red

Doesn't this look like Marley's ghost in a Christmas Carol movie? It's the back door lion knocker in today's constant blowing snow - making me crazy since I live with a man who gets restless and unhappy on snowy winter days and keeps inserting the words Arizona and palm trees into our conversations. I deal with days like this by knitting. As a kid, when I heard it was going to snow I persuaded my father to take me to a store where I could buy a craft item to work on. That habit lasted into my adulthood and I'd often find myself shopping in the middle of a snowstorm, eager to get home. It even happened a few years ago when my granddaughter was young. I was visiting and a storm was coming. We drove in snow to Michaels. It must have something to do with survival. Food and yarn - all one needs during a storm. As a result of the last two days of snow and snow showers, I now have two more new projects going! Besides the red socks I started another Lace Shawl in red cashmere. The primary word here seems to unintentionally be RED.

I have never been big on red. Don't really love knitting with it. Once in a while during the holidays I may don a red sweater, but it's not me and I end up feeling uncomfortable and removing it pretty quickly. But this year the color seems to be invading my psyche. I wear a red leather Pandora bracelet, yesterday I repainted my toenails Stiletto Red, the only sock yarn I was drawn to at the shop was red, and the Lobster Pot cashmere is red. Did I mention that I'm dreaming about a red handbag?

In Deborah Bergman's book The Knitting Goddess (Hyperion, 2000) she writes about red being a gift from the Egyptian goddess Isis. Beneath her veils "people could glimpse a brilliant red sash that curled around her hips...the sash was said to be a clue to a deeper source of [her] powers". From other sources it is said that the first knitted or woven socks (for royalty) were made from red thread. Bergman goes on to say that "red thread or yarn...helps to retrieve souls, and memories, and energy". Didn't someone in a fairy tale unwind a red thread through the woods so she could find her way home again? There's no doubt that the color is powerful and I'm sure it appears in many cultures in many other guises. In art therapy it is supposed to stir action and the person wearing it infuses others with energy. That does seem like a lot of responsibility for one color. By the time I finish my projects I may have changed.

I tell you, the liberation I am after is
     the liberation of red.  
                        Stephen Beal

time after time

In the early years before my first marriage, my fiance and I would stop by the home of his elderly unmarried aunts and uncle every new year's eve before we went on to party with our friends. Uncle Joe would have decorated the house with Christmas lights inside and out and Aunts Elsie and Rose would have been baking for days. We were feted with wine, food, opera music on the hi-fi. Later the aunts would each take brooms and sweep every room, moving toward the open front  door where the meager dust (they kept a clean house) was swept over the threshold. This Sicilian custom was their way of getting rid of the old and starting anew. I didn't add this tradition to my subsequent busy life of marriage and children. If I'd swept the floors of every room in my various houses toward the front door, I'd have had to order a dumpster to take the debris away - I never could live up to the meticulousness of the unmarried, childless aunts, but something of that tradition appeared in altered and ever-changing form through the years.

During these days between holidays, I find myself finishing up knitting projects. Two pairs of socks done! and two more with goal date of January 1st. Then I'll continue working on the luscious red/raspberry yarn I bought yesterday at the yarn shop in town and couldn't stay away from last night before getting to the heel and temporarily abandoning the two half pairs I'd planned to work on... My daughter, soaking in the tub last night recovering from the huge snowfall they had in the northeast, called. When I described this new yarn she broadly hinted that she could use a new pair of socks because I wear your beautiful socks every day. Clever, no?

The other glitch in my virtuous plans for completion? I started a Minimalist Cardigan (Interweave Knits, Fall 2007) using my Rowan Felted Tweed stash in a slatey gray/blue color.

I began with the right front because even though the gauge seemed correct I wasn't sure if I would really like this sweater in this yarn (it's a bit fuzzy). But it's turning out pleasingly light and soft and will make a really nice early spring sweater if the moss stitches don't kill me first and I can take it to completion without it becoming another GIP (guilt inducing project) that I'll be faced with next year at this time. I won't even talk about the cabled cardi that's almost done that I take out of the closet annually and vow to finish - and then put away again. It's very nice but I wish someone else (an elf perhaps) could finish it while I'm doing other things.

