restingmotion

A Quick Jaunt to New York, Part One.

I took a quick trip to New York in mid December, leaving on a Monday morning and back in my own bed by Wednesday night.

The trip was planned around a concert, but while in the city my friend Liana and I also made it up to the Metropolitan Museum of art to see the "Women Dressing Women" exhibit and managed a little bit of fabric shopping in the garment district.  I was admittedly not ambitious, feeling no need to be out seeing and doing everything, and yet it was still enough.  

Most of the photos in this post are from the Women Dressing Women exhibit.  Somehow I neglected to identify some of the dresses, and so there may not be information forthcoming along the lines of "who, what, when, or where" the all important rules of identification that were drilled into me in my youth.  Most of the things that appealed to me were antique or vintage.  It also struck me, and this is definitely a biased interpretation, that the more sophisticated clothing has become, technologically, the less creatively appealing it has become to me in an organic sense. Again, my own interpretations of what is and what is not creative, what does and does not flatter. All is subjective and ephemeral, perhaps even generational, arising from the relationship of the wearer to the world in which she lives.  My own connection to the world has already been shaped and formed by a world that is already in the past. I do not wish to live in the past, and yet nor can I completely escape it.

I was particularly excited to see a dress by Lucile Ltd from 1922.  (not a dress I would actually wear) You might recall that I read a novel A Dress of Violet Taffeta in late summer and had wanted to see more garments designed by Lucile, Lady Duff Gordon. I had gotten the impression from the novel that Lady Duff Gordon was no longer the exclusive designer for Lucile Ltd by the 1920s.  My understanding may be faulty, and it is perhaps insignificant.  Anyway the dress was a thrill, and it reminded me of the story and the writing about the colors and drape and flow of chiffon.

I am not posting these photos in their order in the show.

Although I may not have recorded details about most of the dresses some are still quite identifiable. The dress above for example is classic Hanae Mori.  I was fascinated by Hanae More as a child, and would daydream of a life in her clothes. My interest continued as young adult and I would clip photos from magazines whenever I could find them.   Yet it had been some years since I had thought of Hanae Mori's designs or realized that this youthful fascination had played a role in my own aesthetic.

Many of these things I would wear today, although I wouldn't necessarily do the work involved in creating them. 

Mostly I think the show was both inspiring in terms of design and ideas but also serving as a focal point reminding me of the layering of my own perspective onto the world and onto clothes.  

This was similar in many ways to the shopping jaunts I made into the garment district.  I found that my attentions were far more focosed than they are when I am, for example, fabric shopping online.   I found that although a room full of fabrics and fabric samples can initially seem overwhelming, my brain narrows and winnows out the excess in a very specific way, something that does not happen with online shopping.  Of course more sense are involved in the process:  Visual acuity, because actual three-dimensional fabric looks different than any photograph; scent; touch, including softness, structure, drape; even sound, the scroop of certain fabrics, some silks especially, when rubbed together; scent. , scent, touch.   My viewing of dresses at the metropolitan, and my perusal of fabrics held a common thread even though there was no direct line between the kinds of garments I was observing and the fabrics or garments I was contemplating.

 

I wouldn't have thought the experiences would have been related at all, other than an interest in clothes.  But I found myself surprised by insights and connections, to music as well.  But that is another post.

Slowly, slowly

I mentioned in my last post that I had intended to write about sewing but my thoughts wandered.  I haven't forgotten that post. I still wish to write it, and yet, since my last trip, and my last blog post, I have not done much in the sewing room.

 

That doesn't mean I don't want to catch up.  One of the highlights of my year, and especially the fall months, has been both a return to sewing and, more generally, a renewed focus on handwork in general. And I have wanted to record that progress in some way, to write about what I am doing and what it means to me, not so much because there is anything particularly special or skilled about my efforts but because it is my nature I suppose to think excessively, increasingly to go slowly, and to natter on.

 

 

In early November I devoted a few straight days to working on sewing, as opposed to other projects in the studio.  I spent some days drawing patterns on muslin, cutting, sewing, fitting two patterns I wanted to make.  

 

I had so much fun!

 

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed the process itself completely separately from the thrill of wearing the clothes.  I was reminded how important it was to give myself time, to allow myself to play.  How important it is to just make things, simple or complex, mistakes and all. 

