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A Friday Five

Look! Dare I say I might actually complete a post on a Friday?

This post will be but a simple thing, and probably a bit fragmented, but the “five things Friday” format seems to be a good starting place, as I pull myself back into regular postings, balancing of the simple and the day to day with the wider ruminations of my meandering mind. Perhaps acceptance is also key: acceptance that I am one of those people who are restless of mind; one of those people who always dreams of doing more; one of those people who is never bored. I live in a world define by the concept of a week. Even though the pacing of my own time is somewhat more fluid, I still begin each week filled with grand plans of everything that will be done by weeks’ end, and, somehow, I still fall short of my own goals.

So, where are we this week?

Poinsettias: I attended a workshop/demonstration at Stanley’s Greenhouse, focused on holiday arrangements. The event was inspiring and although I have never considered arrangements to be one of my gifts, I found myself excited by possibilities. I was also inspired by the variety of Poinsettieas that were filling the greenhouse, especially the variegated variety shown above. Apparently I have given poinsettieas short shrift, a situation that may need to change. But first, Thanksgiving travel, and the opening of the Christmas boxes, newly out of storage.

Pickled Ginger: I opened the first of three pint-sized jars of pickled ginger I put up in October. Oh my! It is good. It is the best pickled ginger I have ever tasted. Not jut something pretty and a bit sharp/sweet on the plate. This ginger is something I want to use in its own right. I got a little overwhelmed the week I put this up, and it is not particularly evenly sliced, not as decorative as it perhaps could have been, but the flavor is superb. I added it to an impromptu stir-fry of chicken and bell peppers, and it elevated the dish to something special. Now, despite the fact that I initially worried that I would never use three pints of pickled ginger, I am worried that I will run out before I can make more.

A Book: Recently it seems that my reading is somewhat circular meaning that as I read each new book I find myself circling back to books I have read before, mostly recent reads, but often books deeply filed away in the interstices of my reading memory. And so it was this week, when I was reading a new book by my friend Rob Gieselmann, Irony and Jesus, that I encountered this statement:

How many times have I sunk in water because I could see surf and gale only, having lost sight of the other side.

And, a few lines later, “go to the other side”. Such a simple thing and often also such a difficult task. In this instance these words also provided a spark of insight, a coalescence of sorts, about how to write about Deborah Levy’s new novel The Man Who Saw Everything, a book I finished reading last week. In this novel Saul Adler is attempting to cross Abbey Road. It sounds like such a simple and inconsequential thing, and in one sense it is, but as the novel progresses we learn that nothing in this short novel is what it seems. Truly. Nothing. What seems inconsequential proves full of weight, and what should be full of weight almost vanishes in the ether.

I am in one sense torn here. I believe The Man Who Saw Everything to be an incredibly beautiful and powerful novel, one that I find both essential and impossible. It is a novel I recognize that many people will not be able to stand. Truly the story itself is simple, straightforward and a bit boring. But the novel is not about the story. And I cannot tell you what the novel is about without disrupting, even perhaps aborting your experience of the novel. It is, actually a novel whose meaning and interpretation is multi-layered, and that in and of itself is a marvelous feat of writing and design. At the moment I see a novel about fragmentation, about who we are, how we become the people we become, but also about chance, distraction, care and carelessness, and about the possibility and impossibility of memory. Our memories shape who we are, but who we are today also shapes our memory.

Another Book: And this of course sent me back to another book, a book I read in September (I still haven’t caught up with September books). This book is also about memory, or, more exactly, Shafak uses memory as a vehicle to tell the story of a life: the life of a woman, the life of a town, a country, a culture. This is a poetic novel, a turbulent novel, a novel that could seem overwhelmingly bleak except that it is not. It is a novel filled with beauty and hope. Shafak’s poetic way of setting a scene, of describing a place, made this reader feel palpably present. Beautiful, powerful, touching, absurd. It is a novel about Turkey. It is a novel about women. In fact it is a novel about all of humanity, its joys and its tragedy, captured, if only for a moment.

