The beautiful 80-year-old Peruvian hands you see above are preparing maiz for the next day’s tamales. My brother Pecos and I visit with this woman and savor her pillowy warm tamales each morning when we are in Cuzco with our groups of knitters. I am certain that she, like most women she knows, has also spun many miles of fine, even yarn on a wooden spindle, and that she began to learn to spin almost before she could walk. Hands that can make and do things are revered in indigenous communities, as if they are made of living gold.

Spinzilla is a world-wide spinning marathon that raises money for the NeedleArts Mentoring Program to help create the spinners of tomorrow. I am an accomplished knitter but a very amateur spinner, something my Spinzilla friends may not have realized when they asked me to start off their blog tour (I’ve now let the cat out of the bag, so to speak). And so I nearly declined their invitation until I considered how much better off the world would be if everyone got to try this most sublime of all fiber activities. And since it takes only seconds to stun a stranger with the magic of what happens to slippery fragile fibers when a little twist is added, this seems a reasonable goal.

I believe one need know nothing whatsoever about spinning to spin. When I lead island knitting retreats near my home on San Juan Island in Washington, I like to open our first morning by placing a drift of fiber in each person’s hands. “Play with it,” I tell them, “without thinking.” A few will tell me quite emphatically that they have no intention of learning to spin. I love how their hands instantly disagree! Hands are infinitely curious and quickly discover that parallel fibers slide while twisted fibers catch hold, igniting a kinesthetic awe that illuminates our week as I spin our community into being.

Before long I collect the delicious thing in their hands. They protest and some try to hide their new treasure. Leaving them hungry for more is the slippery slope I desire. Later I offer more fiber, along with a supply of dowels and toy wheels to make spindles. As the week progresses I like to demonstrate what I call ball-spinning, which leaves people slack-jawed, laughing, and entranced, as you can see in the photo below and in this video. By the time my knitters leave, they have a love for spinning even if they never take it farther, although several have become skilled and passionate spinners.

Hands are a miracle, aren’t they? This last spring, the first morning of a retreat, I awoke with an idea for learning names, which slide like unspun fiber until they catch and stick. I asked everyone to spell their first name aloud while slowly writing it in large cursive letters in the air, which everyone watched while making the same movements. By the time we’d made it around the circle, many people could repeat all twenty-four names. For several days, knitters spontaneously wrote each other’s names in the air until the twist and flow of the cursive movements had caught the fiber of each name and secured it.

I’ve been blessed by spinning masters who crossed paths with me at just the right time. Thirty years ago Celia Quinn taught me to use a wheel. I’ve since bought and sold four seductive wheels, until I finally accepted that my real love is hand spindles, for their portability, simplicity, and versatility.

My dream is to read the vibration of twisted fiber like a cello virtuoso as it sings near-perfect yarn into being without me having any say in the matter. The first person I ever saw do this was Abby Franquemont (although I think she has a lot of say in the matter) while we were both teaching at one of Morgaine Wilder’s Golden Gate Fiber Institute gatherings. I learn by osmosis, so even though I have never been able to take a class with Abby, something soaked in.

Abby, as you may know, is a U.S.-born magician who grew up in Chinchero, Peru, and now lives in Ohio. During shared meals, I salivated over both the food and the tales Abby told about what was happening in her class. The first day she loaded her students in a time machine and zoomed back thousands of years, then dumped them out with some fresh-off-the-sheep wool and ordered them to make yarn. She refused to tell them how, so they had to invent it—which I think of as the ultimate teaching. The second day they got to try using rocks, and then sticks. By the fourth evening, when each class showed off to all, Abby’s students could make yarn using anything they could pick up, and some could even do crude imitations of the Andean plying that Abby mastered as a child, a sleight of hands with snapping fingers and flinging and retrieving that makes Cirque de Soleil seem lethargic. I am smitten forever.

