tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72196172473269362872024-03-12T18:17:08.767-07:00Mrs Ramsey's KnittingKnitting, art, the creative processMary Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07545687944750928398noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219617247326936287.post-18366137116974249092014-04-06T10:06:00.000-07:002014-04-06T10:06:28.171-07:00
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:DocumentProperties>
<o:Revision>0</o:Revision>
<o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime>
<o:Pages>1</o:Pages>
<o:Words>1378</o:Words>
<o:Characters>7858</o:Characters>
<o:Company>University of Alabama Birmingham</o:Company>
<o:Lines>65</o:Lines>
<o:Paragraphs>18</o:Paragraphs>
<o:CharactersWithSpaces>9218</o:CharactersWithSpaces>
<o:Version>14.0</o:Version>
</o:DocumentProperties>
<o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
<o:AllowPNG/>
</o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
</xml><![endif]-->
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/>
<w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/>
<w:OverrideTableStyleHps/>
<w:UseFELayout/>
</w:Compatibility>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="276">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]-->
<!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}
</style>
<![endif]-->
<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">She Taught Me Touch<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I grew up in an
imaginary city. Some cities remain the
same for decades, even centuries, but not mine.
The grid of streets I lived on in northwest Detroit remains, but the
neighborhood, the school, the park, the corner store, the incessant hum of
traffic, the Tigers game wafting from every back yard on a summer evening,
those are gone. As a result, my
childhood seems to be a dream or a play whose set long ago burned down.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
In my memory it’s always warm, an Easter
morning. I am four, wearing a new yellow dress with a white piqué
pinafore. I am standing beside her
house, in the sharp smell of warm brick, the scent of new cotton, vinegary
aroma of Easter eggs. My little brother,
with his quiff of pale hair and his matching yellow suit, looks like a
newly-hatched chick. In my basket is a
pink stuffed rabbit; in his, a blue one.
We are posing for pictures. Or maybe
it’s a summer evening, shadows softening the outlines of my grandmother’s
flowerbeds and making a blue oval in the shade of the oak tree. She is leaning
back in an Adirondack chair, her small, narrow feet in their black lace-up
shoes neatly placed side by side. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0OBUgm5wuJ4/U0GJCuhySrI/AAAAAAAAAi8/crjo25m5U88/s1600/She+Taught+Me+2_0002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0OBUgm5wuJ4/U0GJCuhySrI/AAAAAAAAAi8/crjo25m5U88/s1600/She+Taught+Me+2_0002.jpg" height="320" width="268" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
She wore rimless spectacles, cotton print
dresses and aprons trimmed in rick-rack.
She cooked pot roast on Sundays, and dotted her side tables with
figurines and bowls of flowers. My memories of her are mostly tactile: her soft
cheeks, her arthritis-cramped fingers, the soft cables of her yellow cardigan,
the nubby surface of her green sofa cushions.
I remember the sound of her voice
as she moved from task to task but I don’t remember her opinions because she
never weighed in on family discussions of politics or religion. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
My parents embraced the aesthetic we now call
mid-century modern—Mad-Men style, with its clean lines and rejection of
clutter. At home, our chairs were
covered in naughahyde. Biomorphic
ceramic ashtrays were the only ornaments on our streamlined coffee table. My father, who had spent the war years in
England, hung architectural engravings on the walls and read Evelyn Waugh. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
My tall, elegant mother eschewed makeup,
jewelry, lace and frills for herself and for me as well. I had a short haircut and wore sensible
lace-up shoes with my school uniform. At special occasions like Christmas and
birthdays, my grandmother always wore red nail polish, bright red lipstick, and
pearls in her ears. By the end of the
evening, I would have donned her earrings and her cardigan as well as a touch
of the lipstick. In all the festive
snapshots, I’m the short-haired kid in glasses, wearing pearl earrings, an
over-sized cardigan, a smear of red blurring her big grin. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2_7Efl21D4g/U0GJLArmahI/AAAAAAAAAjE/bZM9DStqtr4/s1600/She+Taught+Me+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2_7Efl21D4g/U0GJLArmahI/AAAAAAAAAjE/bZM9DStqtr4/s1600/She+Taught+Me+1.jpg" height="320" width="157" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
My grandmother’s way of life,
rooted in a childhood on a Michigan farm, was very different from my parents’
austere urban modernism but to me it was a sensory paradise. I can still see the bright yellow tiles on
her kitchen floor and the faded pinks of the cabbage rose print in her
chintz-covered armchair. Once a rich
auburn, her waist-length hair had greyed to a soft gold-pink. In the morning, I loved to watch her pin her
braids into an oval at the back of her head.
I loved to sit by her side, whatever the task. I can still feel the smooth weight of the dull
gold cotton sateen that she used to sew the pleated curtains for her the bay
windows. My grandmother and I stroked
the gold sateen together, admired it, and made plans for every scrap. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Some of the left-over fabric would
become pin-tucked throw pillows for her sofa, and a bit more would appear as an
elegant opera coat for my doll, Lily Goldbell.
On long summer afternoons, she’d weed and harvest fruits and vegetables
in her long back yard that seemed to me a world in itself, with its raspberry
patch, tomato plants bristling in the sun by the pungent compost heap, its
goldfish pond in the shade of the huge oak tree, and nearer the house, beds of
pink cosmas, snowy allysum, black-eyed susans, orange dahlias, gold-and-brown
marigolds. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
When the work was done, and the new
potatoes were soaking in ice water, we would sit on the side of her bed and
sort out the top drawer of her dresser, the scarves and gloves and jewelry
boxes. Every object had a story, and as
she told me the story, my grandmother and I would study the beads or try on the
gloves with their three fanned lines of stitches, one for each long bone of the
hand. I would hold a silk handkerchief
to my cheek or run the beads through my fingers of the rosary I’d receive on my
first communion. I’d touch the brooch
waiting for my twenty-first birthday to my collar. I felt as if my grandmother’s dresser held
my whole future safe behind its curved mahogany drawers. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Unlike her sisters, my grandmother
had married young and never went to college. The newspaper sitting in a basket
in her sun room was the only reading material in her house. She never asked about my grades or my reading
level. I was a bookish little girl,
proud of my spot near the top of my class, but I was always glad to leave my
school accomplishments behind when I visited Grandma. Perhaps that was the reason I needed to check
in with her frequently. I longed for the
smells and sights of her kitchen, her knick-knack shelf, her embroidered hand
towels and starched curtains. I begged
to stop for a visit whenever we passed her street corner in the car, no matter
how urgent my parents’ errand might be. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
She always had time. When my mother, distracted with two younger
children, was too busy to show me how to do up the buttons on my bride doll’s
elaborate gown, Grandma would sit beside me, and together we would do and undo
every tiny pearl bead, and then we would pin up the bride’s long hair and place
her veil perfectly. Together, we stroked
the delicate tulle and arranged its stiff folds. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
When I was five, my grandmother
taught me to crochet with white cotton thread and a steel needle. I am left-handed, so not only did she have to
convey the complex movements to my short, fat fingers and short attention span,
but also patiently transpose all the movements from the right side to the
left. So gentle was her teaching method
that without any struggle, I soon found myself making intricate doilies, much
to the amazement and bewilderment of my mother. With my growing collection of doilies, I
began to understand the geometry of radial symmetry as circles grew with the repetition
of eight spreading petals. From that
moment, working out my grandmother’s patterns for cotton stars, I learned that
holding a needle and thread or a strand of yarn could become as natural as
holding a pencil. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
As my school years continued, I
spent less time with my grandmother.
