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.