In The Garden Living an RPG Life

Guess not if you are a hibernating bear!  And I’m not so sure I am not.

So… where have I been?  Writing actually.  And making my mind up that I am a writer and not a knitter.  All that means is that the needles get dropped and left behind for the pen more than the other way around.  It also means that the pen gets picked up for other things that the needles don’t.  Like drawing.  I think.

I had high hopes of making a writerly space there, but something else got in the way.  Yet another writing pursuit in the form of an online technical writing class.  That has been more troublesome than I thought it would be.  I think it’s because the universe of technical writing has nothing to do with what I actually might right about.  OK, so that’s a bit of exaggeration, but still.  I don’t work in a field where office memos are part of my everyday speech pattern.  As it is I had to create a Second Life project for one assignment.  I also ended up using the Comic Kazes blog for another.  And somewhere along the line I discovered that it might do me well to learn Adobe Acrobat for real.  Something about on-demand publishing.

Which of course sent me running back to my NaNo-novels to see how ready they might be for publishing.

Only if by publishing you mean getting someone to put them into print for me so that I can use them like I would any novel I would want to analyse.  Only this time I would be quite critical and tell the author how she might improve the story and the obvious typos.  I think that would be quite satisfying since I know the author would listen to me.  Nothing like talking back to an author knowing you will be heard!  Gives reading with a pencil much more impact.  More power.

Now, I want to shift the blog to where it was heading anyway. Shift it visually away from knitting.  And I just got something.

I wrote a couple of comments in response to a couple of my grandmother’s fans.  In one of them I was remembering reading Mae’s book of poetry and I wrote that I was sitting in her mother’s chair and my mother was sitting nearby knitting.  That’s the connection and I never saw it till now.  My mother didn’t write. Neither did my great-grandmother.  Granny crocheted and Mommy knitted.  I suspect, though, that Mommy knitted instead of writing.  I suspect a lot of women did needle work instead of something else they wanted to do more.  Which makes Mae’s book even more remarkable.  I know that my mother had the desire to write and to make other kinds of art.  For one reason or another, she didn’t.

So much for returns and revelations.

Why do we keep turning away from home to feed our desires?  Perhaps because they get buried at home.  More revelation.   I am looking outside myself for source and sustenance.  At the moment, I am also looking at what appears to be some Granny wrapped in a lace shawl. It’s just photos of my first lace piece draped over a chair.

Proof that I can follow directions as well as finish a complex task.

I think I’m doing battle with ghosts here.  Letting them out so they can go home and leave me to play.  I know this lace thing is good.  I also like the practical stuff, like sweaters and socks.  I just don’t know how to put it all together with the writing and drawing and the rest of my life’s tasks.

Oh well.  That’s what Second Life is for!  Taking me away from all this.  You can’t really knit in SL.  And besides, I get to be a Shaman Bunny.  Can’t do that in Real Life, and while a bunny

can write in Second Life, it can’t in Real Life….

So there!

OK… done venting.  Will be back with more about the Shaman Bunny or another story.  Meanwhile, I’ll be changing things around a bit.

I forget that the holiday season intensity that everyone else talks about isn’t part of my life.  Not directly anyway.  What I forget it that while I don’t do any of the shopping and shipping, or travel planning, or whatever other people do for the holidays, I am the one holding the fort while they do it.  I forget  until I come home tired and fried.  I forget until I realize that I am behind on my own gift making.

Yes, I have a couple of other occasions to knit for.  There’s a whole new crop of babies in my life that I want to make something for.  There’s still one more wedding gift that I’m behind on.

OK.  Enough whining.  I’m happy that I have all this to do and that all of it is about knitting.  I was happy that when I felt an uh-oh for spending money the other day, and I looked at what I spent it on, it was presents for four people.  Most of being behind is because this is the first year of knitting gifts for me.  I don’t have experience with most of the designs I’m using.  One of my neighbors admired the scarf I was wearing, something I’d made for myself, one of my experiments.  I have that one design that I can just reproduce.  I don’t have to figure out what needle size, or wonder whether it will turn out well or be long enough. I’m making a beanie for the son of a friend of mine (the brother of the lap doily recipient).  I know that one will get done quickly because it’s “blind” knitting meaning I don’t have to look at what I’m doing.

Oh, and I’m also behind posting pictures and keeping up with the blog.  There’s so much going on, I haven’t figured out where the end of the thread is and so haven’t yet unraveled it.  I’m still writing the story of my NaNoNovel.  That excites me.  I started drawing again.  Found this great book, whose title I’d have to get up an go find out, that made sense out of the one kind of drawing I never found a use for: doodling.  I must say, though, that I don’t think it would have sunk in as it has if I hadn’t come back to knitting.  Doodling in drawing is like swatching.  Not like swatching for a project but swatching to learn how a pattern works.  Working with Knitting Delight, I learned how swatching works with the design process.  Doodling is like that.  It’s a way to practice design problems and to work out technical details.  From knitting lace, I recognize that doodling takes part of the whole drawing process and just repeats it over and over.  Knitting the wedding scarf was a kind of doodling.  I took one line of the whole pattern and repeated it.  The same for the scarf my neighbor admired.