Weekends were devoted to nature hikes with my two younger brothers and
visits to art museums, softball games and old movies on television. I spent my after-school hours inhaling books
in the local branch library, sneaking from the children’s room into the adult
section, and curling up in a corner with Katherine Mansfield, Charles Dickens,
and F. Scott Fitzgerald. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
My grandmother became ill. The diagnosis was hardening of the arteries,
but the symptom was an increasingly severe dementia. Her beautiful hair was cut short, and then
her words stopped altogether. When she
died I was fourteen on the cusp of fifteen, just out of my freshman year of high-school,
self-centered, moody, and anxious to put all signs of childhood behind me. No longer interested in doilies, I was busy
reproducing the latest mod styles on my new sewing machine. I wore pale-pink lipstick, and when I could
get away with it, lavender eye shadow and mascara. Beyond a vague sadness on the day of her
funeral, I didn’t grieve or even think much about my grandmother for years
until one Saturday night when I was mid-way through college.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I was sitting at a movie theatre
downtown with my roommates, watching the cult hit <u>Harold and Maude</u>. Ruth Gordon in her seventies looked naggingly
familiar. Suddenly she opened a drawer,
turning to her young co-star Bud Cortt, and said, “let’s see what we have
here.” I began to sob and couldn’t stop until long after the closing credits
rolled. Suddenly, I was back in my grandmother’s
bedroom, poring over her dresser drawer, carefully smoothing each scarf, each
pair of gloves. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
At that moment, my link to my
childhood was restored. The sights and
sounds and especially the textures of my childhood came to life again. I connected, consciously, with my past. I
understood that an essential part of me experiences the world, not through
logic or reason, but through my senses.
I remembered how satisfying it was to hold a skein of cotton in my
hands, and I realized why I loved to knit.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Today, forty years later, knitting
still connects me to my grandmother’s love of the actual, material world, her
quiet acceptance of the rhythms of nature, her skill in manipulating needle and
thread, and her rare ability to find eternity in a summer afternoon. The feeling of a strand of yarn comforts me
in a way that no photograph can do. It’s
a direct link to that unspoken, tactile connection, my wordless genealogy, that
imaginary place I discover again every time I cast on and make a stitch. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Mary Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07545687944750928398noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219617247326936287.post-10322549761999153422013-09-14T06:12:00.001-07:002013-09-14T06:12:25.898-07:00The Zen of Entanglement<br />
Last week I plunged in to a project that has scared me for
months.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had fallen in love with the <a href="http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/celestarium">Celestarium</a> Shawl featured in Twist Collective for Winter 2012, a circular
shawl that replicates a star chart, with the stars represented by yarnovers and
crystalline beads.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I selected my yarn, a
deep blue, I <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>located and collected the
beads, and laid the supplies, including the needles, on my work table.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then I got scared.<br />
<br />
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:DocumentProperties>
<o:Revision>0</o:Revision>
<o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime>
<o:Pages>1</o:Pages>
<o:Words>461</o:Words>
<o:Characters>2631</o:Characters>
<o:Company>University of Alabama Birmingham</o:Company>
<o:Lines>21</o:Lines>
<o:Paragraphs>6</o:Paragraphs>
<o:CharactersWithSpaces>3086</o:CharactersWithSpaces>
<o:Version>14.0</o:Version>
</o:DocumentProperties>
<o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
<o:AllowPNG/>
</o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
</xml><![endif]-->
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/>
<w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/>
<w:OverrideTableStyleHps/>
</w:Compatibility>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="276">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]-->
<!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin-top:0in;
mso-para-margin-right:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt;
mso-para-margin-left:0in;
line-height:115%;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}
</style>
<![endif]-->
<!--StartFragment-->
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is a lace pattern I can’t memorize because it has no
repeats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There won’t be much automatic
pilot knitting here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, I will be
following chart after chart and really concentrating on my work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lately, I have been knitting in front of my
television screen, catching up on all the past seasons of Breaking Bad, and
cranking out simple scarves, and I don’t know if I can reform my lazy ways any
more than Walter White can turn away from cooking meth.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But last week I read a wonderful little book by Phillippa
Perry, an English psychotherapist, entitled <u>How to Stay Sane.</u><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For a psychotherapist, she herself sounds
remarkably good-natured and unflappable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As I perused her chapter on Stress, I was surprised to see that Perry
recommends a certain amount for sanity and suggests that we make a chart of
things we would love to do, but remain outside our comfort zones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After completing my chart, I could see that
my star-chart shawl was sitting just a little outside the cozy solar system of
my knitting comfort zone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Clearly, it’s
time to tackle Celestarium.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first step is winding my skeins of yarn into balls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Simple, but not this time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The yarn I chose, as I discovered when I
desperately searched the internet, (not the yarn called for in the pattern) is
notorious for tangling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I found myself
with a tangle more thorny than any I had encountered in all my years of
knitting, and that’s saying a lot.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-W7MwmPJfG44/UjRgPW8lKGI/AAAAAAAAAh0/EztfCvLsFmM/s1600/IMG_0320.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-W7MwmPJfG44/UjRgPW8lKGI/AAAAAAAAAh0/EztfCvLsFmM/s320/IMG_0320.JPG" width="239" /></a></div>
<o:p></o:p><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I was younger and more impatient, I might have lost my
cool completely and either broken the pesky strands, cut them, or thrown the
whole mess away, but now I can see that of the sources of dismay and
frustration in my life, this little skein of yarn doesn’t rate at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, I’ve been sitting on the floor,
listening to classical music streaming on my i-pad, and putting in an hour or
so of winding every evening. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the
hour is up, I feel strangely at peace, even though I may have straightened out
only a small number of the hundreds of yarns of wool still tangled on the back
of my chair, and my spine feels like someone inserted an old broomstick into my
back.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s not true meditation, because I’m not trying to empty my
mind or count my breaths, but it is very calming to focus on freeing a
navy-blue thread from its crazy course over and under and around its fellow
strands, reducing what looks like visual cacophony to a single theme, sweetly
turning round and round a little globe:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-45FHWURpmDM/UjRgnff69fI/AAAAAAAAAh8/-WonldUd44Y/s1600/IMG_0322.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-45FHWURpmDM/UjRgnff69fI/AAAAAAAAAh8/-WonldUd44Y/s320/IMG_0322.JPG" width="239" /></a></div>
<o:p></o:p><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I hope this first stage in my adventure outside my knitting
comfort zone is a sign that as I go, I will continue to make discoveries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s what travel, whether through the night
sky or just through my little life, is all about. <o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Mary Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07545687944750928398noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219617247326936287.post-88450261416661783502013-09-05T17:04:00.000-07:002013-09-05T17:04:21.621-07:00Many Tiny GesturesIn the<u> New York Times</u> this week, the potter Edmund de
Waal poses against the backdrop of his current exhibit, hundreds of small,
identical, meticulously crafted ceramic vessels:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WtT2JHghqrU/UikbLavgJEI/AAAAAAAAAhc/dXBLsSflqs8/s1600/01DEWAAL_SPAN-articleLarge-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WtT2JHghqrU/UikbLavgJEI/AAAAAAAAAhc/dXBLsSflqs8/s320/01DEWAAL_SPAN-articleLarge-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:DocumentProperties>
<o:Revision>0</o:Revision>
<o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime>
<o:Pages>1</o:Pages>
<o:Words>455</o:Words>
<o:Characters>2600</o:Characters>
<o:Company>University of Alabama Birmingham</o:Company>
<o:Lines>21</o:Lines>
<o:Paragraphs>6</o:Paragraphs>
<o:CharactersWithSpaces>3049</o:CharactersWithSpaces>
<o:Version>14.0</o:Version>
</o:DocumentProperties>
<o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
<o:AllowPNG/>
</o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
</xml><![endif]-->
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/>
<w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/>
<w:OverrideTableStyleHps/>
<w:UseFELayout/>
</w:Compatibility>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="276">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]-->
<!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}
</style>
<![endif]-->
<!--StartFragment-->
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> </o:p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/arts/design/edmund-de-waal-prepares-for-an-exhibition.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0">Edmund de Waal</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Looking at this image, I couldn’t help thinking that the
wall of pots looked an awful lot like a close-up of rows of knitting:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YFlgxS-nCYM/UikbZNNov4I/AAAAAAAAAhk/_N59a6gfa8w/s1600/Knitting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="312" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YFlgxS-nCYM/UikbZNNov4I/AAAAAAAAAhk/_N59a6gfa8w/s320/Knitting.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<o:p></o:p><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And that connection reminded me of something I read several
