a switch in time

At this time of year in the mountains each day feels like a new season even though we're still in the remains of summer and the lightest blankets are still on the beds. Today is one of those gray cashmere sweater days. Sprinkles of rain on and off, an occasional peep of sun. After three busy days in a row and more coming up, I am happy to have finished at least one project and be at my desk inside as the warm wind whistles around outside.

This project has been enthusiastically embraced and casually abandoned for almost two years. It is a lace ribbon scarf knitted with 2-ply hand dyed cashmere from Jabberwocky Farms that I bought two years ago at the Wool Festival in Taos. This year's event on the first weekend in October is looming closer. Completing projects with yarn bought at past wool festivals erases any twinges of guilt that might arise as I buy more. And these colors are so gorgeously futuristically seasonal that I put everything else aside to finish it. In other words I was highly motivated. Guilt-wise and season-wise. Although I'd like to be a mindful person and try to live in the present moment, the act of buying yarn thrusts me right into the future.

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Still in an autumn mood (I know it's here because the chamisa is yellow and I can't stop sneezing) I found a project for the Malabrigo sock yarn in color Primavera. The pattern is Ishbel by Isolda Teague. Although I have two skeins of this beautiful yarn, I decided to make the smaller size and use only one. I'm not much of a lace shawl wearer - too short to wrap up in a big one and too old to look cool in it. No matter how the trends have changed, knitted shawls on women of a certain age still  bring to mind grannies and farmer's wives as depicted in old black and white movies. Actually, if you have ever seen Camille (a movie that is older than me), she is wearing, on her deathbed, a hand knitted lace shawl and looks radiant. How else could Garbo have looked? So since I'm not Garbo and like the design, I will make the smaller size to wrap around my neck or drape over a sweater.

I've only finished the stockinette section and an inch of the lace pattern. I began by following the written instructions, but after knitting and ripping in frustration several times, I realized that in spite of being a word person, visual charts work best for lace knitting. This may not seem like news to anyone but me. I resisted charts when they first hit the mainstream. Eventually I had to deal with them because they became the way most lace patterns were written. In time, without my knowledge, my brain made a switch. Good thing too because the pattern so far is humming along and I can't wait to get back to it. On a card I jotted down this quote from an anonymous source.

Truth is about examining, testing,
knowing the actual, immediate,
direct experience of this moment.
                    

a narrow escape

Have you ever had one of those days when it seems that invisible demons are plotting to create conflict every few minutes? That's the way I felt yesterday. Nothing worked, everything I tried to do failed - including conversations that turned into flying fireballs. It was a day when I wanted to unzip and step out of my skin. Perhaps enter my parallel life and hope I was having a better day there. Unable to do that precisely, I gave up trying to accomplish anything in any realm and in late afternoon drove to Wired Cafe. The weather was perfect, shady and cool under trees, sound of water splashed through bamboo onto stones, soft breeze, iced chai, notebook. Inside the cafe a French music CD played and the sound mingled with falling water in several fountains. I stayed for what seemed a long time. Or maybe it wasn't long at all. What I know is that after writing, sitting, sipping the cold chai, I felt I had indeed stepped into a parallel life and that one was demonless. What would we do without cafes to escape to?

Today is stress-free, productive and friendly. The planets must have shifted or something. After breakfast with friends I came home and sorted through my stash of UFOs and possible projects (henceforth known as PPs). I had forgotten about the gorgeous Weaving Southwest Rio Grande Merino Sport in a color I called chocolate and berries (don't know what they call it - labels lost long ago). In a moment of efficiency I'd affixed tags that told me that there is more than 700 yards in that bag! (the color is more subtle and berry-ish than in the photograph - I couldn't tone down the blue that really is soft purple (like boysenberries). Sometimes I do miss my low tech film cameras).

This yarn had been out of sight and mind for so long that it came back to me all fresh and new. Maybe a clapotis? Like the one I made in the same yarn a couple of years ago and gave to a writer friend one late August. She was leaving for Brittany for a two month stay and said, "there's always a chilly wind there". I figured if I couldn't go to France myself I'd send something with her that I'd made. When she returned she said it was perfect! And just this spring another writer friend went off to Nice for three months wearing the cashmere clapotis I'd knitted in shades of red and rust.  She said it was cold and gray all through spring and was perfect! So there. I still love that popular pattern and look forward to starting another. There's lots of knitting to do, the pattern is easy, it's a good portable project. Not to mention that the final product may end up in a faraway place keeping the chill away and looking chic.

