L'shanah tovah tikatevi v'taihatemi 5772

May we all be written.

Sometimes in looking forward, we see only the distance to go. We fail to look back and see how far we’ve come.

So often we resolve to live only in the present, this moment, only this moment. Then we come to situations that ask us to plan for the future, to forgive the past, to change. Which is difficult when we’re living the frustration of the situation right this minute.

5771 was a rough ride. And I found myself this morning looking at my list from last year, and feeling angry with myself for being further behind on it than when the year started. So many more transgressions, so many angry words, so many tears, so many apologies to make. Times when I was cruel or unkind merely because someone was human. I found myself angry and disappointed in myself.

Then I started thinking about the apologies. Why do I apologize? To acknowledge to the other person that they are not invisible, that they are a person, and that I know – in some way - I have invaded their dignity. To give them a chance to speak their piece/peace, to accept responsibility for what I’ve done. And to give them an opportunity to atone for their own things that might be related to the misunderstanding. To make the world a better place; by so doing we choose life.

Suddenly I realized that my list needed one more name: my own. So much of what I’ve done wrong to others this year, I’ve also done to myself.
Pushed myself, mocked myself, berated myself for the flaw of being human. Yes, 5771 was a rough year, and I cracked under the pressure more than once;

but there were also times when I did the right thing as well. And so did the people in my life. At the center of the truth, I love them all; and just as they accept and forgive my foibles, I need to practice demonstrating that core compassion…for all of us.

Three bags sewn.

Ostensibly this is billed as a knitting blog. And there is some truth that Rav has killed the knitting blog. I had been thinking lately of killing the blog, but decided that even though it hasn’t been much about knitting this past 6 months, I enjoy the private party feel of it. I have to organize my thoughts for public consumption, though it’s a small public, some of whom I’ve known for years. And from looking at the stats I can see where I get repeat visitors who never comment. So while life has been very full lately with plenty of reasons to shut it down...

The blog lives another day.


I had some time off of work recently so I whipped up three little project bags using fat quarters. They're just the right size for a small project. With a little pocket inside for my phone and a lipstick. Nothing fancy, just a touch of whimsy and colour for the coming days of grey winter.

Apoptosis

As a child you have imaginary friends. As an adult--well, perhaps you shouldn't. Or, more likely, you have imaginary friends that are real people. Not the people as they are, but the people as your mind makes them, interacts with them. Sometimes this can happen in knitting too.

If the project is off, you can keep knitting and blame reality at the end. Or you can accept the truth and try to use the actual parameters available as a basis for reconsideration:

When you're a child you escape by going to imaginary places in the mind. As an adult, you've been places, you just revisit them mentally. As a knitter you rip and reknit. With some blocking-in-the-wild to check your hypothesis.

Equanimity

It's been quiet on the blog front lately.

On the knitting front I cast on an "epic" shawl in cobweb weight merino. Merino that fought me every inch, snarling back on itself, strands grasping the center of the ball desperately. Still I knit on, really enjoying the focus required. Enjoying the fabric rippling off my needles. Still a little voice would nudge me occasionally, trying to tell me something was wrong. Except nothing was wrong, the stitch count...perfect, the patterning...perfect, the colours...delicious. All other knitting lies abandoned.

About 600 yards in, I awoke one night realizing what was wrong. Gauge, desperately wrong. I jumped out of bed and blocked it in the wild - that wedge shown from about 9 to 11- blocked. Unpinning and measuring in the morning confirmed it. Should be a 23" radius, measures a scanty 11". But I like the fabric, yet didn't want the epic part to be neverending knitting. So I cast on in a larger gauge from one of the other balls. And loved the fabric. So the ripping began. Which the merino disliked even more than being removed from ball form.

Delicate cobweb weight threads, tangled.
Only beautiful when smoothed and entwined.
I want our threads to unsnarl, to relax.
To be transformed into something that,
if not beautiful, is useful and functional.

We're not enemies, yet so often we are tangled in misunderstandings.
The small scales of our surfaces caught on each other, creating a situation that will hurt or break one of us if not handled carefully.