years ago in Shaun McNiff’s <u>Trust the Process</u>, a study of creativity
addressed to visual artists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the chapter
“Karma of Simple Acts,” McNiff advises artists to “experiment with making
artworks that require the repetition of small gestures over extended periods of
time.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mc Niff suggests that this
technique can help overcome the fear that a large blank canvas can represent,
and also observes,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“the process of
building a picture from thousands of strokes also gives me the opportunity to
carefully watch how a composition emerges.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Repeating small gestures over extended periods of time is what
we knitters do. Although many creative activities require repetition of
gestures, whether in playing a musical instrument, practicing a dance routine,
or spelling out words, in most cases the component gestures disappear in the
final product.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in knitting, each
tiny seed is visible in the finished product. While a shirt is cut out of a
large piece of cloth, a sweater is created by placing one tiny loop through
another tiny loop, over and over again.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Naturally, as we hook one tiny loop inside another, we watch
how our “composition” emerges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
process of creating a knitted garment is so slow and incremental that we can
make the subtlest of adjustments as we go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We can shape and re-shape, we can turn a curve into an angle or a
straight line, we can meld and smooth as we go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Drawing two stitches together makes a tiny concavity; turning an
additional loop into a new stitch makes a tiny cup.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The repetition of miniscule elements means
that knitting in amazingly sensitive to the maker’s will.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the same way, I’m sure Edmund de Waal sees miniscule
variations in his collection of vessels, as each one takes on its individual
character, while a product of the same series of gestures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m sure that he sees his own mood, his own
degrees of awareness reflected in each one, just as a knitter observes tiny
variations in her gauge from row to row.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s an immediate fascination for multiple versions of
the same form, especially when the forms are handmade, and we see similarity
coexisting with difference. In the same way as the display of de Waal’s vessels,
a knitted scarf or shawl offers the pleasure of a field of identical,
heart-shaped elements with tiny variations apparent to hand and eye. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As knitters, we have an immediate key to a creative portal,
as we repeat tiny gestures, building something beautiful and useful as we go.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By the way Edmund de Waal is also a gifted writer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His family memoir, <u>The Hare with the Amber
Eyes</u>, is a delightful book that has sold millions of copies through
readers’ word-of-mouth endorsements.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Mary Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07545687944750928398noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219617247326936287.post-5661991726433120212013-09-01T10:07:00.000-07:002013-09-01T10:07:42.441-07:00DIY: Old School Meets New School
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:DocumentProperties>
<o:Revision>0</o:Revision>
<o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime>
<o:Pages>1</o:Pages>
<o:Words>758</o:Words>
<o:Characters>4323</o:Characters>
<o:Company>University of Alabama Birmingham</o:Company>
<o:Lines>36</o:Lines>
<o:Paragraphs>10</o:Paragraphs>
<o:CharactersWithSpaces>5071</o:CharactersWithSpaces>
<o:Version>14.0</o:Version>
</o:DocumentProperties>
<o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
<o:AllowPNG/>
</o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
</xml><![endif]-->
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/>
<w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/>
<w:OverrideTableStyleHps/>
</w:Compatibility>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="276">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]-->
<!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";}
</style>
<![endif]-->
<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
Today’s do-it-yourself movement is
exciting to watch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Young people are
salvaging discarded mid-century furnishings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Empty lots become into community gardens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thrift store sweaters are raveled, their
cashmere and wool yarns re-knit and woven into luxurious hats and scarves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tRaj0-NZKIk/UiNyoSGEIzI/AAAAAAAAAhA/qOyseYjq50Q/s1600/IMG_0204.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tRaj0-NZKIk/UiNyoSGEIzI/AAAAAAAAAhA/qOyseYjq50Q/s640/IMG_0204.JPG" width="475" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Palais de Tokyo, Paris, March 23 2013</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But
we baby-boomers had our own DIY movement back in the day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the seventies, we focused on creating an
alternative universe as far away as possible from our hometowns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We weren’t interested in re-fashioning our
parents’ discards; instead, we went back a few more generations, to our
grandparents or great-grandparents, determined to recover a more authentic
relationship to the natural world, unhooked from the plastic, mass-produced
consumer goods flooding store shelves during those prosperous times. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
We were all about
self-sufficiency, living without gas or electricity, raising our own food,
making our own clothes, starting over from scratch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Looking back on us now, I have to admit that
most of us were fundamentally hedonists, not so much concerned with saving the
world as with the quest for better-tasting bread, richer, more saturated
colors, for the charm of hand-carved banisters, the gleam of old linen. In our
quest for such pleasures, we began learning to bake, dye our own yarn, brew
beer, knit socks, and weave rugs, acquiring some badly needed discipline along
the way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When
I set out to knit my first pair of socks in 1978, no sock yarn was available in
my local yarn store, and double-pointed needles came only in large sizes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I produced my first socks from sport-weight,
marled wool on size five needles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
socks fit beautifully and lasted for years, but like our seventies pottery and
loaves of bread and macramé plant-holders, they were a bit crude. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Apprentices at first, we seventies
DIYers became more proficient with practice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Living in Denver in the late seventies, I was lucky to find a fiber
renaissance going on around me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
Boulder, the Schacht Spindle company was just starting up, in Loveland,
Interweave Press had begun, and in Denver, shops like Skyloom Fibres introduced
knitters and spinners to the best equipment and materials available.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll never forget the weekend Sidna Farley at
Skyloom invited Elizabeth Zimmermann for a two-day workshop.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In her mid-eighties then, Elizabeth rode into
town on the back of her husband’s motorcycle with her wit and knitting know-how
in impeccable order.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
A decade later, having
moved first to LaCrosse Wisconsin and then Birmingham Alabama, I could find not
only a wide range of good sock yarns at my local yarn shops, but also finely
crafted spindles, elegant spinning wheels, and fibers ranging from local,
organic wool fleeces to exotic varieties imported from all over the world, and
now, thanks to the internet, yarns and tools from all over the world are
available at the click of a keypad.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Sadly, for our
late-baby-boom generation that came of age in the early seventies, what had
started as a humble movement based on simplicity and a rejection of consumerism
evolved for some of us into a more effete kind of materialism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had rejected Cheese Whiz for boutique Brie
on a bed of grape leaves, we traded Betty Crocker for Martha Stewart, and we
spent more on artisanal yogurt than our mothers spent on Thanksgiving
dinner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At its best though, our version
of DIY ushered in a new era of craft in cooking, textiles, gardening and home
furnishing and design.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the
presiding deities of the Arts and Crafts movement of the nineteenth century,
William Morris, once advised, “have nothing in your home that you do not know
to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In out finest moments, we tried for that.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Today, when I look
around at the young DIYers, I can see they’re different from our
generation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead of rebelling, they
connect skillfully with their elders and each other, and use social networks to
share ideas, opportunities, and skills.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Instead of running away, they work to improve their communities by
starting urban recycling programs, practicing black-belt frugality, finding
ways to make something beautiful out of discards, something of permanent value
out of the disposable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
They are more
likely to re-knit an old sweater than buy a sheep farm, more likely to
re-finish an old coffee table than build one out of old-growth pine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m impressed, astonished at their
ingenuity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But sometimes, at a
neighborhood yard sale, I want to turn to the young woman beside me and
ask:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Are you sure about that imitation-Pucci
minidress with those black tights and combat boots and your granddad’s
fleece-lined helmet? You are?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I see
you found Grandma’s black vinyl clutch bag.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You must take home this copy of <u>The Vegetarian Epicure,</u></i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in perfect condition except for a slight stain
