restingmotion

Reading Review — October (More or Less)

I was sitting in front of a fire, drinking a glass of wine with a friend and chatting, thinking how nice it would be to curl up with a book in front of the fire....

 

Alas.  I had other things to do, and was struggling with my current novel. I remembered, however,  that I hadn’t written a book post since September, when I had attempted a marathon catching-up. I am still behind, but rather than delve into another huge post, I am going to start with October, which is easier in a way, because I only finished four books.

 

There were several reasons for this:  travel, stress, perhaps a touch of depression, but also some good things.  I am increasingly more interested in diving deeper into whatever I am doing, letting time slip away. This means that for now my reading is slowing down, becoming more reflective and conversational even.  Perhaps I am simultaneously reading and rereading. Life is not a contest after all, although for me sometimes my biggest struggle is accepting that, letting go of behaviors that were once adaptive but have become maladaptive, preventing me from being the best person I can be, according to my own understanding of what that entails.

 

And so on to the books — except that somehow my reading and my understanding is not all that straightforward:

 

Devil In the White City was the first book I finished, although not the first book I started.  I had read it years ago, was rereading it for a book club, and found myself fascinated by the juxtaposition of the stories.  And it is a book about two stories, stories that happen to take place in the same place at the same time but seem unrelated. Or are they?  I saw a lot here:  the rise of industrialism and the dream of a shiny future; a book about opportunism but also about the not so pretty underside of opportunism; a book about dreams and hopes for but also a book about how our dreams can blind us.  I kept turning back to David Graeber’s book Debt, and to David Brooks’ books The Road to Character and The Second Mountain, which I was reading simultaneously (and savoring slowly, not finishing until this month).  

 

I am not sure that Erik Larson pulled off that grand sense of connection, but the book still haunts me, haunted me through the reading of Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte, which I also read slowly, beginning in September and continuing throughout October,  savoring every morsel. Reading and rereading. Sometimes I would put it aside confused by a reference that seemed just beyond my ken, until the meaning hit me and I was back.  The book is fun, smart, witty, terrifying and sometime deliciously sarcastic.   But it is also thought-provoking and filled with challenges. Rushdie puts his own spin on modern life, mixing our obsessions with surfaces, our yearnings for depths despite our inability to hold on to them.  In some ways he is exploring the same malaise as  Graeber and Brooks, Larson as well, although less obviously so.

 

Quichotte also came uncomfortably close to Katherine Eban’s revelations about fraud in the generic drug industry in Bottle of Lies, which I had just finished at the end of September.  He was referencing a different case, one I had forgotten, but I remained unsettled, and perhaps felt the boundaries of my own bubbles pushing in a little more closely than I might prefer.

 

 

 

All of these books explore uncomfortable truths, our ongoing struggles with cognitive dissonance and the kind of moral dishonesty it inculcates, despite our best, and mostly well-meaning intentions.  This is the same kind of moral dishonesty that was also painfully evident in the portrait of the lives of free blacks in the movie Harriet. Necessary, probably yes, at least for free slaves in the south, but what may be adaptive and necessary in one setting can become blindness, self-justification and maladaptive in others.

 

The other two books played perhaps a smaller role in my thoughts, although I have no regrets for having read them. I did not find Anne Thurston’s book Knowing Her Place: Gender and the Gospels, to be completely successful, although I did find it thought provoking and insightful in places.  The author appeared to want to explore the way we read and understand biblical stories based on our own cultural gender biases blinds us to possibilities and meaning, meaning that can be beyond gender itself, but the book often became mired down in the very gender details the author was attempting to uproot, to the detriment of the very issues she seems to want to explore.  

 

Kudos is the third in Rachel Cusk’s trilogy that began with Outline, and in some sense the author has come full circle.   In the first book the narrator seemed to be in the process of rediscovering herself, having lost one view of herself, and in this, the final novel, she has reached the goal, only to find that the success itself becomes another loss of self, exploring the way  “successful writer” is itself a role outside of the self.  Throughout the novel Cusk explores both the internal and external person of the writer, as she absorbs the narrative of others, and they project their narrative onto her.   In short, self can never be defined by success, and, as the author rather pointedly reminds us in the final scene, whatever internal or external success we might achieve, it is only the internal that can sustain us as we can never quite escape the roles others assign to us.

