“Congratulations–you picked the hottest day on record in Washington, DC!”

“You’re marrying that Hyde boy?” (This from a sweet, elderly woman about 4’10.” The groom was 6’8″.) “I’ve looked up to him for a long time!”

(Spoken in a grinning aside to the groom by a friend of his grandparents:) “I unlocked the back door on the north stairs. Got it? The North. Stairs. You can bolt.”

My father-in-law and my husband each have one crummy tooth that has cycled through numerous crowns. Dad Hyde is the practical sort, and hey, he’d paid for that gold, so he collected the ones that came out and always wanted to go create something out of them. Richard and I were students when we got married, with absolutely no money, so here was his dad’s chance. He melted them down and recast them and voila–our 20k wedding bands, done, at the time gold was hitting an all-time high of $360/ounce. (Our bands are silver now and so is our hair. Wait–I can just hear Richard reading this and guffawing, “Speak for yourself!” Can you hear me going, “You do too, look back here, if I stand on my tippy tippy toes I can see plenty of gray, trust me…”)

Today is June 27th, our 27th anniversary being in ’07, we created a family of six, and when I checked Amazon Saturday, I must have looked at just the right moment; their numbers tend to dance around a fair bit, but my “Wrapped in Comfort” book was listed as #2007 in their sales rankings. Somehow that coming together of numbers just pleases me, like a well-balanced lace pattern.

So my Richard gifted me with some superb hot cocoa mix today that a cafe in our downtown area sells, by a couple who owns the cafe and the plantation their cacao beans come from. Superb chocolate–with a connectedness.

Simple celebrations .

I want to sing Martingale’s praises for a moment.

My final deadline re the book was mid-January. In late February, I went to Stitches West, ran into Ann Rubin, and knew exactly who that Barn Swallows scarf had been meant for all along.

When I knitted it, it had absolutely demanded to be made in laceweight in that taupe color that it’s shown in in my “Wrapped in Comfort” book. That is emphatically not my color, but nothing else would do. I did not know why. I did knit it again in other yarns, but it felt like, for the book, that taupe laceweight was what it absolutely had to be.

After I blocked it, I thought the edges would look more solid if I were to redo it with one plain stitch extra at each side edge–but then I would have had to spend hours looking at that taupe again, and frankly, I didn’t know any good enough reason to do so to motivate me, not in that color, and I just didn’t get around to it.

I wrote a caption for the main picture of each project. But the one for the Barn Swallows scarf never pleased me, never felt finished, never felt like I could rewrite it well enough, and I had no idea why.

And then I saw Ann. I recognized her from previous Stitches events as I gave her this wool afghan for her Afghans for Afghans charity; she didn’t recognize me, which was fine. One look at her and I knew that taupe was exactly the right color for her, that it would be absolutely beautiful on her. (If only I had known that, I could have anticipated specifically and been just peachy-fine knitting up that color again and adding those edge stitches!)

Had that scarf been a warm one, Ann would have felt morally absolutely obligated to pass it along to the people she serves in Afghanistan, and rightfully so; their needs are so much greater than ours. We have so much here. But it was a wispy little thing, a decorative little thing, a thank you for the work she does for so many people, encouraging knitters to give of their wool, talents, and time, helping those in need not just to receive physical warmth but human warmth as well: the tangible evidence that someone from around the world wanted to reach out to them and wish them well. And yet–it’s okay for her to feel thanked and reminded that people are grateful for her efforts, too. (That took some convincing from me, much though she loved the thing. She didn’t want to in any way put herself above the other volunteers.)

Changing a manuscript so very late in the publishing process is, my daughter with a college minor in editing tells me, very expensive. But after I gave Ann that scarf, I knew exactly what I wanted to do and what that caption had needed to be all along and why it had felt inadequate before. Martingale put people over profits and immediately agreed with me. We changed it, and they added A4A to the Resources page as well. I must say, I think that new caption totally makes the book, it ends it exactly perfectly.

I don’t have a new picture of the afghan I gave Ann that day at Stitches, nor of the original scarf–which arrived back from Martingale the first day of Stitches, exquisitely perfect timing on their part–so, you’ll have to put up with this old photo.

How that afghan came to be is a whole ‘nother post.