on the page with the incredibly decadent chocolate cake recipe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
Oh, OK. You’re a
locavore vegan and you don’t use ingredients grown more than twenty miles from
your home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Got it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Look, here’s some locally grown organic
cotton at the next booth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let me lend
you a spindle! <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Mary Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07545687944750928398noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219617247326936287.post-25625116046114907072013-03-03T06:57:00.001-08:002013-03-03T06:57:42.164-08:00Two Needles Before the Mast<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gEHRSkzvMR0/UTNj5-ISQYI/AAAAAAAAAN4/Bjg6xvtk8pY/s1600/Sailing+Ship.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gEHRSkzvMR0/UTNj5-ISQYI/AAAAAAAAAN4/Bjg6xvtk8pY/s1600/Sailing+Ship.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Cast on—whenever I
meet those two words, I get a nautical vibe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I can almost smell the salt air and hear the bo’sun piping all hands on
deck. Admittedly, my time before the mast has taken place in the pages of Herman
Melville and Charles Dana or in front of movie screens, thus giving knitting
instructions a romantic and adventurous appeal unsullied by the reality of the
sea-going</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Reading sea-lore,
I find fiber-y images, of course, because sailors do spend a lot of time
spinning yarns and tying knots.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Charles
Dana describes how sailors would pass the long hours aboard ship by knotting
lengths of “old junk,” worn lengths of rope, to create “rope-yarns.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He reports that “we had employment, during a
great part of the time, for three hands, in drawing and knotting yarns and
making spun-yarn.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As
a new knitter, a sentence like “slip seven stitches purl-wise, being careful
not to twist” sounded as mysterious and exotic to me as “the foot of the
top-gallant-mast was working between the cross and the trussel trees.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The long-tail cast-on sounded like something
Captain Ahab might have used to hook the great white whale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I pictured the tubular bind-off worming its
way through a dense fog, while turning a gusset for a Dutch heel sounded like
something for which twenty strong men might need a winch. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Yet my pleasure in
puzzling out knitting instructions in the days before YouTube was as powerful
as my pleasure in reading about nineteenth-century whalers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I savored the exotic adverbs and nouns,
reluctant to turn to a glossary to find that an exotic and resonant phrase
represented a simple maneuver with needle and thumb.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
In those early
days of my knitting apprenticeship, paging through knitting books in my local
yarn store was like perusing a captain’s log from the Age of
Discovery—mysterious symbols accompanied by instructions in what I recognized
as English but in a lexicon and syntax I could not follow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What did “psso,” mean? What did it mean to
“make one,” or “knit as the stitches present themselves,” as older instruction
books blithely directed?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Knitting began
to seem as esoteric as aiming a harpoon from the gunwhales of a whaleboat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even more forbidding were the charts whose symbols
looked as mysterious as celestial navigation. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
That’s where more
experienced mariners came to my aid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When I joined my local fiber guild fifteen years ago, my knitting skills
advanced by leaps and bounds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes
I learned by persistently asking questions of wiser and more experienced
knitters, and sometimes I learned by knitting in a group and picking up the
lore of lifelines for lace knitting and magic loops for socks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I discovered that charts are a clear, precise
language for knitting, and easier to follow than line-by-line instructions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
I watched as
astute knitters highlighted each row of a chart so they could not lose their
place, and admired the way they could read a chart both backwards and
forwards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So too, Charles Dana in his
first year before the mast, made his berth in the forecastle where he could
hear the sailors’ talking and “pick up a great deal of curious and useful
information” from “their long yarns and equally long disputes.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Indeed, many years
later, even though I am equipped with more experience and a handy tablet full
of instructional videos, embarking on a new knitting project is still a kind of
voyage of discovery and conquest, setting forth on the delicate vessel of the
last successful shawl or sock into unknown passages with the hope of finding
not only a new garment but an enhanced sense of mastery of the world of
knitting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Beginnings are
often uneventful, with peaceful weather across familiar waters, but inevitably
I approach the dreaded collar shaping, the instep decreases, the shoulder
shaping, and I’m rounding an unknown cape where the winds are fierce and the
charts fail to show how to do the purl-two-together that I’ve never tried
before.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Weathering that
dangerous territory, working through every narrow passage, winding through the
Scylla of dropped stitches and the Charybdis of reversed shaping, sailing
safely past the Siren song of easier projects beckoning from the shelves of the
yarn shop,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>coming into harbor with a
finished project feels glorious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My little
craft may be dripping with barnacles, and there may be a dent in the bow from
our encounter with the White Whale of Entrelac, but look, there’s the next
meeting of my knitting group waving their kerchiefs on the beach to welcome me
in from another long, fraught journey on the seas of knitting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
Mary Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07545687944750928398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219617247326936287.post-54531262498884574772013-02-24T07:56:00.000-08:002013-02-24T07:56:18.548-08:00Klimt Scarf<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5SVO4gIxj4o/USo1DO-wnzI/AAAAAAAAANo/ccQhrqIfE64/s1600/IMG_0038.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5SVO4gIxj4o/USo1DO-wnzI/AAAAAAAAANo/ccQhrqIfE64/s320/IMG_0038.JPG" width="239" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bxQk-xhd798/TSkWcmGBc6I/AAAAAAAAACA/0sQ1op78w-o/s1600/P1000069.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bxQk-xhd798/TSkWcmGBc6I/AAAAAAAAACA/0sQ1op78w-o/s320/P1000069.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
Hello everyone! It's been a long time since my last post, but I am resolved to do better from here on out!<br />
<br />
In the spirit of the waning days of winter, here's the Klimt Scarf I mentioned in my recent Ravelings for <span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;">Interweave Knits</span>. I spun a fine two-ply from a painted roving by <a href="http://www.etsy.com/shop/lynnevogel?ref=shop_sugg">Lynne Vogel</a>. I separated the shades, from deep purple through magenta to gold, and added some two-ply spun from bombyx silk I dyed in gold. I wanted a graduated look to the scarf, with the gold-coin effect Klimt gets in his paintings by using gold leaf. (See the postcard in my notebook, above.)<br />
<br />
I knit the scarf in the round, using stranded knitting, with Lynne's wool/silk in the background and my gold silk as the pattern, in 5 stitches X 5 row squares. I began with a provisional cast-on. My yarn was fine, so I knit on size 0 needles, and the project did take months to complete. Instead of sewing the scarf's ends together, I crocheted long tassels joining the two sides, then knotted them into a bold fringe.<br />
<br />
I gave the scarf to my beautiful sister-in-law who lives in Vienna. Hope it fits in there!Mary Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07545687944750928398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219617247326936287.post-48800568805425583352012-05-10T07:20:00.001-07:002012-05-10T07:20:09.660-07:00Mrs. Ramsay's Stockings--New and Improved<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mdrALpnqcrY/T6vOc50rjHI/AAAAAAAAAEE/GJ7Zi4MjbAA/s1600/Completed+Sock--Close+Up.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mdrALpnqcrY/T6vOc50rjHI/AAAAAAAAAEE/GJ7Zi4MjbAA/s320/Completed+Sock--Close+Up.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
I've added a new version of the Lighthouse Socks, this time called Mrs. Ramsay's Stockings, to Ravelry as a free download. This version uses sock yarn, Three Irish Girls' Adorn Sock, for a more conventional sock. I hope you enjoy my knitter's tribute to Virginia Woolf's character, Mrs. Ramsay, and the presiding spirit of my blog. <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20href=%22http://www.ravelry.com/dls/mary-kaiser-designs/103029?filename=Mrs_Ramseys_Stockings.pdf%22%3Edownload%20now%3C/a%3E">Mrs. Ramsay's Stockings</a>Mary Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07545687944750928398noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219617247326936287.post-55018351879097031832012-02-03T19:32:00.000-08:002012-02-04T11:08:47.115-08:00Lace Sampler Washcloth<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-y23Er6-XVfc/TyymY95fL6I/AAAAAAAAADg/OsGcw7KpqYs/s1600/P1000305.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-y23Er6-XVfc/TyymY95fL6I/AAAAAAAAADg/OsGcw7KpqYs/s200/P1000305.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span id="goog_695942579"></span>For the Greater Birmingham Fiber Guild meeting this month, we're hosting a Lace Forum, where lace knitters will show off their projects and share their favorite tips for success. A similar forum several years ago helped many of us gain confidence in lace, and this time we hope to continue the tradition. For knitters who haven't yet tried lace, I'm offering a simple pattern featuring a lovely lace pattern called English Lace Mesh. This little pattern is only four rows long, and shows such a clear profile that it's easy to tell what to do next. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/lace-sampler-washcloth">Lace Sampler Washcloth</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>Mary Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07545687944750928398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219617247326936287.post-57480203329911919462011-08-13T05:15:00.000-07:002011-08-13T06:57:43.368-07:00Mrs. Ramsey's Stockings<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MLA5xojRZ9k/TkV9wTHEvjI/AAAAAAAAADc/S-2J6oPP9cc/s320/P1000029.JPG" width="320" /></div>Inspired by the socks Mrs. Ramsey knits in the opening pages of Virginia Woolf's <u>To the Lighthouse</u>, I've designed a pattern that honors the English fishing tradition with a gansey-inspired stitch pattern and that uses a traditional yarn--Jamieson and Smith's two-ply Shetland. This sock is sized for a women's medium, in calf-length with a deep cuff. The pattern is available in a free pdf link below:<br />
