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  • Soon Enough

    I've been in a bit of a slump and as tends to happen when I am slipping and sliding downward, I have been indulging in a bit of a fiction binge.  Although usually at times of family or personal drama I tend to curl up in a corner with my books, using fiction like a drug to anesthetize me from life, I have actually been rather busy with the ongoing tasks of sorting and weeding until I am too tired to sort anymore.

    16705 Michael Chabon's Summerland was entertaining and enjoyable, but I can't say that it struck much of a chord.  I mostly read it on the stationary bike as I have also been trying to get myself back into an exercise routine, but I did dip into it in the evenings as well, especially when I was tired an, as has often been the case, I was frustrated with my knitting.  

    Unsurprisingly the prose was lovely at times, evocative and charming and I even liked the idea of the story combining as it did baseball and various creation myths, but this is where it also got difficult.  At times the book seemed a bit overarching, as if Chabon had to throw in some reference to every creation story and hero myth.  There were too many times where the references and the story seemed forced, perhaps not enough to destroy the novel, but enough that I was annoyed.

     

    8357992 I followed Summerland with two of Lee Child's Reacher novels, 61 Hours and Worth Dying For.  Worth Dying For is the newest one, following 61 Hours, but I read them in the opposite order.  It was therefore with joy that I discovered that 61 Hours took place in the days immediately leading up to the events in Worth Dying For.

    I continue to enjoy the Reacher novels and these two were no exception.  Granted Reacher is unrealistic as a character, but I still like him in the context of the novels even though he is completely unlike anyone I tend to like or know in actual life.  There is no slow build up to the action in Worth Dying For, we jump right in and the violence and testosterone keep boiling up to the end.  But despite his basic lack of self reflection and tendency to violence, I find Reacher intriguing.  There is a certain aspect of a modern day superhero or even Robin Hood to his strong principles and sense of right and wrong.  

     

    6977769 There are some interesting connections between the two novels, including two older female characters, one in each book, one of whom challenges Reacher to question some of his basic assumptions about himself, and one of whom Reacher, in turn, challenges about her own assumptions.  There are interesting parallels and contrasts here, with Reacher championing the underdog (not surprising) but also perhaps attempting to redeem himself after a perceived failure in the previous novel.  I am probably reading more than is there, but a book that is a quick, gripping, fun read, but which also has a little something upon which to reflect is not so bad. I continue to be hooked.

     

    IMG_4766 Last night there was no reading and I seem to have been at least moderately successful in my knitting.  I am working on a scarf, a scarf inspired by a piece already in my closet, and I do want to finish it and wear it even though it is possible it will only see limited wear before next fall.  The fact that I have been knitting the same six-inch section of scarf over and over again for a week has not helped my state of mind, although I can't honestly say if I am knitting badly because I am frustrated or if I am frustrated because I am not focusing on my knitting.  I suspect it is a combination of all these things, as well as just being tired of still not having things sorted out the way I want them.  I sort and toss, sort and toss, and the mountains seem to grow. I know I am making progress but it seems so endless.  Perhaps an evening where I actually ripped fewer rows than I knit is a step in the right direction and a promise of good things to come.  Soon enough I will have a pretty new scarf.  Soon enough I will have a nifty new room of my own filled with yarn and fabric and books.  Soon enough I will have my own space to create.  After all it took me four years to let things build to this point, why should I expect to have conquered it all in four short months?

  • 77 Shirts

    I was never one of those wives who had to dress her husband, until recently at least, but many many things are different now than they used to be, which perhaps partially explains why I let things get so out of hand.  G always did his own shopping, and although I did most of the laundry, he ironed his own shirts, polished his shoes and generally handled most of his wardrobe maintenance himself.  Oh I would occasionally buy him something nice, just as he would buy nice things for me, but generally we were of like minds where clothes were concerned and neither one of us was likely to show up in something that would embarrass the other, so we left each other to our own devices.

     

    Only in retrospect, did I realize how much of a burden the weight of maintaining his clothes had become to G.  He never asked for help; in fact he turned it down when I offered, but as he grew more confused his closet became a burden and it became more and more chaotic.  It was so chaotic in fact, that after I managed to unearth some of his clothes when he came home from the nursing home and moved downstairs to a new bedroom and closet, I dreaded the thought of ever having to open those closet doors again.  I put it off.