 

I am very fortunate.  I do not have to make my own clothing to have something to wear.  I can afford to buy clothes.  And simple garments are really not that complicated or difficult, unless one is inclined toward complexity or detail.  I am also in an odd place in that I probably actually need some clothes, but I do not feel inclined to rush out and fill my closet to the rafters.  I want to make what I make, wear what I wear, be it simple or fancy.  Even if what I make is a total mess, I might still wear it.  I am past the stage in my life where I feel I need to impress anyone with any accomplishments or skills or talents.  Perhaps I am at that stage in my life where I can be proud to be a novice again.

 

I realized a few things.  First off, I need a full-length mirror in the sewing studio, preferably a three-part one.   I do have a mirror in the master bedroom, in the house, not the studio.  That means that I am constantly running back and forth from the studio, which is above the garage, a separate building from the house, into the house and up the stairs to the master bedroom.  And the reverse.  The process of running down and up stairs, back and forth, trying on, pinning, running, sewing, running again, reassessing, pinning, and so forth, again and again and again, is not tenable. 

 

One of my first projects for the new year is to find a mirror and figure out where to put it.   I also think I need a full-sized tripod with a mount for my iPhone.  The combination of mirror and camera will help considerably.  Of course this also means that there will be an entirely new learning process involved.  Sounds like fun.  More playtime!

 

 

A tripod also means I can probably make some attempt at styling and photographing finished objects.  I don't know how well that will take as I am not comfortable in front of a camera.  I am perfectly happy employing Abigail as a model, as seen above in a dress I did finish and wear to several holiday parties. 

 

 

The dress pattern itself is fairly simple. I used the Cadence Dress Pattern from Love Notions.  The fabric is a lightweight rayon crepe.  I lined the dress, which was not necessary, but makes me happy.  I also messed up cutting the lining therefore making the  process even more of a challenge.  But I managed to pull it all together. The dress is wearable and I like it.

 

 

The lining on the sleeve flare makes me particularly happy.  I want to swan around, making sweeping gestures with my arms.  Silliness, yes.  But what is life without a little silliness?

 

The Tenth Year

It seems the urge to write is slowly returning, not so much out of some misplaced sense of obligation but rather because I seem to miss this space.

 

It struck me recently that this year marks ten years since my husband, George, died.  It is not something I think about much any more, although that is not because I have forgotten, or he was not an important part of my life.  His presence is always with me,  as is my ever-present but unspoken acknowledgement of how his presence shaped the person I am today.

 

All of this to say that I don't know why that number, ten, resonates so deeply with me today.  It is not the anniversary of any specific date.  I didn't expect to be writing this post.  Actually I started out writing about sewing, but something shifted, and that post got turned aside.  Perhaps my brain is just seeking out patterns, of trying to make sense of life.  It struck me, that this year, the year after a few had years, hard years for everyone, I am not one to say that my struggles or any harder than other person's, has proven to be a year of closure and of new beginnings. And the tenth anniversary of a loss also marks a closure of its own sort.

 

A year or two, perhaps two, after George died, a very wise woman, a retired psychiatrist told me that, in her experience, many people took a long time to recover from the loss of a long-term spouse.  She mentioned something about ten years or so, which struck me, because all the pop-psych google-type gobbledygook that grieving takes one year, as if any human experience can be reduced to a simple formula.  I know now of course that so little of grief is about the initial rending of loss.  There is the loss of the beloved, the loss of a part of one's very psyche, the painful process of redefinition, of reforming who one is as one instead of a part of two, and then after all those wounds have been healed and the scars have faded there is the process of learning who one has become, what new growth has come forth.  

 

I suppose it is not so far from so much of life:  leaving the sanctity of the womb to be born, leaving home, making a new home, making a family, fledging that very family.  Careers, roles, life choices, all roll across our paths.  We all have many paths, many selves, and this is just another branch off that same tree.   I am not trying to lessen anything here, this is simply the space I find myself inhabiting today.

 

I think that what has actually struck me today is that I've had lots of goals, lots of roles or careers, or whatever you want to call them.  I've made lots of plans.  Some have gone sideways.  Some have not.  This particular iteration of me doesn't really have any plans.  Oh a few short term thoughts here and there, but basically I am much more open to just letting things happen than my younger self might have been, even my ten-years-younger self.  It has been an eventful ten years. Ten years since George died.  Eleven year since leaving New York State and moving to Tennessee.  Nine years post back surgery. Six years post buying a house on my own and moving yet again. Four years post renovating said house. Two years post breast cancer. One year post a flirtation with heart-failure and a series of cardioversions and ablations and finally slowing down uncontrollable atrial flutter.  

