restingmotion

Another Knitted Tee

Autumn has arrived along with the requisite switching of the closets.  Generally this is a good thing as summer dressing is my least favorite and I I find joy in my reacquaintance with jeans, sweaters, boots, wool, and velvet.   I actually love this weather with mornings int he 40s and daytimes in the 60s or 70s.  But I don't mind looking forward to colder days with warm sweaters and toasty fires.

 

But what, you may ask,  about all those knitted tees I have made this past year?  Actually, they are perfect for the kind of weather we are having right now.  It is not yet woolly sweater season.  But the temperatures are perfect for layering and for thicker tees, which brings me 'round to yet another addition to my growing hand-knitted tee collection.

 

 

Presenting Arizona Sandstone.

 

This was a deep stash project.  The yarn, from a long since closed store called ArtFibers in SanFrancisco, was purchased before my grandson was born.  Named Fauvé, the yarn is a knitted tape, with alternating sections of beige cotton and a purple/lavender/bronze nylon blend.  The yarn is complicated enough that it seemed best suited to a simple tee, so to start I simply began playing with stitches.  Half-linen stitch is an old favorite for hand-dyed and novelty yarns, and I really liked the way the yarn knitted up in half-linen stitch, forming striations that reminded me of the patterns and colors of sandstone in the Arizona desert.

 

 

I didn't remember what my original plan was for the yarn  so once I got a gauge I liked, it was simple enough to make the calculations for a simple tee.  I wasn't initially sure if I would include sleeves, simply because I didn't know how much yarn I would need.  So I started with the idea of a sleeveless shell, and figured I would ad lib from there.

 

Well, I did have enough yarn, but I dilly-dallied a bit before actually starting on the sleeves.  I finished the body of the sweater on September 11th, but didn't pick up the yarn again to knit the sleeves until October 1.  The sleeves only took a day to knit, but did that mean that I was on a roll and finished the sweater forthwith? No, it did not.  

 

Cooler weather and the advent of autumnal colors started to seep into my head, eventually reminding me to get this project seamed and finished.   And now I have a new light-weight tee.  I think it will see a great deal of wear.

 

 

Technically the colors are a little on the warm side for me.  But they are also muted, and I can lean more toward muted warmth than I can toward clearer warm colors, so this tee actually works well with a great deal of my wardrobe.  

Meditation

I've been off-balance, wondering how to write about happy frivolous things in a world that feels far away from happy and frivolous.  Even as I write that I know it is not so simple and that frivolity must exist even in the face of despair, love in the face of grief and great pain.  That statement feels like nothing, a platitude, a feather in the wind. And yet that same dichotomy exists in my own life in the balancing of the despair, the pain and grief of the world, with the very present joys and consolations of the everyday interactions that fill my days.

 

Yet despite the peace of my own bubble, here it is laid out before me, a slap in the face, a reminder to my kinder nature that wishes to believe that we have evolved into a kinder species.  But no:  our brutal history, a history it seems we never quite escape, even sometimes within ourselves -- the urge to meet rage with rage, to fling more pain on top of our own, to cause hurt when we are hurting -- is ever present, and apparently still uncontrolled.  Of course much of the horror is driven by greed and lust for power, by those who would fuel division.  Pain and horror sells, grabs our attention, diverts us from the good. The people of the world do not deserve this.  

 

When I am distraught and distracted, I am drawn to music and to art.  Both remind me that life is a double-edged sword, that joy heals  pain. I despair for humanity, and yet I see awe in the face of a baby and smile, I watch the new buds of an azalea unfurl as the dry leaves of autumn swirl about them.  I know that I can offer arms of comfort but I do not always know how.  And yet, for all the power of our darker underbelly, we also have a gift for healing, for transcendence.  I cannot resolve the dichotomy of human existence, but sometimes I think that artists, and I include musicians in this, point me in the right direction.

 

At the end of September I attended a chamber concert by the Aubade Trio that was lovely indeed.  Yet there was one piece that stole my heart, still holds my heart, a piece by Ernest Bloch -- concertina for flute, viola and piano.  In those innocent days in late September the pieces felt joyous, prayerful, full of laughter.  Today it still feels joyous but my awareness has shifted slightly.   At the time that music danced in my head, and combined in my thoughts with an artist's exhibit I had seen the previous week, of waves and water, an immersive experience.  Those two sensory experiences still swirl in my heart, and although I don't see them differently per se, the way they resonate in my soul has shifted.  