<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L62reklBXPCt9C6ZzVMaCZ7w6PoA6rNypD4RXsNqHyI/edit?hl=en_US">Mrs. Ramsey's Stockings</a>Mary Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07545687944750928398noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219617247326936287.post-74962506942982294612011-07-28T12:38:00.000-07:002012-02-08T04:36:04.008-08:00A Knitter Named VengeanceIn my Ravelings column in the Fall 2011 <u>Interweave Knits</u>, I write about knitters in literature. This is by way of an addendum. <br />
<br />
<br />
Les Tricoteuses<br />
<br />
Whenever I’m reading a book in an airport, my fellow travelers give me a wide berth.<br />
But when I bring out my knitting, the vibe changes. Suddenly, the empty seats beside me are occupied by the curious and the sentimental swept up in memories of grandma knitting, Aunt Bee and her crochet, Mama and her quilting.<br />
<br />
Women knitting in public did not always invite such happy reveries, however. In fact, a couple of hundred years ago <i>les tricoteuses,</i> the knitters of Paris, were demonized, condemned as dangerous subversives, handmaids of Lady Guillotine.<br />
<br />
The knitters were the first to rebel in the 1780’s when living conditions for the working people of France became unbearably severe. Marching to the palace at Versailles, the women demanded bread. When Marie Antoinette suggested they eat cake instead, the French Revolution was ignited, and the brave working-class women of Paris were celebrated as heroines. <br />
<br />
During the Reign of Terror, however, with the revolutionaries in power, the market women continued to protest in favor of the poor. The new regime found them an unwelcome irritant and made it illegal for them to attend government meetings. <br />
In protest, the women gathered at the public site of executions, standing for hours witnessing the beheadings, knitting silently through them all, refusing to disappear from public life. <br />
<br />
Some observers of the Revolution claimed <i>les tricoteuses</i> had been hired by the executioners to fill the role of witnesses to their ghastly work, and other accounts described them as gleefully celebrating the deaths of the wealthy and privileged. That’s the version Dickens relied on when he created his immortal character Madame Defarge who knits implacably through A Tale of Two Cities. <br />
<br />
Late in the novel, in a chapter entitled “The Knitting Done” we learn that Thérèse Defarge is a revolutionary spy who eavesdrops on conversations in her wine shop, recording the names of her enemies in her stitches. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9fZZ6IZFZYc/TjG6QpgPIYI/AAAAAAAAADY/pVqTfguVcoA/s1600/Mme.+Defarge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9fZZ6IZFZYc/TjG6QpgPIYI/AAAAAAAAADY/pVqTfguVcoA/s320/Mme.+Defarge.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
The “terrible woman had knitted when he talked with her,” remembers Sydney Carton, “and had looked ominously at him as her fingers moved.” She brings her knitted ledger along as evidence when she testifies against the novel’s hero, Charles Darnay. <br />
<br />
Sometimes, when I’m knitting at the dentist’s office near a wheeler-dealer shouting all his financial details into his cell phone, I enjoy a little Madame Defarge fantasy. What if I recorded all these numbers into my fair isle pattern? No one would suspect a sweet little grey-haired lady of corporate espionage. As Agatha Christies’s Miss Marple shows, a woman knitting can pick up a lot of information. <br />
<br />
In fact, Miss Marple is just another version of the tricoteuse. Acting as witness, prosecutor, and judge, she holds court from behind her needles and pink wool. Listening and observing, she stays out of the mischief going on around her, recording and assembling her evidence until she lays it all out in a scene at the end of the novel, like a lace knitter blocking a shawl, when the tangle of threads opens into a complex geometrical design.<br />
<br />
Every time we sit in a coffee shop or a park with our knitting, we bring history with us. There’s a node of timelessness wherever we station ourselves, and the world, like a kid on a skateboard, sails by, glances at our quiet motions, and careens on its path. In any setting, the knitter is a silent witness to the moving scene, focused yet open, listening, connecting one strand to another as she contemplates the intricate loops that hold the world together.Mary Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07545687944750928398noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219617247326936287.post-76755050673098154852011-05-28T05:55:00.000-07:002011-05-28T05:55:11.365-07:00Hands On Color<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">A week ago I drove up through northeast Alabama to Monteagle in the mountains of Tennessee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sky was clear, and even though twisted billboards and splintered tree trunks gave evidence of the recent deadly tornados that tore through these valleys in April, the road side meadows showe no signs of nature’s abuse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, Queen-Anne’s-lace, pink bindweed, yellow daisies and purple joe-pye weed bloomed in clumps all along the way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No landscape designer could have scattered the colors more artfully.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PXA6oU8lbkw/TeDtSUalO_I/AAAAAAAAADA/9bOfkPCqU6I/s1600/P1000219.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PXA6oU8lbkw/TeDtSUalO_I/AAAAAAAAADA/9bOfkPCqU6I/s320/P1000219.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cloister at Dubose Conference Center</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal">All this color was a great introduction to my destination, Lynne Vogel’s Hands On Color spinning workshop at the Dubose Conference Center.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Beside the residence hall, the cherry tree was filled with ripe, slightly tart cherries, the rose bushes were in fragrant bloom in the little cloister garden, all presages of a weekend of rich color.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l1J1ASh7EwE/TeDuGPR6xNI/AAAAAAAAADE/wJ4TOZmlOyQ/s1600/P1000228.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l1J1ASh7EwE/TeDuGPR6xNI/AAAAAAAAADE/wJ4TOZmlOyQ/s320/P1000228.JPG" width="320" /></a>Once I arrived, I checked into my room, and settled in with nine other spinners to learn new skills and revel in Lynne’s world of rich, complex color spun into art yarn, those amazing skeins of luxurious, textured yarns that are featured in yarn stores like Tiffany jewels, and Lynne’s yarns, displayed near a sunny window, glowed like jewels with their multi-faceted textures in coils, locks, and even beads and fabrics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Spinners always turn out to be fascinating people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over the course of the weekend, as we got to know each other, I was amused, impressed, and touched by every person in the group. </div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jcoAEwAb3OE/TeDvA2iJ0tI/AAAAAAAAADI/sKPoc5UOT1o/s1600/P1000236.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jcoAEwAb3OE/TeDvA2iJ0tI/AAAAAAAAADI/sKPoc5UOT1o/s320/P1000236.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Art yarn by Lynne Vogel</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Some had been spinning for decades, others only for months, but each spinner had a palette of colors all her own, and by the end of the weekend, each had created breathtaking skeins of yarn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Lynne introduced us to a wide range of techniques, from spinning thin-and-thick singles to coil wrapping and coilless wrapping, auto-wrapping and introducing diverse fibers by creating “mini-batts.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ouk9U8Wvbcs/TeDv_wogpiI/AAAAAAAAADM/f7FZNi2Riug/s1600/P1000233.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ouk9U8Wvbcs/TeDv_wogpiI/AAAAAAAAADM/f7FZNi2Riug/s320/P1000233.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lynne's art yarns</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>So many techniques that I have had to go back this week and practice the ones I didn’t get a chance to master during the weekend.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My goal was to learn how to spin fatter yarns and how to introduce texture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I did learn to do both.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also had the good fortune to peek over their shoulders at nine other spinners, as well as Lynne, who was generous in demonstrating every technique on her own wheel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the workshop skeins were stunning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each spinner had a palette of rich hues and tones particular to her own color vision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Greens and blues like a tropical paradise contrasted with deep, mysterious reds and purples.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">On the last morning of the workshop, Lynne and Jan Quarles laid out an enormous assortment of fibers on a long table.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each of us selected a “fiber salad” made up of fibers of our choice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We blended the mix on drum carders and spun up our salad batts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Amazingly enough, the random salads blended with our other skeins.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each of us was drawn to the same group of colors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This time, my palette was earth tones of pinky, purply browns with pale blue and lilac accents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Looking at my sample skeins, I recognize a sea-change in my color sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have shifted away from the jewel tones I favored before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are more complex, more reflective of the summer season fast approaching, or maybe reflecting some seismic shift inside of me. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">After a good fiber workshop, I’m left with the existential question:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>how to I integrate all of this into my work?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What kind of yarn do I want to spin?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And why?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And for what kind of final product?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I have lots of happy spinning ahead of me in the coming months.