The effect of both processes is that I feel much more confident with both lace and drawing.  I have a hard time knowing how to break things down into simpler pieces so that I can practice the parts I don’t know.  From knitting, again, I found that the best way for me to practice is to design something.  When I ‘m doodling, I’m designing the page.  I haven’t quite got the hang of just scribbling.  I want to learn something, build muscle memory.  When I took Judo for a couple of semesters at school, Sensei told us that we should practice correctly.  I get that.  We train our muscles to perform for us while we relax into the pleasure of the task.  Doodling… I’m making and solving a puzzle.  I guess I’ll have to post some of them.  They still look like a tangle of yarn to me, so, yeah.  Knitting and doodling.

I missed getting a photo of the little lady behaving in a very lady-like fashion.  My original photo of the finished piece looked so small.  Little Lady lets me see it the right size.  Both of the girls seemed to like how the doily feels.  All this brings me happiness with a success.  I still have to get the closing seam right, and edit the pattern.  Then, it will be really finished.  Already I’m looking for the next experiments.  Or should I call them adventures.

It looks like a piece of toast.  And it’s mostly done.  I’ve got to take out the join one more time.  I didn’t use a provisional cast on so it looks awkward.  For an experiment, I’m happy with it and I learned a lot from the both the design process and the knitting.  For example, the piece used two skeins of yarn.  It took one whole skein, with maybe a yard left over, to go around the edge.  I’m going to let it sit for a little while before I write up any more about it.  For me it’s more about process, about working out the structure and building the template.  I seem to like mindless design.

Ok.  I say that but it’s not true.  I want to know how and why something is done.  Maybe that’s where the designing comes into it.  I’m trying to figure those things out by doing them.

I’ve been trying to answer questions on Ravelry based on the little knitting experience I have. The biggest knitting challenge for me is lace knitting. This project, the lap doily, has taught me a couple of things. The first thing is to be fearless using stitch markers.

I kept telling myself, every time I knitted this pattern, that it’s short and I should be able to remember what to do. It’s four rows. It’s two sections of four or five stitches depending on which section I’m looking at. What’s the problem? Well, after losing the stitches in the second part I gave in and put in a stitch marker. That small act helped me keep my place and see what I was knitting into. Which was the second thing I learned from this.

I know that reading the knitting is important. It’s easier when it’s knit and purl stitches and stockinette. It’s harder when it’s lace or lacy knitting. The distinction is determined by whether or not there is a plain/non-design row between the design row. In both cases the knitting is into pattern stitches and these are the ones I learned to pay attention to. My lesson came from the yarn over on the previous row. I finally remembered that the second stitch in the second part of the pattern, the one that I kept losing stitches from, is always the yarn over. That yarn over is the key stitch for me. Once I got that, I could always find and recover my lost (usually forgotten to make) stitch.

I don’t know if this detail is going into the story, though.  This pattern, well the edging on the doily, is what Pod and Yohn are knitting.

“She’s given up. She’s been holding up pretty well until this. Now, she’s just given up.” I said, “She’s seeing the holes not the spaces.” There has been a breech in the material of her life and till now she’ s been looking through the breech and seeing saw the future moving through it and being shaped by it a particular way. This “way” was seen as the kind of change that could be seen as opportunity, a path. Now, though, she saw the opening as a space, an emptiness. She was seeing that something has been taken away.

In knitting it is the spaces that give the fabric it’s purpose. It is the spaces that hold or release heat, light. It is the rising of fabric and the falling of spaces that create texture. Knitting is space wrapped in fiber. Lace is light bound by it.

It turns out that writing this year’s novel is being fueled by knitting. I’ve put several projects on needles and so far two of them are contributing—no, three—are contributing directly to the shape of the story. The first project, the lap doily, was the subject of a knitting lesson. The second project, the previously mentioned wedding scarf, is the subject of a main character’s frustration with her own process. Swatching as a necessary part of the design process is also a major part of the story. One pattern will combine with music to become source for secret codes.

I decided that I would post the text of the Cast On essay, today, my birthday.

MOOD

Today, I darned a sock and made a bed…

This is a line from a poem, written by my grandmother, Mae V. Cowdery. It is from a slim volume of poems– We Lift Our Voices. — she published in 1936. Whenever I spent time with my mother in Philadelphia, I would search out the volume and leaf through the pages until drawn to one title or another.

I’m an occasional poetry lover, preferring science fiction and fantasy, my mother’s entertainments. And yet, for some reason, this line lingers, still, creating a ghost image of what my grandmother must have felt about the minutiae of keeping house. Looking around at the chaos I call home I wonder what she would really think of it.