At the same event, I roomed with Judith McKenzie, another spinning magician who was also teaching. One evening in the larger group, she and I were sitting side by side spinning on little Jensen Turkish Spindles that Morgaine had given us. Judith was making perfect thread and I was bumping along. Morgaine suddenly called Judith away to do something, and as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world for Rembrandt to hand his brush and palette to a passerby, Judith handed me her spindle and fiber, and asked me to continue for her. There was no time to protest before she vanished. Impossibly, something Judith-like occupied me, as if she had also handed me her body, or nearly so. For the ten minutes that she was gone, I was spinning far beyond my ability, as if Judith also had a time machine and had fast-forwarded me to a lifetime where I was a fully fluent spinner. When she returned she smiled and told me, “Your thread looks like mine.” It scarcely matters if  I am ever able to do that again, for I now know it is possible and what it feels like.

In 2003, Luisa Gelenter, who passed on several years ago and operated the legendary LaLana Wool in Taos, New Mexico, was part of a small gathering of fiber artists at my home. One afternoon she and I sat on a cedar log on the beach spinning, and she told me how she had learned in Peru as a young woman, sitting for days and days beside elderly women and imitating them. “It’s breathing,” Luisa said, “you breathe into the fiber to allow twist to enter.” As the tide came in and the Salish Sea lapped closer and closer to our feet, I watched Luisa rocking to and fro in this ancient slow dance, and witnessed what she had told me.

The final epiphany has happened countless times, for I have had the great good fortune of traveling regularly to Peru. My brother Pecos lived and worked in Peru, and he and I lead groups of knitters to this beautiful country where his deep friendships with innkeepers and indigenous artisans allow us to bring our travelers into intimate spaces. To watch a Peruvian street vendor making perfect thread with an unbalanced spindle and unprepped fiber while sitting on the ground is unfathomable and astonishing and inspiring. These magic wands wobble over the cobbled ground beside their magicians, who tug and yank messy blobs of fiber into perfectly even thread. It takes my breath away every time, and I can hear Luisa chuckling softly and whispering: “It’s just breathing.”

I am eternally grateful for these gifts of shared mastery. May we all continue to share the miracle of twisted fiber, whether we know what we are doing or not.

After ten days in Perú, my heartbeat now pulses with a Peruvian rhythm and my dreams float like soft alpaca mist rising in thermals up Andean peaks. I am going to try to tell you about our trip but I shall fail utterly to convey the grandeur and life-altering nature of the experience.

 Our plan was to scout out pockets of traditional knitting in Perú in order to shape a 2014 knitting tour. We soon discovered that if we walked around while knitting, knitters, mostly older people, spontaneously reached out to us with radiant smiles and we instantly found ourselves together in that deep space of comfort and kindred recognition that knitters know so well.

Here my friend on the left is knitting my grandson’s sock (she just learned how to do the Coriolis band) and I am knitting her sleeve—we traded for a while. It took her approximately 3 seconds to understand how to knit on 2 circular needles. This sort of thing happened again and again.

My companions were Jim “Pecos” Petkiewicz of Frog Tree Yarns and Community Links International, and his colleague Arturo Ortega. Pecos and his extended family have been my beloved friends for years. From the moment in the airport when Pecos said I was his sister so I could board early with him, we agreed we really were sister and brother. Then Arturo met us in Lima and gained a sister (hermana), and I was surrounded by two dear brothers (hermanos) from that moment on. Here are my hermanos.

Pecos’ family lived for years in Latin America and are bilingual, and Arturo lives in Mexico. I’d been studying Spanish diligently for six months. I was tongue-tied much of the time, but in Perú the delicious sounds and sensations of español melted through me and my abilities slowly grew deeper.

Arequipa,our first destination, is in southern Perú, nearly 7, 000 feet in elevation. Snow-topped volcanos circled us, with the highest, Chachani, nearly 20,000 feet.

Our hotel was a little sanctuary near the center of the city, with a variety of quaint buildings, a small pool, gardens, and a restaurant. Mornings we enjoyed fresh fruit juices, avocado, tomato, ham, cheese, eggs, breads, and grainy cereals like quinoa. Arturo brought coffee from Mexico that he helped grow and process, along with a small French Press. We were spoiled.

