restingmotion

Unmuddling

It snowed on Christmas Eve, and Christmas morning I awoke to a winter wonderland.

I suppose this could be considered a gift or a curse, depending on what one was planning.  But Christmas, or the spirit of the holiday, whether one celebrates a Christian Christmas, a general secular American Christmas, or any variation on the theme of winter solstice celebrations, remains.  We tend to get all caught up in the surfaces of things, and forget they are just that, surfaces, and the thing itself is deeper.  

 

(I continue to be fascinated by photos taken through windows, and am amused by the way the kitchen lights appear like small hovering orbs.

I love the silence following a snowfall. It is as if the world has been swaddled in a comforting blanket.  My mental flailings and discomforts are calmed, ready to emerge anew.  Not that much is happening here, it was a quiet but lovely Christmas.  As Covid-19 continues its rampage across Tennessee, I live a mostly solitary life, and, although I have indeed had more than enough of living inside my own head, I am finding that clarity and focus are returning.

 

I started posting to my knitting blog again.  I had initially intended to start earlier in the fall, before my heart and body rebelled, but better late than never.  Nothing profound is being said there, but the blog is fulfilling its original purpose, a record and a journal of my knitting.  I never do well with paper project books.  I tend to lose them, to pile up miscellaneous bits of paper, to toss them all in a fit of declutter mania.  Perhaps though this is what I need in order to find my way back here, to this blog, as well.

I suppose I originally needed to record my ideas for the blanket project, but I quickly realized that I needed the focus of simply recording progress and ideas.   I also posted on the two hats I knit over the holiday weekend.  Both are using super bulky Manos del Uruguay yarns, both using the same “sidewinder beanie” pattern.  Details can be found on my knitting blog (link above) or my ravelry page.  I am not certain that anyone wants the details here.  

 

I desperately needed the hats.  None of my current hats pull down over my ears, my fur earmuff has disappeared, or perhaps in a bit of early move-to-Knoxville craziness I gave it away.  After all, my first winter in this town I don’t think the temperature got much below freezing.  This winter has felt cold to me.  I don’t know if it is actually colder or if I am colder natured, but I am enjoying wearing sweaters and curling up in blankets by a fire.

Christmas Eve and Christmas day were filled with a flurry of Zooming, Texting, Calling, and socially-distanced gift opening. I actually missed cooking however, so over the weekend I made cholent, perhaps not traditional Christmas fare, but it worked for me. I used the same recipe I have used for decades, now online, here.   I stopped making it because I can no longer eat barley, and the initial grains I substituted:  rice, millet, quinoa, somehow left the dish lacking.  Then I found Job’s Tears (Coix lacryma jobi) also sometimes called Chinese Pearl Barley, although it is not related to Barley (Hordeum vulgate).  I had read that they were a good gluten-free alternate to barley and so thought them worth a try.  And I have to admit I am quite happy with the result.

I used to make my cholent with flanken, but that is a cut not commonly found here in Knoxville.  Technically, probably any stew meat would do.  But I also needed pastrami, a good chunk of pastrami, and good quality pastrami does not seem to be a regional specialty either, so it took me a little while to pull together the ingredients.  Hence Christmas cholent.  I am not complaining.

And so here we are on another chilly gray December morning.  The snow is partially melted.  I have a few large shrubs or small trees that have been partially uprooted by the weight of the snow, and they will have to be attended to.  At the moment, however,  I feel hopeful.  Maybe all I needed was a hat.  Poncho pulled me out for a walk pretty much immediately following my shower, and here I am, wet hair tucked up inside my new cap to keep warm, snug, and ready to face the world.

 

 

 

 

Three Things Tuesday

I have been hopelessly muddled in a blog post that, if anything, is becoming more muddled as time goes on.  It seems that all I can do is admit that sometimes life is more transparent than at other times, and move on to something else.

 

So I present a few progress notes.

1. I am still washing blanket squares.  They are filthy and covered in cat hair and the process has been slow.  At least until yesterday, when I made a concerted effort to move forward.  I remembered the large sweater blocking board my mom had insisted I bring home the last time I saw her — at the beginning of the year.  I did not know what to do with it, or where to store it so it was still in the garage. Yesterday I brought it in to the basement storage room and laid it on the floor next to my smaller gray blocking board.  Although you cannot quite tell from the angle of this crude photograph, the white board has three times the blocking space as the smaller gray board. I filled it with wet blanket blocks yesterday.  They are taking about 28 hours to dry in the December damp and tomorrow I will wash the last batch.  This prospect sparks a little happy dance. Of course the job will not yet be done: I will have to begin the process of planning, repairing, knitting and reassembling.

 

2.  Christmas decorations remain in flux, although truthfully I rarely get the decorating done before the third Sunday of Advent (last Sunday) as much as I always intend to do better.  This year progress has been complicated by the fact that I cannot access the holiday ornaments until after I get wet blanket squares off the floor.  So it will be later yet.  There is still plenty of time.   Christmas merely begins on Christmas Day.  I always appreciate the period of preparation, of Advent, with its highs and lows, with its call toward mindfulness and care, with the knowledge that each year’s preparation will follow its own path. 