 

Monday Miscellany

No apologies.

 

I have made great progress in terms of settling in — finding a balance between my needs for order and creative disorder that feels comfortable and functional moving forward.  The house is settled now, at least as settled as it can be for the moment, which, I suppose is all one can really hope for in terms of any aspect of life.  I am not all unpacked, but I don’t really need to be; I simply need to be able to function and do the things that are important for me to do.  Next up is the studio, which remains a little more chaotic than I would prefer.  But again, I am simply looking for balance, not perfection, that point where I can find what I need, where I can play and make a mess without it devolving into chaos, and where refinements can occur as I feel the need and motivation.

 

Although I did pretty much absent myself from social media and blogs last week, it was not all work:

 

I finished one sock and cast on for the second.

 

The landscapers have brought in the shrubs, the “public face” of the garden.  And I have planted one small flower bed, along the driveway at the base of the retaining wall going up to the circle:

 

18 irises and 20 geraniums.  It felt so good to be planting, to have my hands in the dirt, to experience the hopeful practice of spreading out roots, of settling and nurturing.  But the soil was not completely what it should be.  One area was filled with small rocks and I had to dig them out.    

 

The experience reminded me not to move forward too quickly.  There was another section of bed I was thinking of planting this fall, one in back, that I showed you drawings for in a previous post. But I realize now that planting is premature.  I have all winter to plan, and, as I have suitable weather, time and energy, to dig up beds, improve the soil, and prepare for future planting.  This work, tedious as it may be, is also fulfilling, serving to reacquaint rusty muscles with the skills of gardening, as well nurturing a less stressful place to plant in the spring, both for the gardener and the garden.

Since planting the weather has turned cool.  There have been a couple of frosts.  And my thoughts are turning to sweaters.   I have been working on Lisa Richardson’s Cowl Cardigan from the new Rowan Mode collection.  I am really happy with the way this is knitting up.  Even though double moss stitch is somewhat slow, I love the depth it is giving to the yarn, Kid Classic, in a rather soft pink, named Floss.

 

On this Monday morning this week looks to be a quiet one, and I perhaps relish that after a marathon of concerts and social events.  My bed is made, I’ve been to the gym, and I feel fortunate that I can content myself with starting a load of laundry and picking up my knitting.

 

Puttering on a Friday Afternoon

I’ve been an absentee blogger of late.

 

I have been settling in however, feeling this need to finish nesting, to spend time in the final bits of getting my space in order, broken up, of course, by long bouts playing with yarn or thread, or completely new to me, pastels.  Really I can think of  little nicer in life at the moment than not having to account for my time.

Today, I am working on garden plans.  There are areas that I cannot plant yet, areas waiting for trees, or fences.  Alas these are the areas of the yard for which I also have the clearest vision.  That leaves me playing with ideas on paper for the remaining areas.  A task that is both important, and somewhat fruitless as well.  I am the kind of person who likes to start with a plan, but I also realize that with gardening, if not all of life, those plans are always built on partial information...

 

So we will see how it all turns out.

 

As I play with paper and colored pens and pencils I am also listening to the string quartets of Grazyna Bacewicz, which I am finding fabulously beautiful and powerful.  I am listening to the recording by the Silesian Quartet on Chandos, which is also available as a series of videos on YouTube. If you have any patience for mid-twentieth century string quartets, I highly recommend these, and perhaps even if they are bit of a stretch but you want to expand your horizons with something by a gifted female composer.

 

There is also another YouTube video here, of the Syzmanski Quartet playing the Quartet #4, from a performance in 2015.  The two groups bring different insights to the piece, which is new enough to me that I am still in the process of discovery.

 

Hoping you all have a wonderful weekend, filled with fun and relaxation as well as a touch of discovery, perhaps.

 

 

Five Things

Hopefully still on a Friday.  

 

I am home.  I am supposed to be out again but have been a flake and cancelled at the last minute.  I don’t know if I had a allergic sinus infection or a cold/but all I want to do now is sleep.  I’ve taken three naps today, and lost this post more than once, so I accept that this is where I find myself. 

 

1.First, for pleasant surprises.  I was sorting through photos this morning and through one of those marvelous serendipitous alignments, a photo I took of a hydrangea blossom in California showed up directly above the lettuce from last week’s farmer’s market (posted on instagram).  Aren’t they both marvelous?

