundry room, getting to the long-neglected bottoms of the big hampers that my four kids used for all those years. Things had been frequently cycled through the laundry towards the top, but, I found, were turning into sedimentary rock way below.

This is what I found down there. In the home of a fiber artist whose kids were taught about wool as if it were a religion. At least, it’s still great for dusting; the little scales in the sheep hairs clean like you wouldn’t believe.

The rest of you can go feel better now about your own sweaters that came out of the dryer a toddler size 2.

(Click on the picture for the full effect.)  Abercrombie and Fitch would be so proud.