We visited the Plaza de Armas and admired the fountain,

wandered through the local mercado

and spent several hours exploring the beautiful and labyrinthine Santa Catalina Monastery, built in 1579.

One enters through this arch.

And then the color changes begin. Azul…

Rojo…

azul y gris…

Arturo taught me a new word: tragaluz—a hole that carries light.

From the highest point of the monastery we could see the mountains over a turbulent sea of rooftops.

Walking back to the hotel, children wearing hand-knit sweaters were playing in the streets…

That evening we made friends with our server Gerda, a knitter. She mischievously lifted Pecos’ knitting out of his hands, vanished for ten minutes and brought it back with an inch completed. From her we learned that garter stitch is called “Santa Clara” in Perú. Pecos is very pleased.

In Arequipa we also spent a mesmerizing afternoon with a Frog Tree Yarn partner, where I witnessed the astounding speed, agility, and technique of this woman, who could wind 12-15 skeins a minute. When she let me try, I soon realized I had missed many steps because she was so fast I couldn’t see everything she was doing (notice the blurred hand). I made quite a fool of myself, and she was very nice about my clumsiness. If there were an Olympic event of skein-winding, she would win a gold medal. She is my hero.

There was were lavish coils of silken alpaca, like soft-serve cones longing to melt into yarn…

And to our astonishment, a queso (a huge cheese-shaped bundle) of vicuña fiber that must have weighed 400 pounds, all wrapped in white cloth and having a gentle bath. Our guide opened it and gave me a little bit. I am not telling you where I have hidden it. Someday I shall spin it up, maybe when I am 90 years old.

We soon fell into the habit of having our main meal midday and then enjoying a simple supper of sopa in the evening. I think my very favorite was Sopa de Criollo, a rich broth with milk and bits of chicken or beef, noodles, a poached egg, and a few vegetables. I slept like a baby (or a wawa, as they are called in Peru) every night, out of sheer happiness and a belly lightly filled with warm soup.

We also made a trip to the Colca Canyon and saw dozens of condors, who have a striking white collar and long wing-fingers. They ride the thermals in the morning only, so we arose before 3 am to board our bus, drove into a sub-freezing climate, and later in the day broiled in the sun, then returned to our hotel later in the evening. It was worth it.

During this long day, we rode over the top of the world, nearly 16,000 feet high. I was able to walk and that made me very happy. One of my favorite things on top of the world was this moss, which grows only 1 centimeter a year and thrives as if it has a water source when there is none visible. Most of these are over a century old. So round and green and alive, and oh so beautiful.

From Arequipa we flew to Puno, on the sparkling Lake Titicaca, the largest lake in South America, with Bolivia bordering the far shore. I had wondered how I would do at the altitude of 12,500 (although I was most encouraged by my ability to self-ambulate at 16,000), and it turned out that I was entirely fine. In fact, I thrived; I have since decided that my body loves high altitudes and is stronger and more vigorous in that environment.

But what excited me most about this striking landscape was that everywhere I looked there were knitters, sitting in doorsteps, walking down the street, in the mercados, everywhere. The first one I saw, a young woman walking briskly with a friend while knitting a cabled sweater front, I chased down the street in case she was the only one. Soon enough I realized that either I was dreaming or had landed in a knitter’s heaven. Driving down a road, I managed to snap this photo,

and this one.

At the very large artisan market, halfway up the first aisle we made such good friends that we planted ourselves with them and never went farther. The half-dozen tejedoras were indeed a kindness of knitters (in case you haven’t heard this before, a flock of birds, a herd of sheep, and a kindness of knitters). They pulled out a stool for me to sit on and brought out their bag of coca leaves to share, extolling their virtues for health (the leaves contain less than 1% of the compound that must be chemically extracted to produce cocaine, and chewing coca leaves has been used by indigenous people for centuries to support high-altitude health). After much intercambio (interchange of knowledge and enthusiasm and friendship) we promised to return next year.