 

I know who I am and I also know that I know nothing.  I don't know what I am doing.  I don't know what tomorrow brings.  I actually don't need to know either of those things.  Whatever happens is going to happen whatever I think about it.   I am  65 years old and I don't need to have a plan.  I don't need to change the world.  I've done my time, made my plans, conquered, failed, started over.  I know the world can't break me unless I let it.  That is all the strength I need.  Now I just need to be open to whatever is going to happen.  Or perhaps it is just that I am willing to admit I don't have any choice in what the world does.  But I do have a choice in how I embrace the world. 

 

Somehow, that last sentence feels like Christmas to me.

 

 

In which I have no idea what I am doing.

And that is perfectly okay.

 

I made no specific plans for 2023, no resolutions, only a vague idea along the lines of "nesting".  I didn't want to go anywhere do anything, just settle.  It seems that the time since I moved into this house, in late 2019 had been a time of turmoil.  There was Covid, a fall, struggles with atrial flutter that twice ended up sending me into heart failure, breast cancer, six surgical procedures, chemotherapy, and radiation.  I'm still here but the process itself has been life altering.

 

I'd moved into my new house, but I hadn't settled.  There has been a lot of fluffing, rearranging, working myself back into systems; there is still a lot I am really not keeping up with, although it is questionable whether I care enough to worry about any of that.  With all this puttering about, I have also come to a profound realization that there are a lot of aspects of who I was and what I chose to do which were no longer relative to who I am today and who I want to be.  Some of those realizations started off innocently enough, with baby steps, that led into sudden and unexpected metaphorical falls, or new realizations. 

 

As a result, what started out simply enough as a project involving a physical place called home, has ended up having profound repercussions on the spiritual place called self.  Doors have been opened.  Doors have been closed.  And I find myself in a new place that is simultaneously an old place, a place I have always been, although not always fully in touch with.

 

I am, oddly, content.  That word, oddly, is relevant here, because I have come to the realization that contentment is not truly familiar territory.  I have sought peace, sought contentment, or joy, or happiness, But somehow I always thought of it as something to achieve, somehow missing the point.  Contentment just is.  You cannot get there by trying.  But I was reared in a society and a world where planning and goals, and who one wants to be in life were paramount, and I have always been a planner, an organizer, an achiever, a doer of things.  I was brought up to believe that self alone was never enough.

 

Until, suddenly, it was.  I cracked a door, and something unexpected came flooding in.  I am content. I have no real plans.  I have no real expectations.  I don't know where I am going and I find that a perfectly satisfactory place to be.  

 

In fact it seems that all the times in my life when I had plans and expectations, goals, drives, schedules, all of these ideas of who I was, what I should do, who I should be were based on some idea outside myself that I had to live up to, that they were simultaneously a necessary adaptation to reality and a fools errand, a story I told myself in order to live, based on a version of artificial reality, perhaps.  There is the reality of the world.  Of culture, of society, of human community, which we create, and which is necessary for our very existence, and yet the very nature of the realities we create for ourselves is simultaneously arbitrary and completely necessary.  

 

I'm not saying I care not for the world.  I'm not saying anything really, except that I am here at a place in my life where I see that much of what I have pursued prior to this point does not have meaning to the person I am now, in this moment.  That does not mean my previous life, goals, experiences,  were a waste of time or meaningless, everything has led to where I find myself in this moment, on the threshold of something new, new to me.   I have no idea where I am going, or who I will be tomorrow, other than perhaps myself.  But I don't know who that self may be.  

 

Early in the year, I became fascinated with the Beowulf story.  I picked up the three or four different direct translations I have, and a couple of retellings of those interpretations, perhaps a story loosely based on the original but reshaped for the culture in which it was written.  My intent was to pursue this idea of the hero's journey and how this journey shaped an understanding of civilazation that still shapes us today.  And it does, still.  In beowulf we can see the roots of Christianity, of the Hebrew Bible which lies at the basis of three of the world's great religions, and whose beliefs and conflicts still shape the world today.