Meanwhile, speaking of guilt, I will have to cut back on all knitting projects in early January to fulfill writing and editing commitments/deadlines that procrastinating me has moved to a dim cellblock in my mind. Perhaps a Sicilian broom could sweep it into the open.

tradition, tradition

We awakened on Christmas Eve morning to a winter wonderland. By noon the snow had completely disappeared, the sun was shining and temps were pushing 50 degrees. This mild December is a bit scary but we're loving it! Ron and I sat out on the second floor deck and ate lunch in the lovely hot sun. In late afternoon I drove to Taos Pueblo for the traditional Christmas Eve event. He couldn't go because of a weak back that is painful when he stands for too long - and there's lots of standing around. But we hadn't gone in recent years and I wanted to connect again with a kind of inexplicable energy that emanates from that place at this time of year.  The event itself, held at dusk, is a mixture of Catholicism, Indian traditions, paganism. After evening vespers at the San Geronimo church there is a night procession around the plaza marked by blazing luminarias (big bonfires). Four strong men hold aloft a pedestal holding a statue of Mary, dressed in her best laces and satins, and men at the front of the procession shoot rifles in the air to celebrate the birth of Jesus. In this way they slowly make their way around the village plaza. What I describe next is out of order but I hope you get the gist of it.

 
The Pueblo buildings (1,000 years old) glowed in the lowering sun. Cedar and pinon smoke drifted fragrantly up from 1,000 year old chimneys. Sacred Taos Mountain was wreathed in a smoke ring cloud with a domed snow peak sticking up out of it - against a clear cobalt blue sky. This Christmas Eve Taos Pueblo tradition allows visitors and they were arriving in droves. Spread out over the village plazas were stacks of pitch wood in varying dramatic heights. Each family builds one that will burn brightly and warm the cold night air. I was told once that there is a friendly competition to achieve the highest and brightest of all luminarias. Surely this one would be the winner.

The plaza is bisected by the Rio Pueblo (the only source of water for the village). Luminarias burn on both sides. Normally photography is not allowed at the Pueblo during dances, feast days and other traditional events, but in the past it was allowed on Christmas Eve. So I strolled along with my smallest Canon. However, in a short time I began to feel uncomfortable about continuing to photograph so I stopped to ask three different residents if it was allowed. Two said yes, one said "sure, if you want to take the chance" and added, "but don't let them see you".  As someone in love with my camera and also respectful of the Taos Pueblo people and their rules, I stowed the camera permanently. And remembered what Tony Reyna - an elder of the village (around 90 years old by now) told me 24 years ago when, as a tourist, I went into his shop to buy film for my camera:  you're a writer, you don't need film - the pictures are in your head. At the very moment I was remembering his words, he walked by leaning on the arm of a younger man. He is still a tall, handsome, imposing figure.

This ritual symbolism and Indian/Hispanic tradition always evokes strong emotion within me. I've never been able to explain why. It isn't just about being far away from my family at this time of year. It's that when the fires are blazing in the night, the rifles shooting, the lace clad statue of the Virgin passing with her simple white canvas canopy blowing in the wind, I get all teary eyed. I'm not religious, I'm not an Indian, I had no connections to the southwest until I first saw it in 1986. Go figure. But it happened again and I arrived home with a red nose and puffy eyes. A glass of Prosecco, a bowl of cioppino and a sympathetic ear fixed me up.

On Christmas afternoon (another mild day) I headed back to the Pueblo for the Matachines dance. Northern New Mexico is the only place in the country where this dance is performed. It's a sort of mysterious amalgam of cultures and religions. I've written articles about it but no one ever tells the same story and, frankly, I have no idea of what it's all about. I think they want it that way. I met up with a couple of friends and  inhaled deeply the sunny cedar smoke from the pueblo chimneys. I feel so lucky to be living here.

how many rising
clouds collapse and fall on
this moonlit mountain
                         Basho

portents of

I'm taking a deep breath now. Finished with Christmas making and shopping - I don't do frenzied mall shopping anymore. I knit, order online, shop locally. This year though, some things I'd ordered got lost in the mails for a week. I left the house early this morning to pick up the order that finally arrived and get it ready to send off again in the other direction. As I drove quickly down my dirt driveway ready to turn onto the road out, I noticed this horse standing perfectly still at the fence. An immediate case of personification kicked in and I imagined him wondering why I was in such a hurry.  I stopped the car, got out and, murmuring to him, took this picture. I'm sure his curious sideways stare and calm energy infused me because when I got back into the car I felt not only calmer but realized how lucky I was to be out in the strangely warm morning on a soft gray day having had an encounter with another warm blooded creature.

When I drove back out again later in the day to mail the packages this horse and his three companions (all identical with white face stripe) were racing around their field. A sign, I've learned, that the weather is changing. And sure enough, as I write this, dark clouds are forming over the moutaintops threatening snow up there. Horses know these things.