It just finished fading out, and it’s gone now, but this was the last of the amaryllises last week for the very-stretched-out season. At the same time it started blooming, I started watering a dormant bulb that I’d let rest early from this past winter, and soon I will succeed in my efforts to conquer the world (or at least the back patio, the windows, and the bathroom) and have my bulbs flowering year-round nonstop.

I thought of Lois, and decided I needed to put this photo up here for her.

Remember that game of telephone we all played as kids?

We drove down to Saratoga today for the blessing of a cousin’s baby at church. The hubby’s aunt has a dear friend, Louise, who has been at all the big family parties: the weddings, the baby showers, you name it, always helping out with an impish smile and energy and a way to make you laugh, and I just love her.

Yeah well. Richard talked to his aunt on the phone one time recently, and then told me, She says her friend Louise got diagnosed with scleroderma–and poof, died, just like that.

Now, autoimmune stuff would hit close to home already, but Louise?!? But she was perfectly fine last time I saw her!

People sometimes go fast with the autoimmune stuff, he reminded me.

I quite grieved over that one. I only saw her maybe once a year at most, but that makes absolutely no difference in how you feel about a person.

Okay, so, here we are arriving at the chapel down there, I’m just getting out of the car, opening my door and beginning to stand up. When, just then, I look up to see someone coming dashing over to greet an old buddy-in-law–me. LOUISE???!!!!????

Yeah, it turns out it was Lois who died; one of the cousins straightened out the details for me later. I have no clue who Lois is, and I’m quite sorry she’s gone, but but absolutely thrilled for Louise and thrilled for me. Louise, of course, had no idea why I was so speechlessly happy to see her, and I wasn’t about to say. All she knew, was, I was just really really really happy to see her, too.

Ya think?!!!!!!!

I wrote in my book that some day I was going to have to knit me some kind of a penguin. At the booksigning at Karen’s, Nancy surprised me with an absolutely adorable felted penguin with a handspun scarf that she’d been working like mad on all week. She tells me I have to come up with the perfect name. Any ideas?…

I always thought that was an odd phrase. I have asked my folks about it from time to time, they being gifted wordsmiths: does anybody have cold heart cockles? What’s a cockle, and does it truly have heart? Where on earth did that phrase come from? They didn’t know, and neither did our dictionary.

Shelle just came home from a college internship in marine biology–a few hours after her Sea Silk shawl arrived home via UPS. Cool. She spent several hours showing us pictures of things she’d studied, some weird, some wonderful. One of those crabs looked exactly, in the photo she took, like the tick I removed from her back after she came home from a week at camp one summer, with a bulls-eye of red rings around that bug. (They tested the bug and her both, no Lyme. Phew.)

Anyway. She brought me a few shells, and I had to show this: these are Heart Cockles. So named because when you see the intact shell from the side, it looks heart-shaped. But what I now love best about them, something I had thought to be just an ordinary white shell you see on probably every beach–kind of like sea gulls, something you take for granted, right?–was this: they are a favorite food of giant sea stars, which can move amazingly fast towards them. The heart cockles have one foot, which they stick out so they can run away from the sea star. How does such a thing run? It flips itself, over and over, a seashell version of a living Slinky, running away at a good clip. Does Pixar know about this?

I mentioned in my book that I’d made my first Monterey shawl for my friend Michelle, who is a dedicated marine biology enthusiast. I had no idea, when I wrote that, that my daughter Michelle was likewise going to become one. But I sure can see now why she is.

So good to have you home, sweetie.

(Actually, looking up those two words on dictionary.com, I’m thinking I should reverse them, but then it wouldn’t be a pun in English.)

That Monterey shawl I started in Sea Silk yesterday? Um… I moved it off my lap mid-row to attend to something else, didn’t notice with the stitches all bunched up, and you don’t have to be a knitter to see why I took it off the needles. I was long past where it could be fixed without ripping. I was on row 30. Now I’m on 12. I was going to try to rush it to be finished for my kickoff booksigning on Saturday, but, um, I think my knitting was telling me to chill out. Kick back. Relax.

For those who are coming, you’ll get to hear a few details that there wasn’t space for in the book. That stroll along the canal with Karen? I didn’t mention that I fell through a canoe. Yes. Through. It was very funny, and Karen was just shaking her head, going, Some people!

See you Saturday!

I write this site to try to create a place of safety from the pressures of the world, a place where people can grab a chair, their knitting, if they like, and relax and find themselves among friends.

