The only constant is change. It was one of my grandmother’s favorite sayings! Lately, I’ve found myself inexplicably collecting grey and gold yarn. At this point in my life, I’ve begun to realize that, when I get in a color mood, there’s a reason. Last year I was grey and sad. This year, gold began to creep into everything I reached for. And then it hit me while I was working on my Seismic shawl, and I realized why I’ve been so drawn to that combination.

Long ago when I was wee, my grandmother worked as Public Relations Director for the San Francisco Ballet. (Yes there were all sorts of perqs with that: Nutcracker every December, getting to spend evenings with the conductor’s family while my mother and grandmother were in night school, meeting the ballerinas – heaven for a ballet-crazy kid!) We had very little money, and so my grandmother carefully collected her work wardrobe. Most of her clothes were made by her: fine crocheted tops and lacy dickies from cotton thread, and my mother, who scoured the remnant bins for wools and sewed skirts. My grandmother’s most prized possessions were her three cashmere cardigans, blue, grey and gold. She wore the latter two until they could no longer be mended, and then she gave them to me. My over-eager petting of the cashmere may, I fear, have hastened their demise. And then they were mine. My grey and gold went with me everywhere as my constant companions, and were cuddled until they finally wasted away to nothing. They gave me years of comfort, warmth, and calm.

So you see, through my struggles I have come back to grey and gold, and now I hope very much that I can share a little bit of that warmth and kindness in this eBook. Life doesn’t follow a steady course, and things change, sometimes for the better and sometimes not so much. I have fallen down, but not permanently, and I am striving to create beauty in all the unexpected places and changes again. This eBook celebrates life’s cycle of change, from city to country, from having kids at home to waving farewell to them as they venture off, from this to that. And with love to you in grey and gold.

• Seismic
• Dry Creek
• Cottage Shawl
• A More Perfect Union
• Waikoloa Beach
• Leaves in a Stream
• Bridges
• Off Kilter
• Bright October

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