finito for now

It's finished! It's finished! and I had enough yarn and interest to knit a matching hat. Oh, I love this yarn (Rowan cashsoft baby DK). I haven't blocked it yet and will probably only do a light steaming. It's so cuddly just the way it is. I love the ladybug button and I did stop making hats. Whew! a lot of knitting for 7 or 8 days.

Now, feeling smug and satisfied with the baby knitting over, I must get back to finishing up stuff for the Yuletide Craft Fair at end of November. I'm not terribly enthusiastic about that, but I made the commitment and will give it my best shot. In preparation for another busy week of knitting and other things, I went through the stash in my bedroom. Some of it has been put away downstairs in the trastero (very little storage space in my house) so I can get to it quickly, and some in plastic storage boxes destined for the garage. There is still yarn in every nook and cranny! Help! No, never mind, I will help myself. After the craft fair and after going east I will have a stash sale and whatever is left will go to charity. Clothes, shoes, accessories are tumbling about all over the place.

I continue to read Bonnie Lee Black's book How to Cook a Crocodile: a memoir with recipes and am enjoying it tremendously. She joined the Peace Corps at age 51 and spent two years in Gabon in the late 1990s. I'm amazed at her free spirit. (What was I doing at 51? Well, I was moving from Connecticut to New Mexico - that's something). From the moment I open the book, I am transported into that hot and humid African town on the equator, her friends, her food, the obstacles she encountered and overcame time after time. Knowing her personally makes for an interesting juxtaposition. I am having to imagine her there then and here now. Somehow it all works. In the book she quotes Leonard Cohen:

Like a bird on a wire, 
like a drunk in a midnight choir,
I have found my my own way to be free

 

moving along

All I want to do today is work on this little cabled baby sweater for which I finally found the perfect yarn. Rowan Cashsoft baby DK in "chicory" - palest creamiest sage. It is uber soft and with it the pattern flows easily toward completion. The yarn is a blend of merino, microfibre, cashmere (yum!) (Cabled Raglan Baby Sweater, IW Knits Summer 2009). I had my own idea of how this baby sweater should feel and look and hadn't been able to find the ingredients. My inability to finish even one baby project until now I realize had more to do with the patterns and yarns themselves than procrastination. I simply didn't want to knit a bunch of small pieces and sew them together. That isn't fun and trying to do it in between the other stuff I have deadlines for was wicked and cruel (it's getting close to the 31st and I'm acquiring the season's jargon).

Speaking of the season, lately there's a lot of talk around here about spirits, ghosts, and full moons. It could be attributed to plain old lunacy (apparently this last full moon was disturbing and crazy-making), and days  when spirits get the annual opportunity to walk the earth. I have been warned not to pick up hitchhikers since that's the way they get around. And did you know that  the reason for fences around graves in New Mexico camposantos (cemeteries) is to keep zombies in? I thought it was to keep coyotes and other creatures out. Apparently though, it doesn't work so well if  they're going out and hitching rides.

passion: reign or rain

Number four is finished! how cute is this? I'm working on one more and then will call it quits. I sent a cell phone picture of the collection to my daughter and she wrote back you are out of control. She may be right. Besides I feel a tad dizzy today and attribute it to knitting four hats on small needles in three days. My obsession has done me in. Knitting can be a dangerous and diversionary thing. Over the weekend the laundry didn't get done, the essay not written, no grocery shopping, certainly not the vacuuming or the editing.

But I just finished writing a piece about the wind wailing and moaning around my house all day today. Icy rain started falling and the dog is hiding under the bed. But as I write these words, the sun is coming through like a randomly set strobe illuminating rusty-yellow wildly blowing trees with an inner glow. Talk about solar powered light! When the clouds clear we will no doubt see something like yesterday's sky - only, as they say in old movies, more so.

Erica Jong wrote this about writing books. Today I can apply it to knitting hats.What will you apply it to?

Every book has been written with guilt, powered by pain. 
Every book has been a baby I did not bear, 
10,000 meals I did not cook, 10,000 beds I did not make

offering abundance

Yes, that's snow on the mountain and a full moon making for an exotic dusk the other night. Since then more snow has fallen and it's quite beautiful. Down here (at 7500 feet) it has rained on and off for a few days and the temperature dropped. So far I like it.