2.Next, I am marvelling at how life’s little upsets sometimes deliver new joys and suprises.  My computer is nigh unto death.  Granted, I grumbled about troubles with Safari months ago, and have suffered a series of fixes and subsequent failures.  Then, one system failure became two, then three.  Still, I managed to put off a decision. When application failure number four occurred I accepted that the impending demise of the Mac, but my budgetary priorities will not accommodate a new computer at this time.  Enter the iPad, which formerly did not use enough.  Perhaps that is changing.  

I’ve been blogging on my ipad, which, with a keypad, is proving quite useable, aside from minor glitches like needing to save my work more often to avoid loss. The iPad has easily allowed me to easily play with collages and manipulating photos, like the picture above, of my cute new travel blow dryer.  I went to the sewing retreat with a book I didn’t reead and wished I had a blow dryer as my hair was at an awkward stage of the growout process.  Then I discovered this tiny dryer in a tiny case that also holds all my styling supplies and fits in my little 21” suitcase with plenty of room to spare.   I took it to California and still had room for a knitting project, which I ended up not needing. I came home with 20 new balls of yarns for class projects (only 2 of which I purchased)

3. One of those projects is this wonderful Trailing Vine Pillow (seen in inset) by Dee Hardwick, from the new Seasonal Palette book. Although I haven’t resume work on the pillow yet,  I love every project in that book and every color in that palette.

4. I also came home to grass, mulch, and plantings.  The house looks great.  Trees and some shrubs are not in yet.  The summer was hot and dry and long, and neither the trees, nor the remaining plantings for the front street-front border, are available yet.  I picked up 13 blueberry bushes down at Overhill Gardens in Vonore a few weeks ago, and am happy that they were planted, as were another 14 azaleas I purchased a few weeks ago for the back border.  Below are the blueberries being loaded into my trunk for the trip home, probably a silly photo, but I thought it was marvelous that all thirteen shrubs fit and travelled home safely.

5.Last, but far from least, below is a picture of my grandson playing Bongo at his school’s “Grandparent’s Day” celebration. His class choir was singing “Jolene” and I believe the solo was an improvisation; he pulled it off quite well, and it was by far the best part of that particular performance.

It is still Friday.  I can post this, and perhaps go turn the heel on a sock before calling it a night.  Have a wonderful weekend.

 

Into the Deep

I have been in Redondo Beach, CA, at the first North American Rowan Knitting retreat and it has been absolutely fabulous, both in terms of meeting wonderfully creative women, but also in terms of the workshops and I am leaving filled with inspiration and ideas.  I am also leaving with at least six more projects in my head, four of them on needles (to add to the three I already have going at home).  A tad excessive yes, but also exactly what I needed to get myself over the hump from wanting to return to the creative life but treading too cautiously, admittedly secretly convinced that, despite any claims about being an artist, or hoping to be an artist, that I am a good craftsperson but without an artistic bone in my body.  And there I was suddenly in the deep water, ready to become a dolphin, swimming and leaping and hoping to never wash back up on shore. 

The process started Monday morning with Dee Hardwicke, who had transformed the L’Atelier store into a magical workroom filled with inspiration, and not a small amount of terror, at least for me.  I learned we were going to draw, chart what we drew into something we could knit, and then proceed to begin knitting.  I was nervous about the drawing part, convinced as I am that drawing is not part of my skill set.

First we started with hard pastels, and simply making lines on paper.  Everyone’s paper was different.  Mine was pretty, but there is nothing very artistic here....

Then we were supposed to draw something.  Dee suggested a leaf and for those of us who were more timid drawers, that alone seemed ambitious, although there were others who were far more confident and ambitious.  Surprisingly, I found I enjoyed making leaves.  I enjoyed working with the pastels.  Perhaps my struggle with drawing is more a matter of medium; perhaps I should try again, working with pastels, or even watercolors, rather than the hard lines of pencils.  Just the act of drawing itself was a revelation.  Somehow however, I managed to take a mirror-image photo.  I don’t know how I did that, or how to undo it either.

Dee then proceeded to show us how to graph our images onto a knitters grid made to the tension of the yarn we were to be using.  

And we were off....

Dee had many samples to inspire us as we chose colors...