     

    Until last week.  Last week I tackled the master bedroom closets, his and hers.  I am still working on them.  I would think that my closet would be easier, as I had been weeding clothes as I lost weight, but the difference is only marginal.  My closet was filled with yarn and fabric and things I moved from other rooms in the house during the big switch.  It was unusable.  In fact I had been using the "sewing table" as a closet, stacking the dozen or so non-handknitted pieces I had been wearing on its surface in lieu of a closet.  Something needed to be done.  I needed to find spring clothes.  I needed to finally claim my space as my own and stop using it as a dumping ground for all the stuff that littered my life, both physically and mentally.

     

    G's closet is both easier and more daunting. Together we pulled out the few pieces that he remembers and wants and are still in good shape.  The rest can go. I am overwhelmed by the quantity, 77 shirts alone, most of them forgotten.  My plan had been to pull out the better things and donate them and I started with the shirts, separating the better labels:  Brooks, Charvet, Paul Stewart, Robert Talbot, but as the pile grew, I realized that the dust was overwhelming, that everything would need to be washed, and that if the shirts were washed they would also have to be ironed and the task would be never ending. As I looked at the shirts again, I realized how worn they were, how old, worn, used, loved, pushed back in the closet as new shirts were acquired and simply never discarded, a personal history in old shirts.

     

     

  • The Invisible Gorilla

    Sometimes I wonder if I just happen to read books in a particular order, or if the connections my mind makes between books I read and the general thoughts and themes of my life at any given moment are just a grand illusion, a construct of the mind geared at making sense of the world.

     

    7783191 The Invisible Gorilla is a very interesting book which addresses just this issue, along with others.  As you can probably infer from the title, the authors are the psychologists who ran that now rather well-known experiment where the participants either noticed, or failed to notice, a person in a gorilla suit walking through a basketball court while two teams of players were passing balls back and forth between them.   But there is more to this book than just this particular experiment and this particular illusion, the illusion of attention.  The book addresses the way we think our brains work, and therefore to some extent the way we think the world works, and how we deceive ourselves into thinking we are more in control of our brains and by extension the world than is actually the case.

     

    The book basically revolves around six "illusions" devoting one chapter to each.

        1.    Attention.  

        2.    Memory. 

        3.    Confidence.      

        4.    Knowledge.  

        5.    Causation.  

        6.    Potential.  

    I think the book is well balanced between the stories used to illustrate the points and the research being discussed.  The authors also make some very good points, tackling a host of popular and recent targets covering a wide range of situations and cover them well.  Some of the points made are likely to make any reader reconsider previously held opinions.  And this, I believe is what I like about the book the most.  It has made me realize that I should perhaps be less hard on myself as well as perhaps be a bit less self-secure and judgemental concerning the "mistakes" and actions of others.   After all, our brains have gotten us where we are, whether one deems that good or ill, so perhaps we should not be all too hard on them.  Despite the wording of the title, I am not sure our brains actually deceive us, but more that we deceive ourselves in our search for meaning and security and control, just as I deceive myself finding patterns where there are none.

     

    But of course there are connections.  One of the protagonists of The Big Short, Eisman, appears in one of the chapters in The Invisible Gorilla.   Other connections are not perhaps so obvious buy may still be there.  It is likely for example that bond traders in general possess a high degree of confidence, and it may be dangerous to assume that confidence implies knowledge.   A character in a novel only believes what he can see, but what he sees is probably only part of the picture and is, even then, what he does see is subject to interpretation by his own brain and may not accurately reflect reality.

     

    There is much to think about here, but I'll still make my patterns and connections.  Patterns are the way we define the world and our place in the world.  It is also wise to occasionally remember that what we think we know may not be what we think it is at all.

     

     

  • Pink Teeth

    These little rose-pink strips have fascinated me the last couple of days.

    IMG_4749

    Toward the end of last week I was helping a fairly new knitter who wanted to make a pair of fingerless-mitts, and I agreed to get her started.  In my head, I was thinking simple stockinette stitch, but no, she had a pattern for beautiful lace gloves that had captured her fancy, and she really wanted to jump right in and knit them.  The pattern called for a separate band at the top of the glove, which is knit flat, and it seemed like this would also be a good test piece to see how difficult she would find the pattern, so I knit a couple of repeats while she watched to get her started.  Then I sent her off on her way. I will see her again later in the week.