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Techniques to master, fibers to learn about, yarns to treasure, plans to make for sweaters and scarves, hats and cowls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll be back next year to see my new spinning friends and revel for two days in hands-on color.</div><!--EndFragment-->Mary Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07545687944750928398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219617247326936287.post-59772112850653190352011-05-10T08:44:00.000-07:002011-05-10T08:44:53.944-07:00Stitches and Time<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">When I was nine years old, I was obsessed with an obscure corner in the Detroit Institute of Arts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a tiny gallery on the basement level, far from the harsh glare of sunlight, I found a display of needlework made in seventeenth-century Spain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pressing my nose to the glass, I loved to study the meticulous loops, the tiny knots, the satin-stitched petals and delicate chain-stitched stamens in white threads on fine white linen, the long stockings knitted in silk at a gauge of at least thirty stitches to the inch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thousands of stitches, hundreds of hours. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ik-MhHeyGa0/TclcpsIkB8I/AAAAAAAAAC8/H3VDj_4AiMw/s1600/P1000198.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ik-MhHeyGa0/TclcpsIkB8I/AAAAAAAAAC8/H3VDj_4AiMw/s320/P1000198.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Later, in college I discovered that these impossibly delicate, almost invisible stitches were made by privileged matrons, spinsters or widows of imperial Spain, women relieved of mundane duties like laundry, housecleaning, and cooking by a fleet of servants. When powerful men were getting educations and conducting wars, their sisters and mothers passed the long hours with meticulous, time-consuming needlework, delicate luxuries for bridal trousseaus and infant layettes. These privileged ladies had hours, weeks, years to fill, and only a few activities to fill them with—music, reading, writing letters, and needlework.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One member of their group would read from poetry or a popular romance while the others quietly stitched away. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Today, we divide our lives into discreet units—the half-hour television show, the ten-minute coffee break.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We expect answers at the click of a keyboard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We learn of events on the other side of the globe seconds after they occur.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But once in a while, we get a chance to tap into that older experience of time as a kind of quiet pool that expands around us as we enter its depths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the end of a workday, when the dishes are loaded in the dishwasher and the laundry is folded and put away, I sit down for a half-hour to knit, and time stills. I count rows and pattern repeats rather then minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My heart rate slows as my hands and eyes focus on the next stitch, the next crossed loop.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I get into the rhythm, time settles, like the surface of water after a pebble’s dive. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">This week, during my Spring Break, I join a group of knitters who are designing and knitting jackets following Barbara Walker’s top-down method.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we gather around our hostess’s table decorated for St. Patrick’s Day, in the warm aroma of corned-beef wafting from the kitchen, our jokes and small talk gradually give way to periods of silence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are finding our places, picking up the thread of our progress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Bright early-spring sun pours into the room through lace curtains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We knit contently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The conversation slows, and then, in softened voices, slow-paced, the stories emerge, the ones that are deepest and most urgent, the stories we hold in our hearts, most important but most difficult to share. We are quiet in our sympathy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s no rush to comment or offer solutions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We knit one stitch after another, together but separately, and we listen and feel together another’s trouble.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After a couple of hours, one by one, we fold up our work and wish each other farewell, not because we’re watching a clock, but because we seem to arrive collectively at a moment of closure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t check the time until I’m back at my car, back to the twenty-first century world of digital displays of minute and seconds. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Who knows what stories were shared on those sun-drenched afternoons in Barcelona or Seville, what tales of wars or shipwrecks, of dropsy or St. Vitus’ Dance, what recipes, what scandals?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did the Spanish ladies pause one afternoon to gaze at their completed masterpieces, the stockings and handkerchiefs, nightcaps and collars?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did they tuck each item into a trunk with lavender and their hopes for a young couple’s long and happy life?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Little did they know that their work would travel far from their hands to unfurl across the centuries, the long, patient strands of nameless women who had all the time in the world on their hands, to inspire a little girl growing up in the Motor City searching for something old, something strange and beautiful as her dreams.<o:p></o:p></div><!--EndFragment-->Mary Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07545687944750928398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219617247326936287.post-67942706119399563692011-03-27T06:33:00.000-07:002011-04-01T07:18:16.508-07:00<div class="MsoNormal">After a long, cold, snowy winter, Alabama is exploding with pent-up color. Carefully tended gardens are brimming with tulips and irises framed in brick-edged beds, but the wild thickets by the side of the road are rioting. Wild invasive wisteria vines are blooming in huge untended mountains of purple, their pendant blooms spilling over the country roads. Redbuds that blossom along their trunks and limbs have turned a violent puce, as if they’d been electrified overnight. Oak-leaf hydrangeas, their blooms the size of soft balls, fill shady corners under the pines. Park your car anywhere outside and when you return in an hour, it’s covered in lime-green dust.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In all of this profusion, there is one element of Shaker simplicity, one slender note of absolute purity—the wild dogwood. Deep in the shade of pine and oak, a white glimpse of unglazed porcelain floats in the upper branches. Beginning in early March as pale green flickers, then a soft fawn, dogwood blossoms finally turn a bright, creamy white, as if a smudged sheet of paper were to turn spotless. Five flat white petals with a deep red center. They don’t droop or spill, but float in the air as if resting on long arms. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This spring I’m knitting a cardigan for summer, the Pinnate Cardigan by Amy Christophers (<a href="http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/pinnate-cardigan">Pinnate Cardigan</a>). About a month ago, I chose an organic cotton yarn in a pale shade, nearly white, with flecks of what spinners call “vegetal matter.” It wasn’t until the dogwoods opened this month that I saw the connection. I’m knitting with the same creamy white I see outside my window.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iz4p4VM1JSE/TY87Ocy_IlI/AAAAAAAAAC4/4T6DBfR0P18/s1600/P1000172.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iz4p4VM1JSE/TY87Ocy_IlI/AAAAAAAAAC4/4T6DBfR0P18/s320/P1000172.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My pattern has a lacy leaf motif in panels along its length, and as I add leaf after leaf to my sweater, I can see that spring is doing the same. Every day another bare, grey tree leafs out. The weeds spring out of the lawn as if to get a headstart on the mower. The days lengthen, and I see that yet again in my herb garden the mint has survived the winter and is setting up outposts in the future territory of my basil and thyme. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Thoreau, when spring came to Walden Pond, wrote in his journal, “there is nothing inorganic.” This year, I think I know what he meant. The skein of cotton yarn, neatly coiled in my basket, bound by its paper label, comes to life with the dogwood’s petals, the weeds and wisteria, and like me, at my knitting, hearkening to the mockingbird’s whistle and thrum.</div>Mary Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07545687944750928398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219617247326936287.post-69580586410300287482011-02-18T13:42:00.000-08:002011-02-18T13:42:20.877-08:00Grannies and Granny Squares<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My granny taught me to crochet when I was five or six years old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since I am left-handed, she had to transpose the instructions for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know how she did it, but it must have been a gentle, easy process, because I don’t remember any struggle or confusion, just the joy of acquiring a new skill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I crocheted granny squares, and then I found patterns for doilies and Irish lace and I crocheted lots of things, fascinated by the geometry and the patterning, mathematics dancing before my eyes.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-P4YaiHl6M9k/TV7ltPOJIvI/AAAAAAAAACk/Q9DkhTVU-Lk/s1600/P1000110.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-P4YaiHl6M9k/TV7ltPOJIvI/AAAAAAAAACk/Q9DkhTVU-Lk/s320/P1000110.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">My mother crocheted an ambitious granny-square afghan before she was married.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Large enough to cover a queen-size bed, in dense, three-ply wool in bright, rich colors and bordered in black, the afghan was my childhood sick-room comfort zone, wrapped around anybody recovering from a stomach-ache or a bad cold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I still treasure that afghan; I still haul it out to comfort the couch-bound.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Though it’s seen many years of hard use, its colors are still bright and fresh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The heavy, bright wool is comforting to the cold and feverish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The wool seems to press down on you, to embrace you, it seems stronger than you are, firmer, more solid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems to stand guard over your shivering frame until you recover and kick it off, when, folded back into its place in the linen closet, it awaits its next call to service.