We knit much of the afternoon.  I truly enjoyed the process, loved being reminded of how much my younger self had adored color work and intarsia.  I felt connected to some part of myself that had been put aside during the years when the kind of focused knitting that this kind of color work requires was impossible.  

I ended up ripping out my knitting as soon as I returned to my room.  Not because I didn’t enjoy it, but because my gauge was too loose, and it was becoming difficult to maintain tension.  I used the suggested size needles, even though I know that I often need to size down.  I was not at my best that first day, having walked into the Los Angeles air only to be suddenly pounded by massive congestion.  I thought I had caught a cold from my grandson, but now I think it may be simply a sinus attack from something going on in the air in the LA area.    I immediately cast on again, on smaller needles, making smaller progress between other workshops and social gatherings.   Already I’ve learned from the process, have changed the pattern of my stitching slightly, hopefully to add more dimension and life, but I won’t really know if it worked until I am further along.  

 

In retrospect, although October is not yet over, I can say that for all I dragged myself kicking and screaming through this month, October has become in one sense almost a creative boot-camp, jumpstarting passions for fabric, food, yarn and revealing depths, perhaps, that I would have been reluctant to explore on my own.

 

 

In Which I Am Already Stressed and Still Manage to Get Myself Into Trouble

Trouble with my own tendency to throw myself into the inspiration of the moment that is, with little regard as to the repercussions with my own internal “should” monitor.

 

October always seems to be one of those months that gets too busy too fast and this October has been no exception:  the beginning of the “arts” season, four trips, a Camp Grandma weekend.  That would be excessive in and of itself, but somehow I failed to factor in the most critical thing of all, namely who I would be when I moved back into the house.  And I have been caught somewhat by surprise.

 

Admittedly some miscalculations were made.  I made plans assuming that I would be settled in the house by the end of the summer, but work on the house ended just before Labor Day, and I underestimated my ability to settle during the work.  I also somehow underestimated the pull that creating this space would have on me.  At the moment I want nothing more than to finish unpacking and settling, to disappear into creative pursuits and dreams.  It feels like I have been putting this off too long, and now it is time to put off other things so I can do what my heart has been calling me to do.

 

But as I said, I underestimated that pull, and said yes to some things I should not have. And so here I am, writing a post in an airport, while I go off on my third trip of October, a trip I, in no way, regret. But when I was home I wanted nothing more really than for the world to disappear and to leave me to unpack, settle, nest, play with yarn and fiber and fabric, patterns and dreams, but obligation would raise its head, and it would leave a crack open for my stubborn inner critic, always ready to criticize my choices. 

 

I did play though, although not in the studio. 

I needed food and I went to the Farmer’s Market. Once there I was quickly inspired. I am not complaining.  I had missed that inspiration to play in the kitchen.  I do, however wonder why it had to arise at such an inconvenient time, in a short busy week between trips. Or perhaps therein lies the secret to happiness — pursuing your dreams when it is not easy to do so, much as the same way helping others when one is tired and wants nothing more than to be alone, is exactly what our souls need to soar the highest. P

One of the things I found at that farmer’s market, which was a week ago now, was fresh ginger root.  I bought a couple of pounds, and proceeded to pickle it.  There are a couple of jars of pickled ginger sitting in my refrigerator now, happily doing their thing while I am away.  I also tried using the ginger stems to infuse some tea. The stems had a subtle flavor and although it was good, it was not a completely successful experiement.  I ended up turning the tea into a green tea/ginger leaf syrup, which was an improvement, and I concentrated it and froze it for use upon my return.

I also discovered that the ginger leaves are quite edible and have a lovely, if subtle, ginger flavor.  I stir fried a bunch with that large yellow oyster mushroom and a little chicken breast for dinner before tossing the remaining leaves into the infusion.  In retrospect, I think the leaves also would have made a nice ginger-leaf kimchi, and I’ve put a note in my calendar for next year.

 

A bottle of wine that sat in my car for the extended trip home from sewing camp, was the basis for starting a batch of red wine vinegar, and I started a batch of malt vinegar as well, using some dark gluten-free beer.  I suppose my vinegar will not be true malt vinegar as it contains no barley, but I hope something good comes from the experiement anyway. 

