dog rose jamming

ordinary rocks worth stopping for on a bright and beautiful day

wild rose dog berries

spells and mixtures
When I left this morning for the farmer's market I noticed the wild rose bush behind my adobe wall and how it was decorated like a Christmas tree with red hips. Usually we leave them for the birds (and bears?). This day though, they looked so glorious in the sun, and there were so many, that I was compelled to do something about them. So I donned leather garden gloves, a pair of clippers, and with curious Spike an inch away the whole time, picked as many of the hips as possible without exposing myself to zillions of tiny nasty thorns, knife-like yucca leaves, and the low reaching arms of the apricot tree (still full of yellow leaves). All of these things are thriving in one modest square of space and it's dangerous! An hour later, a bit scratched and with a few thorns stuck in my sweater, I assessed the harvest.

About a quart's worth. Don't know if I'll be able to successfully make jam. (I could string them and wear as love-attracting beads). I tried making rose hip jelly once (I already had the lover). It was many years ago in Naragansett, using wild beach rose hips. The recipe came from an old reissued 1939 book filled with quaint centuries-old lore. Months later, we opened one of the jars when we stayed at the cottage, and the jelly was watery and tart. But now I've found a 21st century recipe that incorporates an orange, a green apple, sugar, water, butter, and hope.

What I did learn from the olden times recipe book is that my particular thorny bushes are called dog roses (Eglantine) and the pulp should be removed with the aid of a bodkin. Princess Alexandre Gazarine (1924) wrote that dog roses are best for jam. And that roses planted in the garden attract fairies, and are said to grow best when stolen. So there. How can I fail?

There is a bit of magic in the air this late afternoon and my mood swings from joy to gloom, from enthusiasm to laziness, clarity to confusion. The sun is low now and filling all the rooms with buttery light. Anything is possible.

antidote for hysteria?

cozypants

The visual tranquility of teapot, artificial flowers and colorful/cushy finished socks is slightly not a true picture of my life. As November 1st looms, I find myself preparing for a non-stop busy time that may include a trip east and/or southwest, and will certainly overlap into early January. Not due to the coming holidays and assorted family birthdays, although they play a part, but due to a plethora of drop dead deadlines.

resolved:
this will be the last year I do the Yuletide Craft Fair because on top of all the other deadlines I now face production! On one hand it's sheer insanity. On the other it's the push I need to finish UFOs. Things that I've lost interest in will inevitably interest someone else. This I've learned through the years. And isn't it better to part with what I no longer love so it can be infused with new love? For example (and I think I broke a procrastination record here), last night I finished a pair of socks started approximately ten years ago. That's what I said, dear reader. Ten years!

Here's what happened. There is a yarn shop in town called The Yarn Shop. In the past (two owners ago) I often traded knitting samples for yarn. I'd discovered socks and loved the new self-patterning yarns. Most at that time came from Regia. This one was called Special Effekts. I knitted a one sock sample that sold lots of yarn, and completely lost the desire to knit the second. A few years months later, the shop changed hands. I reclaimed the sock and tossed it into a storage box where it languished until my recent declutter campaign. Not only was the sock there - looking quite fresh and perky - but so was the yarn - all neatly bundled in a ziplock bag. The very fact that so much time had elapsed and the project was still viable, propelled me to finish. Voila! It's actually quite nice and will make it's belated debut at the Fair. This started an insane trend and now there are three more sufo's clamoring for new life in the light.

"a distinct virtue"
A miniature book published by Running Press around the time I made that striped sock, contains quotes and historical facts about knitting. I don't remember how I acquired the book, but it resurfaced with the sock. Aside from facts about Eleanor Roosevelt's bulging knitting bag, and that the Archbishop of Canterbury got involved (quote above), I wonder if this still works:

The quiet, even, regular motions of knitting
were prescribed as an antidote for nervousness
and hysteria in the nineteenth century

deep, dark & other stuff

Since it's getting close to Halloween I thought I'd share a picture of this house perched high on a hill overlooking the Pacific. I passed it on my walks a few weeks ago. I'm sure it's a lovely place, not a haunted mansion (it's actually quite a modest size) but it sure looked spooky on this day. So let your imagination fashion a story of your own. Today's weather perfectly fits whatever creepy story you do concoct because it's snowing on the mountains (hidden behind clouds) and raining cold rain down here. Gloomy. And cozy. When the sky cleared briefly, it was no longer that blue I've been waxing poetic about, it was silver and gray and moving fast toward the mountains.

