What a gift it’s been to have several visits with my daughter Rebecca during her four-month long tour to promote her best selling nonfiction book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” She reported on facebook last week that the movie rights have been purchased by Oprah, Alan Ball and HBO—-and so away she goes into more exciting and unreal times. She and a member of the Lacks family will serve as consultants to the movie.
Becka, a knitter, loves and appreciates anything handknit. This time she returned home with two Truly Tasha shawls (free pattern on Nancy Bush’s website http://www.woolywest.com) knit from Sandy Soreng’s handspun yarn plus a Fountain Pen Lace Shawl! The first, “Teal Tasha,” was given
to her last year, later borrowed back by me and then returned to her to cope with the wet, chilly west coast weather in Seattle and then California. I knit the next Truly Tasha (my 5th) from one of her favorite colors—periwinkle. My guess was that upon her return to the NW, Becka would look at this one, choose it and leave the teal one with me. Below is the periwinkle Tasha being modeled on a sculpture. And yes, it is really periwinkle, although it certainly is a beautiful blue in the picture.
And because I wanted to make something special to commemorate her accomplishment, I cast on a “Fountain Pen Lace Shawl” (designed by Susan Lawrence and originally published in “Interweave Knits” and worked on it as Becka was completing the last leg of the book tour.
It, too, looks blue but the color of the Fleece Artist yarn (Blue Face Leicester 2/8 lace weight) is amethyst. And yes, its subtle variegation moves from blue to purple (Note to myself about my new camera: I need some help figuring out this consistent blue-purple color problem!). I
used a lot of stitch markers to separate pattern repeats since I wanted to avoid having to unknit and redo parts of the shawl, given the short time in which I was trying to knit it—-a little more than a week.
Here is the shawl being blocked out the night before she returned after the end of the book tour—now looking mysteriously navy:
And here it is finished, floating in the breeze the following day on SE Hawthorne Street in Portland, OR:
And finally, here ‘s the shawl being worn by the happy recipient.
all!
Betsy McCarthy knits 
Wonderful, all of it.
Lovely shawls! I have been recommending your daughter’s book to everyone I know. It will be so interesting to see the movie. Congratulations!
I can’t wait to see it either. I’ve never been so close to a movie being made—-period. It will be a fascinating process to follow and I’ll blog about it as I learn more! I’m still somewhat speechless about all of this, while at the same time not being surprised that this has happened. Becka put in a decade + of her life to do this. There is a piece on obsessions in the June 2010 issue of Psychology Today in which she is one of the people spotlighted! Obsessions can be positive things—–and all of us knitters can now stand up and cheer about that!!
I could tell from reading the book that she put a ton of research into it. I guess that’s why it is so good and so readable. I look forward to reading your posts on the progress of the movie!
Hooray for obsessions!
As far we know, the work on the movie will begin in earnest this fall. Stay tuned……
Betsy, this is just a guess but I bet you need to adjust your white balance! The shawls are beautiful in any color!!!
I am reading your daughter’s book right now and am LOVING it. Can you tell me the name of the yarn you used for the shawl. It’s gorgeous. I’m a knitter too.
Hi Chelle,
I’ve been away from my blog for several years—and do plan to get back to it very soon. I just read your February posting about a sad ending to a sweet dog story—-and it really touched me and took me back to the time of losing dogs I loved. Peace to you and your daughter. It’s wonderful that you documented so many happy memories of Domino. Thankfully, after we lost two dogs in 2010, we adopted/rescued another border terrier, a 5 year old female, who is now 8, very lively and providing much love and entertainment for us. Dogs are such great people!
Betsy