     

    Saturday I finished knitting the pieces to the blue/gray sweater, and I was thinking about those fingerless mitts.  I didn't have the pattern, or know its source, but I was pretty sure that I remembered it, and thought I might knit a couple of bands for a future pair of gloves while it was still in my head.  You see the results above.

     

    IMG_4748 These will be sewn together at the ends and then I will pick up stitches along the flat edge and knit, in the round, down toward the hands.  I see that both patterns are upside down.  The pointy jagged edge will be the top of the gloves, pointing up toward the elbow. I am looking forward to finishing these as I am rather fond of these top borders, but I haven't yet looked at my stitch books and chosen a lace pattern for the body of the gloves.  

    There is no rush.  I am sincerely hoping that the time for fingerless mitts will soon be over, although we are still getting nights in the 30s and the days have not been consistently warm.

     

    In the meantime, I think I should go fish that blue-gray sweater out of my knitting bag and get it blocked so that it can be assembled and finished.  We are having perfect weather for that combination of linen and wool and lightweight layers.

     

     

  • Morning on the Hudson

    IMG_4738

    Sometimes life catches me by surprise and takes my breath away.  This photo doesn't capture the glory of the light on the Hudson River yesterday morning, but it is close enough.

     

    Saturday had been cold, dreary and rainy, a day befitting my mood which was sad, depressed and lonely. Sunday filled me with joy and accomplishment and refilled my reserves and reminded me of all the good things, the things I have accomplished, the things I love about where I live.

     

    I have no regrets about the decisions I have made; they have been the right decisions for me and the people I love.  But accepting a course of action, even knowing it is the right thing to do, does not necessarily always make actually living with the consequences of the decision easy. Sometimes the weight of responsibility, of the choices I have made, seems like a burden to heavy to bear and despair overtakes me.  All I want is my house back.  All I want is my life back.

     

    But this is my life.  These are my choices. And I knew what I was doing even if I didn't fully appreciate the repurcussions.  I suspect that this is a necessary state, this not fully understanding what we are getting ourselves into until after we have jumped in feet first.    Otherwise why even get out of bed in the morning?

     

    But then, if I hadn't gotten out of bed I wouldn't have seen the sun on the Hudson.

     

    And I am lucky to have friends who support me and support me when the dark winds blow and when the sun shines through, who know that these moments are just wisps and hold my hands as I walk through the fog.

     

     

     

  • Two Books

    6463967My reading of The Big Short, was drawn out a bit, not because the book wasn't good but because while I was reading it I was also watching The Civil War on PBS.  Although the situations are completely different, there are similarities that made my blood boil.   

     

     

    The book was entertaining and informative. Lewis is a good writer, and his technique of portraying the financial crisis and the mortgage-backed security market through a small set of social misfits who saw the huge potential downside of the market was a good choice.  I found the story gripping, and I also found that Lewis's circular story-telling technique was helpful in painting an understandable picture of a system out of control and a society on the verge of collapse.   And yes, I am comparing the financial markets to a society in and of themselves, a society that has the potential to take everything else with it.

     

    Although the main characters around which this story evolved were social, and to some extent financial market, outsiders, and although in the end their gamble was right and they made a lot of money, the fact of that they were right did not make them any happier.  There is a message in that.  Sometimes the view is sharper from the outside looking in.  At the same time society does not necessarily want to be reminded of its failures, and betting against one's society and a large driving force of culture may be exhilirating, but being right is not always an uplifting experience.  Even when we know we are right, sometimes we just want to be proven wrong, and even in their success, there is a good bit of discomfort in Lewis's portrayal of his main characters after the crash.  Words of warning perhaps.  Words that are basically unheeded, as it is quite evident that although the crash occurred, there have been no fundamental changes in the mind set and the systems that gave birth to the cataclysm.  A system that rewards people for callous indifference, for taking risks without regard to the consequences, that emphasizes short term gain over long term growth, that rewards callousness and outright greed is a bad system.  The people who get caught up in that system are not necessarily bad people, but the system corrupts.  People will follow rewards.  The mindset of making money by screwing someone else, ends up being a system in which most people are screwed.  The entire idea that one can make money by screwing people, and that people who practice this mindset live at the pinnacle of our society should give us pause.  There is nothing different here from Feudal lords and kings who had little regard for the serfs who maintained their land.  There is nothing different here from wealthy plantation owners who plunged a society into a war it could not win just so they could maintain their protected lifestyle built as it was on bondage and indifference to humanity.  Except that this time however little blood was shed and the perpetrators, for the most part, came out ahead.

