all the faces of

This photograph was taken way back in the last century when I was about 13 years old (1950s). My older brother Frank was the photographer with the cool new 35mm camera that he experimented with quite a bit. This must have been a multiple exposure back in the days when film was advanced manually. If you didn't advance it you could keep adding layers of images to the same frame and if you were really smart, you could figure out how they'd come out like this instead messy and unidentifiable. Frank had given me a CD of the old pictures on one of my visits east and I came across it when I was trying to "manage" thousands of photos on my computer. Note: I gave up rather than spend long hours, days, years, doing it - when my desk is still littered with a half dozen unfinished tasks and the next two weeks are going to be a huge push. Funny how the picture represents exactly the way I feel today (but much older). Outside of myself. Multiple selves. Scattered. Out of date. Serious. A little sad as it's the first anniversary of my dear friend's passing. And then a friend told me her daughter landed in the hospital as a result of a week of intense silent meditation! How is this possible? I'll learn more about it tomorrow. Meanwhile, it's dinner time and I think a nice glass of Chianti might help to weave the loose ends and selves together.

city color

shopping and walking
Went to Santa Fe for yarn, friends, and a bit of shopping. It's been so long since I walked that Plaza or sat in its park. Much has changed in recent years. Many art galleries have been replaced by southwestern jewelry and clothing shops. A few old shops and cafes are still there, but Starbucks is always busy and I must admit that I ducked in for a latte and some quiet before heading home. It was a nice day and I did enjoy the small city feeling - touristy though it was. From my vantage point at the top of the parking garage across from the venerable Lensic Theater, I noticed once again the strange melange of architectural detail on the building.

It was originally built in 1931 by a successful Syrian immigrant/merchant in the "Spanish style" (as he called it). It served for decades as a movie theater and  sometimes a dance hall. Sixty-eight years later in 1999 it closed down - until the Zeckendorf family  (New York real estate) rescued, renovated, and turned it into the beautiful performance space it is now. I've been to poetry readings and concerts there and hope to attend many more (although it is a long 84 mile ride through the canyon back to Taos late at night).

now for the important stuff
Spent some lovely time (and money) at Tutto yarn shop with friend Joan and owner David. We sat around laughing and talking yarn, patterns, other stuff, in between customers. I bought more Foale yarn for the hats and some interesting Danish merino yarn for a future project (more later).

The Opal sale rack pulled me toward it like a magnet. I collect like cheerful colors that brighten up grey days when I just need a simple sock project with yarn that will do the fancywork for me.

So it was a good day and I started the next hat (I think it's the May one) in the periwinkle color. I was grateful for my own hat when I walked this morning when it was 42 degrees, blustery, threatening. Now, three hours later the sun is shining and a few snowflakes are tossing about in the air. Mountain weather strikes again! My desk is littered with still undone writing and editing projects, it's getting on to late afternoon...can't I just knit?

self-control?

abandon all self-control ye who enter here!
Dante Alighieri said it best and better, but my version of his famous words have been echoing in my mind all morning, since my self-imposed hat-of-the-month club has turned into a hat-of-the-week club! I love working with the yarn, finished the kiwi green, and have gotten halfway through the blue.

Wore the mauve hat (#1) on my cold early morning walk. It's deep enough to cover my ears and light and comfortable enough to prevent my pulling it off and abandoning it on a fence or giving it away to the first passerby. Okay, maybe I am a bit unreasonably hat-sensitive. I accept it. It's been like this my whole life. My mother and I started arguing over hats when I was eight and walked to P.S. 97 many blocks away - and we kept at it all through high school which was an even longer walk. "If you catch a cold, don't expect me to take care of you," were usually her parting words". If I got sick, she took care of me - which didn't stop it from happening again. We were both quite stubborn and sure of our positions for the next 40 years!
          My goal today though is to catch up on editing and class work so I'll be free to drive down to Tutto tomorrow for more Foale yarn! The color array is impressive and I may decide to work my way through all the lighter shades!

soon will be the season of colors
of blossoms and leaves and birds
I tell myself not to be greedy
but how shall I eat them all?


        

now I'm here

Ferocious wind. Thirty degree temp drop. Dusting of snow. Scary clouds. Welcome spring. By late afternoon the sun creates dramatic shadows and I stop along the way home to take pictures. The Ali Cap saves me from a big wind-headache as I wander around.

Empty table at an outdoor cafe.