 

But I also saw something else.  Beowulf had to come home. The ultimate goal of the hero's journey is to take that journey back to where it started, to go home, and to learn how to live, not as the hero, but simply as himself as a human being.  Perhaps the goal of life is to go out on our grand journey, whatever that may be, and I believe all journeys and all goals are grand, but in the end we have to come back to ourselves, if we are lucky, to settle back into life, the life we were born to live, as our essential selves, to be who we are simply in the present, and that person is very close to the person we were born to be.  The ultimate goal then is a very small and personal life.  The hero's journey is the world.  The secret to eternal life exists in the tiny nugget of the soul, of being the self in the everyday passing of life.  

 

Oh, I gave up before I finished my studies.  I may have made all this up.  I don't know.  Perhaps I will get back to it.  Perhaps not.  I am at a stage in my life when fretting about the future seems meaningless.

 

What I do know, is that for all I have written and thought about expectation and control, and the letting go of same, the path from thinking to actually doing, or not doing as would be the case here, has proven to be fraught.  And now it is not. I suddenly find, that having softened my grip on my own expectations, many things that were holding to tightly have fallen away, and many new vistas have opened.  

 

All I know is that today matters.  And what I do today patterns, not for the world, but for my own soul, and in the end, that is all I can control.  I have no idea what my choices mean.  I'm not even sure that meaning, or intention, or plans are the things I should be pursuing.  I have no idea what next week brings.  I only know where I stand right now and that all I can do is what is important to me, right now, in this moment.  The future? Well I've never had any control over that no matter how much my human psyche is filled with plans.

 

It is time for another cup of coffee and to see what today brings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

A New Tee and a Wardrobe Surprise

Somewhere along the line I apparently decided that I needed some simple tees, warmer weather tees perhaps, although these are mostly transitional weather projects, not suitable for the heat of full summer, at least not in Tennessee, not for me, although I can admit that after living here for over 10 years now, I am getting a little more cold-natured than I was.  Not sure that this transition has anything to do with Tennessee, but is probably more the affect of age and the aftermath of cancer/heart issues.  

 

All this to say that the purple/yellow tee I showed you two posts back has been finished.

This all came about rather serendipitously.  While I was knitting the lilac Noro tee (two posts back), I was volunteering at the welcome desk at my church, and knitting, when I had a conversation with another knitter.  We talked about our love of Noro yarns and she told me about a simple tee pattern she had recently discovered and really loved.  The pattern was Olori Sweater Tee by Lanre Ojikutu, which I immediately looked up on Ravelry, purchased and dowloaded even though at that point I had no immediate plans to knit it.   After I finished that tee, I had a little over half a skein, or 316 yards, of the light purple Noro yarn left over. I had been eyeing a skein of the same yarn in an acid yellow/green and it occurred to me that the two yarns would work well together.  However it took me a couple of weeks to make up my mind and actually buy the second (yellow) skein.  But eventually I did, and this sweater was born.

 

I hadn't knit a top down raglan sweater in quite some years, and I had never knit one that was intended to be even slightly fitted.  The pattern is meant to have 1" to 2" of positive ease.  Mine is closer to 0 to 1", at the bust, a little looser elsewhere.  I didn't make a gauge swatch because I had just knit a stockinette sweater using the same yarn, but I should have.  Not surprisingly, my gauge when knitting in the round is slightly tighter than when knitting flat, although the difference is not large.  Since I was trying this on as I went, it was not an issue.  Actually all that trying on was in order to finagle the raglan shaping just a bit to accommodate my uneven shoulders.  I am happy with the result, it is acceptable, but I do think I could have adjusted the stitch counts slightly and have made a note of this for the future. I am not sure these notes translate directly to the next project due to differences in gauge, weight, spin and fiber content and they way all affect the actual knitted fabric, but the process was a useful learning project.

 

Best of all I am very happy with the result.  The only real change I made to the pattern was to add a little extra room at the hips, where I needed it.

I used up the remainder of the purple yarn (316 yards) and 7/10ths of the skein of yellow yarn (370 yards) for a total of 686 yards.  My sweater is longer than the original as I am tall, but that is a minor adjustment.