     

    241388 After reading Lewis I needed a novel.  I was hoping for something uplifting, but really I just grabbed something off the shelf.  I picked up Chasing Fireflies by Charles Martin, a book I had originally purchased on a visit to Knoxville and never gotten around to reading.  I knew nothing about the author or the novel, but the prose and the story had intrigued me.

     

    It is a good novel.   The novel meanders a bit between past and present, intertwining the stories of the three main characters, but Martin handles this well and effectively.  The characters are well drawn with depth in the relationships between them.  The characters draw the reader in and although the ending was somewhat redemptive, I give the author credit for not resolving all the story lines and leaving somethings unexplained and unresolved.  

     

    There were some downsides.  There are some glaring factual errors. Sometimes the pacing was off a bit.  Much of the direction of the book is pretty predictable, but in the end this is not really a book about the plot but about the characters and their development, about surfaces and shadows, about what is hidden and what is revealed, about the relationship between fathers and sons specifically, but also about relationships in general, and how we are all looking for someone or something to fill the hole in our chest. Often we are looking in the wrong place.  If we are lucky we find it.  If we are very lucky we find it has been with us all along.

     

    But the story doesn't get to its resolution easily.  There is much pain, fear, despair and general nastiness in this book.  It does not paint a rosy picture of the human condition, and yet it is a book filled with hope, a reminder that there is hope.  I found it deeply enjoyable and deeply satisfying.

  • More Early Spring Flowers

    IMG_4721 The small irises and crocuses continue to bloom, filling in the gaps and now carpeting the new front landscaping bed.  Soon enough the greenery will be up and this bed will pass into its summer garb of textured greens, but for now, when the rest of the world remains brown, the lilacs and purples are a constant source of joy.

     

    Even though I have been gardening and planting for a long time, and you would think that I would take the return of the plants for granted, each year, when new shoots arrive and the treasures planted the previous season return to greet the world, my heart does a little dance of joy.

     

    IMG_4719 Now the hellebores, whose green leaves braved the onslaught of winter, looking perhaps a little tired after the months of snow have perked up, put out new leaves and are bursting into bloom.  These are my first hellebores and I am thrilled to see them, battle scarred though the leaves may be, especially since I am planning to plant more.  The light ones, "green heron" are the first to bloom, but I see deep purple buds proliferating on their darker cousins, helleborus hybridus "onyx odyssey" as well.

     

    I did not get as far with the bulb planting as I had hoped last year, so there are no fields of flowers, but this small front yard is really all that is necessary, warm and welcoming and filled with joy.

  • A Concert, Bare Legs, And Random Mental Meanderings

    Yesterday G and I took another one of our occasional Sunday outings to attend a concert in Beacon followed by dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant, Cafe Maya. 

     

    I was expecting spring-like temperatures, and it was warm, but not as warm as the previous day,  when I was over-dresssed for the spirit of the weather if not the actual temperatures.  I felt like wearing a dress, but I knew it wasn't quite warm enough for the Stella McCartney but I didn't feel like wearing a wool dress either.  I rustled around in the closet, which is once again in transition due to both seasonal and weight-related changes.  

     

    Sunday I came up with this dress, purchased from Athleta last fall and thought it might be just perfect.  Truthfully I was a little on the chill side. Before the cold weather set in, I often wore this with leggings and ballet flats, but I didn't feel like leggings yesterday.  I think I was seduced by the spring-like warmth and sunshine of Saturday, so I decided to bare my gams.