I had to be dragged away and spent the afternoon asking Pecos and Arturo when I could go back to be with my friends. If it weren’t for my hermanos I would still be there.

Off we went to visit a floating island, sailing through half-submerged fields of reeds which are used to build both islands and graceful, seaworthy boats. We visited with local women, whose tradition is not knitting, but embroidery of beautiful cloth murals. They were very curious about our knitting, all the same.

And I was very interested in this cat. Thinking he might be bothering us, the owner picked him up mother-cat-style, which is why he looks immobilized; she was firm but gentle, and the cat is fine. I later watched the cat sneak off with a piece of fish.

From the floating island we watched the sun go down and turn Puno to gold.

And sadly, in the morning we had to leave, and head to Cusco. I complained once more that I wanted to go see my friends in the market, and my brothers just shook their heads. Every time we left a place, I feared I could not love the next one as much, and I was always wrong. Always. Cusco is magical…

In Cusco I met the internationally revered Nilda Callañaupa, director and founder of the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco, whose decades of work for the region’s artisans has preserved their ability to pass on their age-old skills and to sustain their families in many villages. The textiles for sale in the Center were miles above the quality of anything else we came across, visually and tactilely stunning and representing hundreds of hours of highly skilled artistry, including handspinning, natural dyeing, preparing looms, weaving, and knitting. Everything is of museum quality (and the center includes a small museum that is breath-taking) and so beautiful that it is hard to leave.

Cusco is also a gateway to Machu Picchu. After an hour and a half bus ride, we boarded a charming train that wound for two hours along a river, with the mountainsides becoming more and more like a jungle, followed by a half hour bus ride on switchbacks up a nearly vertical mountain. I am a passionate lover of mountains and have never seen any so tall and erect, or so verdant, with soft clouds resting halfway down and slowly drifting upward, rubbing against the mountainsides like a purring cat. Machu Picchu felt like home to me. Jim and Arturo had been there several times before, and knew the best routes. We first climbed up high, where we had a view of everything. I knitted for a while.

Arturo played for us.

And then we began our descent to explore the ruins below.

My brothers were very careful to keep me from going over the edge, and I watched over them too.

Being in this amazing land-and-sky-scape was transcendent. The experience filled me so purely that it seems ever-present still. Do you see how the rocks in the foreground imitate the peaks in the distance?

The following day we went to Chinchero, which we had visited a few days earlier. I was so very happy to return. About an hour from Cusco, this village is where Nilda Callañaupa grew up, and is the original location of her Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco. Abby Franquemont, who also grew up in Chinchero, later told me that it is known as the City of Rainbows. We had a double. When I look at the photos they seem unreal, but this really happened.

Nilda and I reviewed a collection of chullos, the traditional Andean knitted hat with earflaps, each region distinctive, and she explained the different styles of colorwork designs, the varieties of earflaps, and how children’s chullos vary from those of adults. I purchased about a dozen to study.

In the courtyard I sat on the grass with local knitters to talk and share. My friends are trying out the Coriolis Band, crossed stitches, and tendrils on a bolsillo (bag) that I was working on, and which I demonstrated for them. Never have I met such adept knitters, who learn and retain information so quickly.

When you see how chullos are knit, you begin to understand how adept they really are. Chullos are knit at a very fine gauge and every single stitch is interchanged with several other colors in a particular order that seems to shift depending on factors I could not identify. The plucking and rearrangement of the strands is like watching a virtuoso guitar player. It happens so fast that I could not follow it. Someday, on a future trip to Perú, I will learn this.

I shared Judy’s Magic Cast-On and Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off. Like knitters everywhere who learn these magical techniques, my friends were delighted to have solutions to age-old problems.

And someday, on a future trip to Perú, I will learn backstrap weaving. If only I had parallel lifetimes, I would send several of me to be born in Chinchero and learn to spin, dye, weave, and knit as they do.