A Sock: After a brief interlude where I worked on other projects, I have returned to sock knitting. Necessity called. I do need another pair of socks, and although it would be easy enough to buy such a thing, I prefer the ones that are knit by hand, simultaneously luxurious and practical. I turned the heel on the second sock last night, perhaps staying up a little later than I should to be sure if was finished. It is now smooth sailing to the end. Hopefully it will be finished this busy weekend, but then of late it seems all weekends are busy. Hopefully it will be finished and blocking before I embark on Thanksgiving travel, ready and waiting for me upon my return.

November 22, 2019
Monday Miscellany

No apologies.

I have made great progress in terms of settling in — finding a balance between my needs for order and creative disorder that feels comfortable and functional moving forward. The house is settled now, at least as settled as it can be for the moment, which, I suppose is all one can really hope for in terms of any aspect of life. I am not all unpacked, but I don’t really need to be; I simply need to be able to function and do the things that are important for me to do. Next up is the studio, which remains a little more chaotic than I would prefer. But again, I am simply looking for balance, not perfection, that point where I can find what I need, where I can play and make a mess without it devolving into chaos, and where refinements can occur as I feel the need and motivation.

Although I did pretty much absent myself from social media and blogs last week, it was not all work:

I finished one sock and cast on for the second.

The landscapers have brought in the shrubs, the “public face” of the garden. And I have planted one small flower bed, along the driveway at the base of the retaining wall going up to the circle:

18 irises and 20 geraniums. It felt so good to be planting, to have my hands in the dirt, to experience the hopeful practice of spreading out roots, of settling and nurturing. But the soil was not completely what it should be. One area was filled with small rocks and I had to dig them out.

The experience reminded me not to move forward too quickly. There was another section of bed I was thinking of planting this fall, one in back, that I showed you drawings for in a previous post. But I realize now that planting is premature. I have all winter to plan, and, as I have suitable weather, time and energy, to dig up beds, improve the soil, and prepare for future planting. This work, tedious as it may be, is also fulfilling, serving to reacquaint rusty muscles with the skills of gardening, as well nurturing a less stressful place to plant in the spring, both for the gardener and the garden.

Since planting the weather has turned cool. There have been a couple of frosts. And my thoughts are turning to sweaters. I have been working on Lisa Richardson’s Cowl Cardigan from the new Rowan Mode collection. I am really happy with the way this is knitting up. Even though double moss stitch is somewhat slow, I love the depth it is giving to the yarn, Kid Classic, in a rather soft pink, named Floss.

On this Monday morning this week looks to be a quiet one, and I perhaps relish that after a marathon of concerts and social events. My bed is made, I’ve been to the gym, and I feel fortunate that I can content myself with starting a load of laundry and picking up my knitting.

November 11, 2019
Five Things

Hopefully still on a Friday.

I am home. I am supposed to be out again but have been a flake and cancelled at the last minute. I don’t know if I had a allergic sinus infection or a cold/but all I want to do now is sleep. I’ve taken three naps today, and lost this post more than once, so I accept that this is where I find myself.

1.First, for pleasant surprises. I was sorting through photos this morning and through one of those marvelous serendipitous alignments, a photo I took of a hydrangea blossom in California showed up directly above the lettuce from last week’s farmer’s market (posted on instagram). Aren’t they both marvelous?

2.Next, I am marvelling at how life’s little upsets sometimes deliver new joys and suprises. My computer is nigh unto death. Granted, I grumbled about troubles with Safari months ago, and have suffered a series of fixes and subsequent failures. Then, one system failure became two, then three. Still, I managed to put off a decision. When application failure number four occurred I accepted that the impending demise of the Mac, but my budgetary priorities will not accommodate a new computer at this time. Enter the iPad, which formerly did not use enough. Perhaps that is changing.