The fermentation kick was partially inspired by all those red peppers I found at the market.  The idea was to make a salt-brine fermented sriracha.  I started by  chopping all those hot peppers in the food processor but I was a little nervous, perhaps more so than I needed to be, or perhaps not, about burning my eyes, so I did it outside on the deck, wearing the goggles from my circular saw over my glasses while I worked.  I may have been a sight to see, but I did not take a picture. Nor did I take a picture of the peppers either, which are happily bubbling away in a crock in my basement.

 

I  discovered lovely carrots with beautiful greens, and bought two bunches. In fact the farmer from which I purchased the carrots was very happy to give me extra bunches of greens that he had trimmed for prior customers, enough that I made a batch of carrot-greens soup to get me through the week and still had extra to freeze for future, off-season, use. 

 

As I write this, I remember how happy the time in the kitchen made me.  Remember the wonderful meals:  Curried chicken, Szechuan okra, various roasted vegetables, a fabulous cauliflower salad and am happy that I indulged in this creative outburst, even if it meant neglecting other creative pursuits. Winter will be here soon enough, the market will mostly continue to slow down and eventually end, and there will be long weeks when little inspires me to cook.  Rather than beating myself up over the things I wasn’t doing — unpacking, cleaning the house, blogging,  etc — I should have cut myself some slack.  This is, in the end, exactly what I want to be able to do in this time of life, have time to indulge and even sometimes over-indulge in passions.

And of course the added benefit is that I will also get to eat well. Perhaps gratitude is best found in the most difficult corners, when one is too tired to look.

 

 

 

 

 

Music, Memory, Art(?): Where are We Now?

Last night I attended an incredibly beautiful chamber music concert, the first of the Knoxville Symphony's Concertmaster series for this year and was stunned by the skill, harmony, and emotional weight of the performance.  I also allowed my mind to wander, as the minds of humans are won't to do, enjoying the music, experiencing the place, and allowing my thoughts to attempt to integrate the feelings of the now with the history that has led up to the now.  It became a tangled mass of branching thoughts, which also seems to me to be a very human phenomenon.  It is only when we cling too tightly to simplicity that we can be led astray.

The program consisted mostly of music of the baroque era, and mostly music of great emotional depth and weight.  The exceptions are important here, as was the layout of the program, as the contrast added necessary tension, a tension that served to expand the listeners response, inspite of, or perhaps because of, the interruption in flow.  This is harder to do than one might assume, this contrasting of what I will call style and substance, in a way that actually enhances all of the components, making something that felt whole out of disparate, but thematically related, pieces.

 

The basic format was along these lines:  style, substance, style, substance.

 

But how did that take shape?  First there was Corelli, with "La Folia for Violin, Harpsichord, and Continuo", a light vibrant piece that set the tone, a musical amuse-bouche of sorts. Corelli is important for shaping the tone of the baroque, but also because he insisted on a consistency in technique that changed the way music was performed, opening the way, perhaps, for modern orchestral performance.  Corelli also, at least to this listener, seems to be incredibly balanced, lyrical, crisp, happy music, but a music of surfaces only, the depth held tightly at bay.  The Corelli was followed by a longer work by Handel, the Sonata #4 in D Major for Violin and Harpsichord, which was richly resonant, imbued with an emotional sense that played harmoniously with the setting in the Knoxville museum of art.  The lighter movements seeming to bounce playfully off the glass sculpture overhead, to dance through the texture of the cloud-filled sky seen just beyond the musicians, the contrast of baroque music and modern city in the moments before dusk.  And then just that, dusk and the passion of the Scherzando, eternal, and yet also extremely specific to this communal experience in this time and space.

 

Then we began the second style-substance rotation.  The Handel was followed by Martinu, by the "Promenades for Flute Violin and Harpsichord".  It seems like an interesting choice on the surface, Martinu a very 20th-Century composer, a composer whose music seems perfectly in tune to his milieu between the wars that eternally changed human consciousness concerning who and what humans are and could become.  Martinu was also attracted to the baroque, an interesting choice, but perhaps not surprising, an attempt to find a path forward while looking backward, looking for something in human history that softened the weight of the emotional moment.  In this sense Martinu reminded me of Corelli -- perhaps less formally polished and reserved, but also all style -- except this was music for the jazz age, music of the 20's, music that was intentionally avoiding the inescapable emotional weight of the recent past.  