This rustic tree is out. But by next weekend my grandmother’s crèche and the sparkly glass trees I purchased the year that I spent Christmas in a small apartment will be out and greenery will be up as well.  I am as yet undecided about a traditional tree.  The personal, the intimate, connection and kindness are what matter to me this year, including kindness to myself.  I am not so much about putting up a brave front as about celebrating joy in the midst of darkness.  No floodlights here, merely candles, candles whose light is warmly appreciated.  A phone call or zoom, food delivered, a socially distanced glass of wine or cup of cocoa, a note, all are their own kind of lights in the darkness.

 

3.  Surprises are still welcome.  This blanket arrived.  The purple of the blanket is almost exactly the purple of my couch. Poncho and Moises think it coordinates nicely with their fur.  I assume, in time, all will be revealed. 

 

And so I muddle through.  I don’t think muddling is a bad thing.   Just as the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference, the opposite of confusion is not certainty.  

 

Making and Mending

Over the weekend I finished knitting the trim on oversized boxy linen tee.  I have named it summer sunset, although that is a little bit of a stretch...

Weaving in myriad yarn ends took a full evening of knitting time and I also admit that I approached the finishing instructions — to toss the thing in the washing machine and the dryer with a bit of trepidation, even though I had done exactly this with my swatches, and I had the data to prove this was the right course. But most of my knitting choices do not lend themselves to wash and dry, and I have felted a sweater or two in my time, so experience and knowledge were at odds.

Needless to say the sweater turned out beautifully.  I actually think this will work well as a summer top for all but the hottest and most humid days, but also as a layering pieces in spring and fall, perhaps even the warmer days of winter here in Tennessee.  I an already imagine it with a pink-coral turtleneck and brown chinos....  but today is too cold and I am not inclined to play dress-up.

After the sweater was done I started dismantling a blanket I had knitted at the end of 2004 and into early 2005.  The colors don’t really go with this house, but that was not the reason for disassembly.  The blanket was too large, and I was finding it impractical.  I had knit it extra big, because George was a bit of a blanket hog, but now this larger-than-king-sized blanket blanket dragged on the floor off my queen-sized bed and felt cumbersome for a solo sleeper. It also required mending and was too large and heavy when wet for me to wash it.

 

I spent most of the weekend taking it apart.  Lint and cat hair covered every surface and my sinuses were acting up a bit. I initially thought I would start this back in August, but health issues interfered, and Moises thought it was a perfectly cuddly bed. This weekend I paid the price in sinus congestion for allowing him the luxury.

Now I am washing the individual components.  Once that is done I will lay them out and think about how to reassemble them, making necessary repairs as I go.  There are several threadbare spots and holes.  I don’t really like the way I assembled this the first time around, so my plans are different for this iteration although I don’t know what I will do with the old border, which I removed in its entirety.  I do not plan to reattach it, but it is in such good shape that it seems a waste to discard it, and I am sure some idea will eventually surface.

 

I had thought that this would be my “next” project.  But I see now that it will take several days just to wash the many squares, laying them out n my sweater-sized blocking board.  I will need something to tide me over until I can start the process of renewal and reassembly. Which means, I suppose that I will be sorting through project boxes again later today.

Last but not least, I made a minor repair to one of my favorite winter coats.  The separating zipper tape on this cashmere duffle coat was pulling loose and it had become difficult to zip.  I did not make this coat, but I have always loved an unlined duffle, and almost always had at least one in my closet.  This one is several years old and is by Kinross.  When it finally wears out, I shall make my own, but at the moment, minor mending will suffice.

 

Last night my eyes were too tired last night to be able to even see the eye of the needle, much less thread it, so I put it all off until this morning, when I thought I would go to the studio to use the powerful embroidery magnifier.  Luckily this wasn’t necessary.  Freshly rested, I  threaded the needle and repaired the coat in less time than it would take for me to walk out of my bedroom and over to the studio; in less time, in fact, than it took to make my first cup of coffee.   This is good, because it is chill enough that I want to wear this coat again today.

 

A Few Things That Made Me Happy

 

Working this colorful wrapped stitch in Prism lace weight linen.

The beauty of the fallen Japanese maple leaves on the ground cover below.

A simple salad supper, a craving one evening despite the cold weather.  A salad inspired by Yotam Ottolenghi, adapted for rose celery from GirlnDug farm. Shrimp. Feta.  Happiness.

More autumn color.  Ginkgo leaves have really captured my imagination this year, especially the way the color seems to concentrate the autumn light, but I had never been able to capture any fragment of that sense in a photo.  Until this one taken in the waning afternoon light.

This week I learned that one reason my eyes were always tired is that my prescription had changed, and was in fact too strong for me.  One eye no longer needs a prescription for distance vision, and the other only a slight prescription.  We decided to see how I would adapt if I tried to return to contacts, this time wearing only one, for reading, while my stronger distance eye went uncorrected.  Bonus: For the first time in years I can actually see to put on makeup.  But I am not yet sure I am used to seeing my  face without the protective layer that glasses provide. Not yet certain how this will work, or if I will be back in my glasses in a couple of weeks, but the irony is worth noting with a bit of self-compassion.  When I stopped wearing contacts and started wearing bifocals, I missed my face; now, I miss my glasses and feel exposed.  