A couple of nights ago I was invited to a book launch party for Bonnie Lee Black's  How to Cook a Crocodile and it felt so cozy to sit by a warm fire with a glass of red wine and have conversations with a congenial group of people. I'm not big on cocktail party talk - in fact I loathe it and am poor at it, but this was a different sort of gathering. Bonnie cooked delicious African food for us and read a chapter from her new book which is about her years in West Africa with the Peace Corps. When I left I had to walk a distance to my car (with flashlight) and the air felt cool and damp - more like a San Francisco night than a frosty Taos night. I'm reading the book (available on Amazon) and it is terrific. I highly recommend it.

In a panic the other day re knitting baby stuff and after two unsuccessful trips to the local yarn shop in one day after hours spent online, I finally found a pattern I liked for a baby hat. I wanted to knit it flat because there are so few stitches in an infant-sized hat that I find a circular needle annoyingly stitch-stretchy - and I wasn't in a dpn mood. I wanted to use my 2.75mm circs flat and a pattern that would hum along without charts and stitch counters. Thanks to Ann Budd's tips in her handy dandy book of patterns I learned that I simply had to knit a round hat flat and then seam it up. Duh. Yeah, I know I'm pretty dense sometimes. I often revert to being one of those blind followers that EZ talked about. Although I do modify and occasionally design patterns on my own, this one eluded me. Probably due to time pressure and the fact that I hardly ever knit baby things (never) and really really want the baby to wear a hat made by me the moment he is born. So I managed to add undue stress to this whole plan which fogged my brain badly. Today, as I wait for the perfect yarn I ordered for the baby sweater I plan to make next week, I am finishing up a fourth hat! Serial knitter strikes again. I can't help it.

These little hats fit perfectly over empty inverted Greek yogurt containers which are approximately the size of a newborn's head. They're brighter and prettier than the picture shows. The light in the kitchen this morning was strange and the camera misread it and I didn't have the patience to reset it manually. The yarn is Knitpicks delicious soft merino sock yarn called Felici. Regular sock yarn is too scratchy. Meant for walking feet.

I'm trying not to get carried away with this wee hat business, but I figure it this way: I have the tools to create a basic warm article of apparel for a being who will enter the cold southern New England world just before winter sets in and one whom I find myself thinking about more and more. He appears in my dreams regularly and I send messages to him as I knit. (I know he's getting them). When all the hats are finished I'll chose a couple specifically for him and steer the rest toward other babies.

I knitted during my friend's illness and death, I knit now to welcome new life

on & on it goes

And the beauty goes on and on! The weather is magnificent, day after day. Today we say this could be the last one, especially as the nights and mornings are so frosty - but we said that yesterday too.

My time has been taken up with essay writing and trying to get the anthology off the ground. That's during the day. Every night after an early dinner I park myself in front of yet another movie and knit lovely alpaca mitts for the craft fair that starts the day after Thanksgiving and runs for three days. I like every pair and want to keep them, but reason prevails and they're put aside for someone else to enjoy. I was well stocked with Knitz Mittz for last year's show but they sold out by the second day! I hope to avoid that this year. People who returned on the last day for mittz were miffed! I figure I have most of November for production so I can stop for awhile and finish the myriad baby things I've started and put aside. Baby is due in three weeks! Nonnagrande is stressing....

On Sunday I was asked to participate in an online documentary being made about my friend Natalie Goldberg. Apparently Amazon has added yet another feature to their book browsing capability and it's interviews and biographical information on authors. I'll post more about this as I learn more. Suffice it to say that we were at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos with the producer and cameraman (east coast guys) and a handful of other participants. The weather was perfect and when we'd finished with interviews and filming, we all trooped outside to take pictures with our own digital cameras. I don't usually post photographs of people but this one was too fun to ignore - hope they don't mind.

Tomorrow's post will show off the new yarn I bought today when I just expected to stop by The Yarn Shop and special order some Cotton Fleece colors for holiday fruit hats for the baby. I call this hand dyed sock yarn  - which doesn't seem to have a name or number: milk chocolate with raspberries and sprinkles. I immediately cast on for a sock even though I know I won't be able to continue. But I have to test it out, don't I? (so far it's delicious).

color intoxication

This morning I am drunk on color. These trees which so resemble a Wolf Kahn painting, are 20 or so acres away, yet they stand out on the horizon as if they were glowing from within - zooming in with the camera renders them slightly impressionistic. And then there are the peppers!