Perfect day to finish a special knitting project (and try to deal with an unrelated unexpected problem). Why aren't our stresses meted out gradually and balanced by an equal measure of joys? Never mind.
This makes me happy.

Dante's b-day hat and mittens (a Morehouse yarn and modified pattern). Those little thumbs were hell to knit and the touches of felt and beads for lips and eyes (that I didn't add) were over the top for the smallest size. (Have I told you that I hate sewing?) I can't imagine that these mitts will stay on tiny hands either. So I'm about to start a pair of thumbless mittens as a backup. I tend to avoid making tiny toys, ornaments, animals or other cute stuff. I once made a tiny toe-up sock for a workshop and it nearly caused me to quite knitting altogether.

approaching the edge of sanity
Which I can't do at this time because I made a commitment to participate in the Yuletide Craft Fair on Thanksgiving weekend and need to have enough knitted items for three full days. Here's a sneak peek at one of a series of small felted bags that a psychic acquaintance told me I should be sure to include. She said they would serve as talismans to those who bought them. Interesting concept, eh? Who am I to doubt her word.

eat the sky

Like a living kaleidoscope, my small world of color has gone from predominantly yellow and blue to orange and blue. The cottonwood leaves along the Rio Grande are deep burnt orange, as are the swaths of aspens on the mountaintops. Each warm sun-filled day is more precious than the one that came before it. It won't be long now. We try to own the feeling. My friend puts aspen leaves on her kitchen windowsill. Outside she is drying cosmos and marigold heads for their seeds (and I forgot to take some home with me).

Can any day be more perfect than this one? (yesterday? tomorrow?).
John Nichols wrote a stunning book many years ago called The Last Beautiful Days of Autumn. It is filled with photographs, stories, humor, love for landscape and its species of inhabitants. In it are heart-stopping descriptions of Taos in autumn. Elusive and vivid. Scent of cedar woodsmoke in the air, flocks of birds on wires and trees. I've always remembered one particular line from the book. He wrote that the sky is "so blue you could eat it with a spoon". Today was one of those delicious sky-eating days.

under the orange brolleys
Maggie and I ate a lovely long lunch outside under orange umbrellas and blue sky. She's about to leave for winter in England and we had a lot to catch up on before she is gone. She is also a writer, knitter, photographer, so you can imagine the territory we covered - I don't think we took a breath for two hours.

charlie brown lives!
And then I received this very orange, very dear, phone photo of Dante's visit to a pumpkin patch with his grandmother. In a day or two I'll show off the things I'm making him for his first b-day in a few weeks. But at the moment I'm just nostalgic for the days when I took my kids and grandkids to New England pumpkin farms in Octobers past. And I send my love to the boy who is too young to remember me and who doesn't know yet that there is one more person in his life, far away, who loves him (and is madly knitting stuff for him).

Blue mountains white snow gleam
Through pine bulk and slender needle-sprays;
      little hemlock half in shade,
      ragged rocky skyline,


      single clear flat nuthatch call:
      down from the treetrunks


      up through time.

(excerpt from Old Pond by Gary Snyder)

burning desire

Everything I write is true. But I don't write about everything
These words were written by Dominique Browning in her essay "Burning the Diaries" which appeared in the New York Times on September 30. That sentence refers to her published memoir and her blog. But she wrote about "everything" in 40 years worth of diaries that she burned one day. I was inspired. Browning started keeping diaries when she was 14, I started at 40. Whatever diaries I kept before that time were regularly disposed of, thinking they contained secret thoughts I didn't want anyone else to know. I realize now there were no real secrets in those books, just private thoughts that in retrospect weren't of interest to anyone but me. My books are divided into three categories: early spiral bound notebooks with masked versions of the truth, current journals with stark truths, and so-called "workbooks" which contain fodder and junk and can occasionally be mined for a nugget or two. Whatever. There are a lot of notebooks.

My hero Edward Weston wrote in his Daybooks regularly. It was his photography and honest words that inspired me to start writing my own journals. I bought my first blank notebooks from a Job Lots store in Naragansett Pier, Rhode Island. They cost 25 cents each and had turquoise blue covers. Those worn out notebooks are still around nearly 30 years later - much worse for wear and full of the beginnings of repetitions that haunt today's books. How much do we really change? How does one measure self-growth? Do I really want to keep those notebooks?