A willow archway with an empty birdhouse.

Strawberries from the supermarket soaking in cold water in a blue sink.

The scary sky.

And soon I'll cozy up with blue wool and an old movie (Clark Gable on TCM tonight). The glass of  Chardonney cleared out the residual stress and the chocolate didn't hurt either. I started the blue Ali Cap yesterday and think I love it better than the others. Faithless caprice. Just like the season.

the dark north wind
singing like flutes
sunk deep into the
lowering dusk

mood swings

wildfire

A great wind is dispersing smoke from a wildfire outside of Espanola and Los Alamos and sending it here. Although it's 40 or more miles away, there are no barriers. If we step outside we can smell it and feel the irritation in our eyes. As I sit here writing, the smokey smell has seeped into the house under doors and through slightly opened windows - my throat feels scratchy and I have a headache. The sky is white, mountains can barely be seen behind opaque veils. It's spring. It's windy. The danger of wildfires recurs every year at this time. Fortunately, no towns or residences are in danger from this one. It's in the central region of Valle Canyon in the Santa Fe National Forest and firefighters are trying to deal with it. The wind is worrisome though and a Red Alert warning has been issued. 

the color of taste

After the crock pot posting, a couple of people asked about the Kool Aid dye recipe that I'd bought the pot for in the first place.  As I cleared out my workspace this morning, I found it and subsequently tracked down an old picture of a pair of socks I made with the resulting yarn. 

The yarn pictured was actually dyed with Kool Aid in a microwave oven. It was a bit more complicated as measuring cups, gloves and bottles were involved. I can't find those directions, but I'm sure they're online somewhere. Several flavors can be used so it allows for more color flexibility. Meanwhile here is the simple, tried and true one I've used several times with the aid of my 2 quart Crock pot. The original recipe came from Anne Carroll in a 1990's booklet and I've tweaked it a bit since then. I didn't keep any of the resulting socks, but they were really nice (and smelled good too)! This recipe dyes about 400 yards of yarn. For more yardage, use a larger pot and double (or triple) the recipe.

kool crocksox
2 pkgs unsweetened Kool-Aid
3 cups warm water
1 T white vinegar
pinch of salt
undyed, unbleached yarn (I used KnitPicks Bare merino fingering weight)

Pour water into pot (do not turn on yet), stir in vinegar, salt, KoolAid packets, stir to dissolve
If using balls, remove labels. If using skeins, mark off end with paper clip and carefully place in pot. In either case, do not squoosh together or crowd. Leave room for liquid to flow through and around. Immerse gently and completely for semi-solid color or, if you want a tie-dye effect, keep the top half of the yarn balls/skeins out of the liquid. Cover pot, turn on low setting, simmer for 8 hours. Turn off, un-plug, leave to cool overnight. Gently remove yarn, carefully squeeze out excess water. Place on rack or hang on hook until dry. This may take several hours depending on where you live. Can also be dried outside on a warm day with  a gentle breeze (if it's windy, forget it, you'll have an impossible pile of tangled string to deal with!).

Kool-Aid dyed yarns have a faded stone-washed  look to them and I think they'd make a pretty shawl or scarf. There is a shawl on Ravelry by Janel Laidman called eiki (strength in Japanese). All proceeds from the sale of her pattern are going to the Red Cross in Japan. I bought mine last night.

Great mood swings of weather seem, in their constant variety,
fierce reminders of our own natural turbulence
                                                                 Jennifer Lash ("on pilgrimage")

moody blues

True to my obsessions, at Tutto in Santa Fe I bought two more colors of the Marion Foale yarn for the Ali Caps. I started in on the April hat immediately upon returning home. It's a nice spring green shade and my stitches are coming out more crisp and defined than in the first one. This is a good thing and probably based on the fact that I'm now familiar with the stitches, gauge, size and have eliminated the neurotic worry about running out of yarn. The color is soothing (isn't bilious green used to paint hospital and institution walls to keep patients calm? I know I read that somewhere). I'm thinking I'll keep this one and gift the first one - but I also really like the blue - it's so moody and today has a pale blue feeling to it....  There are many more lovely colors of this yarn and I plan to go back for more hat club supplies as soon as possible.
          I also brought home some great Opal sock yarn in cheerful spring colors. More about that another time. No matter how strong the voice from the sock bag is calling "start me, me" I will first finish mates for three pairs that I began a few weeks ago in that aha moment of simplifying and temporarily (or permanently) quitting the labors of lace knitting - which was giving me a big headache. Besides, how many damn shawls and scarves does one person (and her friends and family) need?
          Here is a great little closing phrase on this windy smokey blue-ish day:  

kisses and bises 

          (from what I've learned, it means kisses (of course) and also the northwind!)

hats and socks, oh my!

