Tag Archives: reading

spinning/silliness/sunday.

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The sun came out yesterday while I was spinning the first bobbin of my first (of two!) bump of Hello Yarn shetland in Sour Fig, from the Fiber Club. I had to stop and take a picture. Twenty minutes later, my bobbin looked completely different:

I’m super excited to see how this ends up. I’m aiming for a 2-ply dk weight, but this stuff wants to be spun fine, so we’ll see what happens.

And now, the silliness:

I am a lucky girl.

Yep, another picture of this sweater. The fit is a bit awkward, the armholes are huge, the seams are wonky, even the ends are poorly woven in. I love the big ribbed collar, but I think the reason I wear this sweater more than any of the others I’ve made is that it was my first, finished in February 2008.

I wear it to late night reading groups, to dinner at friends’ homes. I pull it on to take Boh outside in the morning, I curl up in it on the couch. I buy groceries and write papers in it. It fits over many layers, even other sweaters, which is often how I wear it. It warms me, in more than the obvious way. I’ve been reading/discussing Rushdie this week, and these rather silly ruminations on my green sweater make me think of something his narrator says in Midnight’s Children. “Reality can have metaphorical content; that does not make it less real” (230, in my 1991 Penguin edition, though this was first published in 1980).

Time to slip my arms into the green sweater and get back to work.

objectivity and bias.

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As an aspiring historian, I am certainly sensitive to questions of objectivity and bias. (In the realm of full disclosure, I don’t think history is about the pursuit of truth so much as the exploration of an expansive/infinite number of alternate tellings, re-tellings, and interpretations of the past, necessarily colored by the historian’s “present,” whenever/whatever that may be. I don’t think objectivity should be the goal. I’d rather we focused on interrogating our own perspectives biases interests contexts as part of wrestling with what how why we are arguing whatever we’re arguing.)

Anyway, Boh must have read your comments, because he called me on this. He wondered (to no one in particular, though I was the only one here) why certain people (ahem) think very carefully about how to accurately represent their sources in some contexts, but are perfectly happy to misrepresent, oh, I don’t know, a certain four-legged and important member of this household.

Boh wants you to know that he does not sleep all day. He does very important things.

You never take pictures of me doing other things. That’s why they think that. Show them that I can catch my ball! That I can jump high into the air! That I bark at potential intruders and guard our home! The problem, dear reader, is that my skills do not lie in the realm of photography, so I mostly have a blurry mess to share. Boh is right, though. He does appear very energetic in these photos.

I took about 43 other photos, all of them blurry.

I’m sorry, Boh, for not thinking about how I have been representing you. (I listened to the RadioLab “Animal Minds” episode last night while working on my snowbird, and I am certainly aware of my own anthropomorphizing here…)

Also, lest you think I only knit, and do not work, here’s what Boh and I have been up to this morning:

Yep, the semester has begun. Sigh.

silence.

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“The creosote and tar smell of the railroad tracks woke him from the dreaming. The cinders made hollow crunching noises under his boots. He had come a long way with them; but it was his own two feet that got him there.” — Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (1976) (My version is Penguin, 2006, p. 236.)

prewittrr

Do you ever read something that just takes everything out of you? I didn’t intend to just stop posting, but I read Ceremony this week and it stirred up a lot of things that I’ve been processing. Powerful books can be almost incapacitating. (This is good. Also, hard.)

boh knit corner

Boh started to worry about the knitting pile. He told me so.

bracken prog inc

As you can see, I’m making progress on Bracken. (You can also see that this Jo Sharp Classic DK wool seems to attract Boh hair.)

messy dumplings

I made myself a plate of very messy dumplings last night — the only wrappers I could find this week were enormous! I overfilled a few, and they ruptured in the cooking process…but they were still incredibly delicious.

cloud complex

(A few pictures from 2007 seemed appropriate, given Ceremony‘s mostly southwestern setting.)

a broad margin.

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” I love a broad margin to my life.” I’ve been reacquainting myself with Thoreau this week, and this particular line from the opening paragraphs of “Sounds” in Walden (Beacon Press, 2004) was rattling around in my head as Boh and I took a nice long walk through the local preserve that surrounds the reservoir for New Home’s drinking water.

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This place is, quite literally, in the margin of the physical space I occupy here: a bit further afield from our daily walks, and in the opposite direction from campus, but part of my world all the same. For me, a broad margin suggests a willingness to review, reflect, comment, engage; in my reading and writing, the margin is the place for conversation, questioning, response. This place, not far from my door and yet far enough, seems to provide me with critical distance from (and at the same time, intimate connection to) myself.