     

    But of course Sunday, while about the same in absolute temperature, felt cooler as it remained cloudy all day and I was a little cold.   And so I fretted.  I could have worn leggings.  I could have worn tights or even sheer hose.  I could have worn something else altogether. I worried that my 53-year-old knees were no longer up to the exposure.  I haven't given up sheer hose yet, and given that I was attending a chamber concert where the average age seems to be around 75 with 90% of the audience being over the age of 60, classic nylons would not have been out context.  In fact the bare legs were probably more out of place.  

     

    So I spent part of the concert fretting about my knees, my bare legs,and various other things.  This was not really the fault of the concert or my sartorial choices as I have been sleeping badly and have been somewhat overwrought over a situation that I am not ready to share.  Not to worry, it has nothing to do with G, but it has rendered me occasionally unable to sit and just enjoy the moment.

     

    But the concert was, overall, quite good. We heard the Jupiter String Quartet playing Schumann, Kurtag and Mozart and the concert was just lovely, although I am not quite sure what I think of Kurtag quite yet.  The Kurtag piece was "Hommage à  Mihály András" and it was very interesting, and at times arresting, but I could not wrap my head around it.  This may be more a reflection of the state of my head than the music, but this is something I will only figure out with more exposure.

     

    I do think it is telling though, that although I loved the Schumann Quartet in A Major, and I thought the performance of the Mozart Quintet in A Major was fine, I could not really keep my attention on the Mozart.   The music was very familiar of course, it is a work I with which I can easily hum along, unlike the Kurtag, and perhaps that was part of the problem.  As I listened my mind wandered.  I started off listening and then, as I listened, I suddenly remembered that this piece was played in an episode of M.A.S.H, I believe the final episode and I was flashing back to that episode.  This led me to consider if I knew any other films in which the clarinet quintet was used.  Well, Mozart is very common in film and television, almost to the point of being ubiquitous, which I do not generally think is a good thing, as if we hear something enough we start to take it for granted and stop actually listening, as I was not listening yesterday afternoon.  I can think of lots of films with Mozart, but the only one I could remember with this actual piece was Venus, which we watched recently, and perhaps that too, the film's position in my fairly recent memory, along with my own scattered state, is what prompted my absent-minded musings.

     

    So it was a fine afternoon if scattered, and I prefer, if I am going out to a concert, to be able to focus more on the work of the musicians.  I feel I owe them that.  But it was good.  G enjoyed it as well, although he is gradually becoming more and more scattered again, as if that Sunday of the first concert we attended was the high point of this recent reversal and now we are back on course, although still a long way from where we were.

     

  • An almost Tragedy

    Remember Louisa?  I shrank her.

     

    I was devastated and incredibly angry at myself as well because I knew what I had done practically instantly, and I. KNEW. BETTER.  

    Too Late.

     

    I loved this sweater so much I wore it four or five times in the first week after I finished it.  I loved it so much I could have just never taken it off, except that, well, I'm not that kind of person.  After a week, it needed washing, and I washed it with another sweater that was very close to the same color.  I knew the other sweater would need a trip through the spin cycle before laying it flat to dry because it is a heavy rayon and it gets rather large and unwieldy when wet.  But I planned to just roll Louisa up in a towel while I transfered the other sweater to the washing machine and spin it out. Then I would lay out both sweaters on my blocking board to dry.

     

    Except that G and I had a big fight that evening.  Not a fight about anything important; I don't even remember the cause.  It was the kind of acrimonious fight couples have over the most insignificant things, the kind of fight that was probably actually a reflection of individual stresses each of us were undergoing separately that just happened to boil over at that same moment.  But still, it was a fight, and I was not thinking clearly.  

     

    I am sure you know what happened.  I threw both sweaters in the washing machine, and when they came out I was surprised to see a very small Louisa.  I stretched and pulled and stretched some more and was practically in tears when I went to bed.  I knew I would knit another but it killed me.

     

    The next morning Louisa was still pretty damp so I pulled out the iron and steamed her and stretched her a little more.  She was still small, but she seemed like she might just fit.  Indeed she did.  She is a little smaller, a little more fitted, and about 2 inches shorter.  The fabric is a little tighter but by no means heavy or thick.  It seemed that she fit well enough that I might love her again someday, perhaps next fall, and I was about to put her away.  I was still too wrapped up in mourning the sweater she had been to see the beauty of the sweater she had become.

