Category: murmurs

Mary Beth at The Stitchery  has tagged me! Initially I started to panic, hoped it was a mistake, and wondered if I could disappear into the bowels of the earth.  Well, secretly I was thrilled, like the child I was once was who was always one of the last ones chosen to be on a team during PE.  Terrified, but thrilled.

Here are the rules (lifted from Mary Beth’s blog).  Thank you Mary Beth!

1. someone tags you,
2. you post five things about yourself that you haven’t already mentioned on your blog,
3. you tag 5 people you’d like to know more about

1.  I mentioned the first one in that first paragraph.  I was the kind of child that was never picked in school.  When I was very young it bothered me terribly but I learned that the harder I tried the more I was teased.  So I started pointedly ignoring everyone else, trying to be different, deliberately walking a different path.  I think I was trying to fool myself as much as the others and it didn’t always work, but I think I became much more resilient in the long run.  And although I still secretly want to be "chosen" the popularity game is one game I can’t bring myself to play.

2.  I grew up in a small town in the bible belt in a very protected environment.  Although I was not completely ignorant — I read widely and was familiar with literature, science, world politics, I was completely naive about the world.  I knew racism existed but I didn’t know I had ever encountered it.  I knew homosexuality existed in an abstract intellectual way, but I had not been aware if I had ever seen or encountered it.   I traveled 1500 miles across the country to go to college in the age of sex, drugs, rock & roll, and cynicism as a complete naif.  Although I knew first hand that people were not nice, I believed that liberal intellectual people lived their lives seeking a platonic ideal of goodness and knowledge. 

3.  When I moved away to college I knew the words to every song John Denver and Barry Manilow had ever written. I still probably know most of them.

4.  At one of my first jobs, the company I worked for offered to pay my way through Law School.  I turned them down because I thought I was too shy to be a good lawyer.  I now think I probably would have made an excellent lawyer, but other opportunities have presented themselves.

5.  I knew that I would end up marrying my husband the first time we spoke.  I have never regretted that decision.

Now who to tag?  Always one to over think these things I worry, what if I tag someone who doesn’t want to share things on their blog? What if they don’t do tags?  What if?  What if?  Will I commit some king of faux pas (there is the girl who wasn’t chosen speaking up again).  Oh who cares.  Consider yourself tagged.  Respond if you wish…or don’t.

SewIntriguing , DiaryofaSewingFanatic , Life in LaLaLumay Land ,  Hungry Zombie Couture , Bad Mom Good Mom

For many years the act of baking occupied a primary role in the holiday festivities.  I baked cookies, cakes, various coffee cakes and tea breads, and lovely artisanal breads.  These would all be piled into baskets and distributed to friends and acquaintances.  Even though G is not a lover of cookies, tens of dozens of cookies would roll out, some for the kids and even more to be distributed on gift platters, including my annual cookie platter which I take to the local post-office as a Christmas treat.  I get my mail at the post office and the staff there have always been friendly and helpful.  It seems like it wouldn’t be Christmas if I didn’t bring in my usual, huge, 36" tray piled high with cookies, a tray so overloaded I can barely stagger into the post office from the parking lot. 

But then, about three years ago I found out I had Celiac disease and the urge to bake simply disappeared.  My first attempts at gluten-free baking were not promising, and as I felt somehow betrayed by bread and cookies and cake, I felt very little incentive to work very hard at creating new treats.  I gave it all up, even Christmas baking for others, because those first few years I couldn’t bring myself to buy regular wheat flour and bake all day and not be able to taste any of the results.  As a result there was a big void in my holidays, a void I have struggled to fill.

One year I made various forms of chocolate bark for everyone on the list.  One year I made several types of macaroons.  I had always included macaroons and candies in my holiday baking ritual, but making them alone seemed more like a concession than an actual celebration of holiday baking.