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It might not look like fall out my bedroom window, but in these woods, autumn is everywhere. The rustling of the wind in the trees, the scent of leaves drying, the gentle crunch under my sandals: this is my favorite season.

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Our walk turned out to be more important than I realized when Boh and I set out on Friday morning. You see, after we returned, I set about my day, which included a bit of grocery shopping. I park my car on the street in my quiet neighborhood, and really relish the fact that I use it only a few times a week. It seems that sometime in the last 36 hours, someone crashed into my driver-side mirror, smashed the glass, and drove away. No note, no nothing. The damage is slight, and certainly repairable — really, I think it just the mirror that needs replacing, and I have complete coverage on my car, so it isn’t really about the cost. I’m just so disappointed that someone decided that it was okay to not take responsibility for their actions. I think our morning walk made it easier for me to take a few deep breaths and continue on with my errands.

pickledbeets

And so, in an effort to feel better about the universe, I decided to finally tackle the big bag o’ beets in my fridge. (How’s that for a transition?) I found a recipe in The Joy of Pickling that was intriguing: cider vinegar, cloves, all-spice, cinnamon sticks, etc. I slurped up a spoonful of the brine before I poured it over the pints of beets, and it was tasty. I’ll let you know in about three weeks, once these beet slices are appropriately pickled!

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I realize this post is becoming a bit epic, but I figured you might want to see what I’m knitting. I started a pair of toast/toasty in my Hello Yarn handspun in the Five Plum Pie colorway. I’m using 6s, and I’m hoping the fabric will be dense enough to keep my hands warm as morning and evening temperatures continue to drop.

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Also, I’m swatching for a super-exciting KAL that has been in the works for awhile now: Mick of Much-Adored, Laura of Happy Trails and I are going to knit the garter yoke cardigan. We’re beginning on the first day of fall, so I’m plotting and swatching so that I am ready to go. I’m thinking of using my Hello Yarn handspun romney in the Alpine colorway (browns, blues and greys) with some soft brown Cascade 220 heathers. I got stitch gauge (row gauge slightly off) with 7s in the Cascade 220, and now I’m thinking about the handspun. I’m thinking that I might knit the yoke with 6s and just keep trying it on to make sure the sizing is okay, because my handspun is occasionally uneven (read: thinner), and I’d like a dense, neat-looking garter stitch. That seems reasonable, right?

Thanks for indulging my Thoreauvian ramblings on this fine Saturday morning. Time for another cup of coffee and a bit more quality time with Mr. Henry David himself.

gone.

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Yesterday I finished reading Ellen Meloy’s The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky. This book truly moved me. It made me ache, hurt, long, dream, exhale. I know some of Meloy’s places, and I hope we all know, or grow to know, our places as well or as intimately as Meloy knows hers. I set the book down yesterday thinking that I wanted to share a chunk of it here with you, and this morning, sobered by unthinkable news, I opened it and it fell to a page upon which I had underlined these words:

“In those days my friends and I strode through an uncertain world, strong-limbed and reluctant to settle. Our emotions were nearly torrential but not very durable. In our young lives, in those glorious mountains of summer, this swing was, like the waterfall, a necessary flight from the sheltered to the wild.” (p.115)

These words are far more powerful in the context of the stories Meloy is telling about her youth, but I share them here partly in rememberance of the energy, encouragement, inspiration and exuberance of a knitter whose company I was lucky to enjoy weekly at my knitting group out west. I was the baby of this group, and she was always so excited about the things in my life for me, about the discovery and adventures in my future, about what was around the bend. From where I sat, she was someone I wanted to be like: confident, capable, silly and selfless.

She was out riding her bike on Monday evening, and was struck by a car. She died there on the road.

She commented here on the blog occasionally, and I learned of the accident because I happened to glance at my blog stats, and noticed that several people had done searches of her name and found my blog. I googled too, wondering why.

I write this here for two reasons:

(1) These kinds of accidents tend to incite heated, hyperbolic, angry debate between motorists and cyclists. In the eyes of the law, bicycles are vehicles, and they/their operators have legal rights and responsibilities as such. The majority of cyclists understand and obey the rules of the road. Many motorists respect cyclists and obey the law. Despite this, there is still quite a bit of confusion and anger, on both sides, about what the rules are. We need more education, for both cyclists and motorists, about how to peacefully and safely coexist on the road.

In this particular case, it seems that my friend did everything right. It wasn’t enough.

(2) I write this because I’m saddened that it takes something like this for us to tell the people in our lives what they mean to us. I have lost someone who inspired and encouraged me — someone whose kind words convinced me to go home from my very first knitting group night and seam up my first sweater. I imagine that this particular person had a similar impact on a whole slew of people, and my thoughts are certainly with her husband, her children, and her community.