     

    But G thought she looked nice.  And I took her to my LYS, where everyone there thought she looked nice too, and since a few days had passed, I could see that they were right.  My eyes were no longer blinded by frustration.

     

    IMG_4690 Once again I have been wearing Louisa.  I must admit I am very happy with the way she has turned out. Happy enough that I might knit another one in the same yarn and intentionally shrink it as well; or not.

     

    I realize, that she actually looks better, the slight fulling of the yarn has firmed up the shaping of the sweater so it is a little more defined, and this length, two inches shorter is more versatile and can be worn with a wider variety of bottoms, such as the wide leg pants here, which are 7 or 8 year old Banana Republic trousers that are now almost too large, they keep sliding down on my hips.

     

    The only problems with this sweater are that the sleeves also shrank in length and the shoulders are now just a tad too narrow.

     

    The sleeve length may not even be a problem as I tend to fold or push up most sleeves to better facilitate the wearing of bracelets.  The new sleeve length actually hits at about the top of the cuffs shown in the photo, and I pushed them up a wee bit to show a little skin between cuff and sweater.    Apparently I tend to prefer my sleeves, if they are full length, either very narrow and close fitting, or fairly dramatic which would of course forestall the wearing of bracelets all together.

     

    But sleeve length and shoulder width are easy fixes which can easily be accommodated in my next version of this sweater.  There will be a next version.  I have already have a vision of it in my head and have already purchased the yarn.  But that is a project for the next transitional season.  Now I am feeling the need for some summer knitting.

     

     

     

  • This and That Around the House

    Well, here I am back at the blog but I haven't really worked out a time yet for being back an therefore it seems that my mind, lacking the structure of the old, "if it is X AM it must be blog-time" routine, wants to dart hither and yon.  The hardest thing so far me about adjusting to having help is perhaps just that, adjusting, and my schedule seems to require constant adjustment.  I am not by nature amoeba-like in my ability to adjust to changes in circumstances, so at times it is a bit trying.

     

    IMG_4693 This week we are watching Ken Burns' series, The Civil War, on PBS.  My initial reaction was "seen that", many times over actually, but G wanted to watch it and I was drawn in as well.  Each night I am saddened, angered, and brought to tears at least once as I get wrapped up the the turmoils of men, history, stupidity, tragedy and the occasional kindnesses of strangers.

     

    But this steady diet of evening television time has been good for my knitting and I finished the first piece of my next sweater last night.    I'm just going to post this teaser for now and say that I am using a wool, linen, and baby alpaca blend which I hope will prove excellent as a transitional piece for layering.  I am determined to finish it by the end of next week.

     

    While I am on the subject of transitional garments, I also went shopping this week.  Actually I went shopping twice, once looking for some new things I saw in the JCrew and Talbots catalogs, but none of the items I sought were available in the local stores, or nearly local as J Crew is over an hour away.  If anything my trip to the J Crew store actually discouraged me from attempting to order anything from the current catalog as I was so strongly disappointed in the merchandise available in the store and frustrated by the experience in general that I had about decided to just live with what I have currently in the closet.

     

    IMG_4678 But then a friend was showing off a fabulous new coat she got at Kohls, a lovely soft sage-green, transitional piece, and I promptly ran over to Kohls and bought my own. The sage made me look rather bilious around the edges and the black, despite the fact that it is pretty shiny, was a much better choice.  I like the weight, I like the fact that it dips down at the side seams, and I like the fact that at less than $50 it is not a major commitment.  If it gets me through a season or two I will be happy, especially since my previous black trench, a lightweight little number by Drizzle is looking pathetically sad and dated and is ready for retirement.

     

    The truth is that I hadn't been in Kohls' in at least 4 years, and although I had heard good things about Vera Wang's Simply Vera line for Kohls, I have never been particularly attracted to Vera Wang's various explorations beyond the realm of wedding gowns.  I may have to reconsider.  I picked up a couple of pieces which I felt offered far better style, construction, and value for the money than the merchandise available at the Danbury J. Crew.  They are not pieces for the ages perhaps, but I have come to accept with age, that little that is cut from cloth truly is ageless.  I can accept that.