My family back east is a little nuts. They quite often occasionally succumb to unexpected bouts of silliness. I've been with them a few times when it strikes and end up teary-eyed and weak from laughter. They keep me from getting too serious about varieties of important unimportant things which I tend to do. I was in somber mode yesterday when we received this picture of Dante wearing the hat and socks nonnagrande (me) made him, surrounded by an array of other handknitted socks. I can imagine that someone noted the socks and hat and tossed their own socks at him (mother, father, grandmother). I can almost hear them laughing and trying to shush each other up so as not to wake him. He obviously wasn't disturbed. How cute is this gratifying mood changer?

seeing the future
Last night I worked on the Ali (MacGraw) Cap. Very curious to see how it would turn out. I liked working the variety of simple patterns with clear instructions. By 10 o'clock I began to worry that I'd run out of yarn and thinking I'd be unable to sleep until I knew, I kept knitting. I figured the yardage must have been calculated for the kit, but everyone knits differently, I didn't check the gauge, and you never know. Making mistakes on straight knit rows, I stopped working at 11! This morning over coffee I finished. There was enough yarn with a tiny bit left over. I wore it during breakfast.  I love this hat pattern!

It's the hat that I wished for a few days ago. Lightweight, covers my ears. Today temps were in the high hatless 60s, but given the  vicissitudes of mountain weather at this time of year, it's sure to change soon. As predicted, I want more. I'm going to Santa Fe tomorrow so I'll stop at Tutto's. I plan to start my own one person hat-a-month club and knit them in different colors for the four female members of my dippy family and one special friend. Then, when I visit again in winter, we'll wear them on beach walks and in the City.

happy St. Patrick's Day
I don't have a drop of Irish blood in my body, but I like the holiday which I got used to celebrating with friends at Irish pubs in Manhattan when I was young.  The pubs in those olden days had sawdust on the floors, corned beef sandwiches and green beer. The line in the middle of Fifth Avenue was painted green for the parade and revelers drifted into the pubs all day long and later to dances at hotels.  That was a long time ago and for all I know it may still be happening in the same way. We will celebrate modestly with a couple of mugs of Irish Coffee (decaf so we won't be awake all night). Ah, how things change.

varieties of use

4,000+
This blog has reached an unimaginable (to me) milestone and passed the 4,000 readers mark since it started less than a year ago! And readers are all over the globe! Wow! I'm blown away by that figure. Many thanks to all of you who have checked it out, stuck with it, or who dip in and out. I plan to continue. It's fun. More so now that I know there are actual bodies out there who, to some degree, care.Thank you!

ahh...
As I write the smell of cooking coq au vin is permeating the house. It's only mid afternoon and dinner won't be for several hours, but I'm using a slow cooker (formerly called a crockpot). The thing is, I have only cooked in it once in my life. The result was bland and pale. I bought the pot many years ago with the thought of using it for dyeing yarn in Kool Aid, not for cooking.

My granddaughter was expected for her annual summer visit and I always tried to set up new and interesting things for us to do together. That summer (more than a decade ago) it was dyeing yarn. The resulting socks that I knitted and sold at a studio sale later that year were labeled by Kira. She indicated the flavor of the Kool Aid and a tag that read "Sniff Me!" (the socks really did smell like grape, strawberry, lime). Since then the crockpot has been stashed, unused, on top of the tall kitchen cabinets. I'd forgotten it existed. Standing on chairs this morning we located it and brought it down. Unattractively enveloped in cobwebs, faded, and with greasy kitchen dust on it, I nearly threw it away. But in my new waste not mode, I carefully and thoroughly washed it and voila, it turned out to be as good as new. Hence, the hopeful preparation of coq au vin. It smells wonderful, but I still have doubts about so-called slow cookers. I'm more the throw-stuff-into-the-skillet-sizzle-and-saute type, but we'll see.

later...

a hit! delicious!