 

I cannot exactly hear the music as it was played that evening.  There are recordings.  I've listened to two versions streamed on Amazon, and two on YouTube. Neither is quite the same, but that is the way of music, interpretation is always present, the conversational understanding between the artist performing the music and the artist who composed the framework.  But listening to variations reminds me of what I have heard.  Perhaps that is a curse, the specific nature of my memory.  No other performance is the same as the one by the Aubade trio.  It plagues me in concerts sometimes, to remember specific sequences of notes, of sounds, but it also rewards me with new insights.   Besides, even if the Aubade trio performed that work today, it is unlikely that it would be performed exactly as it was that night in late September, and I too am different today than I was two weeks ago. There are no absolutes.   

 

What I do know is that at the time of the concert, there were moments in the music when I was transported to moments at the Knoxville Museum of Art, where I was immersed in Jane Cassidy's piece You Never Forget The Swim.   The exhibit is visual, aural, experiential.  One sits in a dark room, sound from outside is muted but not absent. And one is immersed in an experience of water that is everything but the actual wetness.  Water in the abstract, the spiritual basis of water.   At different moments during that concert I would simultaneously be in that room, experiencing the joy of lightly rolling waves at the shore, remembering the way sometimes the light reflecting on water reminds me of the way light reflects on silk charmeuse, and through the sound of music.   The concluding movement reminded me of a carnival, but the good sides of a carnival, joy and sparkling lights, the bubbles in a glass of champagne, the frothy light bubbles that sometimes appear in waves, buoyant,  almost ephemeral.  

 

Although I cannot recreate the experience of the concert, I can return to the museum, to the experience.  And yet every time it is different, just as every time I am different.  Sometimes it is comforting, like a warm bath or a soft caress.  At other times the swirling seems out of control.  For the most part I find the experience calming, elemental even, much the same way I find music calming and elemental.  Both tie me to darker things.  The dark side is always present, but when faced with music, or art, I am not lost in that darkness but transformed.

 

After my first experience of You Never Forget the Swim, this is what I wrote in my journal  "caressing, stroking, smooth, comforting, enveloping, engulfing, drowning, strangling, suffocating, calming, eternal, love."   

 

Ernest Bloch and Jane Cassidy both might be horrified by my comparisons, or not, but this is how they have been captured in my experience in this particular space and time.  Each thing we create, each word we say even, these words included, once uttered, once created, flow out into the world creating new experiences beyond our control and our intent.  I hope my words overall are good, but I too am human and my feelings and run the gamut of human experience.

 

 

I wish I could share the experience of Jane Cassidy's work.  I highly recommend seeking her out.  I can, however, include a performance of the Bloch.  The first time I heard it I thought one thing.  The second another.  I might have found another version more prayerful, yet another more joyous.  It doesn't really matter.  When I listen again this morning, just before posting this, I am compelled to tears during the slow movement, and then slowly, as if the music is tickling my toes, slowly first, but just enough.  And despite the tears, a smile rises and I know there is hope.  There is always hope.

 

 

The Fall Garden

Oh the joys of autumn flowers and the fading of the garden.  A post of photos more than words

The nights are cooling and even though the garden has a distinct autumnal tone,  the summer garden has not completely died back, and fall blossoms shine.   Coreopsis Summer Sunshine has begun to bloom, showing up  consistently in late September and typically continuing well into November. 

Also, new to me, pineapple sage looks beautiful next to the garage. Not hardy here, unless we have an unusually mild winter, but I will put in more next year. It is doing much better in this spot than the rosemary that lived her previously.

The second bloom of the sedum.  The first was in July.

The roses are happy with the warm, dry days.

And the fall blooming azaleas.  I had spring azalea blossoms, but it was not the best year.

Lastly, I am letting the oregano go to seed and am thoroughly enjoying the blossoms on both the oregano beds and the Thai basil (no photograph).

 

I've done both less than I hoped, and more than in the past, so a good year.  I am filled with encouragement and hopes.  I suppose one could ask for nothing more.