Why don't people and relationships come with
clear pattern instructions?

Gallimaufry

Not really a coherent post this week.
Life and knitting have been a hodgepodge the last couple of weeks.

I did get two more things off the needles, without casting on anything new:

And one thing off my mind:


"Sorrow has been my roommate lately.
Grabbing me with a tightness in the throat
Tears that course, silently.
Without clear reason, without fear.
It isn’t loss, or longing.
Nor loneliness or isolation.
Just sweetness that touches an unnamed need,
Languishing in a corner."

Pettine Pettiness

Despite the fact that both skeins of Malabrigo Silky Merino claimed to be the same colour/lot they were about as alike as homemade marshmallow candies are to the marshmallow root - which is to say - Not at All. Even TAO looked at the shawl & questioned the juxtaposition of abrupt colour change. The first skein really emphasized purple hues and the 2nd was very much orange. I carefully weighed the first skein & when I was close to the halfway mark I switched to the other skein, thinking that when worn the colour change would not be so obvious. But it bothered me a little. It's knitting--not neurosurgery--so it shouldn't matter. Doesn't matter. But it's knitting--not intracranial shunt placement--so I can also have greater control over it.

I intentionally packed it for my vacation, with a dyebolical plan. I enlarged the chart enough to see it over my mojito glass, and finished the knitting. Then promptly consigned the shawl to the dye pot. (After much staring into space to decide which overdye hue to shoot for.)

Ahh, after it's refreshing simmer, and "blocking" (which was really just hanging it by it's little neck edge loops on the clothesline,) it's a keeper. But if you don't hear from me for a while it's probably because the Malabrigo dye police hauled me away for daring to overdye the yarn.

Binary

I always wanted to grow up to be an anthropologist. Specifically a cultural anthropologist. But I couldn’t figure out how I would pay the bills, so I grew up to be other things.

I still love to hear people’s stories though. How they ended up where they are. What happened along the way. What guided them. Finding the back story to the moment of their life that is today.

PreBlocking

Which is ironic, in that I have such lousy skills in actually understanding/interacting with people. I spent the last two weeks trying to sidestep the booby traps. Those situations where what you WANT to do and what you SHOULD do are diametrically opposed and stressful. Even I understand that shaking someone while screaming “For G-ds Sake take pity on me and explain” would be counterproductive.

So I retreated to knitting. Charted, counting, nothing-exists-outside-these-needletips-knitting. The soothing rhythm of binary. Something, nothing, something, nothing, something something something, nothing.
After roughly 47 hours of “math” I emerged with my mind no clearer, but with a finished shawl. 570 yds of Wollmeise and the Trousseau pattern. Luckily I was not captivated by the elusive Wollmeise; I can think of 3 different yarns I’d prefer to have. I am however enchanted with the pattern, and have been considering re-knitting it in Mirasol Tupa. Several people in Rav had noted that they ran short despite having considerably more yardage than the pattern called for, so I used my scale extensively and finished up with less than 5 yds left over. The large calls for 500 yards, and I left out one 16 row repeat and 2 rows of final border. 50" wingspan and 25" back depth.

Sometimes I tell myself I’m just undergoing a vigorous “blocking” from the Universe. I hope when it’s all over the pattern of my somethings and nothings in time/action/choices will reveal a worthwhile life.

There may have been knitting.

Most of you would not be the least bit surprised to hear that “there may have been knitting last week.”

After all, I think of knitting as the ultimate panacea. Want to think? There’s knitting for that. Want to NOT think? There’s knitting for that. Joyous? Knit. Sad? Knit. Apathetic? Browse patterns. Anxious? Wind yarn. Of course, this doesn’t work for monogamous knitters; they must surely have some other coping mechanism? Perhaps they are Opera fans, after all Opera comes in all those flavours too.

I’m still seeking the elusive silence of the mind. The only way I can describe last week would be: Roller skating in a Lightning storm. You have to keep one eye on the tarmac, looking for road hazards, and simultaneously cast a wary eye on the heavens lest you be suddenly cardioverted.