to keep my ears warm
This morning when I walked in the park with Spike, it was cold. I was wearing a baseball cap and my ears tingled uncomfortably. I thought about how nice it would be to have a lightweight knitted cap for days when the temp is in the 40s. Enough to keep my ears covered, but not too warm or confining. Tonight, while I waited around in the kitchen during the last anxious coq au vin cooking hour, I remembered that my friend Joan had returned from Stitches West with a gift for me of a hat kit designed by Ali McGraw. Joan was helping out at the Tutto booth and Ali (who is also from Santa Fe) was their featured guest. Remember that cap in Love Story? How great she looked in it? Ali is still beautiful and hasn't aged a day (how is that possible?). She is also an animal rights advocate and knitter who joined up with Marion Foale, a British stylist, who designed a line of gorgeous, soft 3-ply wool. Proceeds from the sale of the kits goes to the Wildlife Emergency Response Fund's efforts "to offer immediate help whenever crisis strikes wildlife anywhere in the world." How cool is that?

This is a worthy cause and a beautiful kit. I've just started working on it, but I can tell already that it will be a satisfying project I will make again and again. You can't knit just one! I encourage knitters to get one for yourself from Tutto. Did I mention that also included in the kit is a carved Sea Turtle button? 

how comfortable!
nestled in a bed of yarn
the wooden sea turtle

what is

Everywhere, in the everyday, there are exquisite worlds. 
That paraphrased quote came from James Agee who believed that if one could learn to study a thing (read: notice), we might begin to perceive what is rather than what isn't. Jack Kerouac did it in the 1950s with words in his Book of Sketches - quick notes in short lines running down the pages of his small notebooks like miniature waterfalls. Yet within those terse flowing lines he captured mood, place, characters, feelings and much more. On the title page he wrote, in pure Kerouacian style: (proving that sketches ain't verse) But only what is. If you read this blog you know I love the quick "gesture" concept and always carry a small camera and notebook around with me. Very often the camera is used more than the notebook. Things I didn't notice reveal themselves later when I review the pictures and then I can write. I never know what I'll encounter. Not much if my mind is preoccupied. Lots if I'm noticing. The tea shop's spring colors that look like sock yarn, the painting my neighbor gave me because I like wool.

f

ultimately there is no
absolute truth,
only perception
                      Dr. Sherwin Newland

violence vs. complacence

This project was started over two years ago and picked up every few months for an added inch or two. Frankly, I had lost interest in it. Who could remember the motives or mood that made me purchase the yarn in the first place. Or maybe I was sick of the Lace Ribbon pattern knitted so many times before. It might have been early summer when I thought that the color and weight would work as a light shawlette. With that thought, I added an additional pattern repeat to the depth.  Like the famous tortoise in the story, I finally finished the race. It's a gorgeous soft scarf/mini shawl in Jade Sapphire's incredible 50/50 silk/cashmere yarn. As I photographed it, I noticed the resemblance to the fossilized shell/rock I wrote about several posts ago. The one that was brought down from the top of a mountain peak a thousand miles from an ocean.

Maybe I was thinking of that when I bought the yarn. Legends of great seas in the southwest when the earth was trembling and cracking and mountain ranges like the Rockies, Jemez, and Sandias were forming.

Eons ago when planetary upheaval  didn't cause the kind of human destruction that the earthquake and tsunami in Japan has.
          Yesterday I was in Santa Fe shopping for cosmetics, browsing handbags and spring styles, only vaguely aware that a natural disaster of some kind had occurred somewhere in the world. On the drive home I spent time wondering how long it would take to learn how to use my spiffy new cell phone. I dreamed about a bag that I liked that was on sale and should have bought and the silk shirt at the Gap - wouldn't that look great with jeans. Those were the flimsy thoughts that occupied me on the long drive home. Once there I turned on the news. Reality kicked in. Of the terrible plight of the Japanese people and how easy it is to get caught up in shallow desires, yearnings, forms of addictions, habits. There were amazing photographs online this morning. One showed two attractive, fashionably dressed young women wearing high heeled boots, carrying stylish handbags, picking their way up a steeply tilted broken sidewalk with a look of fear on their faces, buildings collapsed all around them.
          Not everyone is like me, of course. I know women (and men) who don't give a thought to fashion or material possessions beyond the necessary, who live in earthships, who don't color or style their hair and who have never had a pedicure in their lives. In some cases they have chosen that lifestyle in spite of adequate incomes, in other cases it is forced upon them. It's those of us in the center that sometimes get confused.
          I want to help the Japanese people in some way, but I'm not a Red Cross volunteer, firefighter, or  doctor. Other than a small donation of money or supplies, all I can do is think about adjusting my own life, recalibrating my desires - and maybe knitting wool socks. It looks like the weather is cold there. People bundled up in jackets and blankets. At least I can knit.