Not one bed made. Not only unmade, but covered in unfolded laundry. I don’t even know where I would find the makings even if I chose to make any one of them. As for socks. I’d rather make one than darn one. In fact, when I recite the words in my head it’s usually, “today I made a sock and darned a bed”. Except I don’t make socks. And I like bed too much for even such a mild swearing as “darn”.

All that being said, there is still something that lingers, that calls to me from those words. It came to me while I was working on a piece of lace knitting. Nothing special. Just a collection of thread and holes to find out how this stuff works. Of all the knitting I’ve done, knitting lace is the most satisfying. I only discovered that last month with my first lace knitting project, finished. It satisfies me with its requirement for focus on making each stitch. Even the plain rows require attention lest I miss one of the yarn-overs of the previous row.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been reacquainted with my grandmother within the same month, that I’ve come to associate lace knitting with poetry. Over the last five years or so, I’ve found references to her and her poetry on the internet. And last month I made contact with a woman who is writing about her for an anthology of Harlem Renaissance poets. The image I have of her now, wearing a suit and tie, emphasizes my imagined inheritance of housekeeping ennui. And yet…

For all the chaos, I have friends that would rather be here than at home. They say, it looks like me. The walls are painted the color of sunlight through leaves and glow and move with leaf shadow in sunlight. The walls are hung with quilt explorations. The windows are edged with tiny Buddhas among even smaller animal totems: horses, rabbits, rhinos. A small blue glass holds three coccoons. When the fan is on the flat rings with the chimes of an Em7th chord.

Ok. So I’ve decided we don’t like housework. There is more to keeping a home, a home where poetry grows anyway. And I realized, sitting and knitting lace, that this is a home for poetry and other makings. Lingering after all the other voices on proper living have had their say, the poet’s voice prevails.

As for me…today, I leave a sink full of dishes and the eggshells unmulched. I’m rushing to catch the cone of gold cotton, to photograph it glowing in that deep sunlight way it does, nestled there between the bookshelves, against the green wall. And then, I write how knitting lace is making poetry, and how making poetry remakes the world.

Leaving the dishes may not be a kind of home keeping that Mae Cowdery would fully approve of, yet, it could be one that she would recognize as right and good.

The poem:

Mood

I am a strange creature
Of precarious moods
More changeful than the weather…
Today I did a simple task
(I darned a sock and made a bed)
And now my heart is singing…
It will not last—I know too well
How soon some straying thought
Will grow into a sullen cloud
And brood across my sky…
So I will sing the while
This errant sunlight glimmers
Through my day.

I think I spent nearly all of the day on Ravelry. Yes, it was somehow productive. I may have answered one question. I know I wrote a little about Margaret Stove’s Creating Original Hand-knitted Lace.

This was recommended to me in the Lace Tech group. Specifically I was sent to David Reidy’s Sticks and Strings podcast to hear his interview with Margaret herself. I was inspired and nearly willing to send to Australia for the book. Fortunately, Mum, a deft hand at both knitting and the internet, suggested I do a little searching first–past Amazon.

I found a listing for the book in a library catalog in Oregon. The publisher? Lacis. Yes, the same Lacis that I have been to on a couple of occasions and the source of Evelyn Clark’s Knitting Lace Triangles I wrote about earlier. I ordered the book and received it within a couple of days, weekend notwithstanding.

So, as a kind of thank you to the existence of Ravelry, I spent a lot of time there.

I have got some knitting done. Done, not just started and understood. I finished a square that will be a stroller blanket of sorts. I’m trying it out tomorrow to see how I feel about it. Meanwhile, I’m looking to use the same brand of yarn to make scarves for people. Still a good way to practice lace knitting. One good edging will make a nice looking scarf. And because it is a fluffy yarn, it should be cozy without being bulky. Something to tuck inside the collar of a coat. Not good for keeping the rain off.

I’ve never been to a wedding before. I left my simple gift on the table with the rest of the more elaborate ones. Amy, the bride, was excited to see me there. Jon, her husband, less so.

I was glad to have been there. It was a ritual I’ve never experienced before. Food and friends were my experience. I found that one of the gang is the daughter of Babetta’s Yarn shop. We spent the few minutes we were allowed by the other women at our table deep into our love of lace knitting.

The experience was unifying… I’ve been away from the gang for a while. Babies are born. Other weddings constructed and expressed. I got to take photos of the photos being taken. I also got to put my gift on the table among the more elaborate ones, the gifts in fluffy bags.

I am happy, now. These are my other family, the younger people in my life. I am grateful for being included, remembered, and making myself felt among the others, the women the bride believed would be her blessings. She is right. The women she chose are her guides and angels. The women who love her and wish her the best life possible.

I was on the groom’s side. I prefer the company of the boys, the conversations of theories and techniques. It was the groom’s invitation that reached me first. Although AI knitted her scarf first, it would not be a complete gift without his.

There will be more to tell about the gifts. Photos and all. Until then, congratulations Jon and Amy. You have made the first steps. And love is your path.