I’ve been blogging on my ipad, which, with a keypad, is proving quite useable, aside from minor glitches like needing to save my work more often to avoid loss. The iPad has easily allowed me to easily play with collages and manipulating photos, like the picture above, of my cute new travel blow dryer. I went to the sewing retreat with a book I didn’t reead and wished I had a blow dryer as my hair was at an awkward stage of the growout process. Then I discovered this tiny dryer in a tiny case that also holds all my styling supplies and fits in my little 21” suitcase with plenty of room to spare. I took it to California and still had room for a knitting project, which I ended up not needing. I came home with 20 new balls of yarns for class projects (only 2 of which I purchased)

3. One of those projects is this wonderful Trailing Vine Pillow (seen in inset) by Dee Hardwick, from the new Seasonal Palette book. Although I haven’t resume work on the pillow yet, I love every project in that book and every color in that palette.

4. I also came home to grass, mulch, and plantings. The house looks great. Trees and some shrubs are not in yet. The summer was hot and dry and long, and neither the trees, nor the remaining plantings for the front street-front border, are available yet. I picked up 13 blueberry bushes down at Overhill Gardens in Vonore a few weeks ago, and am happy that they were planted, as were another 14 azaleas I purchased a few weeks ago for the back border. Below are the blueberries being loaded into my trunk for the trip home, probably a silly photo, but I thought it was marvelous that all thirteen shrubs fit and travelled home safely.

5.Last, but far from least, below is a picture of my grandson playing Bongo at his school’s “Grandparent’s Day” celebration. His class choir was singing “Jolene” and I believe the solo was an improvisation; he pulled it off quite well, and it was by far the best part of that particular performance.

It is still Friday. I can post this, and perhaps go turn the heel on a sock before calling it a night. Have a wonderful weekend.

October 25, 2019
Into the Deep

I have been in Redondo Beach, CA, at the first North American Rowan Knitting retreat and it has been absolutely fabulous, both in terms of meeting wonderfully creative women, but also in terms of the workshops and I am leaving filled with inspiration and ideas. I am also leaving with at least six more projects in my head, four of them on needles (to add to the three I already have going at home). A tad excessive yes, but also exactly what I needed to get myself over the hump from wanting to return to the creative life but treading too cautiously, admittedly secretly convinced that, despite any claims about being an artist, or hoping to be an artist, that I am a good craftsperson but without an artistic bone in my body. And there I was suddenly in the deep water, ready to become a dolphin, swimming and leaping and hoping to never wash back up on shore.

The process started Monday morning with Dee Hardwicke, who had transformed the L’Atelier store into a magical workroom filled with inspiration, and not a small amount of terror, at least for me. I learned we were going to draw, chart what we drew into something we could knit, and then proceed to begin knitting. I was nervous about the drawing part, convinced as I am that drawing is not part of my skill set.

First we started with hard pastels, and simply making lines on paper. Everyone’s paper was different. Mine was pretty, but there is nothing very artistic here….

Then we were supposed to draw something. Dee suggested a leaf and for those of us who were more timid drawers, that alone seemed ambitious, although there were others who were far more confident and ambitious. Surprisingly, I found I enjoyed making leaves. I enjoyed working with the pastels. Perhaps my struggle with drawing is more a matter of medium; perhaps I should try again, working with pastels, or even watercolors, rather than the hard lines of pencils. Just the act of drawing itself was a revelation. Somehow however, I managed to take a mirror-image photo. I don’t know how I did that, or how to undo it either.

Dee then proceeded to show us how to graph our images onto a knitters grid made to the tension of the yarn we were to be using.

And we were off….

Dee had many samples to inspire us as we chose colors…

We knit much of the afternoon. I truly enjoyed the process, loved being reminded of how much my younger self had adored color work and intarsia. I felt connected to some part of myself that had been put aside during the years when the kind of focused knitting that this kind of color work requires was impossible.

