Stay, Don't Go.

It just occurred to me that my mom died about 10 years ago just a few days ago. I say "about" 10 years ago because I'm not the type of person who keeps track. I know that it might be ten or eleven years ago. It might even be nine (but I'm thinking 10), except I do know that it was in February. That she died, that is.

Oddly enough, her sister, my aunt, is suffering right about now. She has a cancer that has spread to her bones and her brain, too.

She left her belongings behind in the Bay Area and is now spending the rest of her time with her daugher in Texas.

The other day, she left me a voice message. She said: "Oh Wendy, I want you to knit me something. I want to feel your knitting around me now. It's not too cold here, but it would be nice to have a cardigan. I don't want a hat. I just want to feel you hug me with your knitting."

Oh my.

I love my aunt Sandy, my mother's sister. The one who sat with her in her last days while I cried nearly 300 miles away and didn't have the strength to be there as well. And now she is having hers and I don't know exactly what to do.

And knitting a cardigan would take me so much time. Probably too long. A cardigan would take me weeks.

And then it hit me. I have boxes and boxes of samples that I knit over the past five years for my books. I have them sitting all around the joint, in boxes! 

So, I gathered up a yoked eyelet cardigan, a pair of lacy socks, a triangular shawl and some fingerless mitts. Colors of cinammon, peaches, sea glass, and cornflower blue. 

I'm not good at this stuff.

BTW: Vesper Sock Yarn. Rainbow Love. Fingerless gloves but with thumb gussets. I can write down the recipe if you want me to.