Snipping a few herbs early one morning I was entranced by the frost on the leaves of oregano and chervil.

Music has not stopped.  Although I still miss live performance, zoom has been wonderful.  I have subscribed to the Norwegian Digital Jazz Festival through the Big Ears website, and  I listened to this concert earlier this week.  I have replayed it at least once (one of the advantages of zoom, although I still miss the way the vibrations of music in the air change a space).  The Eivind Aarset Quartet is more to my taste, but I still found Hedvig Mollestad fascinating and enlightening with the way their music seems to dance on a precipice, blurring lines between free jazz, heavy rock and prog.  At times powerful, occasionally beautiful, certainly perception-changing.  Tonight Big Ears is presenting a concert by the Bad Plus and I am looking forward to it.

I finished the bottom trim on the boxy linen tee and I have to admit I love the way it is turning out.  This is not exactly how the pattern was written, as four colors were used in the sweater, but I only have 3 remaining.  It took me a little fiddling to align the three colors in a way I found pleasing, but now I am happy with the results.  I have not finished the neckline yet simply because Poncho decided to move up in the world, advancing from lying at my feet, to joining me on the sofa.  I approve, but Moises is not yet convinced. There were a couple of evenings in front of the tv, dog on one side, cat on the other and no knitting in between. 

 

And there it is, actually a pretty good representation of my week.  Not much happened.  Not much needs to happen. Life is good.

 

Seeking The Light, or Advent.

Yesterday was a cold, rainy day.  There was snow in the air in the afternoon but not on the ground, at least not where I live.  The thing was, that even though it was a damp and depressing day, and I could not quite get the chill out of my bones as the dampness seemed to seep into everything, it was also a happy day.  It was not a productive day, yet another in a long string of non-productive days, but it was a day of contentment, a day in which I smiled often.

 

I do not fret the lack of productivity.  Increasingly I despair of this life, a life in which we count the accomplishments of days, a life in which we count everything:  calories, sleep quality, steps, items on our lists that have been crossed off.  The more we count, I fear, the more we become automatons and the less human, or less humane, certainly less filled with imagination, hope, creativity and even empathy.  A world of checklists is not a world of possibility.

 

But then, of course this is a year in which I am not the only one feeling the weight of demoralization. And I am one of the very lucky ones.  I have a home that is secure and safe, I have food, I have friends with whom I remain in contact even though I yearn to see them more, for human contact that remains just out of reach.  I have the resources, financial, physical, and even emotional to see me through.  Not that this means there are not days in which I struggle, days in which the world feels more bleak than at all optimistic. 

 

My absence from this blog reflects my struggle against demoralization, exhaustion, relevance.  The truth is that I sometimes feel so trapped in my own head that any attempt at writing just seems pointless.  I feel the weight of my own thoughts more simply because there are fewer opportunities for those thoughts to be sifted, shared, and newly revealed through contacts with others.

 

Perhaps my brightening mood is simply due to catching up on sleep.  I wondered, at one point, if my good intentions had overwhelmed my sense, if I was able to weather the process of adopting an older dog, a diabetic dog, a blind dog.  If I had realized the first two weeks would be as hard as they were, would I have done it?  I hope so.  We need each other Poncho and I. And life has settled down into comfortable companionship.  I need to be aware of, to care for, another living being in my life, to get out of my own head.  I need to be reminded that spending half an hour walking in a circle is just as important as spending the same amount of time in pursuit of some fixed destination.  In fact, I wonder if all the goals I have pursued in life were really just points on a bigger circle.   It seems, as I grow older I also grow closer to where I began.  

 

Hmm.

 

It is Advent in the Christian calendar, the beginning of the church year, a time of waiting and preparation.  I find it interesting, this beginning of the year in the darkest period, at least here in the northern hemisphere, of the year.  But this, the circumstances of light and dark, of seasons, the world in which I grew and developed shapes the paths my thoughts are likely to take in their meandering.  The church year begins in the darkness much like the way, in Jewish tradition, certainly in ancient Hebrew life, the day began at sunset.  The calendar year begins just as light begins to return. We begin the day waiting for the light.  We begin our lives being born.  We begin our lives, in fact live our lives, in preparation, and in hope.  

 

See here I am, feeling all positive again.  Darkness is merely a transition, something from which to emerge. 

 

But to what are we emerging?  That my friends is the journey of a lifetime.  To celebrate those moments of joy, whether they be short or long, to be compassionate to each other and ourselves when the tunnel seems to long, when we struggle, when we trip and fall.  I am not sure that what we find in the light is what matters, simply that we make the journey, and that we are kind to each other and help each other along.  I cannot say I have mastered this, that I am anything more than the lowliest of apprentices.  Compassion to others comes far more easily than self compassion to me.  But I still need to make the journey.  We still need to make the journey.  Together.