My mind was so cluttered that I totally forgot -until very suddenly today- that Sunday is my daughter’s Birthday. In one sudden swoop, all other thoughts fled. What do you do for a dead child’s birthday, especially when you are far from anyone who remembers her? When you remember that moment of epic joy, that later led to life shattering pain?

               I knit.

Bogged Down

"There you go - all my own work. Contains almost everything except tea." M. Allingham

The nice thing about knitting slumps? They're not important. If you are driven crazy by a co-worker, they are harder to sidestep. If your loved ones are demonstrating the traits that you love them "despite" - short of running away from home - you still have to deal with them. If your own mind is fixated on a single jaw clenching thought, you cannot just hit "mute."

Knitting...that's another story:

If your tiny apartment eats two balls of wool necessary for a sweater; you order more, and while you're waiting you realize that the previously knit part is now 4" too big because you've lost weight. Rip Rip Rip.

If a project is bogged down because you mailed off beloved speciality needles and then the artist had a family emergency; you just mark the chart and set the project aside.

If you left out of work without the chart for another project - meaning all your weekend knitting plans are dead in the water - you pull out the swift, some stash, download a new pattern PDF that Jenny & Nicole are knitting, and

Cast on a new project.


I'm suddenly struck with the thought - if that sweater is too big, I bet the cute dress I ordered yesterday is too. ~Curses~.

Testing the resiliency

The term "stress" - as it is currently used - was coined by Hans Selye in 1936, who defined it as "the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change".

We all have stress. We’ve all heard ad nauseum about Fight-or-Flight, any reasonably up to date woman can give you an intelligent discourse on the basic brain chemicals that we’re hopped up on in response to all those “tigers” out there. They can even give you a comparative commentary on how relaxing/recharging is different based on the activities needed to release chemicals in women vs men. Both halves of the species need to return to the cave. One to climb into a solitary charging cradle and one to have interaction with sympathetic listeners.

What happens when the tiger lives in the cave? When that suspicious sound you heard in the back corner turns out to be large & dangerous; waiting for the hunger to build before it pounces and devours your future? When it’s there in your mind, growling in the night?

Obviously as knitters and spinners we chose to indulge in our hobbies to release stress. Hence why this week has included a pair of SportWeight socks on 2.5mm, Tofu - who is going to Georgia to live with a little girl who has an inoperable brain tumor, and 120 yards of worsted weight "in the grease" 3 ply for mittens. The marl is for the hand and the solid chainply will be striped cuffs.

I've also re-read some old favourites, listened to hours of music, walked so much my plantar fascia hates me, and I suppose I will clean this place sometime in the near future.

What do y'all like to do to return to the still, quiet, silence of the mind?

Nibble nibble

I had a week that was roughly equivalent to ripping out 1200 yards of mohair lace knitting in a cobweb gauge. But we're not going to focus on that. Instead, I'm looking at the future. A future that will hopefully include a lovely light worsted weight 3 ply marled yarn for mittens. I'm actually going to chain ply a smidgeon for solid coloured striped cuffs and then marled mitten hands. Should be off the needles in time for my retirement to Northern Arizona.

I nibbled away at the spinning of this - 4 ounces of Corridale/BFL, stripping the roving down to roughly it's single colours and then spinning each individually. The natural definitely had more grease/nupps/2nd cuts in it and came out thicker, so I presume that's my shortest yardage. My goal in early May was to get back to a little daily spinning. Just 15 minutes a day. Of course, most days the soothing rhytmn sucked me in and in some cases, an hour was happily spent "treadling" in time to music & letting the sheepy goodness engage my fingers.



Now that summer heat is upon me, I will have to move the furniture around so that the wheel lives in the room with AC, extreme heat & humidity can't be good for the wood, not to mention being a sweaty experience for poor 'dainty' me. The very things that make this tiny apartment nice in winter, make it a sweatlodge in summer.