Comments are closed on this post. Instead, please make sure someone who has inspired you knows it.

it really is magic.

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Have you tried Judy’s Magic Cast On? The instructions in Wendy’s book (printed with Judy’s permission) make this purchase already worth the cost. Here I am, 4 repeats into my first-ever socks on two circulars!

lacy rib on foot

I’m knitting the medium size to account for the stretchiness of the lace. I may also knit a slightly shorter foot to create a snug fit. I am absolutely thrilled with the way this colorway is knitting up, and I’m really enjoying knitting with 2 circulars! Victory all around, even if I am not able to finish these by the end of the month (and qualify for all of the incredible Socks From the Toe Up KAL June prizes). I don’t know why I didn’t try using 2 circulars earlier — it makes a lot of sense for a patterned sock — one needles has the pattern, and the other needle is the bottom of the sock, all in one place. Rather than become a hard-core advocate of one way to knit socks, I’m beginning to see the benefits of choosing needles that fit the pattern.  I may even have another go at Magic Loop (which I liked and have used for sleeves and things, but found a bit fiddly) — my Twisted Tweed Socks (rav link) were giving me some trouble around the heel, but maybe I need to try a different way of knitting those when I bring them out of hibernation.

Here’s one more close-up of my Lacy Ribs Sock:

lacy rib close up

Here’s hoping I can stick to my goal of equal amounts knitting/spinning and reading. I’ve put in some serious time on these socks in the last 12-14 hours, so as soon as I hit publish, I’m going to curl up with a book on the Gilded Age.

I think I mentioned something about farm shares and strawberries yesterday. Want to see this week’s haul?

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Red lettuce, harukei turnips, kale, chard, broccoli, oregano, rosemary, basil, mint, 2 qts strawberries, more komatsuna,  mustard greens (!!), and a handful of calendula flowers to brighten my kitchen.

Time to get to work!

vibrant colors.

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Looking at today’s photos helped me to link the day’s activities together in my brain. While reading, knitting, and heading out to the farm for my veggies do not necessarily seem intrinsically connected, today has been filled with bright, buoyant, truly vibrant colors — and particularly now, when I am not feeling quite so buoyant and vibrant on the inside, it seems important to be able to see these things all around me.

I spent the morning watching the colors of the first skein of kureyon reveal themselves in the stripes of my growing sweater.

stripesprogress

Stripes! is one of those patterns that teaches you things as you go, and today I learned to do the math to add waist shaping tailored to high-waisted, rather boy-shaped me. (Yay!) Here’s one of those awkward sweater body-in-progress shots:

stripes waist shaping on

I hope I can keep up this pace, as I am itching to wear this sweater! We’ve had cooler, cloudier weather of late, and part of me hopes it will stick around a tad longer so that I can pull this on and sit outside on a breezy summer evening…

Today I picked up a beautifully written, thoughtful book: The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone and Sky by Ellen Meloy. (Find it on amazon here.) Meloy’s prose is artful, at times surprising, and the way she intertwines memory with story, past with the book’s present, is evocative and beautifully complex. I’m about a third of the way through, and am finding myself particularly moved by Meloy’s exposition and exploration loosely centered on blues and greens.

Lastly, today marked the beginning of my CSA’s season. Check out this week’s haul:
csa haul

In those beets and radishes, and even in the greens, I see the colors of my sweater. Red beets, chiogga beets, radishes, spicy white turnips, komatsuna, spinach, arugula, kale, oregano, thyme, mint…I braised some of the komatsuna in olive oil with some chopped garlic, and then sauteed some radishes in butter at high heat for a beautifully colorful plate — ravenously consumed before documentation could occur.

Settling in for some more stripes-knitting.  I hope your day was punctuated with moments of bright color too.

quiet weekend.

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applesauce-bowl

more-giant-muffins

more-sushi

helping

Good and good-for-us food was enjoyed, some reading was accomplished, and a cozy clapotis got some serious wear:

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Back to it. What if Boh actually helped with the reading, instead of just lounging NEAR my books?

Hoping to get some in some knitting on that BSJ later on this afternoon. (No SuperBowl watching occurring here…) Happy Sunday, all.

inching along…

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I didn’t post this weekend because I felt like I had nothing new to tell you — slowly making progress on my pinwheel (which NEEDS to be done this week), reading a lot of books, occasionally chuckling at the dog and his pouting, baking bread. You know, the usual. And then, I figured that while you might not enjoy me explaining these things in infinite detail, you might want to see the pictures. So that’s what I’ve got for you today.