I want the season to stop changing  right now. Wouldn't it be lovely if this amazing October weather remained all through the winter? I know skiers and snowboarders wouldn't agree with me. And the Ski Valley people would have a fit - or go into a deep depression - but there you are. I'm not a winter sports aficionado. Forget white and gray, I want color! Cold mornings and nights of sweaters, scarves, handwarmers. Days that turn into warmth and sunshine when those things are removed. In another month or so my vision will turn inward and yarn will supply my color fix. I'll  be tempted by cashmeres hand dyed by Axelle de Sauveterre and others. We humans think we have so much dominion, but just try to control the seasons.

this warm October's
long yellow days
linger on tauntingly
making us believe promises
we'll curse in November snow

three quiet hours

Finito! At last I finished the wrap sweater. It was a top down pattern and I hated knitting the sleeves so much that I ended up with two too-short uneven sleeves. I blocked it, put it aside and it has been on my mind ever since. So close and yet so far away. Today, after classes yesterday, the yard sale Saturday, the appointments and assignments since,  I unraveled the cuffs (easy with top down patterns) and reknitted them to match. Not bad.  I actually like this cardi. I didn't like the cheesy i-cord ties in the pattern though, so decided to leave it loose. It's much more flattering and feels nice. And since it's getting cold, I'm sure it will become a favorite.

Met with my new friend Maggie at a tea shop this afternoon where we laughed and talked and ate Irish apricot walnut bread and drank Ceylon tea. I gave her three pairs of socks. Maggie is British and lives in Taos half the year. She is leaving next month for a long stay in a cottage in Cornwall, England. And since I am someone who is always ready to take off to distant lands and since I can't right now and since I have friends who do, I am sending the socks with her so I can go vicariously. I've done this before. The writer friend who went to Brittany for two months, the one who went to Nice for three months. Each of them went with a shawl I'd knitted. Is this crazy? It feels so right. If I can't go, then something I've made can go. While she is gone I will think about that winter coast, those beaches which she says are not made of sand as we think of it, but of tiny shells. I don't seek out these connections, they seem to enter into my life on their own. Maybe someday I too will be heading off for a long stay in a cottage somewhere. The funny thing is that Maggie thinks of my American life growing up in an Italian-American  family in the Bronx as exotic. Go know. Is the grass really always greener on the other side of the fence?

Bon voyage Maggie. I'll be thinking of you this winter as I slog through the high altitude snow and knit and write.

But I ask you,
how much is laughter worth?
When was the last time
you laughed so hard
you cried?
Came home inspired
and wrote a half dozen poems
in the three quiet hours
before dawn.

disappointed

FROM THIS...

TO THIS.

Decided to try out one of the new yarns because the color is so unusual and I couldn't wait to see how it would knit up. This stripey thing was the result of 47 stitches on a 2.5mm needle. In my opinion it's not interesting (or subtle) and I expected much more from it. I will continue with this hand-warmer project because I suspect they might be fun (for someone else) when finished. The yarn itself is a soft sport weight that is easy to work with. This weight is getting to be my favorite. It's thin without being sewing thread/spider web thin and works well for socks and lace.

It's cold, sunny and windy today and I'm loving it. But the season does seem to have turned from Indian summer to deep fall. Yesterday's neighborhood yard sale scored 5 on a 1-10 scale. Didn't make much money, but the weather was a ten and I sat outside most of the day reading, knitting, being interrupted frequently by nice people, a couple of rude people, neighborhood dogs who stole things and peed on the sofa I tried to sell, and two men who insisted that my husband really would sell his cement mixer if I would just ask him (what is it about cement mixers that guys love? it eludes me). An attractive couple my age came by. They live in Taos and New York. It turns out we all grew up in the same neighborhood in the Bronx, were totally familiar with the schools we each attended, shopped in the same stores, walked the same streets (he was able to name them in order!) and our high school graduations were held at the Paradise Theater on Fordham Road (now designated as a historical landmark) (as we are?). The long day passed and most of what I tried to sell, didn't. Mostly it was stash yarn that sold! It felt good to pass it on. What became uninteresting to me through longevity and familiarity, became fresh and inspiring for someone else. Nice.

Thomas Edition said:
To invent, you need a good imagination
and a pile of yarn junk.

i'm late i'm late

Rummaging around looking for my cellphone which didn't ring when I called it, I knocked over the jute bag (a nifty Rowan membership gift) and out tumbled a tangled bunch of small unfinished projects. Socks, handwarmers, clapotis, unraveling balls. I knew they were there and have been working at one or two every few days, but seeing them all together in a pile was rather sobering. There was no time to sort properly so I stuffed them back in the bag, didn't find my phone and rushed out to an appointment that I would surely be late for - first I took a picture. Then I found my phone under a pile of yarn (!) and left for my appointment, giving myself a full half hour to get to the south of town (which should be a 15-20 minute trip), stopped at the post office for two minutes and got back on the road which detoured into a huge traffic jam (this is Taos folks - we don't have traffic jams!). It turned out to be the homecoming parade. Needless to say, my blood pressure rose and I mumbled things like "who cares about a homecoming parade?" and "what the heck is it anyway? (I grew up in a big city and we didn't do that sort of hometown thing). I think it's about football.