My book was released last Monday. By Friday evening Amazon had reverted to its “This title has not yet been released” page, at the same time some people were getting theirs–from Amazon. After there were a few posts of “Mine came!” on the lists, I got an email from a woman who had pre-ordered in March, after Amazon had told her it was not available yet, asking, did that mean she didn’t pre-order early enough in the line-up to get hers?!

I’m assuming Amazon assumed x percent of the pre-orders would be cancelled, didn’t stock enough to cover the initial demand, and simply ran out. It’s just knitting, after all, and really, how much interest could there be in that? And lace, at that.

You know what the largest user group of bloglines is? You got it. Knitters.

By yesterday Amazon was shipping again. Meantime, over the weekend, chapters.ca likewise posted it “temporarily unavailable to order” (maybe it got held up at Customs, let’s not be too full of myself) and a large online vendor of knitting supplies had, like Amazon, gone from shipping to “not yet been released.”

The funniest was a guy who was scalping copies at $52.

I dunno how word got out so well or how you all did this, but I have to tell you, you’ve been making me feel like a little kid on Christmas Eve. Thank you thank you thank you. I can only hope it lives up to your hope. I cannot tell you how wonderful it feels right now to be getting multiple reports from yarn store owners of opening up cases and selling out on the spot. Y’all don’t mind if I bask a bit, do you?

I got a delightful email today from a woman who’d just knitted her version of my Strawberry Pie shawl for her nine-year-old granddaughter. I immediately thought of the sweater my mom had made for me when I was nine, and I wish I had a picture, any picture, anywhere, of it, but it’s long gone.

My grandfather once requested that my mom knit him a cardigan. Being very proper in his dress, and needing it not to look too casual, he specifically requested a very fine knit and something that he could wear easily at work–which happened to be the hallways of Congress (when he wasn’t wearing his suitcoat.)

Mom designed an allover diamond Aran, the kind of cabling that Barbara Walker would describe as right-twist and left-twist, quite understated. I vividly remember that subdued green wool yarn and that pattern as it slowly, slowly appeared on Mom’s needles: she used to knit it when she was waiting for me at my piano lessons. With six kids and little downtime, it took her a year to do. I reminded her of it once, a few years ago, and she exclaimed, “I used fingering weight and size 2s?! I must have been out of my mind!” Yes, Mom; I remember you teaching me what the term fingering weight meant. I wanted to do that someday. I remember. She had had to buy needlepoint yarn to get the look she’d wanted.

The ultimate act of motherly love is that, because I totally fell in love with that sweater while she was making it, when she finally finally finished it and told me it was my turn next for a sweater, when I said I wanted that same diamond pattern, she actually did it. She must have been screamingly bored out of her mind with repeating that same thing after so much time, but she did it. She let me pick out a rosey shade. With a zipper in front. This was radically fashionable at the time, and with a big family, we rarely went for the latest fad–but lookatmenow! She did mine in worsted weight (there are limits, after all) and I was thrilled.

You know how teenagers sometimes wish they could tell their parents how to dress before they’ll be willing to be seen in public with them? Yeah, well. In my case, I loved that sweater, with Grandpa’s diamonds altered just so just for me, and I refused to give it up. I outgrew it. Badly. I refused to stop wearing it. My mom saw me sneaking it on one day when the wrists barely went past my elbows, and that was that–it just kind of “disappeared” shortly after. I was not happy.

I asked Mom a few years ago whatever happened to it, and she didn’t remember; oh, she’d given it away, she was sure, but she would only have given it to someone who appreciated it, she assured me.

Grandpa, meantime, wore that sweater for thirty more years, until his death at 95. It was always his favorite. His daughter had created it just for him, and it was just the right weight for wearing year-round. It’s one reason why I like knitting in wool and baby alpaca; with good care, one’s work can last practically forever, without the aging tendencies inherent in a cotton yarn.

It just now occurred to me as I was writing this why my Embossed Diamonds pattern that frames these pages must have so immediately appealed to me as it appeared out of my needles the first time. A similar-shaped stitch pattern. Huh. The things we learn about ourselves when we write.

As for that grandma who wrote to me, I am delighted she liked my pattern–and I am thrilled for her young granddaughter, who doesn’t ever have to worry about wrist lengths.