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nRLLlvnUFV0/TV7mqnNMG-I/AAAAAAAAACo/Rotsy3HB3Kk/s1600/P1000111.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nRLLlvnUFV0/TV7mqnNMG-I/AAAAAAAAACo/Rotsy3HB3Kk/s320/P1000111.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal">The granny squares make the perfect entertainment for the convalescent eye.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Edged in a deep, warm, glossy black, each square is made up of one, two, or three bright colors, sometimes a whole square in one color, just to soak in its richness, a scarlet or emerald green or a bright yellow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other squares join complements—green and red, or blue and orange, while others show more thoughtful experiments:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a line of pink around a tiny square of red, a row of yellow shading into orange, then burnt umber.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I look at those squares now and I see my mother in her twenties, the youngest child and only girl, last to leave home, living with her parents in their newly-built house in the outskirts of the city.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think about the faded color photograph where she holds a dinner-plate-sized dahlia up to her face so her dad could beat his neighbor in their annual dahlia competition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their new garden produced giant tomatoes, rosebushes with huge, round creamy blossoms, massive peonies, six-feet-tall sunflowers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of the garden’s richness and color, along with my mother’s dreams for her future life, seemed to migrate into my mother’s afghan.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Granny squares also remind me of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the 1970’s when they suddenly became hip.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My high-school classmate Judith Killeen started a business making granny-square purses. She earned enough money so that she could hire a dressmaker to sew her clothes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was deeply impressed with her enterprise, and not surprised at all when Judith went on to engineering school, one of the first women to enroll in the early 1970’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her innovative spirit was easy to spot even in high school, as she found a way to exploit the possibilities of the humble granny square.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Crossing Central Park West in New York City one spring day a few years ago, I passed a woman in a scarf made of tiny granny squares, crocheted in a yarn finer than lace-weight, in a bouquet of soft pastels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was smitten, and ever since, I’ve thought about making a similar scarf, even though I know I couldn’t match the delicacy of the one I glimpsed on the street.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve thought about using up all of my crewel yarns, perhaps, or using Rowan’s Kidsilk Haze for a soft effect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So far, I have amassed a few of the squares.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much crocheting is still ahead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xHGnbO_T1yA/TV7nY0hOYTI/AAAAAAAAACs/-0pvZD33et8/s1600/P1000113.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xHGnbO_T1yA/TV7nY0hOYTI/AAAAAAAAACs/-0pvZD33et8/s320/P1000113.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal">But every square takes me back to my sixth year, sitting beside my granny on the side of her bed in her sunny bedroom on a side street in Detroit, watching her skilled hands, fingers bent inward with arthritis, gently moving her crochet hook in and out, as I hold mine, our heads bent over our work, until I tire of concentrating and rest my cheek against the starched rick-rack at the top of her apron strap, watching as she finishes one more square.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><!--EndFragment-->Mary Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07545687944750928398noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219617247326936287.post-21378764541624203782011-02-12T17:32:00.000-08:002011-02-12T18:14:30.851-08:00Valentine's Day Boot Socks<a i'd="" they're="" (they="" a="" alpaca="" and="" as="" beautiful="" blend="" boot="" cascade's="" cushy="" day!="" double="" eco="" for="" from="" href="http://www.blogger.com/Happy" like="" line.="" made="" offer="" pattern="" project,="" quick="" satisfying="" slippers).="" socks="" the="" these="" to="" valentine's="" wool=""></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">As a Valentine my readers, I'm offering a free sock pattern for these cushy boot socks. Just click the link below for the pdf. document. Happy Knitting!</div><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U_F3WPSw1zo/TVczdC3XBNI/AAAAAAAAACc/Tx6Cmw6J690/s320/P1000105.JPG" width="320" /><br />
<a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B0racPW342gWM2FjMDc3ZjAtMDhjNi00Zjc0LTk0MGUtZmE5MzJlMDcxMDZl&hl=en">Valentine's Day Boot Socks</a><br />
<a href="http://https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B0racPW342gWM2FjMDc3ZjAtMDhjNi00Zjc0LTk0MGUtZmE5MzJlMDcxMDZl&hl=en"></a>Mary Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07545687944750928398noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219617247326936287.post-75392409409960161022011-01-13T15:55:00.000-08:002011-04-01T07:20:57.710-07:00Knitting is Small<div class="MsoNormal">For one thing, knitting rarely exceeds the dimensions of the human body, and we humans are pretty small. Knitting usually covers even less space than that. Half a body for a cardigan, a sixth of a body for a hat, a pair of socks or mittens. So knitting is pretty small.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_rq7ix6TbKVE/TS-Pv1dVaaI/AAAAAAAAACM/jg9l-sHc040/s1600/P1000083.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_rq7ix6TbKVE/TS-Pv1dVaaI/AAAAAAAAACM/jg9l-sHc040/s200/P1000083.JPG" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal">Large-scale knitting, like a sweater for an SUV, is automatically parodic, an ironic comment on the essential smallness of knitting.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
The tools are small, light, and cheap. Sticks made of wood or metal or plastic, sometimes connected by a plastic cable. Yarn, no larger in diameter than a pencil and usually much smaller. A few even tinier accessories like a tape measure, sewing-up needles, a small pair of scissors. That’s it. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_rq7ix6TbKVE/TS-NK9Gv_gI/AAAAAAAAACI/j8MoIWK8qVk/s1600/P1000094.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_rq7ix6TbKVE/TS-NK9Gv_gI/AAAAAAAAACI/j8MoIWK8qVk/s320/P1000094.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And the motions are small, almost imperceptible tugs and twirls of a finger or wrist, repeated again and again.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There are only two of these motions called stitches: knit and purl. You can twist them around each other for cables, throw the yarn over your needle to make a lace eyelet, but once you know knit and purl, you know all there is to know about stitches.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Doesn’t take long to learn. Twenty minutes to learn the knit stitch, twenty more to learn how to cast on, bind off, and purl. Now you’re started.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Cast on, knit a row, purl a row, repeat.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But the number of repetitions—those are massive. Hundreds of stitches repeated thousands of times. Something prayerful about those tiny motions, over and over again, like turning a prayer wheel or saying a rosary. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Over a lifetime of knitting, millions of stitches, and more repetitions accumulate: scores of sweaters, hundreds of socks, thousands of cast-ons and bind-offs, and you begin to understand how knitting works. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">How it is small but elegant. Like no other craft, knitting follows the contours of the body. Its discipline is kinetic, following the arch of the foot, the clamp of the thumb against the palm, the raising and lowering of an arm, the narrowing of a waist, broadening at the shoulders. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Knitting follows the soft contours around a baby’s chin as well as it traces the girth of a fisherman’s torso. Unlike tailoring that fits a flat textile to human curves, knitting produces a three-dimensional, curved fabric that stretches and clings, expands and contracts.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It takes decades of practice, watching and learning from the skills of other knitters to become a good knitter, a real knitter. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There’s nothing to it. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But I'll never get to the end of it. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Mary Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07545687944750928398noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219617247326936287.post-66656437740774485912011-01-08T18:08:00.000-08:002011-01-08T18:08:59.154-08:00Art is Everywhere<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">Today at the Birmingham fiber guild meeting, we talked about keeping journals for fiber art work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One very gifted weaver commented that she never thought about her weaving logs as a journal; others said they never thought of keeping a record of their knitting, even though they kept other kinds of journals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Some of us are meticulous, using a standard format to record every project, dating and measuring each finished product, while others (like me) reach for the nearest notebook when inspiration strikes, open to a random page, and sketch, paste, write, figure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have index cards, notes on the backs of envelopes and receipts, all kinds of little bits of paper tucked into my fiber journals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s how I know that I’m a non-linear person to the max.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_rq7ix6TbKVE/TSkXsYeTzwI/AAAAAAAAACE/Ex_hvVP2zeY/s1600/P1000070.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_rq7ix6TbKVE/TSkXsYeTzwI/AAAAAAAAACE/Ex_hvVP2zeY/s320/P1000070.JPG" width="320" /></a> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But we are all artists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It took me a long time to realize that “art is made by ordinary people,” as Ted Ormond and David Bayles write in their invaluable book, <u>Art and Fear.</u></div><div class="MsoNormal">I had grown up with a skewed idea about art and artists, an idea that prevented me from accessing my creativity for a long time.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Like many conservative, well-educated midwesterners in the fifties and sixties, my parents respected art and artists, especially old masters like Shakespeare, Rembrandt, and Michelangelo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But they became very uncomfortable around twentieth-century art like the Socialist murals of Diego Rivera in the Detroit Art Institute, and they assumed that artists live chaotic lives filled with substance abuse, unstable relationships, and even insanity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a child, I was presented with a double-bind:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>art is admirable and worthy of veneration, but only if it has been made by people a long time ago and safely housed in a museum for at least a hundred years.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Now I know that art is everywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="_x0000_s1027" type="#_x0000_t202"