reaching

This is the closest I'm going to get today (and for many more days to come) to spring. It's been cold and gray here and a few minutes ago it started snowing lightly. It may not add up to anything, but that's not the point is it? There are scratch marks on the walls and I feel like howling. Louder than the wind swirling around my house. This possibly life-saving cashmere from Jabberwocky Farms is named "Iris". I've always loved this color combo.
          When I was ten years old and my family moved into a new "country" house in the northeast Bronx, I convinced my father to paint my room these colors. I thought it was the height of girl-cool and I loved entering that room and closing the door upon the "outside" world. In that lavender and yellow room I read, listened to music, daydreamed, and started to write really dumb poems in a notebook with a red cover that I'd cut and sewn together myself. I never showed the poems or diary entries to anyone and when I discovered that my mother had found my hiding place in my very own room - and read what I'd written - I didn't keep a diary again while I lived in that house. In fact, I didn't take up what became "journaling" until I was long gone from that room and my childhood. Such is the power of mothers.
          So, instead of howling, I'm working on yarns that have a touch of spring color in them. It's better than brooding over what seems like a longer winter than usual (it isn't of course - it's always like this). I am craving yellow and waiting for the "dandelion" colored alpaca sock yarn to arrive. Meanwhile, dependable Opal from my sock yarn stash serves. No thinking, minimal planning (like what color to begin with). Just nice regular keep-me-interested knitting that easily allows for simultaneous movie-watching, book-listening or conversations.

So off I go now to the post office - in the flying snow - to check for a possible yarn delivery. I'll finish working at my desk when I return, after fixing a cup of hot Assam tea.


you inhale sharply
cold scent of new snow
spring daydream dashed

image keeping

Finished at breakfast this morning! The Helen's Lace clapotis. When I ordered the yarn and started it a couple of months ago, I imagined a light silk/wool wrap/scarf for spring. Saw myself wearing it on a cool summer evening in the mountains, a beach back east, west in San Francisco. This first day of March did not come in like a lion but like a nice domestic cat. A kitten curled up in a patch of sun. So bright in the kitchen that I drank my coffee and finished knitting, wearing sunglasses! I steamed blocked it right away, took some pictures in the morning sun,

wrapped it around my neck and hurried off to my Latin class. It felt perfect. The color is Lorna's Laces limited edition dye lot #8040 called "Amber's 1st Kitchen".

My days seem to be speeding up lately but I managed to get in a couple of walks in the park. The only signs of spring that I noticed were the incredible clear blue sky and some weedy green things growing close to the earth. The rest is still shades of brown and gray. No sign of buds on trees yet either.

Because I'm not traveling at this time, I find myself collecting images in words and photographs - things I've noticed without seeing. I'm working on a new essay based on a photograph and it's filled with things I don't remember being there at the time it was taken. I may write more about that later. It's been a challenge and I'm still working it out. The landscape here is endlessly interesting, but I could just as easily spend time in an apartment in a city, traversing the same square block over and over, or with windows overlooking the street, and come up with something to photograph or write about. Colette did it in her later years. Her bed was the ship in which she navigated through the images that turned into novels. I have a copy of a wonderful photograph of her in that bed - frizzy hair, dog, books, papers, pens. If there had been cellphones and iPads in those days, they would have been there too. Just as there were when my friend was ill last year and we named her Colette. She was surrounded, in her bed, with cellphones (two), laptop, dogs (three), newspapers, knitting (she was learning), books, CDs and music. Her toenails were painted vivid red - just as Colette's were. Remember Old Rose in Titanic? Those red toenails? I vowed then and there to keep those slightly wild-spirit touches alive for myself - in memory of those other wild women who inspired me.

I've passed it a thousand times. Never noticing the geometric symmetry and the gray-green color of the weathered boards.

Or the way long afternoon shadows can make ordinary wooden park benches look mysterious - as if they have a tale to tell.

spring is in the air these days but not yet on the ground 
where there are large patches of snow everywhere, and 
the road in is deeply rutted in mud. When I wake at five 
there is already faint light, and I eat my breakfast watching 
the sky turn rose or orange just before the sun leaps out
like a jack-in-the-box...
                                                May Sarton