(Meantime, since every good post needs a picture, I’m putting the back of the book on top of the Sky Drama shawl shown on the front cover.)

I signed a book for my friend Mary in Iowa at Purlescence last night, went out to dinner with friends and hubby, just normal busy life stuff, came home, and read Mary’s blog entry about her elderly father being interviewed and talking about how important it is to get our stories recorded. Yes. It’s not just a busy life–it’s how we spend our time becoming who we are.

My grandmother’s mother died of colon cancer when Gram was eight. When Gram was 60, knowing well what it was like to grow up wondering who her mother had really been as a person, she got talked into writing down some of her own life stories. Thank you very much, that’s me, the three year old in the family photo in there with the curls who, on being told to sit up at the table, declared emphatically, “I won’t sit up! I’ll sit down.”

This business of needing to get the words just right. It goes way back.

I got given a copy, with her inscription, “To Alison, who is old enough to read and enjoy this book.” I was by then nine. I hated it. It was boring. It had a vivid sunflower-orange cover, a color that was very much in vogue and that I very much hated.

Yeah, well. You know what comes next. Or some of it, anyway–the rest, I did not quite believe till I’d called my mother, who knew the people involved, remembered it, and confirmed it was so. So: I picked up the book a few years ago and read it, wondering why on earth I hadn’t earlier. Maybe I’d been afraid I would be critical of the writing, or that I might find it to have any vapid Washington DC politics, or–I dunno, but I didn’t want to be critical of my grandmother.

I liked it. Hey Mikey. The Supreme Court Justice who came to his office every day in a horse-drawn carriage? The senators’ wives being expected to wear hats and white gloves and to leave their calling cards at each others’ residences, timed and ranked by Senate seniority, her surprise at how southern and how Victorian-style Washington was in the early 50’s? It was fascinating.

But what I hadn’t expected to find was one story of what had happened after they made a slew of new friends when they moved there part-time after that first election.

My uncle, his father’s namesake, was serving in the Army in Korea, and an officer came up to him whom he’d never laid eyes on before, and barked at him: “I don’t know what your name is, soldier, but it ought to be–” And then he named my grandfather’s and his name.

To which my uncle, stunned, stammered, “Uh, yes, sir. That’s exactly what it is, sir.”

She named that officer. She published this when I was nine and my husband was ten.

It was my husband’s great uncle.

“On the cover of the Rolling Stone.”  (Everybody keeps asking me who the models are.   I should ask.  I don’t know.)

“Gonna buy five copies for my mother!”

About time for some knitting content around here. This is a scarf I knitted yesterday using just one repeat of the body of Nina’s shawl. I used one strand of baby alpaca I’d dyed in a bright light blue and one of Jaggerspun Zephyr merino/silk in royal–I liked how the two colors played together, and they grabbed me and wouldn’t let go.

It wasn’t till I was nearly done that I found I’d dropped a stitch at the beginning. Normally this would be a disaster–but since the yarn is doubled, the loops from the other color running through it will help anchor it in place so it won’t run. (I will, however, go back with a mending strand and tuck it a bit out of sight there.) One stumbles, the other keeps it steady and keeps the pattern going. There is so much poetry inherent in the simple act of wrapping wool around wood.

It took me awhile to figure out why those colors had so grabbed me: Nina herself is at Camp Stitches at Asilomar right now, at a gorgeous spot looking over the ocean. Sky and sea–and here I was, knitting the two as one without being consciously aware of why those two shades had wanted to dance together. Cool.

Meantime, my LYS got a case of 36 books in yesterday, and when I showed up for my knitting group last night each one had been sold or spoken for, and they were scrambling to go order more. Nina called to report that the LYS down where she is had sold out instantly as well. You all don’t mind if I brag happily, do you?

I signed onto the Knitlist for the first time about eight years ago, specifically to ask if anyone knew of any music-themed laceknitting patterns. I got lots of responses of no, but if you find one, let me know. (I am determined I am finally going to come up with one for my next book.)

We went to a concert a few nights ago; there were two superb pianists, one a dear friend of longstanding, the other his brother visiting him, and two grand Steinway pianos had been brought in just for the occasion. (How you borrow two Steinway grands, I’d love to know, but never mind.) The eldest very much carried off the staid, calm, older brother shtick, and Russ–Russ is a showman. Russ is someone who once demonstrated how simple it was to play Bach, at a concert I went to a few years ago, by holding three oranges in one hand, two grapefruit in the other, and playing a piece I knew well totally note-perfect. These two grew up playing in USO shows as kids, and they’re good.