I ended up ripping out my knitting as soon as I returned to my room. Not because I didn’t enjoy it, but because my gauge was too loose, and it was becoming difficult to maintain tension. I used the suggested size needles, even though I know that I often need to size down. I was not at my best that first day, having walked into the Los Angeles air only to be suddenly pounded by massive congestion. I thought I had caught a cold from my grandson, but now I think it may be simply a sinus attack from something going on in the air in the LA area. I immediately cast on again, on smaller needles, making smaller progress between other workshops and social gatherings. Already I’ve learned from the process, have changed the pattern of my stitching slightly, hopefully to add more dimension and life, but I won’t really know if it worked until I am further along.

In retrospect, although October is not yet over, I can say that for all I dragged myself kicking and screaming through this month, October has become in one sense almost a creative boot-camp, jumpstarting passions for fabric, food, yarn and revealing depths, perhaps, that I would have been reluctant to explore on my own.

October 23, 2019
Abandon all hope….

Of coherent thought at least, of being able to string together sentences, or even more so, whole paragraphs…..

I am still in nesting mode I suppose, and scattered. There are days when I have plans and ideas and those plans are constantly interrupted by other necessities. Then, when all is quiet I pick up the pieces and try to finish the myriad half-done projects. It is minor. It is a privilege actually, but that does not mean there are not days when I do not wonder if I will ever be able to think again, much less write. At least I am able to connect my computer to the internet, and the solution was all my doing. After a couple of phone calls, I realized that all Apple support was doing was trying to follow a chart, a rote if-this, then-that routine that was skirting around my issues and never getting to the heart of it. Sounds like a metaphor for my life at the moment. In which case there is hope after all.

This past weekend was the first weekend in which there were no workmen here. You might think I would have gotten a lot done and I would argue that this was not the case, that I spent a lot of time just reveling in the silence, and that would be true. It was also a working weekend for me, as the first weekend of the month is my altar guild weekend, and I had a funeral on Saturday and then church services on Sunday. I don't really like Saturday funerals because they interfere with my Saturday Farmer's Market habit, but in the end, doing what you want to do is not where meaning comes from in life. Meaning comes from helping others. And need rarely cooperates with want; helping someone when you are least inclined to do it because you are tired, or frustrated, or had been planning to do something else taps into the essence of our humanity. When we interrupt our own ego-driven pursuits and help others we open ourselves up to joy.

Besides, altar guild suits me. I like the idea of making sure that things work, that everything is pretty, and that what you need is there and ready, and not having to be the public face of anything.

I finished organizing the kitchen, putting away the last few things that were stacked up, waiting to find a home. Oh there are a few glitches here and there, a couple of extra shelves have been ordered, and space is different from my previous kitchens so the organization needs a bit of fine-tuning. But basically it is done, and just in time as well. The painters came in and finished up today, installing the hardware for the windows and the screens, my wonderful side-opening screens, there when I need them and out of sight when I don't.

I spent the biggest part of the weekend organizing books. I'm still only about half done, but it is of course getting easier simply because the pile of unsorted books grows smaller and smaller so finding things is faster. I actually have far more bookshelf space than I need, which seems like a minor miracle, and I may have to space the books out more on the shelves. For a few moments I thought of all the books I gave away and donated before moving to Tennessee 7 years ago, but no, there are actually very few books that have been replaced, and a library needs room to grow….

And finally I spent time knitting and reading Ninth Street Women, which I adore. These women amaze me and I love the way the author interweaves the story with themes from their lives and their art, not necessarily always chronologically but in a way that makes sense in the flow of the art and the relationships, which, to mind at least, is how our experience of life tends to evolve, chronological yes, because we can't avoid time, but also simultaneously separate from that chronology, because what matters to us, and what shapes us, has its own way of interfering with timelines. The knitting is going slowly simply because I knit with linen more slowly than I can knit with wool, but I now see enough color that I eagerly look forward to the next change. My knitting is much like the book in a way then, worth any added effort in the revelation of what appears next.