 

The big surprise was how well this sweater goes with a pair of yellow chinos.  This was not planned.  I am a firm believer in serendipity, and the idea that what one loves tends to be harmonious.    Anyway, I've worn the yellow chinos for years with white, or black, sometimes with soft pinks and greens, but I've never had anything that actually "went" with it.  And frankly I didn't think I had anything in my closet that would match this sweater.  I just thought the colors were pretty and I could always wear it with jeans, or especially with white jeans or cords, both of which I do own.

 

Happy serendipity.

 

 

 

Speeding up and slowing down, Autumn arrives.

Sunday evening was our neighborhood picnic.  The air felt distinctly autumnal on this early fall evening, the prelude to Yom Kippur, not that the two events were at all related, or that our feasting on shared dishes bore any relation to the impending fast, if indeed knowledge of that fast even registered.  Yet I couldn't help but be reflective, as I flitted in and out of the crowd, occasionally intentionally on the sidelines, watching neighbors group and regroup, thinking about community and coming together -- little bubbles of contact in a world that is both overcrowded with both people and things to do, and yet at the same time strangely solitary and isolating.

 

This year in particular the contrast between the physical season and the cultural season occupies my mind, the almost yin and yang of it, the way that we humans grow busy, filling our evenings particularly, with cultural events, as the earth itself is winding down into a time of rest.  When the earth is full verdancy we are off celebrating our individual pursuits; as the light grows dim we band together, partly for comfort, but also I wonder, if partly to distract ourselves from the reminder of the inevitability of the impending darkness.  We seem to forget that rest, even death, is part of the necessary cycle of life, as if, by keeping ourselves busy we can forestall its arrival.  

 

If we keep running from event to event, from achievement to achievement, from high to high, can we outrun death?  What about the necessity of repose.  Nature must rest.  The earth must rest.  Our bodies must rest.  But I am an introspective soul living in a world where external distractions are the dominant mode.

 

Autumn is my favorite season.  But it is also the season in which I feel pulled in many directions.  The arts and music scenes have geared up again, and I am happy to reconnect with friends.  I could allow myself to become frenetically busy, even as my soul is yearning for and remembering rest and renewal.

 

Within the social whirl, I seek islands of repose.  Yesterday was one such day, a day where I could spend time in the garden, hands in the earth, putting some areas to bed for the coming winter, seeding garden beds with cover crops, or perhaps with luck, a small winter garden of frost-tolerant plants.  As I putter, my mind wanders and I reflect on the activities of the past week.

 

Although my weekend ended with the fall picnic, it began with the opening concert of the symphony season -- Pictures at an Exhibition.  Mussorgsky's work, as orchestrated by Maurice Ravel was the titular attraction, and the closing piece: well-performed, familiar, exciting, rousing the audience into a sense of communal high spirits.  It was a good concert, well planned and well played, from the opening trumpets on the balcony as concert-goers entered the theater, a festive glass of champagne in hand.  The concert opened with Adam Schoenberg's Picture Studies, based on the same structural scaffolding as Mussorgsky's work.  This modern work, inspired by works in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City was a good opening choice, both thematically, but also temperamentally with its very American sense of movement and lyricism.  I find Schoenberg's works to be accessible and likable, easy on ears and sentiments. This piece was no exception. and the performance was engaging and quite satisfying.  A projection screen was mounted behind the orchestra, and the referenced works were featured for nine of the ten sections of the piece.  I personally find that my eyes are drawn to the screen, which distracts my mind from fully attending to the music, but I suspect I am in the minority on this, and eyes can be closed, allowing the music itself full expression.  Picture Studies is also a feast for the percussion section, which sustained the excited air of enthusiasm that had begun with the trumpet fanfare, would continue through the second piece, Alexander Arutiunian's Trumpet Concerto, performed by brilliant young trumpeter William Leathers, and,  of course, ending with the triumphant ending of the Mussorgsky.  All in all it was a rich, brightly enlivening celebration of the arts, of music, of lighting up the impending darkness, of the power of music and the gathering of community.

 

But that was only the denouement to my week.  A couple of other events preceded the concert, of which I will only focus on one now.

 

On Wednesday evening I attended a performance of Cato, Joseph Addison's play, first performed in 1713, about the last days of Cato the younger.  This performance was staged through a historical lens, based on a performance for George Washington's troops in 1778,  a joint endeavor through several departments and UT, intended, at least in part, to further discussion on the ideas of liberty and responsibilities to community.  