 

I suspect that many in the audience did not love the Martinu as much as the Handel.  I could say that I too might prefer to drift into Handel than Martinu, although I found it both shocking, and it is strange to say that about music that is over 80 years old, and charming in a way that had me considering Martinu differently than I had previously, probably mostly because I am only familiar with his symphonic output.   But the Martinu also served to pull my thoughts together in a way that would have been different had the music not been included.  I think placement was critical here, just before the intermission.  If I were to maintain the food analogy, I would say it was a bit of a tart sorbet or palate cleanser, allowing our ears and minds to reset between two too-rich courses.  

 

And the second half was rich.  We were treated to two of the Brandenburg Concerti, and due to the considerations of the space, the audience and the larger group of musicians, the space itself began to feel as if we were all participating cells in a single body as the music unfolded, musicians and listeners as one.  There was a very relational sense to this performance, one that is not always captured both between the musicians, and between the musicians and the audience, one where the listeners feel as if they are a part of the music surrounding them.   It was a powerful and beautiful evening.

But this leads me to the other part of this performance, the places the music led my mind to wander, and my own questioning of history, experience, and humanity.   These thoughts are my own, of course, and yet, much as we like to think ourselves unique, this is but a shadow truth.  I am but a speck after all, and music reminds us of this, of the way we are transported into some common place even though our individual experiences of that place are different.  We are all just cells in one giant living tree, twisted and overgrown perhaps, but an inexorably connected piece of  the whole.  It seems interesting, therefore,  that though we live in a time when we prefer to think of ourselves as unique, we still thrill to music written in a time when the uniqueness of the individual was not a priority.  This very dichotomy seems to connect us even more deeply.  Even though we cannot experience anything in the same way as that previous cell did, its existence informs our existence. 

 

As I listened to the Corelli, I was transported back to my 17- and 18- year old self, to the girl who loved Corelli, the girl would sit in her dorm room and lose herself in this music.  I wondered what a young girl saw in Corelli and I am not surprised: the joy of it, yes,  but also the harmony and cohesiveness. Perhaps it was that very lack of emotional weight that drew me in.  At that age all I wanted was an escape from the burden of emotional strife, and as I listened to the music again, I reconnected with that sense last night, the was reminded of the way we yearn for peace today, yearn for escape from the sense of strife hammered into us every time we look at the news.    

 

Corelli and Martinu, Handel and Bach.  Baroque music connects us to some essential yearning. But we cannot have it, not in the way we think anyway.  The way we listen to this music today is shaped by the way the world has been altered over the course of the last 120 years.  It is in our DNA.  The music we heard last night was unique to a particular time and place. We the listeners, and the musicians playing the music, are each completely who we are, and we are products world entirely different from the one in which Handel lived. That Handel could write music that transcended time and place is art.  That is something unique to us, we humans, art and awareness -- not just that we are aware, but that we are aware that we are aware, and this awareness changes us throughout subsequent generations, even, and oh the injustice of it, without our being aware that we are changed. 

 

The music by Martinu reminded me of this, of my adolescent self loving Corelli, of the way we, the collective audience, loved the Handel, and that sense of universal yearning. The Martinu struck me because it made me think about the way many audiences of classical music today struggle with this period, struggle more I think with this "modern" period that occurred between the wars, the music where one world, one social structure, had been torn asunder and yet there was no stability, where another war was going to change our very understanding of humanity.  We struggle because we cannot recapture that feeling experienced by generations before us, by people who were transformed into a different kind of awareness following WWII.   We are inheritors of a different kind of world, but,  in a way, like Martinu, we seek a more distant history, one less imbedded in our more recent DNA. Perhaps we too attempt to integrate old with new, dreams with the reality of the world in which we live, yearnings with experience.

 

I don't think we think of music, or art, in this way very often, and perhaps my own meandering reflections are shaped by new understandings, or misunderstandings, from recent readings.  But it seems like something worth exploring.  Or not.  

 

This perhaps is just a beginning, an incoherent beginning at that. 

 

A Weekend of Adventure

Late evening.  A city in South Carolina.  Back roads.  That is all I know.

It has been a great weekend, the weekend of a sewing retreat with really six fabulous women, five of whom are now new friends (one has been a friend a long time).  It has been a weekend filled with sewing yes, but also a weekend of great food, fellowship, laughter.