I don't know if you can see it clearly, but these bare trees are alive with birds. Hundreds of starlings (I think) had landed in two nearby trees. By the time I got the door opened, camera in hand, they'd flown up into the air, circled around a couple of times and landed in trees further away. They seem to be gathering for something. And no, it's not like a scene from The Birds - well, maybe just a little - because at this moment, there are many more of them in the trees.....

moon madness

They're finished! The men's socks and the black neckwarmer! In time for Christmas - except that the recipients are 2,000 miles away and won't receive them till next week.

I'm also still waiting for some items I ordered more than a week ago that have to go into the packages I'll be sending. It seems that this year mail delivery is slower than ever. At least around here. My small local post office has been understaffed this month and every time I go there lines of waiting people are snaking out the lobby doors. For the last four days I've received one piece of mail each day. What are they doing with all the surplus? Since there are no small children back east waiting for a New Mexico Santa to arrive (the youngest is only a month old) it's okay. We'll all be grown up about it. However, their gifts to us arrived last night and I couldn't resist opening the smallest package in the big box which turned out to be a sweet sparkly charm for my Pandora bracelet! And then I received a note from my Santa Fe knitting friend who said she has to speak to me soon about her obsession with Pandora! Love it!

Yesterday morning snow on my sheepy doormat and everywhere else. Today it's all melted and temps are in the high 40's. They're celebrating up in the Ski Valley and things are just as they should be. I'll be shopping tomorrow for my husband's birthday dinner on Thursday and maybe spend a day baking cookies. I haven't done that in a couple of years, but somehow it seems right this year. We've been through a lot of stress and angst lately and in lieu of too much wine, we'll eat cookies.

I was out on the deck last night in my Garfield PJ pants and a thick sweater trying to take pictures of the full moon and the deep rose cloud that floated beneath it in the sky. My eyes saw a crisp and clear moon, but my cameras saw a thick milky haze around it. I simply could not capture on camera what my eyes were seeing no matter what camera settings I used. No doubt an astronomer could explain it to me, but I don't happen to have one handy. So tonight (soon) I look forward to an early darkness as the winter solstice kicks in. And then I look forward to that wonderful gradual return of light.

mornings after

Winter arrived on cold wet feet yesterday and now the world outside is entirely white. Before the snow came I bought some pre-planted paperwhite bulbs (we used to call them narcissus). A couple of evenings ago - before the weather changed - the first flowers softly glowed against the sunset. I wasn't sure if my camera could capture what my eyes saw, but it came pretty close. This morning the scene was quite different though - washed of visual warmth and color.

At first light the flowers appeared silhouetted against the deep snow. When full light arrived I took pictures from my kitchen window for a good part of the morning since my neighbor's horses are back decorating the land and providing photo ops. This guy was following the hay truck driving off the land.

When it was out of sight, he turned abruptly and began to run in circles. The other horse followed, dropped down and rolled around on his back. When he jumped up, completely covered in snow, they raced together around the field before stopping near the hay barn. They don't have an enclosed barn to enter and aren't coddled or pampered. Rather, they live outside all year long and don't seem to be bothered by it. (How would I know if they were?) I trust that their hardiness has been proven over many decades, centuries, of northern New Mexico farming and ranching. I'm a former city girl whose only connection with horses came at the Bronx Zoo so I keep some questions to myself.

all night long
listening to snow falling
morning horses race

Yesterday I felt snowed in. There must have been some negative planetary thing happening because I felt, not cozy, but trapped in a basically sad/bad mood. Today, although still snowy and gray, feels better and I'm wrapping gifts to send to Connecticut. I gambled on shipping dates this year and lost. The packages will arrive after Christmas for the first time ever. But, hey, they're all grown ups now and the baby is too young to notice.

The flower pots planted in summer are still on the deck with a slightly altered look.
 