So. If only there were a DVD. They started in on a Rachmaninoff piece dear to my heart: I was slated to play it at Peabody Institute in Baltimore at a Maryland State Piano Competition in the late 70’s when I was a teenager. (Something in C minor, c’mon, brain, help me out here on the title. BUM. BUM. BUHMMMM!! Yeah, that one. You know the one.)

Rachmaninoff had huge hands. If you’ve looked at pictures of me on this blog you know that I emphatically do not. An octave plus two? There was no way! My piano teacher, a onetime concert pianist and a quite-petite woman, told me, oh, just skip the notes you can’t reach.

I could not play that thing the way it was supposed to be played. I could not do that thing justice. It was supposed to sound bombastic, and the thing was impossible to do right. I argued, I practiced like crazy, and in the end I rebelled and refused to play it there.

So here Russ and his taller brother were starting in on that piece, and I instantly wondered how Russ would be able to reach those notes. The other, yes, but… Russ actually talked first about the size of Rachmaninoff’s hands, and traded some sibling barbs with his brother over the issue for the crowd.

They started off in unison, a huge sound on those two huge pianos. Then the showmanship kicked in. Russ made an act of getting frustrated over getting the BUHHHMM!s Russ’d, leaped up from the piano as his brother continued on, walked off the stage, walked back across it carrying a large wooden board and a circular wood saw–giving his brother bunny ears as he went past him–and disappeared off the stage to the other side. Sounds of loud sawing suddenly offstage; the big brother acted oblivious. Finally, Russ came back on with his board with, basically, popsicle-stick-equivalent fingers added on, and sat back down at that second piano.

It was the BUM BUM BUHHHHM! part again. Russ put that board over the keys and the popsicle stick pieces played the entire, superstretched chord perfectly. He put it quickly up on top of the piano out of the way, and continued. Back to that chord–grab the board–play!

It was hysterically funny. The older brother calmly pretended not to notice, but if it took an extra quarter of a beat for Russ to grab that board fast enough and get it down there, the brother, eyes on his own keyboard, kept right in sync with him.

I can just picture Rachmaninoff up there, going, BRAVO!!!

Try to live up to that performance! Hey wait–I get it. All I have to do is go knit a plain sweeping swath of stockinette, go borrow Russ’s circular saw, and whirr a treble clef stencil out of the thing. Done!

(Note: if you want a copy of the CD, contact Russ at skipthesefourwordsrussell@thehancocks.us , skipping, of course, the four superfluous words in the addy.)

If I had designed this, it would have had two more words added at the end, and then it would have been the utter truth, at least in my experience: the words, “for others.”

I’ve been asked about booksignings.  The kickoff is to be at my friend Karen’s shop, The Rug and Yarn Hut in Campbell, CA, next Saturday, June 23; we’re scheduled there from 1-3.  I will be showing off shawls and talking about the book and reading some stories from it.  I will try really hard not to be  screamingly nervous on my first try at this author stuff, but if I open my mouth and absolutely nothing comes out, I’m sure my friend Nancy will jump forward and read it for me.  Thanks, Nancy.  Then, Commuknity, in downtown San Jose, 6:30 Thursday, June 28.  On June 30, Saturday, I’ll be at Marin Fiber Arts in San Rafael at 2 pm.  (I’m not sure yet how to post these in the sidebar, so I’m putting them here for now.)  Purlescence Yarns in Sunnyvale, CA, at purlescenceyarns.com , has offered to ship copies that I’ll inscribe for people who buy from them–they will start taking orders after their copies come in.

I’m planning on going to Stitches East in October, for that Friday and/or Saturday: my husband and I are from Maryland, and it gives us an excuse to go home for a visit.  Rhinebeck the week after is being debated.  I expect to be at TKGA in Oakland in September.

I have a huge request to make re booksigning events: I’m on permanent chemo and am extremely susceptible to catching anything, and anything that wakes up my immune system wakes it up to fight me.  So I’m asking that people err on the side of caution for me re colds and the like.  (I hate having to say that!)  Thanks.

Alright–on to the book!  (Hurry, hurry, mail system, get those copies out there!)