However, the delay (45 minutes to get to the south end of town) gave me time to open the package that I'd picked up at the PO.  Yarn from Jimmy Beans Wool. A limited edition Lorna's Laces Shepherd sport weight called Goblin and a weird color combo called Zombi BBQ (strange). They are both interesting, different and I like them. It breaks the color spell I've been under where I end up buying new yarns that resemble the old ones. Now I have to figure out what I'm going to make with these colors after I sort out the contents of the jumbled jute bag and finish some of those many little projects. I just can't seem to remember why I ordered this new yarn. I know I had something in mind but since I didn't write it down, it's gone. Oh well, I trust it will reveal itself when there is time to clear the tabs and think clearly (when?).

That is, unfortunately, not in the cards right now as I prepare for the big 16 family Des Montes neighborhood yard sale that starts at 8 tomorrow morning. Sorted it all out yesterday: books, clothing, teapots - and yarn stash. Surprised?

lots o'fleece

This past weekend saw the return of the eagerly anticipated annual Taos Wool Festival in Kit Carson Park. It was summer again in Taos so there were fewer spectacular woolly handknits parading around, but there were numerous sightings of lovely lightweight lacey shawls and shoulder warmers. Vendors outdid themselves with lots of inventory, color, new fiber blends, animals, handspun, and finished products from hats to goat milk soaps and sheepskin booties.

Buckets and bags of fleece make me want to dive into them both figuratively and literally, but I find that I'm still impervious to their charms re spinning. I simply do not want to add one more obsession to my life in fiber. I've heard from too many new spinners how addictive it is.

We all liked the monkey hats.

We brought food and blankets with us and in the afternoon settled in a shady spot under a big old tree that we named The Man Tree because every time we glanced up a different man was resting beneath it waiting for someone - usually a female companion toting a big bag of fleece or yarn. One came back with an angora rabbit.

We feasted on baguettes, goat cheese, eggplant, fruit, hummus, olives - and dark chocolate espresso malt balls. yum! Acquaintances and friends wandered over for brief visits and we happily settled in for the duration, taking turns at one or two more laps each - usually returning with something we hadn't known we needed (did I say needed?). Back issues of knitting magazines, a skein of silk and bamboo we'd been musing over all day, the basketball sized ball of cotton ends from the rug maker. I bought some dreamy purple and yellow cashmere from Jabberwocky Farms (my favorite cashmere supplier) and a cheerful blue washable lightweight worsted and pattern for a baby cardi I started immediately upon arriving  home and will finish.

We gathered our stuff and left for home late in the afternoon, a bit sun tanned, our minds reeling with color, potential projects, friendship and promises to meet again before next year's festival (when I will remember to bring my own chair).

dizzy winds

When I was a girl my father told a story about a fight between the sun and the wind and a poor hapless man caught in the middle who kept having to take off his coat and put it back on according to which one of the combatants was up at the moment. I feel like that today. After a week or more of summer-has-returned when temps rose into the high 80s and the sky was a deep cloudless blue and the sun shown hot, this afternoon ominous clouds gathered and wind suddenly blew up knocking over outdoor chairs and trash cans and dropping the temp by about 30 degrees. I went outside to take a picture of a patch of sun glowing on the orange peaks (which didn't turn out very well) and got cold and windblown. So much for that idea. The Wool Festival starts tomorrow and I'm hoping that blue sky will prevail once again.

My friends and I will attend no matter the weather - we're meeting for breakfast at 7:30 tomorrow morning (!) and plan to spend the day in the park complete with picnic and new yarns. Meanwhile, instead of those pesky baby things and those pesky production things, I'm working on the Jade Sapphire clapotis and just got a call from the yarn shop in Santa Fe that the extra skein I'd ordered is in. Oh dear oh dear - how far can one budget stretch? When I look at this work-in-progress in the cloud light, it resembles the sky at this moment (except for the antique Budweiser box it's resting on).

Will write another post when the Festival is over and share some of the experiences we'll no doubt have on this major holiday for my people!