Weston's entries were intimate and frank and in 1925 he threw three years' worth into the fire because when he reread them he was "revolted by all the heartaches, headaches, bellyaches".

Many mornings I wonder why I even start to write, 
with nothing worth recording in my humdrum existence. 
If it were not for my pot of coffee I am sure there 
would be no inspiration.
     Edward Weston, 1927

chop, haul, knit, purl

What's better than getting into the car on a gorgeous October day of vibrant color and soft breezes, popping a Segovia classical guitar CD into the slot, lowering the windows and driving alone to Santa Fe to spend an afternoon with a friend I haven't seen for awhile because we've both been too busy. We walked, talked, ate late lunch outdoors under the trees on Canyon Road.

last harvest admiration

 a less-than-Edward-Weston type pepper

She asked me to bring new socks for her. And showed me the heap of well-used pairs I've been supplying her with for more than a decade. We reminisced about when and where. Patterns and colors I'd forgotten about but that instantly triggered memories of where I was when I worked on them. They were less garment and more grimoire (book of evocations). Tangible clues to our pasts. Most of her socks are still in great shape and she said it's like having a drawer full of art. Way back in the days when I first came to Taos she encouraged me to write and to enable that, bought my hand knits to keep me going. Another friend (since moved away) also amassed socks. Once they had a friendly argument about which one was the bigger collector. No decision. And now my daughter has joined their ranks with her own growing collection. I guess I'm one too - a collector of yarns to make the socks to warm the feet, to be here, right now, in this moment.

all over the place

danger! danger! will robinson!
I began this post 4 or 5 hours ago and was happily typing away when my laptop got extremely hot. To hot to touch. Then it stopped working. We managed to remove the battery and disconnect everything and I made an emergency call to the computer guy who suggested I buy a fan at Walmart. Then remembered that HP had sent a notice a few months ago. Something about a battery recall...and danger...and fire. Uh,oh. Once I saw, in a Napa Valley gallery, an old typewriter with flames rising from its platen - I imagined how my laptop would look as flames engulfed it. Not a pretty sight. So now I'm safely typing away on my cheap/reliable netbook and hoping things will turn out okay. Tomorrow is another day.

back to the sea?
My father's greatest joy was fishing and he kept a little hand written sign pinned over his desk:

red sky at night, sailor's delight

red sky at morning, sailor take warning

I remembered it at dawn this morning when the eastern sky was ablaze. I didn't think it applied to the southwest mountains the way it did for northeastern waters, but by afternoon our gorgeous balmy weather had turned to a cold gusty tempest with skudding clouds and fading sun.

over the top?
Preparing for Santa Fe tomorrow for a visit with a friend and a showing of some handknits. It forced me to open the box I've been tossing finished socks into all year. Twenty-one pairs! It seems I'm already prepared (sockwise) for the Yuletide Fair at end of November.

To Do lists are cluttering up the desk and kitchen table and Ron is watching a Dracula movie and maybe I need to join him and use it as an excuse to settle in, get scared, and finish the mate of the single sock I photographed on the Pacific beach two weeks ago. Where did the time go? When will I return? Too many questions tonight. Too much uncertainty.

the attention we pay to the small, often mundane tasks of life
can make the difference between a life of drudgery and a life of joy
(slightly paraphrased from Bernadette Murphy, Zen & the Art of Knitting)

a Monet day

Claude Monet's kitchen in Giverney was done in blue and yellow - as was Matisse's chapel. Like this day. Warm. Cloudless. Blue and yellow. Simply the pinnacle of perfection. The Rio Grande flows green, reflections of yellow in it's unusually calm flow. We decide to take the day off. After a super busy week and yesterday's yard sale, I turned my back on the scattered papers and boxes of stuff stashed in my workroom. Not as much as I started out with, but I'm still a long way from that minimalistic achievement. Instead we drove to Santa Fe. And all I saw was blue and yellow wherever I looked. Up. Down.

I stopped in a couple of shops looking for a good pair of walking shoes for winter but frankly, winter seemed so far away on this balmy day that I simply wasn't interested and bought nothing - an achievement for me in shop-till-you-drop Santa Fe.

the smell of books
Stopped in Collected Works Books - one of the few bookshops left in our ebook world these days. Sofas, coffee bar, fireplace (no fire today) - all nestled in the center of the small energetic city. I must admit I felt guilty about the many books on my Kindle. I recently heard that the sale of ebooks on Amazon has surpassed the sale of paper books. In my own small way I have contributed to this. I also read that publishers are finding ways to have authors sign ebooks at readings! I can't figure that one out, but don't need to. Somehow I don't see myself toting my Kindle to a poetry reading. But then I never anticipated a life without overflowing shelves either. I tell myself to go with the flow and wonder what kind of world the next generations will live in. What will my dear Dante (11 months old on Tuesday) see in his lifetime? Will he know the tactile experience of paper and print in his hands? the satisfying moment when he will underline some resonant words with a pencil?