I longed to bring this beautiful piece of weaving home with me, but had already spent too much on my new chullo collection. I could literally taste the colors and feel their energy. This piece represents hundreds of hours of shepherding, shearing, handspinning, gathering of dyestuffs, vegetable dyeing, warping, weaving, and finishing. At both the Cusco and Chinchero centers, there are many pieces like this on display and available for purchase. It is a miracle. The centers alone are worth a trip to Peru.

On our way back to Cusco as night fell, we paused here to look up at ruins on the hillside and down on the Sacred Valley.

Back in our hotel, catching up on emails before we went off to find the soup of the evening, with only one more day before leaving Perú, I began to dissolve, as if a membrane that had always contained me had broken. “You should have warned me,” I told Pecos in a trembling voice, “I had no idea it would affect me like this.”

I didn’t have to explain what I meant. Pecos had told me what it was like for him when he, his wife Mags and their two school-age children had made the difficult decision to leave Latin America a decade ago to be closer to their families in the United States. He had warned me; I just hadn’t realized how deep the experience could go, and how it could uproot and dissolve so much of what I normally think and feel. My world had swollen like a pregnant woman’s belly over these ten days in Peru; my world was now round and radiant and urgent and I realized that I had not known it had been flat before. I went up to my room to weep before returning for dinner, tears that were nonverbal, of grief, of joy, of bewilderment, and most of all, of a fierce new love for that which pulses like red earth and musical languages and bright black eyes and intelligent hands of the sacred people and land of Perú.

On my final day (my brothers were staying a few days beyond me to work on other things) we went to the Plaza de Armas, where Arturo knew a woman would be selling the best tamales in the world. I love tamales. They were perfect. So perfect and satisfying that one was enough. It was soft, warm, delicate, and succulent.

We shall return in early June of 2014 with a group of knitters and will follow a similar route, with improvements (as if that is possible!). The trip will support Community Links International, which helps traditional artisans in both Latin and North America support themselves, keeping families and cultures and communities intact, and also focuses on environmental work and community-based education. Every day my brothers and I sat down and recorded observations and ideas and places and people and made lists of things to tell our knitters so they will be well-prepared. I’m working on a detailed glossary of knitting terms and useful sentences in Spanish and English, which will help everyone communicate with local knitters. If you are interested in the trip, email me. It will be an active trip, so you will need to be able to easily carry a day pack (of say around 20 pounds) as you walk on hilly streets at high elevations. It’s a great motivation to get in shape!

Strangely, I feel ten years younger than before going to Perú. We ate delicious, nutritious food, were very active, and I slept deeply. I can’t know what anyone else’s experience will be, but consider yourself warned if you join us. You may dissolve as I have; you may choose to return again and again, or to find your own Latin America closer to home. You may be changed forever. Perhaps like me, your world is flat and you have not known that; the trip may make your world round as a woman’s nine-month belly, ready to burst open with newborn possibility.

Some islands are deserted, meaning nothing much is there; I had the great good fortune of being stranded knitting with Lucy Neatby on the desserted (plenty of chocolate in the cupboard) Tancook Island, off the Nova Scotian coast near Halifax, where Lucy has a cottage on a hill above the sea. My heart has now put down roots on Tancook and nothing, not even the gale force winds that stranded us there overnight, can ever extract my heart from that mesmerizing three-mile-by-one mile forested rock.

It all started last week when I flew to Toronto to join Stephanie Pearl-McPhee for the flight to St. John, New Brunswick. She and I became jolly and perhaps a bit too insouciant, unaware that we were both botching the knitting projects—Fiona Ellis’ Gwendolyn (Steph) and Sivia Harding’s Confluence Shawlette (me) —that we were attempting to follow using the tried-and-untrue method of glancing at only some of the directions and charts, assuming we “got it.” It got us.