August 5, 2019
Slow Fruits

In many ways this has been a week in which pent-up frustrations (previously hidden, at least to myself) become increasingly manifest. And yet it was also a week of steady progress, of good times, and continued new beginnings. Like a puff of smoke, those frustrations were freed, apparently only beholden to my own unwillingness to let them go. For that I can thank the power of the spoken word, of naming problems rather shoving them back into the hidden drawers of my psyche, where they had no choice but to fester.

And yet I must also thank the power of handwork, even slow and at times tedious handwork that was not always meditative. I wound skeins of yarn into balls. I did it manually, by draping the yarn around the chair pictured and cannot pretend that I was always happy with the slow process of winding five skeins, five skeins each containing 580 yards of lace-weight linen. I should have done it weeks ago — I could have been knitting, but my darker frustrations were too busy nibbling away at my energy. Of course, now that the yarn has been wound, it is possible that I may move into the studio next week, and that ball winder may be unpacked. It is only a month after move-in, after all. But promises have been made before, and the ability to knit, to knit something I am actually eager to wear, is both a gift and a therapeutic balm.

The yarn is Prism's Euroflaxx Laceweight Linen Layers and it will be used to make Laura Bryant's boxy linen tee from the summer Vogue Knitting magazine, pretty much exactly in the color as shown. I don't subscribe to Vogue Knitting anymore, after being a devoted subscriber since they began publishing again in the 1980s. I have enough knitting patterns, and it is rare that enough appeals to me to keep the magazine. Summer sweaters are difficult given that I live in a place that is both hot and humid in the summer and I prefer neither. But I can wear most "summer" sweaters in the winter here, and perhaps this one even in the warmer transitional months of early summer and fall. Perhaps this is all just an indulgence in wishful thinking. Perhaps I need to travel someplace cold and drafty for the winters so I can wrap myself in wool.

The winding itself was slow. I admit to being spoiled. I miss my yarn winder, and in the missing began to fret about all the unpacked things that I miss, almost all of them are tools for handcraft. The missing fed the sense of tedium and frustration, reminding me of the fragility of our perception of the world, that the difference between tedium and mediation is purely state of mind. Once I was willing to let go of my own perceptions of the self-importance of my time, it became evident that this yarn was probably best being hand-wound. The linen tends to grab onto itself; I myself tend to push myself, and inner demon crying "harder" and "faster" — the combination could have quickly spiraled into a massive tangle. The quickest skein took me a little over an hour, the slowest, most grabby and somewhat tangled skein, took two.

And so it seems that despite my initial petulance, the bitter muttering and grumbling, by the end, the act of winding itself had become something that offered time for quiet and reflection. For all that I say, and do believe, that it is the slow work of our hands, of sustenance and existence, of slow moments with friends that bring meaning, I am also a product of my time. I want instant gratification, easy access, more and more and more. Time and again I have to slow myself and give in to the process itself. Time and again, I must relinquish and be relinquished from the bonds of rushing.

Is in this, the process of living, of doing, of making, that peace is found, in our connection with this place that is actually home, this earth. Perhaps we have fallen too much under the spell of "life is brutish and short" mentality about labor, about the slow physical acts of feeding and clothing ourselves. Joy is in those moments with friends, in the actual labor of our hands, in the making, both of things and connections, not in the consuming. And yes, in this world, consuming isn't just about things, but also about busyness and experiences, about being more and more and more, when what our souls really want is less and even less.

Every day I drive under this crape myrtle, into the construction site that is my backyard. The construction site is filled with busyness, and often ugliness, but also promise. The crape myrtle simply hangs there, and is.

July 12, 2019
Quick Update — Some Progress and Some Delays

I finished a couple of sweaters that had been sitting around.