I didn't complete any garments, but I did not expect I would.  My goal was simply to get started, to make some muslins of garments that actually fit --- not as in this is good enough because it is what I can buy, but as in actually fit.  And I made a good start, with lots of help.  You can't tell much about the dress above, and truthfully I love the pattern of the light on the table as much as whatever I was trying to photograph.

I finished two muslins, two garments that will become basics.  That I did not produce three muslins was completely my own fault.  I am not one to pretend like life is perfect, or that I never mess up, and mess up is exactly what I did.  I had traced off a favorite pair of pants, but stressed, distracted, and completely unthinking, I grabbed non-stretch fabric in order to muslin those stretch pants.   It was not an abject failure however.  I have a pretty good idea of where I need to go from here, and what I need to do next.  As I worked, memories were reignited and I am looking forward to the process.

Then it was time to go home.  I didn't get far -- about ten miles.  But first you need the back story.  You see, I had a blow-out on the way to the retreat.  It happened in Columbia, in heavy traffic, when I was in the far left lane passing a truck, in an area on the curve that was not very safe.  I controlled the car, there was an exit right there, and I am grateful to the drivers who let me across traffic so I could exit to safety.  I drove the rest of the way on the donut on back roads, arriving in the dark.

I found a tire dealer who could replace my tires with something in the right size and of similar quality.  I suspected the rim was damaged, discussed this, both on the phone, and with the person who looked at my car,  and was told they would look at the car and let me know if that was the case -- if they could replace the tire or if I needed something more.  But somehow, somewhere along the line, someone forgot, and they mounted a new tire.  Less than 20 miles later, that tire was shredded and I was going nowhere.  Luckily for me, my friend Marjorie was still in Myrtle Beach.  I called the auto service, they found someone to tow my car to the Audi dealer in Charleston, and Marjorie kindly took me down as it was on her way. 

My car is being repaired and I should be on the road again tomorrow.  In the meantime, I had a glass of cabernet when I checked into my hotel, a lovely dinner, and a good night's sleep. Despite all the agitation, I am incredibly fortunate to be here, to be able to enjoy this very European-feeling American city.

A Slow Start, But A Start Nonetheless

It seems that a good part of my time last week was spent in the studio.  Mostly I was simply unpacking, but I didn't want to leave.  Now, back home, without the prospect of having to pack up and leave again soon, unpacking was not necessarily less tedious, but it was still somehow more enjoyable.  I was already to starting to think about what I want to work on, where things should go, pulling projects. And also hitting walls.  There are still things I have to do, some cubbies that have to be built because I haven't unpacked the components yet.  I don't yet have a pressing table.  That too still has to be built, but I am about half-way there.  It remains a transitional space, but an increasingly functional one.

 

I worked on a few small projects for others.  I am ready to get started sewing for myself, but some of that progress was hampered by the slow progress of unpacking, burnt fingers, and travel plans.  I haven't made anything for myself in many years now, and I have no TNT patterns.  So although I have materials and ideas, I feel very much like I am starting fresh, like I am diving into the deep end of the pool, rather than wading in from the shallows.

 

I threw some things in a suitcase and went to my mom's.  We've been working in her sewing room.  She is working on a few quilt blocks.  I have commandeered her cutting table and am tracing.  I traced a pattern for a dress.  I know what basic alterations I used to make generally, but enough has changed during the transition into my 60s that I think a simple shift, and starting from scratch, is the way to go.  I am, in fact looking forward to both making and wearing this dress, as I see much potential.

But I am also working on a few things which may yield more immediate success.  I have a woven tank that I purchased from Lafayette 148NY some years ago and which I have since worn constantly.  In fact I have another version of the same tank, with variations in hem and fabric.  This piece is, and once I copy the basic shape, will continue to be, a staple in my wardrobe.  There are a few minor fitting issues, but I have a pretty good idea of what needs to be done to complete the transition from very good to favorite basic.  

Or perhaps I don't.  As I started to trace off the original tank, the first one I bought, I realized that I have worn it almost to death.  The fabric is worn and fraying, stretched in places, threadbare in others.  In fact I probably should have stopped wearing it months ago.  Trying to trace the fragile, warped piece was proving to be difficult.  In the end I realized I would never wear this iteration again, so I simply cut it apart to make a pattern.