Somewhere at 40,000 feet we each discovered we had overlooked key elements and thus had to unravel hours of work. One knitter gone wrong is sad, but two gone wrong is merry, so when the nice Air Canada flight attendant came along with customs cards, Stephanie happily tucked her passport, pen, and card in her seat pocket and promptly forgot it. You can read all about the result of our merriment here. When I flew out of Halifax early this morning I took the time to tell the Air Canada agent that her company had done something so magnificent for my friend that I probably ought to kiss her feet (Stephanie, on the other hand, you will learn when you read her post, was so monumentally relieved that she nearly kissed her saviour on the other end).

In the tiny St John, NB airport, Veronik Avery and our driver awaited us and we zipped off through beautiful countryside to the charming Algonquin Hotel which spreads like a twisted stitch design atop a promontory in St. Andrews-by-the-Sea for the Knit East Fibrefest, where Jane Thornley and Lucy were also teaching. In the market, Stephanie, still unaware of her lost passport and thus full of mischief, cast a spell on me which caused me to buy hundreds of dollars of Fleece Artist yarn (and an Ilga Leja pattern, which will turn out best if I actually read all the directions) while she spent considerably less. I tried my best to get her to compete with me, but she refused.

Veronik, Stephanie and I traipsed down to the sea to see the unusually high tide (which had been so high an hour earlier—around 26 feet­—that the whale-watch office, on stilts, had been ready to evacuate because of waves lapping at the floor), and discovered Cottage Crafts, which enthralled us all and which I shall let Stephanie tell you about here.

My classes, Personal Footprints for Insouciant Sock Knitters, and Magical Moebius Knitting, were full of hardy, capable, adventurous, good-hearted knitters with whom I would be glad to spend my life if I could only be two of me, one a US citizen and the other Canadian. If Cricket Cove ever hosts a second Knit East, I recommend you try to attend.

Meals were great fun because they gave rise to the Drama of the Elusive Cheese Sandwich (DECH). One evening the tall, dark, and handsome server said to Stephanie, when she hypothetically asked if he would bring her a cheese sandwich (with cheese) if she asked for one, “I will bring you anything you ask for,” and she replied, “You will? Why?” and he answered, “Because I’m afraid of you (in a good way).” Alas, the DECH still had a day to go at that point or the denouement might have been different. Spies write with invisible ink, and some chefs ply their trade with invisible cheese.

After the Sunday’s class, Lucy and I made a fast getaway in her Mini in an attempt to outrun the storm that was headed our way. With Lucy masterfully piloting her now amphibious Mini, six hours and two cups of chicken noodle soup later, we made it to Dartmouth, NS. Monday morning we awoke and drove to idyllic Chester, the Tancook equivalent of Anacortes (the ferry terminal I use to reach my home in Friday Harbor, on San Juan Island, just south of British Columbia).

The Tancook Island Ferry can take one car (in Friday Harbor our ferries mostly take over a hundred), and only if the tide is cooperating so that the ferry, dock, and ramp can meet at the necessary levels and angles. There is a huge metal box which is hoisted by crane on and off the boat at each stop, where riders can store anything from a new bed to a bag of groceries for no extra charge.

Here you see the single vehicle, several metal storage boxes, and the red crane as we sail away from Chester. A rider pays $2.05 per round trip (from Anacortes to Friday Harbor it’s nearly $10.00). Inside, there are about 50 comfy blue seats, and you have to stand up to see out the windows because you are low and they are high.

Lucy often teaches a bit of knitting to ferry passengers. The technique du jour was double-knitting. Nearby, four  islanders retrieved an old real estate sign from somewhere, propped it on 4 sets of knees, and began a lively game of cards.

When the weather permits (as it did on our trip out) you can go above, and stand at the prow watching the flag flying as you manuever through miscellaneous islands (anything above the high tide mark counts) to Tancook.

Dolphins cavorted starboard for several minutes, and Scott, the ferry guy, when we asked him to take a picture of us, spontaneously laid down on his back on the damp deck to get an interesting angle. What a guy. (Note the shoes I am wearing: 1 blue and 1 green; this will become significant soon).

We stayed above knitting until Little Tancook hove into sight; fifteen minutes or so later we pulled around a windbreak into Big Tancook’s dock where Scott hefted a long pole with a big hook on the end, reached for the dock rope and secured it to the deck.

