I hope it’s in her hands by now, and I’m sure she doesn’t read this blog anyway, so here’s the story on that project I was being coy about.

Today is the final doctor visit of our friend Mary Elizabeth Williams’ cancer drug trial, and Mignon suggested a variation on the Morse Code Cowl might be in order: with the message “fuck cancer.” Mignon, who lives down south, designed a card with the Morse characters on the front and the URL of the Wikipedia page on the inside, so Mary Beth can make sense of it all — assuming the two packages show up reasonably close together! If you don’t already read MB at Salon and elsewhere, or haven’t seen her brilliant essays about her battle with cancer, read this now. She’s truly one of my heroes — a model of grace and humor in the worst of circumstances.

Since MB is rather petite, and I don’t know if she loves to have a giant pile of yarn around her neck like I do, I had intended to scale it down a bit for her. But it still came out about 30 or 32 inches around and I think I made it 14 inches deep. I believe she’ll also be able to pull it down around her shoulders like a capelet if she likes. Anyway, I hope she loves it, or at least laughs!

(Knitting specifics for anyone interested: The yarn is Malabrigo Twist, in Tuareg, held double throughout — approx 440 yds total — knit nice and snug on a US11 x 24″ circular. I cast on 88 stitches, knit the “cancer” row at 4 inches and the “fuck” row at 6. )