A little lesson in the lace

Discovered what I am doing wrong in my lace knitting. It seems I wrap my yarn over stitch backwards from what most people do, then when I purl on the return row, I try to purl from the front leg of the yarn over stitch. Result is a twisted stitch with a smaller hole. I had questioned this many times, but had felt the resulting hole when I did it the other (the correct way) was too big.

I had to learn and be willing to open up my knitting and be more accepting of the holes. Once I started to do that my pattern became more discernible. SO now I wonder, do I start over or just continue in the new way and live with the resulting consequences of the past? A familiar dilemma.

Consequences

As anyone knows who knows me for more than a minute, I knit. Alot. I also am known to get downright lyrical over the feel of many of the finer yarns. Of course the finest of these is petted in the stores and I admit to coveting a hank of it often. Cashmere. Imagine my chagrin when I learned that this simple, harmless passion, one that is evidently shared by many, has pretty severe consequences.

Given the immensity of the world's consumer appetite and the numbers of shoppers, anything that is popular or prized will by definition create an unacceptable impact on resources.

See this article in the Chicago Tribune.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-china-cashmere-htmlstory,0,2722049.htmlstory

Sigh. Even cashmere. Another reason to buy local.

A faded mental snapshot - Aunt Annie

I used to have a photo of Aunt Annie when she was a very young woman. Long ago lost, I had a vague, though imperfect, memory of it and of her.. She was shown sitting with a toddler dressed in a christening outfit standing on her lap. She looked very pretty in her dress, wearing a broad brimmed hat with a wide bow ribbon under her chin. Annie looked back from the photo with a slight cock of her head and a clever little smile. I found the photo during an online google search.

A few wisps of memory blend with those of other family women forming an archetype of the woman I always thought I would become. I want to grab at the wisps, although they are ephemeral. Maybe by peering more closely at these memories I can better understand this image of what I thought I would be and better fathom why I am so often disappointed with the reality of who I am.

My great, great Aunt Annie McClintock was born in 1885, one of twelve children fathered by a strict Methodist preacher. Her life included three marriages, three children. At one time or another in her life, she had worked as a taxicab driver, carnival barker, merchant marine, farmer and desert recluse. She wasn’t well known. She didn’t leave much behind and so not many have any lasting memory of her. However, I often think about Annie, wondering about her life, imagining it from the few clues provided in snippets of memory.


I remember Aunt Annie as an old desert rat living in a shack in the dry expanse between L.A. and Las Vegas. My memories of meeting her probably reveal more about myself and provide only minor clues about Annie’s character. Since I was only about 4 or 5, it is hard to know how much of what I remember has been distorted by the passage of years or simply reflects the skewed perspective of an immature mind. I remember sitting primly on an orange crate politely proffered me when we visited her on one hot summer day in 1956. I sat with back straight and my white, gloved hands folded in my lap, just as grandma had instructed me to do in her stern lecture to me on the way to Annie’s home. I occasionally smoothed my new frilly dress and petticoats. My feet dangled off the side of the crate with the heels of my impractical shiny black patent leather shoes incessantly banging against the crate. As I dangled my feet, I glanced around at the unpainted walls with old yellowed newspaper clippings and an occasional faded photo. In one corner was a stack of old letters, arranged in bundles, held together with twine and Christmas ribbon. In the kitchen was a dripping pumpstyle faucet in a slate sink. A checkered gingham skirt dressed the front of the sink where the usual kind of kitchen cleaning tools peeked from the skirt’s hem. The spigot above dripped brownish water. Annie offered us a glass of this to wash the dust from our throats. When I demurred with a look of distaste, she gave me a bottle of Coca-Cola, the green bottle still warm from sitting in the sun, and the green light refracting through the glass onto the wall next to me.
I was under orders from grandma to sit quietly and keep comments to myself.

Annie had tried to make the place nice for our Sunday afternoon visit. She had fashioned little handmade animals using walnut shells, of particular interest to me. These animals she placed carefully atop crocheted doilies resting on orange crates that served as end tables dotted around the little room. In the center of the largest of these crates was a green bowl full of oranges. The sun pierced the walls in a couple of spots and when I looked up, I thought I could see at least one patch of blue sky. Thankfully, rain was infrequent in this area. I noted a shotgun in the corner next to the door. She caught my eye as it roved around the room and stopped at the sight of the gun. Aunt Annie explained it was kept convenient because she was having trouble with pumas, a wildcat common in the area.

It was only after several cups of soda that I learned that the “facilities” were outside. It would be my first, and I hoped the last visit to an outhouse It was the old fashioned kind, with a wood lid over a hole in the ground inside a dark, tiny closeted room located several yards from the shack. I approached the structure warily, looking about carefully for a glimpse of a “puma”. The outhouse itself was full of yellow jackets, flies and a pungent smell. I could not bring myself to venture into that little room and instead squatted behind the outhouse, pricking my bottom on stickers and getting urine on my lace topped white socks. I noticed with dismay that my pretty shoes were brown with dust and dotted with beads of splashed urine.