And speaking of chic. It's September and time to lose the green toenails.

It was great fun, but it was just one of those (summer) things. In anticipation of a long-neglected pedicure next week, I bought a new color from London called Stiletto Red. I've never worn a pair of stilettos in my life - I'd fall flat on my butt if I did - but I figure the polish is safe and sounds chic (not that anyone will know but me and the Vietnamese pedicurist who won't care).

accidental invention

Soon we're leaving to celebrate a 64th wedding anniversary with friends. He's not well, but his wife is throwing a party at The Living Center where he's staying. I decided to bake a cake using a basic old recipe that I modify for just about every occasion. My mother cut it out of the New York Daily News in the year she was married: 1926 and it's been published since then in a poet's cookbook, a family cookbook, and passed around and used in many forms for generations. What came out this time though was a modification I hadn't expected. Five minutes after I put the pan into the oven I noticed that I hadn't added the egg to the batter! It was already baking so it was too late. I didn't feel like driving to the store and didn't have enough of the ingredients left to start over. Not knowing what happens to a cake made without eggs, I just left it in the oven and sat down to read for awhile. Forty minutes later it came out all baked - a bit flatter than usual but it smelled and looked good. My husband convinced me to cut a piece and taste it and if it was okay it could perhaps be cut up into bars and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Never! it won't work, I said with great conviction. But that's what we did (after eating all the outer edges) and it's delicious. So we're off now to the party.

sarcophagi for ufo's

It is phantasmagorically satisfying to finish knitting projects. Even simple socks.

After foolishly making a commitment to participate in the Taos Yuletide Craft Fair on Thanksgiving weekend I suddenly panicked when I thought about plunging into production again! In the past it has meant starting months before and knitting every day and night since a three day show requires a lot of inventory. I usually get stressed out and end up with a pain in my neck (literally). Not so this year. I will share space with poet friend Leslie who makes unique necklaces with beads, fossils, trilobites, other items. Each piece is a wordless manifestation of a poem. We shared space last year and I had way too much inventory in my half. I kept murmuring "less is more" and moving things around. This year will be different. I plan to include limited editions. Socks are always a big seller though and I'm finishing up long-languishing UFOs. In spite of the raid on my supply a few weeks ago, I still have quite a few. Two pairs were finished over the weekend as I watched old movies and ruthlessly wrote up schedules for my other commitments. One pair had been stranded for five years! But - clever me - once long ago I organized unfinished sock projects into separate plastic bags, enclosed notes on patterns, needles, other things, and then stashed them away in the dark recesses of storage boxes I named Sarcophagi for UFOs (the History channel could make something out of that title). This action reduced my guilt substantially, i.e.: out of sight, out of mind. Unearthing them now yields some surprises and renewed interest - especially when only one more sock has to be knitted.

I have no idea where the original stitch pattern for this primary colors stripey/lace number or the yarn came from since I dislike working with primary colors and rarely buy them (which may explain the five year abandonment of this project). Also, the pattern annoyed me enough that I'm not likely to ever to use it again. But I do like the way they turned out. They're just not for me.

"They're writing songs of love, but not for me"

portent or delight?

It's happening fast. And earlier? Summer is morphing into autumn. The light is different and in recent days bird noises are prevalent. Ravens and magpies are cawing nonstop and flocking together. Why, I don't know. They don't leave for the south. Like us, they seem to be stuck here for the winter. Other birds are landing on the deck in groups, chirping choruses all morning, on the lookout for seeds that are no longer there.  We stopped putting out seeds because although the birds loved it and we had a great view of the many varieties, mice also like bird seeds a lot and since the deck is off the kitchen...well, you know the rest. I hate rodents in my house! (and car, but that's another story).