First, a slouchy teal cashmere sweater that I was knitting off and on last year, posting this photo last December:

I finished the knitting in February and blocked the pieces, with full intentions of sewing everything up during March. That never happened for various reasons, but it was the first sweater I put together while I was visiting my mom in Texas.

Sorry, no photo of me wearing it, yet, but already I am looking forward to cashmere weather. The Pattern, named Simple and Relevant, is one of the Sweater of the Month patterns from L'Atelier in Redondo Beach, I think from 2017, and the yarn is DK weight cashmere. Although you can't really see this in the above photo, the sweater is wider at the shoulders and more fitted at the hips, and the sleeves are narrow and closely fitted (which you can see). This was exactly the shape of sweater I was looking for when I started this sweater, having felted a beloved, 10-year old cashmere sweater with a similar shape in the apartment washing machine on the not-so-delicate, hand-wash setting. The pattern calls for a wider boatneck, and the neckline on my sweater is a modified boat, with small amount of drape, which suits me much better.

The second sweater is a summer sweater that I originally knit in 2012. I don't really know why I didn't finish it but suspect it was because I was smaller at the beginning of 2012 than at the end of the year, when George was failing rapidly and I was struggling with depression. I was about 20 to 30 pounds heavier than I am now. In retrospect, now that I have finished and tried on the sweater, I think I was afraid it wouldn't fit so I simply put it in a box and forgot about it. This I will wear now, and it is seasonally appropriate.

Here is the pretty sucky selfie I took in a hotel mirror yesterday morning. The pattern is from Lang Yarns Fatto a Mano #182, published in January 2011, pattern number 67, and it is knit in a cotton ribbon yarn called Sol Dégradé. The original pattern called for a fairly high crew-neck, and I simply lowered it to a more flattering scooped shape. I have lost the piece of paper with the math, but I really don't need the now.

I am moving in to the house today, but I am not sure if I am living there yet. There is at least another week's worth of work in the house itself, but I should be in residence over the next couple of days. It will be an adventure. The studio floor is not yet finished; therefore all fiber-related furniture and materials will be in a temporary holding area and unaccessible. I suppose I should be grateful as this will force me to settle into the house, when I really want nothing more than to be playing in the studio. I have one more (winter) sweater to assemble and finish with me, and some linen yarn to start another summer sweater. I think I will drape that linen yarn around the chair in my hotel room tonight and manually wind it into balls, ready to begin. It is always good to look forward and start something new when one is a little frustrated about the present.

June 19, 2019
A Few End of Year Projects

This will be my last post for 2018. My mom is here until the end of the year, and although we aren't doing anything significant, just hanging out, my thoughts are elsewhere, not on blogging.

I have been entertaining myself with small knitting projects however.

First, I started this cowl for myself, using some yarn in my stash, a skein of Manos del Uruguay's Wool Classica in the deep wine color, and a skein of Colinette's discontinued wool, Skye. The cowl started with different yarns and a pattern. My original yarn choices didn't really work and I ended up ripping and restarting the pattern several times because I didn't like the way the color bands were turning out. Eventually I modified it into something I liked. Consider this my practice cowl.

About the time I figured out what I was doing, and just before the final ripping and reuniting of the wine cowl, I decided I needed to change up my planned gifts for my step-daughter Miriam and knit her a cowl. Family Christmas was on the 23rd and I made this decision around mid-day on the 22nd, so off to the yarn store we went. I picked four yarns, two by Luisa Harding (Trenzar), a variegated yarn by Auracania (Alumco) and another blue yarn for the background. I've already lost the tags so I have no idea what yarn I used.

I tend not to be drawn to high contrast, and I was a little worried, as I knit this, that there would not be enough contrast in the final fabric. But we are both happy with the results.

Family Christmas was a lot of fun. Mom carried on the family tradition of wearing one's bows.

I restarted, and finished my cowl. Historically, I tend to knit cowls and scarfs on a whim, often inspired by a particular yarn. Apparently there is a theme. It seems that all of my scarves, except the grey one I knit earlier the year, all fall in the same color family. Luckily my coats are wine, grey and taupe, but I do think that perhaps I should. branch out, just a little bit, in 2019.

