les masques

One day in French class we read about Marie Antoinette (in French) and learned that when she and her husband the King were guillotined during the Revolution, a certain Madame Tussaud took their heads (among others) and made death masks which she then cast in wax. Her likenesses of these unfortunates are the only way we know now what they looked like. This story prompted our professor to suggest that perhaps we would like to have living masks of our faces and, not to worry, he'd been doing this sort of thing to his students successfully for many decades. A few brave hands went up. Fortunately, I was assigned as official photographer - keeping me slightly distant from the actual process. The mask above is the face of a handsome young man. Eventually it will be filled with plaster of paris and the crude preliminary likeness will be discarded. The photo is of the inside of the mask and appears convex instead of concave which is what it was. I'm told that this mystery is due to something called reversal of figure-ground and if I had studied art I'd know that. To me, it resembles a film negative in the way shadows play over the details. One does wonder though, what was Madame T thinking? Carting away those bloody heads! Mon dieu!

Lorraine

socks & more galore

I'm trying hard to learn French at the local university - to satisfy a fond wish to share a conversation in a French cafe with an actual French person. However, since I'm a rather old dog to be learning new tricks I fear that the verb endings might kill me before I get back to Paris. To mitigate this possibility, I retreat to a teashop with some book or another and pretend. One of my favorite places is The Turquoise Teapot. It is as close to an authentic English tea shop as one can get in northern New Mexico and doubles as a nursery and flower shop - and in my imagination serves as that elusive French cafe across the street from the used booksellers along the Seine. I have also been known to bring along a half-knitted sock to work on between bites of scones or cake. And speaking of socks...



Here, as promised, is the photo of the socks I completed during my friend's illness - the eighth pair is missing because I gave them away. They were all knitted during many snowy winter days, tentative pale spring sun, Taos mud days, and often with three dogs at my feet (including a Dalmation who resembles the pair in the middle). This colorful group of seven haven't been blocked yet; just resting in a nice lavender-scented box. No doubt, when the female members of my family visit in summer they will raid the sockbox and head back east with their haul.

Spring reappears today - chilly blue and green and the inevitable wind. Weather predictions are dire for later in the week (snow showers and 60 mile an hour wind gusts!) - but if I've learned anything in recent months it's to live one day at a time.

Lorraine

wind in the blossoms

We awakened on Friday morning to three inches of snow. We are at 7500 feet in the mountains, so it's not unusual at this time of year, but it felt awfully depressing - too much for too long. By Saturday morning most of it had melted and I set out to meet my two friends at a cafe in town where we drank tea, coffee, knitted, gossiped, planned a get-away-retreat in Colorado for a couple of days in late May. I showed off my simple lace shawl - only 19 inches completed so far (the pattern calls for two 36" pieces!). Lots of knitting ahead on this project. The yarn is Isager alpaca/wool 2-ply in a rich olive green.



Also showed off the Opal "Antonia" sock in lovely shades of brown, peach, lime. I love Opal sock yarns and feel fortunate that the yarn shop Tutto (on Galisteo Street in Santa Fe) carries their full line. Santa Fe is not around the corner (84 miles away) but after almost two decades in the southwest, long drives no longer concern me as they did in my old New York/Connecticut life when a 90 minute drive required planning.

Today I finished reading Julia Glass's Three Junes. What an absorbing novel it is. It won the National Book Award a couple of years ago and I somehow never got around to reading it until I found it in the library's used book shop for 50 cents last week. There were long, beautifully written chapters centered around the slow death of a dear friend and it especially resonated within me since I have recently lost a close friend. I accompanied her to chemo treatments, long lunches, waiting rooms, sat by her bedside for parts of most days and knitted socks through it all. Elizabeth Zimmerman's quote knit on with hope and confidence through all crises manifested its truth during that time. I don't think I would have been as patient, silent, or spent as many hours with her if I didn't have that feeling of yarn passing through my fingers - creating something out of time and space - with slim wooden needles, cheerful colors. My friend said more than once in her last weeks that it was comforting - to have me just sitting nearby, not asking anything of her, available if she needed me - or not - knitting, always knitting. Two months before her death, she asked me to teach her how. Her grandmother was a great knitter, she said, but added "no one ever taught me". I did teach her (with a lot of help from Melanie Falick's "Kid's Knitting"). The sample piece she painstakingly worked in pale teal yarn represented hope. Unfortunately she was not able to complete a project. But, if the Tibetan Buddhists are correct, that what we've learned in this life we take into the next one, she might, in another existence, be a knitting fanatic like me! In all, I finished 8 pairs of socks!

The wind is picking up now at dusk. The dog (Spike) is barking to come in (he hates wind) and I'm going to knit a few pattern repeats on the lace shawl while watching Now, Voyager.

Lorraine

snowy day in the mountains

Taos, New Mexico

It's spring. It's almost May. The white apricot blossoms outside my workroom window opened two days ago and I envisioned sparkling jars of apricot jam in June that would last through next winter. I watched a hummingbird flit from blossom to blossom - vibrating stillness in the air for long moments drinking in nectar. I took pictures, but he was fast and the photos came out looking rather more abstract than figural. After handfuls of days when the temperature reached nearly 70 degrees, the wind suddenly started to blow in great gusts and we woke up this morning to two inches of snow. I suspect that the blossoms will have frozen and there goes next winter's jam. The three horses on our land (a neighbor's) don't seem to mind the snow and are leisurely browsing through the new grass beneath the wet under thick cloud cover. This chilly, gray closed-in day makes me think about doing nothing more than reading or knitting. A good time in which to start a blog about knitting and other things.

About myself, I can tell you that I have three overriding creative passions: knitting, photography, writing - not necessarily in that order and sometimes all at once! I'm an editor, published writer, mother, grandmother, wife, friend - I even once had a knitting pattern and essay excerpt published in Interweave Knits.

I often write what I call "Moment Studies" - notebooks (the paper kind with fountain pen) kept on a daily basis - like a Zen practice - that include brief terse word sketches, haikus or haibuns - often accompanied by photos. I set a time frame (six months, a year, a month) and go. I will make entries in this blog in that same spirit - catching moments in time. As I learn to include photos and other goodies, I hope it will be of interest to kindred spirits. Until then, and for this snowy moment, please be patient with words alone.

Lorraine