Down on the ground,
bowing to the very roots -
farewell to flowers
                            Basho

ode to sox

This is probably going to be more of a sock report than anything else and ironic because in spite of all the hundreds of socks I've knitted through the years, in spite of the drawer upstairs filled with socks, as I sit here at my desk and write, my feet are freezing! Okay, so they are bare and in sandals. My home is passive solar and when the sun shines, even in winter, it's pretty warm - except in my workroom on the north side of the house. The single sock above is for the pair I'm working on for my great grandson's father who specifically requested them and approved the yarn. I had to recalculate size, number of stitches and make notes so they match. And I'm nervous about having enough yarn. I have no idea of how much extra I'll need to complete this pair so there is that small element of stress.
     After completing one sock I remember why I don't usually knit socks for men. They are bigger and (dare I say it) boring! This pre-patterned yarn is actually somewhat interesting, but overall, considering the wild array of colors and patterns I'm usually drawn to, not. However, I will push on, needles in hand, and continue because I like him and he asked for knitted socks and anyone who does that gets special consideration. Even my son who asked for a neck warmer in black!
     Also satisfying is when recipients of socks wear them! As in: the girls lounging around in their PJs and jeans. I was wearing mine too but with a baby in one arm and a camera in the other, my photo op was severley limited. By the way, those huge plaid PJs were on a slim and gorgeous 15 year old. Go figure.

What is it about socks? So basic. So fundamental. So fun. Even Pablo Neruda wrote Ode to My Socks. Do you know it? Socks knitted so fine he considered putting them in a cage and feeding them melon seeds. I love that image!

shades of pale

Lately I'm enveloped in gray (no, I'm not depressed). Home again in sunny (today) Taos, I'm remembering the soft grays in Connecticut.

new perspectives
In Natalie Goldberg's book "Living Color: A Writer Paints Her World " she talks about really noticing gray for the first time when she looked at a stuccoed church against a Minnesota sky: Suddenly I appreciated that color. I saw how one gray could frame another gray. What she wrote is similar to what I felt walking along a beach path and boat yard last week. Then my friend in Cornwall wrote to me about the gray cliffs and sea there and sent a picture of her stone house in snow against gray sky. And I realized that what I've always considered a non-color is suffusing my life at the moment and it's not at all unpleasant. (NG): a sense of hugeness would be held in the color gray, a sense of afternoon and timelessness... Yesterday I saw alpaca yarn the same color as the Atlantic sky and sea and I want to wrap myself in it. (I'm knitting a cabled neck warmer in cocoa brown but may have to start another in gray).

special request
My great grandson's father wants a pair of knitted socks. He said all the women in the family have them and it's not fair. I generally don't knit men's socks for reasons that should be obvious to any sock knitters out there who love wild and crazy yarns as I do. As hard as I tried, I couldn't convince him that he'd love stripes and zig zags and rainbow colors - he's a guy after all - but I did dissuade him from solid navy, dark brown, and charcoal. At Westport Yarns I found a good compromise, cleared it with him before I left, and started right in on it. It is Online's Supersocke 100 Canadian-Color and although it is predominantly dark grays and black, there are occasional shots of cream and tan along with built in subtle patterning that keeps me interested. So far I love working on this yarn although I may find it difficult if I'm watching old movies in a dimly lighted room (last night there were three versions of A Christmas Carol on TV). Maybe it's a sunny-mornings-in-the- kitchen project. With black coffee.

cool silver star
against old marble buildings
     shining city lights

various patches

Could New York City have been any colder than it was on the day we visited? I do remember those blustery gray December days in the canyons of Manhattan - I just haven't experienced it recently. Four women (daughter, daughter in law, granddaughter, me) braved cold and wind chill and spent a lovely day seeing the tree and skaters, eating a late lunch in an Irish Pub near Rockefeller Center, photographing each other and the silver and gold flags and....

visiting Times Square where we played tourist and brought back funky I (heart) New York gifts

for ourselves and  the new mother at home all cozy with her eighteen day old baby boy. At home we made tea, baked cookies and cooed over the baby. Rocking him to sleep the next morning one of the cats followed us around from room to room staring intently.

how perfectly right
in a patch of winter sun
a black and white cat

winter beach & more

report from Connecticut
It's cold. Grey. The baby is warm and cuddly. The house is cosy. Took a 3 mile walk along beach path with ex-husband's widow. It always amazes me how families extend and get mixed up and somehow it works. I love walking along empty winter beaches. Scarves, hats, gloves. Gulls doing their thing, geese in Vs flying overhead, soft lap of the tide coming in, gossipy talk of two women getting to know each other.

baby report
Dante (17 days old) is perfect and perfectly wonderful. Soft, cuddly, hungry, sleepy, sooo sweet.
And I think he likes me. At least I've been able to get him to sleep. My son (great uncle) came by the other day and took over the fussy baby, calming him down completely. Now he boasts that he can do anything! Run a company, calm babies, and do minor surgery. Well, I'm not sure about the last item, but I can bake chocolate chip cookies (by special request) and buy red Lobster Pot cashmere yarn to knit a lace shawl. So there.