Autumn bespeaks loss. Winter looms. But we had a reprieve and tonight my cheeks are flushed and warm with the yellow sun that enveloped me on this day. The doors are open, the night air gentle. Moths fly against the windows. Spike barks outside and I bring him in because this is the time of night when the bear comes out.

all manner of satisfactions

"about as close to magic as modern society allows"

It's 7 o'clock or so. The sky dark and starless, the moon not risen yet. I am at last finished with my writing obligations for the week and after this post I plan to read something entertaining and knit a little. The poetry marathon was well worthwhile for our art, but also for the food. Our hostess is an accomplished cook with sophisticated tastes - especially in baked goods. On this final day, we were greeted with an amazing cherry chocolate gateau from Dragonfly Cafe. There were other delicious and beautiful goodies every day (the caprese salad was an art form in itself) but only today did I have the presence of mind to take a photograph. How beautiful is this?

With the midnight oil burning night after night and words stinging like bees in my head, I somehow managed to finish two pairs of hand warmers with the Rowan dk soft that I love so much. I have one ball left and since it seems to be a discontinued yarn I'm going to hoard it like Persephone's pomegranate seeds.

Working on these simple projects all week helped me to focus in a much more efficient way than if I tried to wrest words from an overwrought tired mind.

and then there were none
How lovely it would be if I sold everything I've collected for the Des Montes neighborhood yard sale tomorrow. The timing is a little off - I'd really like to take a break, but what is, is and the 15th is the date that was decided upon. If you are local and reading this, stop by starting at 8 a.m. for more yarn stash and other interesting stuff.  Somewhere maps will be available in an obvious location. As for me, I'm going to settle in now with Joanne Harris's novel Chocolat.

kitchen table muse

the last roses of summer

On the kitchen table in an ordinary water glass are 34 pink roses the size of quarters - the last blooms of a dry southwestern summer. Late, they came in October. They were enclosed in snow last weekend when time was suspended and the end seemed near - until slow rising sun performed a miracle. I snipped the best ones before they were gone. 34 roses in a water glass emit waves of pink light that replaces autumn sadness. Especially when combined with a pot of tea.

I've been participating in a marathon poem-a-day workshop this week (can you tell?) and am slightly obsessed with the pink roses on the kitchen table. The poem I wrote today was a bust, but the actual flowers are spectacular. I find that it is quite difficult to write creative non-fiction essays during the same week I'm supposed to be writing poetry. The place from which they originate (my mind) may be the hub, but the spokes don't match. And on a day when small outside frustrations and potential betrayals flared up while I tried to write, I fell off track. I'll scramble on again tomorrow and do my best. I think it's the alignment of the dementor planets again. And moonbeams in the house for a couple of nights - so bright that I got out of bed to turn out the lights. But you can't turn off the full moon.

I clip off the old dead branches
to force life into the ones that survive
weightless black stems feed the darkness
rekindle fires. Ashes faintly glow with
premonitions and different kinds of joy

rocky mountain high

This, dear readers, is the paw print of a bear near my driveway. As a person who has only encountered bears in zoos, this is rather startling. Apparently a young bear has moved into our neighborhood. The prevailing theory is that its mother may have been killed (an adult bear hanging around a condo in town was recently shot) and this one is displaced. It's been living in a nearby fir tree, coming down in the night to maraud trash barrels. The summer was dry and available food in the mountains is sparse as winter begins up there. Hence, bears who are canny survivors, are marching down to pillage fruit trees and trash cans. They do, after all, have to eat. This is where nature and humans run into trouble. With that in mind, we're keeping Spike behind our adobe wall. So far the bear hasn't figured out how to open the latch on the gate but I hear bears are pretty smart. Oh my.

and now the weather...
Yesterday morning greeted us with two inches of snow! Making the folks in the Ski Valley cheerful and the rest of us despairing. It's early October! My dear departed Aunt Jenny used to say, on bad hair days, "I feel like the last rose of summer." I thought about that when I noticed the roses outside the door.