This year I tried something different.  I went to the store and bought a bag of flour and made cookies until the flour ran out.  I made raisin cookies, a long time specialty of this house, big pillows of sweet made by taking two over sized sugar cookies and using them as top and bottom over a filling made of cooked raisins.  I made Tassies, little round cookies with a thumbprint center filled with ginger marmalade or apricot marmalade and topped with rich dark chocolate.  I made brownies, several forms of brownies.  I couldn’t eat a one of them, and yes, I also made macaroons.

It felt good.  I was singing as I baked, and it really feels like Christmas this year.  Most of all just making the cookies has reminded me how much fun I have baking, even though I rarely eat many baked goods any more.  I think I want to explore more gluten-free baking, and next year I want to do more, make more cookies and perhaps even some other things as well.  I don’t have to indulge in the same kind of baking extravaganza as filled my past, but it will be nice to make some things.  And although it was nice to learn that I can still work with wheat flour and bake things for others, it would be even nicer if I can learn to remake some of my old treasures, and find new treasures, so that I can make treats that I can eat and give to others, without their knowing that they are getting something "special" beyond the fact that it was hand-made.  I had forgotten how baking, even though tiring, relieves stress.  I used to bake in college at exam time.  If I was stressed I would reserve the dorm kitchen and cookies would roll out of the oven. I would pile up trays of cookies in the parlors and they would all seemingly evaporate, nary a crumb left behind.

And what does this have to do with knitting?  Nothing really, and yet baking like knitting, makes me feel calm, and happy, and centered in a way.  The last two days have ended in exhaustion, with me falling into my chair and watching whatever movie offers some kind simple, hopefully uplifting story line, that I can half-follow as I concentrate on my knitting.  I knit until I fall asleep, needles still in hand, probably only part-way through a row. 

If the television options are too slim even for my pretty loose standards as to acceptable knitting viewing, I listen to a book on tape.  I just listened to The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, a book recommended to me by more people than I count and also a book I had avoided reading simply because of some kind of mental backlash against the idea of popular, best-selling, uplifting, spiritual tomes, which often seem to be nothing more than uninspired pandering to popular taste.  The same criticism has been leveled at this book, and it is true:  it is filled with cliches, the characters are one-dimensional, the plot is simplistic, there is no complexity or intellectual meat.  You could argue that they are beyond the point of the book, and to an extent this is true.  It is a fable, a parable, a fairy tale and as such it works.  Four hours of listening were certainly more entertaining than the great majority of the seasonal, inspirational, and uplifting movies that are out there, many of which are so saccharine and stridently uplifting that I might gag were I not burying my attentions in my knitting.  Would the book have worked for me if I read it instead of listening?  I don’t know.  I like to savor the act of reading and I am not sure this is a book that bears up to loving perusal.  But I have also long loved fairy tales and fables.  It certainly works as a fable.  Perhaps I enjoyed it simply because it was well read.  Perhaps I enjoyed it because I listened at this time of year, this holiday season which is supposed to celebrate so many of the simple and important things, and which gets lost sometimes in the spirit of "buy more", "decorate more", "throw a better party", and "do more".  It is nice sometimes to put the cynicism and catty comments aside and just enjoy. Knitting has its own simplicity and its own peaceful rhythm; that too sometimes gets lost in the rush to finish and the urge to start new.  Sometimes it is nice to sit and enjoy, to unwind slowly, to fall asleep, yarn and needles in hand.

Too bad it probably won’t last.

We leave early tomorrow for Kansas and will be gone for the week.

My bag is packed and not even full even though I have both knitting projects (mermaid sleeves, and the socks), two books, and the little speaker/charger device for the Ipod so that we can have music in the hotel room.  Even though I have the small 21" suitcase, I am not planning on carrying it on as G wants to check his bag anyway.  That is OK with me.  I don’t mind waiting and I do increasingly mind hauling stuff around with me.  I wish to travel through life as unencumbered as possible, when my back lets me.  I also have an extra feather pillow in that small suitcase, and I am only carrying a purse on the plane, albeit a roomy purse.

We are planning to spend a little time in Lawrence on our way from Kansas City to Manhattan and I have scheduled a visit to Yarn Barn of Kansas.  Gee I guess I can even take my purchases with me, although I was planning on having them shipped.