the original sex in the city girls
One of our daughters (now middle aged) described her mother and her five best friends as fitting that description way back in the 1970s (last century). Now, a few years later, we have early dinners with good wine and food - and go home early. I spent a lovely evening with those old friends reconnected with in June. We vowed to keep up with each other and convene once or twice a year from now on. The prosecco flowed and many heartfelt toasts were made to our missing friend, to each other and especially to the new baby.

salute per tutti!

the worlds I make

Tonight as the all-day snow clouds cleared out we were stunned by this sight in the west. That's the flat-top Pedernal (Georgia O'Keeffe's Ghost Mountain about 40 miles away in Abiquiu). We had light snow "down here" at 7500 feet, but hope that they're celebrating in the Ski Valley (9000 ft). We awakened this morning to light snowfall and disappeared mountains. Three horses had materialized in Floyd's field next door and were rolling around in the thin snow, getting up and galloping wildly - energized by the weather. Horses do that. And they looked beautiful with white snow on thick brown coats. Here's a tidbit for you urban people who don't have horses living next door - they develop thick coats for winter. Most people don't keep their horses in heated winter barns around here. They live outside 24 hours a day. If it's a really cold winter (which most are) their coats get super thick and fuzzy.
           So what did I do on this snowy day? I ran around like a turkey without a head trying to finish up, organize, shop. And made turkey soup out of the remains of Thursday's bird. It bubbled on the stove for an hour or so and filled the house with delicious smells. Frankly, I haven't made turkey soup often and sort of didn't know where to start. But common sense and decades of cooking came through and the soup was enthusiastically devoured for supper.

I feel pretty achy today after three days at the Yuletide Craft Fair where I barely sat down the whole time. An amazing number of people came through the three big buildings to see the variety of crafts. We heard reports that tons of people were walking around Taos Plaza all weekend. This is good. Good for morale, good for business, good for the community which struggles even in good economic times. And it proved to be an unexpected boon to most of the vendors at the show. I returned home on Sunday night with a quarter of the inventory I'd started out with. Throughout the three days I felt warm appreciation from visitors, buyers, and friends who stopped by. That sign on the pegboard reads: life is short, wear cashmere and alpaca. There was lots of agreement. Overall, a good mood prevailed.

But now I'm feeling that I've finally reached the point of saturation. My last two classes are tomorrow with papers and exams due, I'm leaving the next morning before dawn and haven't figured out what to pack, my toenails need a pedicure, my hair needs cutting and styling, my clothes need to be laundered and, oh yes, the car has to be unpacked with the craft fair stuff which is rattling around in the back. When I returned from the organic market this afternoon I noticed that one of the boxes had opened and there were feet and hands scattered in the car. Sigh! Take a deep breath. Think of kissing the wee baby (and giving him the snuggles bear I bought for him at the show) and forget what I heard today - that New York City is expecting heavy rain on Wednesday afternoon. Sigh!

under orange clouds
and a disappearing moon
thin snow glistens whitely
 

warm in green

Happy Thanksgiving and here's a bouquet of hand warmers for you! 
Out of control? Possibly. Getting ready for the craft fair this weekend got me thinking about these things in general. This one coming up for the three day weekend after Thanksgiving is huge. There are over 300 vendors in three convention center buildings in Taos. Everything has to be handmade (no commercially made products allowed). It isn't juried. Therefore this annual Yuletide Craft Fair is a major hodgepodge of every craft item you can imagine and in various levels of quality and taste. There is amazing pottery and not so amazing pottery, churchlady potholders and crocheted acrylic afghans, award-winning jewelry, fresh Xmas wreaths, gorgeous Shibori hand dyed scarves, jam, carved furniture, satin stiletto Christmas stockings, amonite necklaces, leather work, handknits. And that's where I come in. 20 pairs of socks later...

What is it all about anyway? My conclusion is that craft fairs are simply a necessary guilt-reducing outlet for one's hobbies and passions run amuck! 20 pairs of socks? 12 pairs of hand warmers? And I'm just one person. Unless we are clothing a village, what do we do with all that output?

Historically, I guess that's the way all selling started. Our family in Pompeii made too much olive oil this year? Let's trade with Giuseppe down the via who made too much wine for his family. Mama mia's bread? She loved the smell of those baking loaves and made a few more than she needed, maybe the neighbors would like some. I hear they have an extra basket of figs. And so it goes.