I breathe deeply now, remembering … there was a smell inside the shack, too. I remember it as the smell of lavender talcum, dust and oranges… a peculiar smell of an old woman’s cabin. As I close my eyes and remember, I hear her laugh. She had a hoarse, robust laugh, full and broad, with no hint of pretension.

Annie wore blue jeans and a man’s shirt. Her long gray hair was brushed back and neatly braided, with a small dusty ribbon the only concession to her gender. Her face had the dark, leathery look of one accustomed to working in the sun and squinting in bright light. In spite of a manly way of dressing and walking, she had a gentle humor about her that was definitely, though perhaps only nostalgically, feminine. Sitting in that room with Annie, I sensed that I was in the presence of a person fully capable of handling life no matter what its course.

In my Aunt Annie’s presence, grandma was a far different person than the one I knew. Grandma had had a special fondness for Annie. Around her, my grandma acted as one does with someone with shared memories of childhood. I don’t know what happened in their lives that bonded them; I never thought to ask about their relationship. When I calculate the disparity in their ages I realize they would have shared a corner of their youth. When grandma was in her early 20’s, her aunt would have been young enough to sympathize yet experienced enough to fascinate her. I imagine that Annie knew grandma when grandma was still vulnerable and had hopes for her future. Grandma once hinted how Annie had taught her a popular dance in the 1920’s, known as the black bottom. It is still hard for me to imagine a younger version of grandma dancing the black bottom.

Perhaps it would have seemed incongruous for a life like Annie’s to end in a soft easy manner. Many years after that summer’s visit, on a similar summer day in 1975, an elderly but still agile Aunt Annie, drove her old battered Chevy truck down the highway near her desert home. Somewhere along the way, she picked up two tired teen-age hitchhikers and offered them a meal. Aunt Annie never had much but what she had she offered freely, and with pride. Perhaps because of this remarkable sense of generosity, the couple could not believe she was as poor as she appeared. The teenagers were convinced that she was an eccentric with hidden money on her land. She was found strangled and her shack virtually destroyed, torn apart by the teens anxiously searching for more meaningful treasure than what they had been given so freely.

Though convicted, the young boy and his girlfriend served nine months for the crime. The conviction of the girl was overturned because she didn’t have a lawyer present during her confession.

Not long ago while out on visit in California with my husband, I insisted we try to locate Annie’s property. As we drove past what we believed to be the place along the freeway, there was no evidence of the shack or the outhouse. Only another part of the desert one travels by on the way to someplace else.
All that’s left is little bit of memory, remnants of unasked questions. And the ubiquitous dust when the SantaANa winds howl through in the late summer

Playing peekaboo with Angel using my current shawl project. Almost finished with the stockinette portion of the pattern using Blue Moon Fiber Arts, "Geisha" yarn. The yarn is luscious. Angel likes it as well. About to start the lace part of the pattern. Hopefully this will become the Ishbel shawl (pattern available through Ravelry) . While in process it is a good mask for playing with one's Cockatoo.

The magic of discernment or the nature v nurture debate

Was thinking about maturity. When it’s a peach, I anticipate the appropriate moment when its ideal to eat. I know that its moment of perfect maturity is a function of so many different things: soil nutrients, the genetics of the fruit stock, the health of the tree, the weather during the fruit’s development, the environment of the store, the environment in my home where the peach is stored. It’s not magic. The magic is my in the use of intuition, with the help of my senses, knowing the exact moment when that peach is perfectly mature. Not mushy, not green, but sweet and perfect.

Are we so different? Its not nature vs nurture. It’s the optimal blending of each with just a tad of magic.
I am a little past my peak of ripeness, I think, but my magical power is strong. I am learning to discern

Knitting as self-medication - finding the right prescription

Sometimes all I want to do is sit and knit. My hands start to itch at work when there is too much to do and too many voices and I am starting to feel a bit grumpy.

Yes, knitting is my prescription for grumpiness. When agitated as opposed to stressed and overworked, I am better with a simple lace, not too much of a challenge, but one I must attend to being careful to remember what comes next. In that way I find a clear route to sanity.

Now if I am feeling blue, its best if I knit in the round and do a straight stockinette. I can look inward, the knitting becomes a mantra. The yarn must be soft, a babyfine alpaca maybe. (Desperate depression may call for cashmere, but that brings in retail therapy and a 12 step program for overuse of that prescription could become necessary since it can be highly addictive). With a straight stockinette in the round, though my spirit can go out for a walk in the sunshine and when I raise my head up after many many stitches, I can usually get my feet planted and take that actual walk that my heart needs.

With boredom, comes the need for a more challenging task. That’s when I bring out the Lace chart, stitch markers, and lifelines. I prepare myself for a challenge of making the puzzle come together; the pattern becoming ingrained in my brains synapses. A rhythm starts to be first indentified, then made normal, then become so secondary that my fingers know its course, even if my brain decides to go elsewhere for the duration.

Knitting can be a prescription that evens out the bumpiness of a moody character.
Honest, I am not addicted. I could live without it. Maybe. Never tried. Dont intend to.