 

Admittedly I attended as much for the drama itself, for the language and ideas as much as for the idea behind the performance, the continuing discussion of the meaning of liberty.  I am a bit of a restoration literature fan, and I reveled in the wonderful eighteenth century dialogue.  I sometimes miss this use of language, here so artfully rendered by the actors; a play that eloquently explores ideas and responsibilities in a way that is both thought-provoking and entertaining.  The play is a tragedy, and yet oftentimes comic, as are all human endeavors.  I had read the play but never seen it performed, and of course we all know lines from the play, lines that have become part of our American History -- "Give me liberty, or give me death" among them.   I loved the expository passages, the explorations of individual liberty versus governmental tyranny, but also the explorations of the dangers of individual liberty, both covered in an abstract sense in the debates between the characters, but also quite realistically in the action of the drama itself.  Logic versus emotion; republicanism vs monarchism; we still debate these same ideas today, they show up in our debates, our marches, our literature our movies.... What are our rights? And our responsibilities? And with rights do not also come responsibilities?  Joseph Addison obviously thought so, as did the founding fathers of this country.  And even as their understandings of liberty and even the "rights of all men" may feel narrow minded compared to our views today, they still have much to teach us.  The forest remains.  

 

And so my thoughts continue to swirl.  Autumn is here.  Darkness is inescapable.  But the darkness itself, and our own struggle with life, the meaning of existence, the very things that make us human, is it not this very thing that drives us to make art?  Is art the embodiment of this very battle with darkness, with rest, and death?  Would there be art if we never knew repose?  If we never fought for meaning? If we never sought the light?

 

 

  

 

 

Neither Lost nor Forgotten

I finished knitting a sweater in early August and I forgot to share it with you.  I didn't forget the sweater itself, a tee, and have been wearing it frequently since the weather started to cool.  In fact, I think it will see a lot of wear.

 

This sweater came about on a bit of a whim.  I had been admiring the pretty purple yarn in my lys, when I also saw the Noro spring summer knitting book that includes this pattern.  This is the same book that had the pattern for the green cardigan I posted two weeks ago, although I knit this sweater first.   The yarn is called  Akari Solo,and it is a silk/cotton/rayon/mohair/wool and nylon blend from Noro yarns.  I knitted the tee on a size 6 needle, which gave me a post-blocking gauge of 16 stitches and 24 rows to 4 inches.  This is slightly looser than the recommended gauge of 18/26, but this yarn at this gauge felt stiff and tight to me on the needles even though the final fabric is soft with a gentle drape.  I do not think I could happily knit it any tighter, and I think a more open fabric is often preferable in a summer knit.  Anyway, it was easy enough to do the math required to adjust the pattern to my gauge.

 

Even so, I did mess up a bit although not with the maths. I modified the pattern slightly to adapt the fit to my own shoulders, and I intentionally knit it is a more closely fitting sweater than the designer had envisioned. However I also ended up modifying the pattern placement inadvertently.  There are supposed to be three motifs across the bottom of the tee, and then two only following the first full repeat.  I did not notice that in the photo, and, as I read the pattern quickly, with an idea already in my head, I misconstrued part of the instructions.  That was completely my fault, although I am somewhat dyslexic (despite my heavy reading) and I do sometimes get instructions scrambled.  At any rate, by the time I discovered the mistake, I decided I actually like my slightly eccentric placement, and forged ahead without ripping.  I've always preferred that were a little off-kilter, or slightly off-proportion anyway, so this suits me perhaps even better than the original.

 

The resulting sweater is soft and comfortable.  Perhaps not suitable for the hottest and most humid days of August,  but perfectly fine when the humidity is lower or the temperatures in the 70s to even low 80s or below.  It is also a good weight for layering with jackets and cardigans throughout the Autumn and Spring months, so I do believe this will see a lot of wear.

 

I used slightly less than 1 1/2 skeins, of 749 yards to knit this sweater.  Inspired by my joy in this top perhaps, and spying the same yarn in a pretty yellow, I decided that I could combine it with the purple to knit another tee, in progress now, and shown below.

It ends up that I no longer object to simple stockinette knitting, and I like having a relatively mindless project on the needles for those days when I either am distracted or just tired (quite suitable after a tough day in the garden for example).  I apparently also like knitting simple tees that I will wear, although I haven't yet moved onto simple stockinette on small needles.