In my small role as craft vendor for three days I have to admit that I generally do not trade. Although I am often approached - handknit socks are coveted in certain discerning circles. But when I consider the time that goes into knitting hundreds of thousands of stitches versus the sale price (way lower than it should be), most offers are not tilted in my favor. In addition to that, the three days are so intense, busy, noisy (one year we had to listen to two days of The Chipmonks singing Christmas songs loudly before it was finally turned off upon threat of a mass walkout) - I may not even get wander around and see if there is anything I want.

I'm looking forward to picking up the irresistible dynamic lime green alpaca and my new GoKnit pouch again. This color makes me so happy (see? this is how it happens). I'm halfway through another pair of Knitspot Roger socks with this yarn. They require a bit of concentration - I can't seem to memorize the pattern or "read" where I am in it easily - so I'm getting the patterning part out of the way so I can work on them while heading to NY next week - and who cares if the weather is cold and grey and nasty back there (any bets?) my feet will be warm in green. Unless one of the females in the family literally walks off with them.

acquamarine, viridescent, emerald
sea-green, grass-green, lime-green
my thesaurus says gullible, easily fooled
      simple

happy birthday Dante

How cute is this? (even though I can't see his face I know he's the cutest baby ever born). He's here! Arrived in Connecticut late last night with a blue hat! Everyone is doing well and since it was too late for nonni grande to open the bottle of chilled champagne (we were already ensconced in bed watching an old Thin Man movie and really sleepy) we'll do it tonight. I'll get to see him in 10 days and I'm told that I'll never want to leave. This is probably true. His mother is head over heels in love with him and I'm sure he's in love with her and that's probably why Oedipus remains such a popular story. I remember falling for my firstborn son too. The feeling was mutual - and then he grew up to be a Republican. I'm proposing writing a book called How to Love a Republican. Except I sort of have writer's block at the moment. But never mind...
here's to you sweet baby boy!

history is now

I just returned from an early morning meeting at the Des Montes Gallery. It opened in summer and is owned and operated by neighbor Floyd. I am working on a special project with him which I'll write about in future posts as we move along. Suffice it to say for now that I have watched with awe as a rustic space has been turned into a treasure chest of local Hispanic art. I hadn't been there in several weeks and was surprised by the mural that is being added to the building. It depicts the Des Montes/Arroyo Seco area past and present.

In spite of an influx of new people who through the years have come from every part of the United States and beyond to live here, the area still maintains its agricultural and ranching roots. In great part thanks to Floyd and his family who are a diverse group of multi talented people who have their feet comfortably in both worlds. At the head of the family are Manuel and Marina, both in their mid-90s.

When I get all New-Yorky-edgy and start thinking that I wouldn't want to be tied so closely into family and tradition, I look around me and understand that one of the reasons we came to live in Taos is because centuries of tradition exist for Hispanic and Pueblo people and we had lost that in our own lives. Perhaps it only existed in the lives of first and second generation Americans and weakened with us and our children. Our small family does of course have it's traditions, but they're new, don't go back centuries, and consequently aren't nearly as strong. This is good and bad because they keep changing. When asked my nationality I always responded "Italian" but I'm not from Italy. I'm what Martin Scorcese called American-Italian. We can't shake the latter and yet it remains elusive to us. Therefore, a hybrid form of exile exists for a segment of later generation Americans. My neighbors do not experience this self-imposed doubt about people and place. And landscape. Lest I forget, this is why the Taos Mountains are called in Spanish the Sangre de Cristos (blood of Christ).

Basta to useless musings and stunning abstract sunsets. I'm waiting today for a baby boy to be born - on this date that has historic significance to both sides of the family. And the formerly lost package of hand knitted baby items (causing great hysteria and consternation) should also arrive at its destination today. Big day!

How mysterious!
The lotus remains unstained
by its muddy roots,
delivering shimmering
bright jewels from common dew.
                                 Sojo Henjo (816-890)

fate allowed

That's snow outside my west-facing french doors. It's still coming down. What started out as a sunny day with some wind and palest blue sky rapidly grew dark and ominous until now in mid afternoon winter has actually arrived. This is when I start reconsidering my decision to continue to live at 7500 feet in the mountains. It's a long time until May. But today has been one of those days!

