Plans gone awry…

If you read my last post I should have been sailing down the coast of Alaska right about now, posting lovely photos of moose, whales, glaciers, and breathtaking scenery.  Sadly that didn’t turn out to be the case.

I left about 10 days ago for a multi venue trip, and was to then fly from Oregon to meet up with my husband for an Alaska cruise.  I packed heavily for Alaska, and shipped all my workshop and classroom supplies and samples, so they could be returned shipped.

I arrived uneventfully in Oregon and we headed down to a remote forest in Oregon, for an annual event, my first time there, called Fiber in the Forest.  Part of me loved the remoteness of the venue, the enthusiasm of the students, the energy of a weekend retreat, but part of me thinks I’m way too old to put on boots and coat in the middle of the night to wander down to the concrete latrine.

There are two things that will set a teacher who travels like this over the edge.  One is lost luggage and not being able to have samples and supplies for teaching (thank God in 35 years it has only happened to me once), and the other is getting sick.  Which I did.  Fortunately one of the other instructors who was also sick had a stash of pharmaceuticals that kept me functioning.  I have to say that it is really really hard to teach all day when you have a fever and want to curl up and die.  But I did it and the resulting vests from my three day Pieced Vest workshop were lovely.

They chose their materials and got right to work…

The venue was comfortable and  brightly lit despite the constant rain.

The vests began to take shape.

Not bad by lunchtime on the last day.  Most still needed armhole and neck bands and a lot of handwork, and there were still a number of hours to go…

Somewhere in there I had a birthday.  Things were going south fast and that was the last of my worries, but it was sweet when they put a candle in a scone and sang happy birthday during lunch in the dining hall.

The other instructors couldn’t have been more supportive or more fun to be around, than you Sara, Sarah, and John.  I love you all.

So the other thing no instructor wants to hear while they are away teaching is that there is an issue at home and that I needed to come home.  I have been blessed in my career that there have always been others who could take over for me, my husband mainly, and I could keep doing what I needed to do.

I finished up Fiber in the Forest, checking my messages and updates as often as I could.

Despite being sick, I managed to give the presentation to the Eugene Weaving Guild on Monday, along with John Mullarkey, as we did a reprise of our battle of the bands.  I thought it went well, though it was quite different since the setting was more intimate, and we encouraged lots of questions.  We were less on display and more interactive.

By Monday afternoon I knew I had to go home.  I cancelled the remaining classes I was booked to teach, which tore my heart out, that is so not my work ethic and book the next flight out I could get, that would get me from Eugene to San Francisco and home to NJ on the red eye.

I have said little about my husband’s cancer and how it is progressing.  It isn’t my story to tell. He was having trouble eating again, and was booked to have an esophageal stent put in while I was in the air traveling to Oregon.  All should have gone well and he was expecting to fly to Anchorage to meet me on Thursday for the cruise.  Of course life is what happens when you are making other plans.

Briefly, the cancer is spreading.  He ended up in the hospital the next day, where he is still, with drains in his chest wall where they removed 10 liters of fluid, the fluid does contain cancer cells, and they installed a feeding tube.  There is an additional tumor in his stomach and it is virtually shutting down stomach function. The lung drains have since been removed but they need to put in a Pleurx Catheter.  My daughter was there alone dealing with all this and my blessed sister came up from Maryland to assist her.  Although my daughter is incredibly competent, she is 23 and was scared and my  sister, who was holding together another family crisis, came flying up in the middle of the night to help.  The gratitude I have for the support that surrounds us is beyond measure.  So instead of sitting on a deck knitting watching whales and vistas, I’m sitting in a hospital room, supporting my husband as best I can under really really sad and stressful circumstances.  I’m terribly disappointed for him that he was not able to go on the trip of his dreams, it was so close, but then I’m also grateful that we weren’t in some remote village in Alaska when all this went down.

I did finish a sweater. I’m wearing it today.  C2Knits Daphne, from Shibui heichi silk.

I will be uncommunicative for a bit, there are facebook updates when there is something to update, but for now, I will probably be quiet on the blog.

I love you all dear readers, keep weaving/sewing/whatever gets you through the day…