In fact, when I first traced the front, I probably made a mistake.  I traced it as it was, but then realized it had warped somewhat, actually following the same asymmetricalities as my own torso.  I wonder if that is good or a mistake, I suspect the later, but I was tired already.  It seems that reacquainting oneself with old skills is a process, and memory is sometimes slow to engage fully. I have straightened the piece out, and this morning I believe I need to trace another, straighter version before starting.    Whichever piece proves to be the most useful, the experience itself will be educational.  

 

I did a better job with the back pieces (above).

 

Lastly, I started tracing a pair of pants, a style I wear frequently and love, a pair that fits pretty well, but with a couple of  significant but easily corrected flaws.  I started tracing off the pants last night, only getting as far as the back yoke.  I will hopefully finish up today.  I am desperate for bottoms, assuming fall temperatures will arrive sometime.

 

In the meantime, do not expect much from me this week.  I am traveling again.  I am attending a sewing retreat, but I will mostly still be in pattern- and muslin-making mode.  I'll have knitting and needlepoint with me as well, to sooth frayed fitting-nerves, if nothing else.  And, as if there is not already enough on my plate, this morning I started coughing; my nose is running and my eyes are feeling heavy and tearing up.  I am hoping that mom's cats, Scooter and Cat, have simply made an impression on my sinuses, hoping that this is not a cold. If it is the former, my upcoming exit will help; if not, all other plans are up in the air.

 

Flowers from My Mother's Garden

I walked around my mother's neighborhood this morning, first out through the back yard in the early morning sunlight, then back.  The sun was higher, the light different but not yet high.  These photos are being shown in the order they were taken, as the sky brightens, as I leave and return.

Aside from the lushness of the flowers, the first thing I really noticed was the softness of the air, the relatively low humidity, at least as compared with Tennessee, the gentle caress of a steady soft breeze on my skin. It is unusual to go from Tennessee to Texas and find a kinder, gentler climate.  And although this is not the fist time this has happened, I continue to be surprised when the world upsets my expectations.

As I walked, my senses began to experiences the differences between the neighborhood and the one I had walked a mere 24 hours earlier.  Both of us live in neighborhood with manicured lawns, where homes have sprinkler systems, and yet nothing was the same.  Of course the plants are different in Texas than in my Tennessee neighborhood, but there were other signs of difference as well.  Garland Texas is not in the midst of a drought, and the air is rich with the smell of earth, of green leaves and continued growth.  Autumn is not advancing as quickly here.

Even though I live in a neighborhood filled with sprinklers, we cannot water enough to counterbalance the continued heat and the lack of rain.  Texas as well has suffered a heat wave, but the availability of water, and the plethora of more heat tolerant plants is evident.  Walking in Knoxville I smell dry dusty earth, browning leaves, decay.  Walking in Garland I smell flowers, freshly mowed grass that smells of new growth,  wet earth.  The scent of a freshly watered lawn still in the flush of growth is markedly different than a freshly watered lawn that is nonetheless struggling to survive.  

I notice other things as well.  The birdsong is different.  I hear the sounds of the marching band coming from the nearby high school, although I would probably hear something similar if I lived near a high school in Tennessee.  I am reminded that it is Friday, that there will be a pep rally, and I am carried back to my own high school days.  

I think about the drive to Texas, the long ride into the extended Texas sunset, broad and wide and filling the sky with a different kind of light than I see in Tennessee, where one feels closer to the earth perhaps, and less dwarfed by the sky.  I think about how I watched the motion of the grasses on the sides of the road in Arkansas, the movement of the air through the leaves, the changes in wave motion and velocity as different vehicles passed in close proximity.  I wondered why I had never noticed this before.  I wondered about how easy it is to pass through life without really paying attention.

Sometimes I struggle with travel, with the idea of travel on an intellectual level, not the desire for it.  Sometimes I think of travel as going someplace exotic, and put visiting family in a different category, travel that is not really travel with a capital T.  But that isn't really fair.  All travel, all experiences outside the constraints of our normal boundaries can open our eyes, expand our horizons.  I remain unconvinced that we really need to travel in order to learn to open our eyes, but perhaps we do, perhaps we need to be forced out of the boundaries of our normal habits.   Perhaps it is the interruption that is as important as the location, the interruption that allows us to stop our internal monologue for just a moment, and see something a little differently.