Crazy March

It’s a snowy, windy, sleety Saturday. I received in today’s mail a skein of sock yarn that I was compelled to try out immediately. It’s Waki Saki by Wisdom Yarns—an interesting combination of fibers: 50% merino wool, 25% bamboo, 25% nylon. So soft. I located my favorite old well-used Kollage square double-point needles & got down do it. As I worked I heard the wind outside my window & listened to a chapter of Harry Potter (book 4 or 5) on my AirPods (love those pods!). The yarn is lovely in shades of purples, pinks, lavender. It stripes & self-patterns as I knit—somewhat like the magic in HP—my wand being my needles. Years ago when self-patterning sock yarns first came out I got hooked and hundreds of socks later I’m still loving those yarns. I haven’t knit anything other than socks for several years and only when I’m watching movies or listening to books or music. Also still liking the HP books and J.K. Rowling’s intelligent writing. Way back in 2002, I designed and published in Interweave Knits magazine, a Harry Potter sweater pattern along with a short essay that accompanied it. At the time I was heavily into knitting anything, everything, designing, writing, working part time in a yarn shop, editing an annual literary anthology, and marketing my husband’s art. I was thrilled to be in Interweave (they’d already published an essay of mine in their defunct supplement) but they wanted more designs. I was faced with the decision to design or write. I chose writing but never stopped knitting. Just pared it down to socks. Because, as head wizard Dumbledore said, “one can never have enough [knitted wool] socks. People will insist on giving me books.”

And speaking of books, my newest just hit Amazon. A collection of poems: There Was Always Enough Time. It can be ordered from Amazon or publisher, Nighthawk Press, Taos, NM. Since my copies have been delayed (due to snow & ice?), I cannot post a photo.  Meanwhile, here’s an excerpt from a chapter in my first book (2017): From Salt to Sage: A Memoir: (2nd Printing 2022 & not about knitting, but it does creep into an unrelated story or two). Stay tuned.

                                                                    Gull Wing

“…I came across an old spiral journal with notes on knitting designs and items I’d made, as well as interesting names of stitches and their histories. I had used the information in a couple of articles I’d written for craft/design magazines. There are many vintage names and histories for knitting stitches, and many were listed in my notebook. One of those, called The Gull Wing, evoked thoughts about my father Dominic, the fisherman, who earned a hard living as an auto mechanic but whose head was always in the salty wind and whose feet were in the sea….

Like my father, I am an escape artist. My path is through words, books, imagination, yarn and color. I get lost in the poetic names of knitting stitches: Sailor’s Rib, Seaweed, Four Winds, Dotted Wave. Gull Wing.”

She’s Back! (again)

 

It has been quite a long time since I wrote in this space. I needed a sabbatical. Needed to internalize personal loss and gain. Did I miss it? Not until recently when a few friends asked about it, said they missed it & encouraged me to return. One friend said it was more authentic in some ways than facebook postings. 

We have so far—family and friends—survived the pandemic and have begun to reach out again, maskless, vaccinated, boostered, ready to roll. My heart goes out to those who have gotten seriously ill and still feeling the effects or have lost someone. Of course, the horror of what is happening in Ukraine is a presence in my mind as I go about my daily life. Thankful that I have a daily life. This neighborhood where I live now has a large population of Russians and most probably Ukraines. I do not know them personally, but I pass them on walks in the park around which our homes and apartments are located. They look somber—even the ubiquitous grandmas pushing bundled-up-against-the-cold babies in their prams, the ones who previously have always looked contented, even smug—look worried now & deadly serious. 

I changed the blog profile photo to my new badass self (even with all the reflections in the mirrored sunglasses). Because, frankly, I feel that way: Badass.  (At least to myself. Who knows what others think?). Maybe it’s just that I’m eighty-one now, writing, knitting (socks mostly), still taking pictures, loving, looking toward my new book coming out this month, There Was Always Enough Time, a collection of poems. I will share these posts on facebook, also, so if you are reading this and would like to be a “fb friend” please do so. I’d like to connect again or meet you. Due to arrive this month, besides official Spring, is the 2nd Printing of my 2017 book, From Salt to Sage, A Memoir. I will try out new material on you, my readers, too. My partner’s book, The Evolution of Freud was released yesterday, already with great reviews. More on that later, too. 