This morning I learned that the package of hand knitted baby things sent out 12 days ago hadn't arrived at their destination yet. I went into immediate stress-mode until I realized that except for a few phone calls and being disagreeable to people who didn't know what to do either, it's fate was out of my hands. I started figuring how long it would take, if I began right away and knit super fast, to duplicate the items. No matter how fast I tried to knit I would not beat the arrival of the baby. I decided to be Zen about the situation as I drove to the post office to pick up today's mail. I did perhaps murmur a plea to the angels to help the package turn up somewhere. The yellow slip in my mailbox yielded the returned package! That was fast work mail angels! Equilibrium restored. Thank you. So now it's off again via FedX and should arrive safely. As will the baby who is due on the same day.

To mitigate the snow-wind-wintery feel this day has become, I only want to keep working on the alpaca Roger sock (Knitspot pattern). I'm doing it for pure pleasure in between craft fair production. It's going slowly. I'm using my beloved Classic Elite Alpaca Sox yarn - delicious for practically anything made at fingering weight gauge. I've tried almost all of their colors over the last couple of years for scarves, handwarmers, socks, a clapotis or two and have never been disappointed. And they add new colors now and then which should keep me occupied for years to come! At least until the winter is over.

 But alas! I have other commitments to attend to that are not nearly as much fun.

if I take the yarn
my warm hands will melt the snow
in this icy new world

we stroll dreaming

It was another Sunday matinee day. This time at the Taos Center for the Arts where I saw the independent film Howl - about Allen Ginsberg and his poem. The film expertly interwove black and white footage with color, animation (based on some of Ginsberg's sketches), live action, vintage photos, stage performance and courtroom scenes that recreated Lawrence Ferlinghetti's trial in San Francisco. The city's prosecutor had brought obscenity charges against its publication. Fortunately, way back in sexually repressed 1957, freedom of speech won out over censorship. It is an amazing film and I highly recommend it.

As a person of a certain age, I have my own memories of Howl.
     A summer night. Four friends who have just graduated from high school are having a double date in Greenwich Village. They have had dinner in a tiny Italian restaurant in a courtyard with Christmas lights strung in the trees, spent time in a coffee house listening to poets wearing black from head to toe, smoking cigarettes and reading their work, and now they are strolling along the avenues not ready to take the subway home to the northeast Bronx. It's a lovely soft night and everyone in the Village seems to be outside. I am in love with Greenwich Village and one of the men. He's not the one I'm going steady with. I am in love with my friend's boyfriend. He has already started at City College, I'm working at a Manhattan advertising agency and enrolled in college at night, my friend is in secretarial school, and my boyfriend is starting at a Jesuit college when the summer ends. Late in the night we stroll through the streets of used book shops that are open until midnight. Tables outside are piled with used and new books.  My boyfriend and friend have wandered over to the Good Humor truck parked along the curb and are buying ice cream. The man I love - let's call him Harry - and I are hungrily browsing the book stalls. He picks out a tiny pocket-sized volume of poems, buys it, and hands it to me. It is Howl. I've never heard of it. He tells me: read it and let me know what you think - this work is amazing. Wow! I think  he chose to give this book to me - he respects my mind (many years later I found out he respected my body too, but that's another story).  What were those Leonard Cohen words? he touched her perfect body with his mind?) I slipped the tiny volume into my white summer purse and couldn't wait to read it at home. Well, the jist of the story is that after the first few lines I didn't understand a word of Ginsberg's poem and it scared me a little with its references to dark things I'd only read about. I never did talk to Harry about the book and he never asked. I kept the book for decades and at some point it disappeared the way things disappear as we move through our lives. One day a couple of years ago as I was perusing the shelves of a used book store in Santa Fe, I found an original copy of Howl. It wasn't the first printing like the one I'd been given, but it was the third and the original price was 75 cents. I bought it for $2 or $3 and wrote my initials on the title page, thus reclaiming it once more. I understand it a bit better now and could finally have that conversation with Harry. But I haven't seen him in thirty years and, really, do I want him to see me now?

That same year of finding that old edition of Howl, I met Ferlinghetti in his City Lights bookstore in San Francisco. My friend's stepfather helped found that famous shop with him and she introduced me . He was old, but his blue eyes sparkled with a still-dangerously liberal glint and when I arrived home from that trip I began writing poems about him.

in the summer night
we were angel headed hipsters
with ideal love in our hearts

edges soft and sharp

edgy
November shadows are sharp in the sunny cold. Almost everything seems that way now after the long mostly soft autumn we've enjoyed. Yesterday was cruel. Grey, blustery, cold, dark too early.  I was forced to shift into winter mode. Drive to writing class in the dark, take inventory of my stash of knitted scarves, shawls and handwarmers to see how they survived summer storage. Not a sign of moths! Very good news. I'd been worried after the recent fluttering in my sock drawer (all clear now).