With all the avian activity I invariably think of the chapter in The Wind in the Willows when the birds are gathering on wires and in trees to discuss travel plans and how some of the animals (Ratty? Moley?) are wistfully longing to go along but know they won't or can't. It's really hard to leave home. But what would it be like to throw a few things into a pack and just go? Like the ancient Chinese and Japanese poets who put on a good pair of straw sandals, packed a rucksack with a cotton kimono of white paper treated with persimmon juice crumpled soft, a waterproof, hat, ink stone, paper, and set off - on foot - on journeys that lasted a year more or less. I love to ponder this type of journey and my own mythical rucksack. Basho said: I've always been drawn by windblown clouds into dreams of a lifetime of wandering. Me too. I'd need a second pair of shoes of course, a warm sweater, camera(s), a small knitting project with pack of interchangeable needles ( just in case I ran into some yarn along the way), pens, notebook, lipstick, good moisture lotion, wool socks, flannel PJs crumpled soft, Kindle, cell phone...guess I'm destined to stay home with Ratty.

All day, column after column
a squadron of feathers,
a fluttering airborne
ship
crossed
the tiny infinity
of the window where I search,
question, work observe, wait.
                               Pablo Neruda

what is luxury?

Today I feel like this old crumbling adobe house. No matter what I did to my face, or what nice clothes I put on, or the new bag and mint green toenails, that's how I felt. We drove down to Santa Fe to Trader Joe's for a week's (or more) worth of food. In spite of the price of gas and the 84 miles one way, we still get more for our dollar at TJs than anywhere else. And it sort of feels like an adventure to fill the trunk of the Miata with provisions - against what I do not know. This is not, after all, the Taos of Mabel Dodge Luhan and the early settlers who spent whole days and an overnight getting from Santa Fe to Taos and back. Nor is it winter when, although practical experience tells us that Smith's is just a half mile away, the car has 4-wheel drive, and we really won't run out of food, genetic survival instincts still kick in.

I feel like the top has blown off the roof of my head, too. And I can just make out the sky and trees as I begin to work on a weekly schedule to insure that I can actually accomplish the plethora of commitments I seem to have made for the next few months. Perhaps signing up for a Latin class was not the brightest thing to do. Or volunteering to take on two concurrent editing jobs. Or the Yuletide Craft Fair in November which means I'll have to up my knitting production.

Across my opened book of Neruda's poems lies a skein of soft baby alpaca yarn the color of wine stains and nearby, a square of dark chocolate. I drop small strawberries into my glass and wonder if life needs to get any better than poetry, wine and chocolate. I have to eat the red-wine-soaked strawberries with a spoon.
"what does it mean to say for ever"?

new yarnista in town

The imposing adobe church of St Francisco de Asis in Ranchos de Taos is one of the world's most painted, filmed and photographed edifices. Georgia O'Keeffe, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, D.H. Lawrence - you name the artist or photographer, past and present, and they've done it. It was originally made by hand and is still remudded that way every year - most recently in June. The plaza surrounding the church has sprouted a few relatively unobtrusive and eclectic shops and cafes. Today I drove there to find a yarn shop I'd heard about.

As you enter the plaza your eye is immediately drawn to the imposing familiar church situated right in the middle. If you look to your left you will see a doorway with old weathered gates opened to a courtyard where Red Willow Art and Fibers is nestled.

The interior of the two room shop in this old adobe building is by its very age and existence filled with atmosphere - add to that an array of luxurious hand dyed fibers in two rooms - spinning fibers, weavings, luscious yarns, other treasures - and it's some kind of heaven. Julie Silvian is the artist who opened the shop in May (and I only just heard about it!). She dyes the fibers and her colors make me want to sample at least all  of them. There is no corporate commercial yarn here and don't even mention the a-word! This is all about the exotic: alpaca, silk, camel, yak, cashmere. Sigh! Okay. So I want off budget a trifle (the new budget I set for myself this very morning).

How could I resist hand dyed ultra soft baby alpaca named wine & roses or superfine alpaca called wine country? I ask you. How? And at such reasonable prices? And we won't even speak about the golden yellow cashmere that I didn't buy or the cute and unique fabric purses and compact padded camera bags that her friend makes for the shop (perfect for my favorite Canon).

Taos is a fiber town and the fiber pinnacle of each year is the Wool Festival on the first weekend in October (my friend Josie calls it "a major holiday for our people"). There are excellent yarn shops in this small place and Red Willow just added another dimension. I'm sure there's more to Julie's story - she's a weaver, knitter, dyer - how did she come to Taos  from other parts?  But I wasn't there to interview her - at least not for now. Instead I'm planning to organize an expedition with a couple of fanatic friends and storm the gates.