I looked through my new material to find a poem or haibun to add to this note but what comes up consistently is a poem by Adam Zagajewski called “To Go To Lvov” and it fits what is going on in Ukraine & Russia. I do not have permission to post the whole poem here, but the first few lines will pull you in and you will be able to find it easily online in its entirety. 

“To go to Lvov. Which station/for Lvov, if not in a dream, at dawn, when dew/gleams on a suitcase, when express/trains and bullet trains are being born. To leave/in haste for Lvov, night or day, in September/or in March…”

Until we meet again…

Continuous Practice

It is a fine over-the-top Spring we are having this year in northern New Jersey. Along with daily bursts of color, shots of energy, bird song, lots of pink blossoms, and a car covered with tiny green things fallen from the old maple tree above it (a very bad place to have a driveway), I am inspired to begin again to post weekly (or more often) starting on this lovely sunfull-blue-sky-emerald day. For those readers who followed me for a few years, I hope you return, for new readers, welcome. This
post is brief because I plan to go for a long walk in the park (currently a fairyland of pastel blossoms) right outside my back door, before clouds roll in later.

A writer walks (the longer the better), collects ideas in an always-present notebook, a camera, records days and expands ideas in journals, turn them into stories, poems, books. What I do every day. A continuous practice. Things happen. Ideas develop. Stresses and anxieties exist, get written down, become something else. Not necessarily easily or quickly, but at a certain stage of life one does become aware of wasting time upon things that need their own time to resolve or may never be resolved. So be it. I've heard an often repeated NJ mantra since I've been here: it is what it is. A lot has transpired over the last two years or so, some wonderful things, some sad. Angers, loves, losses, gains. Life. All is well and all will be well. Meanwhile here are a few tips someone posted to me, purportedly from Goethe:

Every day:
Hear a little song
Read a poem
See a fine picture
Speak a few reasonable words

Summer by the Sea

On Saturday we had a special visit along with some friends and family in my son's new digs with its great views of Long Island Sound.

We enjoyed lobster rolls, hot dogs, quiche, cookies, fruit, wine, and just kicked back to talk and enjoy all of it on a gorgeous summer afternoon. In quiet moments we heard the lapping of water against the stone wall just below his balcony.

and then....
There were some recently received copies of my book From Salt to Sage and I had the very excellent pleasure of signing them.

This is a most thrilling time for me as the book begins to land in the hands of friends, acquaintances and unknown readers. I look forward to all the comments and reviews no matter what they are. I am especially looking forward to my upcoming SOMOS reading in Taos, NM on August 9. I will use this blog and facebook to announce other readings as they are scheduled. I will also insert selected poems and brief excerpts from the book in this space (or the blog I've just set up on WordPress but don't quite understand yet--oh, dear!), so please stay with me as I discover new paths on this aesthetic and practical journey I'm taking. The book is available on Amazon and from the publisher Nighthawk Press.com.

...from "Gray"

"There is a chill in the air and no shadows. In the pale March light, the sky is flat translucent white. A small piece of it can be seen through gaps between brick buildings and bare branches, but only if you bothered to look up. The frail elderly woman who wears a gray too-large wool coat is my mother. We help her into the back seat of the clean new silver Oldsmobile that belongs to my brother. Elvira sits on the plush burgundy seat--her feet do not quite reach the floor. The seatbelt is high and rests across her thin neck." 

Another Year & A Book!

Last year in early spring I announced that I was "back" and would post regularly again. Well, the time between then and now developed into a year of things lost and found. Sometimes I felt like a leaf dancing in the wind--or art itself. Other times I stood at the edge of a dark whirlpool of sadness, emotion (love, anger, death). Somehow, with help from my friends and family I got through it all and although many issues are still pending, there is light and I know the universe will unfold as it should.