I got reacquainted with favorites and nostalgic for the winter knitting of '08/'09 when I ordered Axelle de Sauveterre's hand-dyed cashmere for the first time. That winter was so depressingly cold  and snowy that the only way I found to dispel it and not tumble into darkness was to knit with cashmere in rich colors. How's that for self-therapy reasoning?

I still get lost in the beyond-dreamy colors and feel of this 100% cashmere. If I had my way (and a Swiss bank account) I would knit with nothing else. That winter I knitted three shawls. This clapotis is Orion and I kept it. The other two in shades of reds and olives landed in France and Connecticut where, I'm told,  they are well loved. I don't know what my future holds generally, but I'm pretty sure there's more of this yarn in it.

report from London
friend Maggie arrived in London and is wearing the warm hand knitted socks on long walks in the city. She can't wait to leave though, and head out to the country where she will spend the winter. Socks and sand, cameras and writing. Sigh! I imagine spending a winter in Cornwall with a bag or two of cashmere yarn, needles, and lots of unscheduled time. Now, that's something to strive for.

a winter cottage
with windows facing the sea
Earl Grey tea cooling

photoplay

Part of the preparation for the big yuletide show at month's end is to unearth the mannequin hands and feet that were stored away since the last gallery show in September. They are used (obviously) for display. I begin to gather stuff and stash it on a nearby desk. From my work table (where I've been all afternoon and haven't accomplished much) I noticed that the hands and needles were clustered together in a picturesque way. Sort of a knitting/art installation.

photoplay
what I'd rather be doing than production, writing, paying bills, researching flights east. Yellow brick roads beckon, but I'm stuck in my metaphorical black and white Kansas.

unable to speak
I count four hundred stitches
          tears soak through the wool

cold breath, warm hands

Can a human be in love with an herb? If so, I'm in love with rosemary (Rosemarinus officinalis) which, in spite of its female-sounding name, is considered masculine gender in the herb world. The potted flowers on my deck have long ago succumbed to freezing nights and what is left is the hardy rosemary that now sits on the kitchen counter next to the stove where I snip off bits of it for roasting chickens, sweet potatoes (which have also been sliced and coated with olive oil and salt), or tossing whole sprigs into soup. Legend has it that rosemary has curative vibrations and magical powers and is used in love and lust incenses. According to Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs, it is also handy when you need protection, want to preserve youth, heal, need the answer to a question, attract elves.

on the outdoors
Sweater-only weather is holding and each day is more precious than the one before. Behind the warmth is a distinct snowbreath from the highest peaks. Sunsets are spectacularly dramatic - particularly when I can watch from my kitchen window while sipping a glass of Chardonney. 

My hiking friends are taking advantage of this long lovely autumn and venturing out daily to different trails. Maggie (Brits are born walking) totes her fabulous Lumix camera with her and yesterday took pictures of fish swimming in clear water at a fish hatchery somewhere up a trail upriver. Now that she has learned that I prefer park paths and city sidewalks and am famously not sure-footed on trails she extracted a (tentative) promise from me that when she returns from England in the spring I will consider hiking with her. Since I will undoubtedly have to buy a new pair of hiking shoes, there's some appeal there to the hiking-in-the-spring thing.

 

on making warmth

So far I've finished five pairs of hand warmers for the craft fair at month's end. Since I set a goal of a baker's dozen, I still have a long way to go. These are softly-lusciously warm in cashmere and alpaca, flattering (in a strangely sophisticated way) to hands and arms (remember when holding a cigarette served that function?) and remember when fingerless gloves were the hand wear stereotype for movie hobos, winos, and Dickensian characters? Things do change - and I want to keep all of them for myself. However, the advantage of being able to knit is that someone else can enjoy what I make and I can do it again. And again. And again. I hope to have my Knitz Mittz booklet available soon. I am often asked how to make hand warmers in an uncomplicated way and the new chapbook will address that request. It will be offered in tandem with the latest edition of Mastering the Art of Sock Knitting available by the end of this month or the end of the year! Will keep my readers posted. 

Speaking of my readers (how arrogant is that?) and just when I was considering cutting off this blog soon, I recently learned that since I started in April I have had almost 2,000 readers! Now that may not seem like a lot to the more popular bloggers, but to me it's friggin' amazing! And they're not all in the USA either! 

Thanks to all of you out there. I'd love to hear from you.