See you next year.

December 28, 2018
A Scarf and A Question

I am surrounded by piles. But they are not piles of obligation. I am not stressed. I am simply in a place of reconsideration and rethinking, hence the piles. But I am also find it is perfectly acceptable to leave those piles in place, to release the pressure to address all questions immediately, perfectly acceptable to just do nothing and see what happens. It is perfectly acceptable to sit back and wait, perfectly acceptable to hold on to the thought that I want to do will become perfectly clear in its own time.

I did knit a scarf for my mom. It is a simple infinity loop. I gave it to her yesterday because it was cold and I decided gifts could be given freely, when the time seemed best, rather than waiting for a specific day.

The idea for the scarf was a last minute inspiration. However the finished result was not what I originally intended. Mom is allergic to wool so the yarns are cotton and a cotton rayon blend. The cotton is Cumulus by Juniper Moon, and it is very soft and fluffy. The multi-colored yarn is Alumco by Auracania. It is lovely, but it also proved too slippery for my initial idea. I knitted and frogged, reknitted and frogged again, working through multiple bouts of knitting and ripping before I settled on this very simple idea.

Although there have been moments of temporary frustration, that entire process of starts and stops, of knitting and ripping and trying again, was actually very calming and freeing. I was reminded that sometimes you just have to sit back and wait, sometimes you have to fail and try again, but eventually your efforts pay off. I think in my younger days I was too concerned with production. I was too concerned with the idea that success in life meant accomplishing as much as possible in as little time as possible. I see now that this was an error. Yes it works, but I wonder if that sense of accomplishment is really a false sense of accomplishment. How many potential rewards were cast off because visible results came too slowly?

What if success in the game of life is not about what you have to show for your time, but who your use of time allows you to become?

December 22, 2018
Holding the Center

I more or less shut the door on the world for a few days. I went out to see a production of a Christmas Carol Friday night, and Sunday was the Christmas pageant at my church. Watching little children always makes me smile, the littlest sheep especially. Somewhere in between the two I watched Alfonso Cuáron's 1995 version of A Little Princess. All three left me smiling and singing happy little songs to myself. I am no opponent of sappy romanticism. Sometimes it is exactly what we need.

That also could have been because I spent much of the weekend working on knitting and handwork. While I watched the movie I did some hand-sewing, alterations and mending on a velvet jacket (above) that I hoped to wear to a couple of holiday parties this week.

But I also did a fair amount of knitting as well, working on a few last-minute gift ideas, as well as a project for myself. The last-minute gift knitting wasn't particularly pressured. I'd already done all my shopping and have everyone covered, this was just inspiration knitting. Ideas popped into my head and my fingers were itching to get started. One should run with inspiration when it hits after all.

By Sunday afternoon I had found my equilibrium again and I managed to catch up with the world a bit, reading the Sunday NY Times and this week's Economist between bouts of knitting and a trip to the gym. Despite the news, and the fact there will be a bit more hustle and bustle over the next few days, I am still humming.

For me, increasingly, this season isn't really about doing more, but about finding the light and holding the center. Somehow in my head thoughts are swirling around a bastardization of two metaphors. First there is the idea of life as an aboriginal longhouse, from Louise Penny's newest novel, Kingdom of the Blind, where "Everyoe we meet, every word we speak, every action taken or not taken lies in our longhouse. With us. Always. Never to be expelled or taken away.". I am juxtaposing that with the idea of a magic circle, rekindled yes, from A Little Princess. This entire holiday season whatever you celebrate or believe, seems to be about maintaining that circle, about lighting a fire of hope and love, and holding what is important close, be it creativity, friends, family. Our longhouse is always full and crowded, the busyness of the world always around us. But within the circle there is love. What is in your circle?

December 17, 2018