No computer is making the trip so there will not be likely be any updates until I return a week from Monday.

Be Thankful!

Chaos seems to be the prevailing state of late and it is really beginning to wear down my spirit and energy, so much so that, after months of anticipation, I am considerably considering cutting my time at New York State Sheep and Wool this weekend. 

Perhaps it is just that there are too many unfinished projects right now and even though I look forward to hanging out with friends and meeting bloggers, although I have strong doubts about my ability to actually introduce myself to anyone, the thought of adding one more overwhelming source of chaos and over stimulation to my overloaded life seems, well, overwhelming.

The unfinished construction surrounding my house wears heavily.  They are supposed to pour the concrete tomorrow, but it is also supposed to rain.  I have no idea which will actually happen, but I live for the day the concrete is poured because it means we can actually start to move to the next stage of construction.  At the same time the  pour has been delayed so many times that I am beginning to think of it as a mirage, like the palm trees envisioned by the thirst-driven wanderer in the proverbial desert.

I don’t remember if I have mentioned that October has been plagued with failures:  computer failures, car failures, failed communications with clients, appliance failures, jobs half done and items moved for contractors and repair people but never returned to their normal places because the failures and contractors and general upset flow one into another.

Perhaps the final straw was last night, when at the end of a wonderful anniversary, I got home (after a mad drive from Newburgh) in time to watch most of Project Runway having missed only the first 10 minutes. 

I looked at my hands at the end of Jeffrey’s show and noticed that I had just purled an entire row.  I had PURLED a row in a garter stitch sweater, a sweater in which I have knit how many stitches?  How many rows? Nary a purl to be seen.  The rest of Project Runway was enjoyed as I unknitted the entire row, slowly and meticulously, cursing myself.

It seems to be a sign….a sign that there is too much going on, too much undone,  so many distractions that focus seems to escape me.

Oh I will go to Rhinebeck, there are a couple of things I want to see, and certainly people I want to see.  But I might not have the mental stamina this year.  It might be too much stimulation for my already scattered brain.

20 years ago today I married the most wonderful man.  I was giddy and flighy even though I knew it was perfect and the best decision I had ever made.  If you had told me then that I would love this person even more after 20 years I would have thought you were joking.  It’s true. 

And I’m still giddy and flighty just thinking about it.

Happy anniversary G!

Perhaps this is more entertaining than another inch of Mermaid.

As happens occasionally, life intervenes and the knitting slows, although I am hoping for a little progress on the weekend.

For those who have inquired, Mermaid is not a complicated knit, very straightforward, and the instructions are excellent and clear with explanations of techniques to be used  as one progresses.

But the call of work becons….I shall return.

This knitter has just learned she is a grandma! 

I am heading from San Francisco to Knoxville tomorrow. 

Updates will continue sporadically.  Anticipated return to normal scheduling September 26.

As I sat knitting last night while G watched various news programs on television, I wondered, why do we continue to be obsessed with Castro and Cuba.  It was on every chanel in great length. 

I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis (even though I was a small child — I remember the palpable and incomprehensible sense of terror I felt), but the Soviet Union is no longer a threat and Cuba is a very small country.  Of course Cubans would feel deeply about this issue and well they should.  But why is the media preoccupied with Cuba?  Why do we, as a much larger nation, care and fear so deeply?

I am not going to argue whether Castro is good, bad, or none of the above.  I know people with strongly held beliefs on all sides of this issue and I myself am not that thoroughly informed.  But that is not germaine to my question.  I am not asking abut human rights, or the fate and rights of Cubans, or any other issues.  I am asking why does the fate of Castro and Cuba worry the US as an entity so deeply?

It just seems that there are far more important issues, issues that affect the welfare of this country and its citizens far more greatly than Fidel Castro.  Why aren’t we obsessing about those issues, rather than spending hours of prime time media analysis on Castro and Cuba?  Or is it easier to fret about some minor outside event than to deal with unpleasant truths at home?