A Purse for Emily

I won two dollars at the Delaware County Fair. My mother submitted the purse that I knit for my sister this summer, and it won third place. I lost to a pair of lacy socks and possibly a cabled sweater.

The purse began as a gift to makeup for my absence at her graduation in may. To truly mark the occasion, I picked a pattern harder than anything I had previously knit. 4 panels, 3 major panes, a whole lot of new pattern stitches, with 34 bobbles each. The weekend Emily graduated from Carnegie Mellon, I was knitting at a campsite in Nevada's Delmar valley, while my coworkers

teased me that the piece on my needles most resembled a beautifully textured thong.

I knit and knit and knit. Her birthday rapidly approached. Luckily, the purse was built of four panels- I could give her two for graduation and two for her birthday. Or, really, two weeks after her birthday, when I headed back east to spend a long weekend with my family and friends on vacation.

I knit in the middle of nowhere. 12 hours of work, make some dinner, knit until the sun set on

our campsites. Watching the last rays of the day reflect off of the canyon walls in the Big Rocks Wilderness. Working by headlamp as the stars flicker into perspective. Knitting in gloves by the side of a tiny alpine lake in Idaho's Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness as the temperatures dropped with the setting sun. Reclining in the Sunday afternoon shade with my needles in hand at the Shady Motel in Caliente. I knit in the Tule desert, the Delmar Valley, the Pahroc Range, The Hiko Range, The Muleshoe Valley. I tried to knit as Brandt drove the curving roads through redwood forest in Humbolt County, but it was too windy for my weak equilibrium.

I was almost done when a car accident caused my elbow to swell into a useless lump. I had all kinds of good excuses for being late on my gift, a lack of electricity, too much time driving, small stitches, big purse, lost needles, airport security, etc... But I finished it- and mailed the pieces home for her and Mom to sew it's lining and call it done.

This purse brought Emily into my life this summer. It gave me a reason to talk about her, tell her best stories, to anyone who would listen. The simple, polite inquiry, "What's that you're knitting?" opened the door to as many emily stories as I could squeeze into the window before they stopped listening, and then a few more. It brought her to the desert- to more valleys and ranges and sunsets that she'll probably never really know.

Now, Emily is carrying this purse around Baltimore- to restaurants and ceramics studios and art museums that i'll probably never know. But hopefully, if people ask about her beautiful and unique accessory, she'll have a chance to talk about me- bring me to life a little bit in her world too.