The gangplank was lowered, the crane (once again operated by Scott) began to lower the huge metal box onto the dock, we descended, retrieved our supplies from the box, and there I was, on Tancook Island at last.

Lucy asked one of the other passengers if we could hitch a ride in the back of their truck. “Of course,” they replied, and as I was climbing in, the wife saw my shoes (Lucy and I have shared a pair of Keens since the first Sock Summit in 2010; we each have 1 green and 1 blue shoe) and she reached out for me like I was long-lost family: “Oh! You’re the one with the shoes!” she cried. And just like that I was part of Tancook Island. We bounced and bumped along the road, me sitting on Lucy’s new zebra carpets and Lucy perched on her duffle, all the way to her cottage, a most refreshing and scenic ride past happy chickens and vegetable gardens.

After a cup of tea, we set off for a hike and I found myself in the midst of a photographic epiphany. The “rule of thirds” activated in my brain and body so that composition became not a thought so much as a rightness, and I now have hundreds of photos that are so much better than anything else I have ever shot. That a latent ability would burst forth like a newborn filly, already walking and running in this feral bit of land in the sea, makes complete sense to me.

That evening we knit on the deck in the misty light that came and went through the fog that kept wanting to drift in and out of Lucy’s yard.

My chair held me up just fine at first.

And then it didn’t. But I kept knitting.

Tuesday morning we boarded the ferry back to meet about 50 Craft Cruise knitters due to arrive at Lucy’s house in two shifts, where they would stream into her basement “shop” (open by appointment only) and scoop up armfuls of beautiful yarns, DVDs (Lucy’s DVDs contain enough crystal-clear instruction, all presented with Lucy’s wit and charm, to keep you deliriously happy for at least a week; I cannot recommend them highly enough, try one and you will see what I mean), books and patterns. I saw some old friends from previous workshops (Hello Vivian and Gretchen!) and met many lovely knitters, all of whom spoke in glowing terms of the cruise. Then we dashed back to the Tancook ferry. We knew a serious storm was brewing but figured if we could make it to Tancook we could make it home the next afternoon after the storm blew itself out. Two of Lucy’s friends were planning to join us, and one backed out because of the storm. When Scott the ferry man came down below to punch our tickets after we were underway, he mentioned that the first ferry of the morning might not run the next day if the wind didn’t let up. How quaint, we thought, and how lucky that we are planning on an afternoon boat (I had a workshop on Thursday, and Lucy had a new sink arriving).

Little did we know that by morning, the combination of fierce wind and very high tides would flood some island roads and all Wednesday ferry runs would be cancelled, something that had not happened in over 27 years.

The most blurry part of the photo is salt spray on my lens, and the whole photo is a bit blurred because the wind was so fierce that I could not hold the camera or myself steady. That’s the ferry tied up there, precariously high alongside the dock because of the high tide and wind surge. The weather report predicted gale force winds continuing through Thursday midnight, which meant I’d miss my workshop scheduled for that day. Lucy decided I could teach via Skype (high speed internet had just been installed in part of the island and we would be able to borrow it). Fortunately, I am still trying to imagine that.

She made some inquiries and the ferry captain phoned us back to say we ought to show up for the 6 am ferry in case it would run. I scavenged enough wild island apples to make a pot of applesauce for dessert and we intarsia’ed together what was left in the refrigerator for supper. Stephanie had been given more fine bottles of beer in St. Andrew than she could take home on the plane and had donated the remainder to us, so we were able to toast our strandedness with a beer called “Dark and Stormy Night.”

Friday morning, 3 hours before I was due to start my workshop an hour and a half across Nova Scotia from Chester, the ferry did indeed set sail with us aboard.