style='position:absolute;margin-left:103.05pt;margin-top:6.25pt;width:180pt;
height:135pt;flip:x y;z-index:2'/><![endif]--><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_rq7ix6TbKVE/TSkWcmGBc6I/AAAAAAAAACA/n-rNykzygIw/s1600/P1000069.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_rq7ix6TbKVE/TSkWcmGBc6I/AAAAAAAAACA/n-rNykzygIw/s320/P1000069.JPG" width="320" /></a><span style="mso-ignore: vglayout;"> </span></div><table align="left" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody>
<tr> <td height="5" width="102"></td> </tr>
<tr> <td></td> <td align="left" bgcolor="white" height="139" style="background: white; border: .75pt solid black; vertical-align: top;" valign="top" width="185">The occasions for it and examples of it are everywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today at the guild meeting I saw beautiful hand-woven scarves, I saw women knitting beautiful socks, I looked at an artist’s journals containing scores of visually striking compositions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And all of these women look just like me, and pass unremarked at the mall or the grocery store.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Except that we all have a kind of glow when we’re making beautiful things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">One of my resolutions this year is to keep art alive in my life and introduce it in a place I’ve been afraid to let it out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For me, that’s my office at the college where I teach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This year, I resolve to make my work environment more colorful, more inspiring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">How do you personalize your work space?<o:p></o:p></div><!--EndFragment-->Mary Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07545687944750928398noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219617247326936287.post-3105407414752410392011-01-04T04:40:00.000-08:002011-01-04T04:40:14.356-08:00Mrs Ramsey's Knitting: It’s been a long, drawn-out winter for Alabama. Th...<a href="http://mrsramseysknitting.blogspot.com/2011/01/its-been-long-drawn-out-winter-for.html?spref=bl">Mrs Ramsey's Knitting: It’s been a long, drawn-out winter for Alabama. Th...</a>: "It’s been a long, drawn-out winter for Alabama. The trees in the woods behind my house are stripped down to their architecture—all gray vert..."Mary Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07545687944750928398noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7219617247326936287.post-6911922922798316732011-01-03T13:43:00.000-08:002011-01-04T04:35:27.160-08:00<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">It’s been a long, drawn-out winter for Alabama. The trees in the woods behind my house are stripped down to their architecture—all gray verticals and lichen-spotted diagonals. It’s quiet. Anna’s at the beach with her friends, Kieran and David have driven to Oxford, Mississippi to visit Faulkner sites, and I’m home alone.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;"> I’m reading a favorite book. My copy of <u>Knitter’s Almanac</u> must be at least twenty years old. There’s a whole archeology of signs in it. An address in Fort Collins penciled into the flyleaf tells me that I was living in Colorado, in graduate school, when I first owned it, but beneath the address is one of Anna’s two-year-old scrawls from when she systematically marked every book in our house in Alabama. Stuck to the back cover is a heart stamp that dates from a long-ago Valentine’s Day gone a bit wild. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">The price on the back is $2.95. On the back pages, a “Catalog of Selected Dover Books in All Fields of Interest” lists Dover’s eclectic collection at $3.00 or less, including Enrico Fermi’s THERMODYNAMICS, TEN BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE by Vetruvius, and CUT & FOLD EXTRATERRESTRIAL INVADERS THAT FLY by M. Grater.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">I’ve opened my copy countless times in the past twenty years, most often to find the classic Practically Seamless Baby Sweater, the one that suits every baby, and gladdens the heart of every expectant mother. This time, I’ve decided to really read the Almanac and learn what I can from it. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">I’ve been knitting since I was a teenager, designing my own sweaters since college when I had no time to shop for patterns. Knitting has accompanied me through graduate school, my first college teaching job in Wisconsin, through divorce, remarriage, the birth and growing up of my children, and nursing my mother through a long illness to her death. Knitting has introduced me to dear friends and to wonderful yarn stores all over the world. Knitting helps me to appreciate the work of human hands. Knitting is a meditative practice and a delight that never fails. I hold my knitting in my hands, but my knitting also holds me together, focusing me in the present moment, connecting me to the stitches I’ve made in the past, to the stitches I will make in the future, as I plan my next project, the one that will include none of the mistakes I’ve made before or the ones I’m making now. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">My eye is always distracted by the hand-knit garment in a room. Every issue of a new knitting magazine contains a project I can’t wait to try in a new yarn that looks rich and lustrous. I’m always ready to believe the next scarf, the next sweater, will be the perfect one, and even though it never is quite perfect, each one gets a little bit better than the one before.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">I’m starting in the beginning, with January, when Elizabeth Zimmermann’s project is an Aran Sweater. She writes, “most Aran patterns are forms of cable, and all Aran sweaters contain several different ones.” Cables—how appropriate for January, those monochrome arches and angles, the caves of a honeycomb stitch, the knotty roughage of moss stitch climbing slowly up the side of a heavy sweater fit for “keeping out the wind,” as EZ says.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">Cables that snake and wind and twist across the landscape of a sweater create a fabric of deep texture, a texture deep enough to bury a fingertip in, deeper than any other fabric texture I can think of. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_rq7ix6TbKVE/TSJClO1UWZI/AAAAAAAAAB8/kxbsohXtgY0/s1600/P1000076.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_rq7ix6TbKVE/TSJClO1UWZI/AAAAAAAAAB8/kxbsohXtgY0/s320/P1000076.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Garamond;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">When I first learned to make a cable twist by holding stitches, knitting those behind them, then knitting the held stitches, I felt as if I’d seen through a magician’s trick. What seem to be coiled ropes on the surface of a sweater were really twists on the surface—the back was flat. It was like finding out that the actor hanging by his thumbs from the roof of a skyscraper was just crawling on his stomach along a painted flat making convincing grimacing expressions. But the magic returns when I step away from my cable stitches and see how they seem to climb and twist across the surface of the garment.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">“I have heard that the Aran family-patterns helped to identify the man washed up drowned. A sobering thought,” writes EZ. Whether or not that legend is true, cable patterns seem connected to hard lives, working fishermen’s lives, from Ireland’s western islands to Brittany, wherever cable patterns are found, even in the Baltic and Mediterranean. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">Covering one’s torso with twisted ropes seems almost shamanistic for a sailor, as if the knitted cables could hold one together in a storm. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">Although cabling uses up almost twice as much yarn as flat knitting, the twists and floats create air pockets, an insulated, double-thick fabric. Even a fine yarn could be cabled and twisted into a thick, padded garment. And once she (or he, since fishermen are reknowned knitters) started introducing twists and cables, intricate patterns evolved. And the patterns become metaphors: blackberries, honeycombs, chains, fishtraps, waves, ropes, the garment a kind of poem whose language is the stitch taken out of its sequence and picked up later, in a different place.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">Not all cables convey the “perturable toughness” of the cables in Shakespeare’a metaphor for friendship. In fact, a fat cable knitted in a soft merino or cashmere, like those in Patricia Robert’s sweaters of the 1980’s, creates a sensuous rhythm of compression and release, soft puffs and squeezes of lush fiber. So, it’s all in the nature of the fiber, the needle size, and of course, the way we interpret a technique. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">I’ve been experimenting with cables and searching through my pattern books, swatching with my chosen yarn in 5-ply Rittenhouse Merino by Manos, hand-dyed in Uruguay. My yarn is a deep teal blue, because I remember a teal-blue Aran sweater one of my high-school students was wearing in 1985, and I’ve always wanted an Aran sweater that color. But my sweater won’t be a traditional Aran, I’ve decided. I’m going to cluster the cables at the top of the bodice like a yoke, and release their tension below the bustline for an A-line profile, better suited to my pear-shaped figure.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">This afternoon I passed through Walmart’s garden section, looking for a larger pot for a root-bound ivy. Passing the seed display, I saw an elderly man in a fawn-colored cabled cardigan fanning through an array of seed envelopes, selecting carefully the summer’s tomatoes, melons and peppers. In this bare-bones month, he sees beyond appearances to the time when the tips of these grey branches will lighten and tightly wrapped buds will open.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">Let me check—yes, that was a red-bud on that branch deep in the woods. Compression and release—the rhythm of the year.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Garamond;">What knitting project are you planning for 2011?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;"><br />
</div>Mary Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07545687944750928398noreply@blogger.com1