Back in in the northeast under last winter's gloomy, cold gray snow-filled skies, at my desk, finally in a room of my own, I worked on the manuscript with my editor 2000 miles away.  The collection was a long time in the writing and I begin this new series of postings on a high note. My book, "From Salt to Sage," a collection of personal essays with a smattering of poems and photos, has been released by Nighthawk Press. Please check it out on Amazon. It can be ordered directly from the publisher's website: nighthawk press.com. Please join me on Facebook, too. I'd love to hear from you. (My full name in case you can't read it is Lorraine Lener Ciancio--I'm having terrible time posting photos with the "new improved blogger" by Google!!!).

She's Back!

It has been many months since I last posted here at The Knitorialist. I've been living in the east and have spent lots of lovely time within closer driving distance to the Atlantic Ocean and the tri-state area nearer to my family. I've met new people, am editing the final draft of my book manuscript and made strong connections in other areas. I still haven't gotten used to taking trains to Manhattan and driving around busy New Jersey and Connecticut. I guess I've been spoiled by 25 years of wide open, speedy, southwestern roads. I don't seem to remember my way around either which is sort of embarrassing. In Taos I took for granted an abundance of sun, dramatic neon sunrises and sunsets, blue sky winters and generally lighter clothes--all elusive here among trees, endless grey skies, frigid and gloomy winters that require long LL Bean Ultra down hooded coats with faux fur. All winter I felt compelled to knit wool socks and nothing else. I added to my sock yarn stash and have enough yarn to get me through future winters. Most of the finished socks ended up with friends and family members.

But it's spring now and I am awakened every morning by a cardinal singing high up in a tree outside the window. After-dinner strolls in the 23 acre park outside my door now puts forth the color I longed for all winter and sought in yarn.

I will try to write this blog at least weekly from now on and will post excerpts from one of two manuscripts I'm working on: a collection of creative non fiction essays and another of poems. Meanwhile I wish joyful spring thoughts to all of you who return to these pages.

begin with Yes

Frankly friends, I don't know where the special effects for this photo came from.  It's a mystery. Yes, it's the view from my kitchen window, but the falling snow? Wow. Magic? At the same time that this appeared, the photos I was downloading disappeared. So. What does this all mean? It's been a difficult year and it is drawing to a close in many ways subtle and not so. I've learned that meditation helps, saying yes and breathing helps, knitting helps. In the midst of an anxious week I came upon a skein of cashmere yarn that I'd purchased a year ago and forgotten about.

It's from Lobster Pot Yarns and the name alone is compelling. Dyed in lobster pots, dried in the wind of east coast beaches. Lovely! So I began to knit a Colonnade triangle/lace scarf and more magic happened. The soft luxury of this Mongolian cashmere and the color called Shoreline Heather (lighter than the photo) seemed to bring an inexplicable inner peace. I'm loving it, appreciating it and very very grateful for the animals that give us their wool. To all the sheep, goats, alpacas, and silkworms, thank you! Thank you to the trees that produce apples in Christmas colors, too!

I'm writing a lot these days, filling notebooks, mostly with junk. Sometimes I have the greatest urge to consign them to flames, but haven't done so thus far. What I do know is that I'm not writing very often on this blog because too many other things are clamoring for attention. Therefore, I am going to take some time off. As Terry Tempest Williams said recently on her facebook page, I am going to take three months off from most social media and do what the bears do. They hibernate from now until the Spring Equinox. Tonight I meet with a group of women who will be celebrating the return of the light on this Winter Solstice night and then it's a 21st century version of hibernation. I'll be back in the spring. I hope you will meet me here then. For now, I'm poised and ready. See you when the robins are twittering and the meadowlarks are calling from fenceposts again

Life is a Hallelujah
Hallelujah when we're born
Hallelujah when we die
And Halleluljah when we rise each morning
           T. T. W.