And glanced toward the east.

Our next door neighbor was having an outdoor birthday party shindig and an army of guests were due to show up around 1pm. Tent and chairs had been set up the day before and a lovely warm early October day with blue skies and views of the yellowing aspens on the peaks was expected.

The party went on as scheduled, the sun didn't come out at all, the snow began to melt and turn grassy areas muddy. By cold late afternoon no one was sitting under the tent, the modest-sized house overflowed with guests, Ron had already gone home to our warm house (he hates the cold) and a hardy group huddled around a blazing fire pit. I alternated between the house and fire and today my clothes are perfumed with the autumn-y scent of cedar smoke.

The gathering was for professional musician John Archuleta. He jammed all day and into the night with other musician friends and talented family (music genes abound). Drums, voices, guitar, violin. Wine, beer, coffee, food and desserts were abundant, as well as laughter and congeniality. A welcome change from the tragedies that this extended family has endured in recent months. Happy Birthday John. You bring a lot of pleasure to a lot of people with your music and cheerful demeanor.

pie wedges of my life

A cartoon in the New Yorker, glanced at quickly in an airport shop, shows a pie divided into thirds. The dialogue balloon says something like this. "Blogs: 1/3 sewing, knitting & other crap, 1/3 travelogue, 1/3 blah, blah". I may not have gotten the words or order exactly right, but I do remember that first third and although it was humorous, I recognized myself as a perpetrator of one of those wedges (sans crap).  I'm home again and slipping into the life I left ten days ago. So many images in my notebook, the camera, my head. I will share a few edible pieces at a time.

yarn
In Sausalito we took a short walk to a fabulous yarn shop with a view of the Bay. It was buzzing with activity and filled with high quality yarns, bags, notions and surprises.

I'd vowed to exercise restraint since, as you know, I recently had a stash sale and am trying to live up to that impossible minimalist standard of living. The temptation angel overcame me and I bought an expensive 550 yd skein of Blue Heron Yarns "Bluegrass" rayon metallic. Sumptuous! Gorgeous! Guiltless.

food
Eating flowers in an Italian pizzeria/cafe on Fillmore Street I was reminded of when my mother cooked squash flowers and we ate them sprinkled with salt. Crunchy and sweet. Strange and magical to a child. I didn't tell my friends about it lest they think we were a weird family. I still think eating flowers is magical, but don't care about weird anymore.

Here's an organic California artichoke that just happens to be the size of a cantaloupe and fills an entire plate! Tender savory leaves and heart dipped into melted butter. Yum! 

Most of all, friendships and seaside images will stay with me the longest. Walking back from the ocean one morning, I took off my Colonnade scarf and tossed it onto a dune where it blended in like a soft chameleon with lace wings. It was made with Madelinetosh Tosh Light yarn and was absolutely the perfect garment for cool overcast mornings and evenings near the water. Now I want to make another in a different color. A place color. In Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert wrote that every city has one word that describes it. If I recall correctly, Rome was Sex, New York, Ambition. Can a color be applied to cities too? I think so. San Francisco? Florence? Paris? Santa Fe? (oh yeah, turquoise).

Everything weathers softly there. Would I? Or would my persona simply turn gray and slowly fade?

the cool autumn wind
subdued by a knitted shawl
and an old weathered kayak

the color of sand

gifts

Back in the city after a long weekend on the ocean. I'm still processing the experience. Like yesterday morning when I was the only human walking on a stretch of beach that went on for miles. Imagine that! The whole Pacific Ocean for my eyes alone. Gulls accompanied me, along with a bird I haven't yet identified, who skittered at the edge of the foamy surf. A plover? A tern? It had a red beak.

first glimpse

Most days were softly overcast, creating a gray cashmere fleece kind of feeling. The sock project I brought with me was perfect. Alpaca blues matched the atmosphere.

We were three women in a beach house with needles (a baby hat, needlepoint, socks) and I finished one whole sock that came to the beach with me for a photo op. Back at the house there was talk, music, food, wine, our lives - and we stitched. One afternoon in a nearby town we sat on a deck overlooking the water, sipped wine and talked about books and Africa.

Since I am still in San Francisco, I will simply share a few seaside moments in this morning post. Another pleasantly busy day awaits. Musings, poems, talk of opera, socks and sparkly yarn, will come later.

Words on a sign over my computer read:

Today is a gift
that's why 
they call it
the present