We met Diane, my lovely chauffeur, at Lucy’s friend Jennifer’s Hawthorne B&B in Chester, where the lovely Jennifer and her husband greeted us with freshly ground milk-frothed coffee, coddled eggs, and cinnamon buns. Lucy went home to direct the installation of her kitchen sink (she has been renovating, and her kitchen was in the condition of “everything but the kitchen sink”) while Diane drove me through glorious countryside to Gaspereau Valley Fibres where I alternately taught another fine group of Maritime knitters and wandered through the spacious shop feasting my eyes and hands on everything, petting the cat, cooing at the Cotswold sheep in the adjacent pasture, and enjoying the company of my students.

For lunch yarn shop owner Brenda had arranged for a Sweet Tomato Soup made with fresh tomatoes from the valley farms, in honor of the class I was teaching (Cat’s Sweet Tomato Heel Socks). The day went way too fast; I would have loved to keep my students for many more hours.

Then Diane whisked me back to Lucy’s just in time to join a birthday celebration for Lucy’s just-arrived-from-England sister and brother-in-law.  I felt unspeakably glad to be for that night part of her family of exceptionally bright and spirited individuals, so different than one another yet so kindred and living in lively harmony.

How did I ever get to be so lucky as to live this life I am living? Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Up until a few moments ago, all my books have been paper. But now, a new book, Cat’s Sweet Tomato Heel Socks, is born, and will be winging its way via cyber-molecules to electronic devices in knitters’ hands, perhaps even yours. If you’d like to purchase the eBook, click here. You will have the choice of paying by Paypal or by credit card. And thank you so much for venturing on this first eBook journey with me.

If you’re familiar with my other books, you’ll feel right at home with this new baby because I’ve used the same design and layout style and offer the same meticulous attention to detail and clarity to insure your knitting experience is smooth and sweet. I’m excited that for the first time I can include live video links so that my hands and voice are at your service.

The nearly 100 knitters who have tested my Tomato Heel Socks say it’s the simplest and most satisfying method they’ve ever used. This heel emerged last winter after several days of sitting beside the wood stove with my mother while trying to fiddle my way towards a new short-row heel. I’d given up several times when almost unconsciously, I did a small thing—and just like that, the clean heel of my dreams existed. This small thing closes gaps without holes, wraps, or acrobatics. The heel is rhythmic to work and nearly perfectly smooth, like a tomato. Best of all, once the process is understood, a knitter needs no written instructions.

The payment of $20 covers all installments of the eBook. The first installment is 20 pages long and includes the foundation lessons and first 3 patterns, with 5 more patterns to follow (listed in the table of contents in gray). These 8 designs will also be released as single-pattern purchases. A ninth sock, never to be released as a single, will arrive as an exclusive thank you gift to eBook purchasers, and will complete your eBook.

The first sock in the book is one I dearly love, my Zebra Socks, which come in sizes for babies through large men. Above you see my little grandson Charlie wearing his, and below you see me in a tree wearing mine. I am pretending to be a Madagascar Lemur.

The next pair in the first installment is another Charlie-inspired design that delights adults as well: Secret Treasure Pocket Socks. I can even fit my iPhone in a pocket, and you can make 1, 2, 3, or 4 pockets, as you wish. These socks also come in all sizes.

If you turn the pockets inside out (notice that I used leftover sock yarn to knit the insides, why not?) they look like puppy dog ears. Of course, when they are pushed to the inside as intended, they are secret.

And third, you will find an elegant sock, Minnesota Moonlight, which will entrance you both in the knitting and the wearing. Alas, I do not offer these for babies or men, but they do come in women’s small, medium and large.

This eBook was conceived and born in the the very same room where I am writing this, at my parents’ home high in the Santa Cruz Mountains 10 miles as the crow flies (and they do) from the Pacific Ocean. At the moment I am working nearby my mother again, as I was during the days when the Sweet Tomato Heel was conceived, surprising me with its sweet, smooth innocence and friendliness. Twas winter then, tis summer now, and the sun is shining, so off I go for a walk, with my patient mother, who just told me it need not be a long, long walk.

If you’d like to purchase my eBook, click here. You will have the choice of paying by Paypal or by credit card. (The $20 payment covers all installments.) And thank you so much for venturing on this first eBook journey with me.