Lizards in the Leaves

Imbolc - Brigid Poetry Festival

2012-02-01T19:04:00.000-05:00

In honor of Brigid , fire goddess and saint, and the season of Imbolc, I post two poems.

Hands
by Siv Cedering

I When I fall asleep my hands leave me. They pick up pens and draw creatures with five feathers on each wing. The creatures multiply. They say: "We are large like your father's hands." They say: "We have your mother's knuckles." I speak to them: "If you are hands, why don't you touch?" And the wings beat the air, clapping. They fly high above elbows and wrists. They open windows and leave rooms. They perch in treetops and hide under bushes biting their nails. "Hands," I call them. But it is fall and all creatures with wings prepare to fly South. II When I sleep the shadows of my hands come to me. They are softer than feathers and warm as creatures who have been close to the sun. They say: "We are the giver," and tell of oranges growing on trees. They say: "We are the vessel," and tell of journeys through water. They say: "We are the cup." And I stir in my sleep. Hands pull triggers and cut trees. But the shadows of my hands tuck their heads under wings waiting for morning, when I will wake braiding three strands of hair into one. Ritual for Beginning Something by Zann Carter At dawn call the quarters then face east calling again calling... Breathe into all the places where the sun rises and sets in you, the place where the moon plays with your shadow, all the dark places. Be open in the day and night spaces of your body, make room. Be waiting. Expect everything, expect nothing. Make a bowl of your heart, a cup of your hands, a stone of your intention. call again... Imagine it done, consider it begun. Perpetual flame picture found here. Brigid's Cross picture is Wikipedia Creative Commons & found here.
)O( - Blessed Imbolc

Patrick's Birthday

2012-01-31T00:41:00.001-05:00

Very Winter

2012-01-26T10:46:00.000-05:00

It’s very, very Winter for me.

Not in the temperatures or the winter weather department, for it’s mild so far this year (and somewhat creepily so.) But in my body and spirit, it’s definitely Winter. If Winter means:
turning inward
feeling drowsy
moving slowly

My looms are as bare as the branches.

I’m okay with this, although it’s taken me some time to be okay and not feel guilty. I planned this season for retreat and restoration. I decline outside commitments. But I forgot to decline inside commitments.

Last week I realized I had saddled myself with a huge number of goals and deadlines, and creative plans.
I let them go.

In the spirit of retreat, rest, restoration, in the spirit of Intention (my word this year), I let them go.
And I breathed a breath that came easily and felt a great pressure fall away from my spirit.

I've also realized I may well be suffering from the lack of Light--one of those d'oh, slap-your-forehead realizations. In years past I have spent my winter mornings at the computer bathed in the glow of a Verilux "happy light."

I don't know why it didn't occur to me this year, except that I've been working mostly from my Big Chair in the living room (which gets little natural light until late in the day) and the room I used to write in where the lamp sits was beginning to look like a hoarder's lair.

So I waded in and ~~cleaned it up~~ moved things around a bit and have worked with the lamp on each morning this week. I definitely feel more lively and hopeful, less like I'm trying to move through mud. I've even been visited with a bout of whimsy and named the Verilux: she's my new bff, Luminella.

I will end this post with a Winter Tip.

If you HATE static shocks, this tip is for you.
Carry a spoon around in your pocket or keep one handy. You can use it to discharge the build-up without having that awful anticipatory dance of fingers against things you know will give you a jolt, those moments of steeling yourself for the zap. Because there is NO zap to your tender skin when discharging the build-up through the spoon.

As I'm writing this, I'm thinking you're thinking, why does it have to be a spoon? And I don't think it does. But the spoon works for me and I love it, so I'm sticking with it.

I suspect I'm going to name it soon.

)O(

Occupy Terre Haute - Tiny Tent Event

2012-01-22T15:09:00.000-05:00

It was a pleasure to host a Tiny Tent making event for Occupy Terre Haute at First UU Congregation.

This is probably my favorite picture from the day, with the industrious hands of people who are speaking truth to power.

Everyone left with a bunch of tents, hopefully to start placing them in nooks and crannies where they will surprise and cause folks to pause for a moment to think about the issues of economic justice, corporate domination and democracy.

We had a template for tents, but the night before, I saw some tiny tents online that were simply rectangles of colored card folded in half. So I brought some index cards along with the templates. Someone went one better and folded and taped a floor, which makes the tent tinier and sturdier. This is now my favorite way of making Tiny Tents.

I have a box of the tents in my car, but I haven't been anywhere yet to place them. When I do, I'll document and send in pictures to the Tiny Tent Task Force.

Terre Haute's a small city and OTH is a small group with no encampment, but they have been dedicated in creating a standing occupation several times a week. Rain, shine, snow, freezing temps - they are on the street representing the 99%.
I admire the dedication greatly. That is more than I can do right now, but I give my support in ways that I can, like this event.
Peace & justice!

)O(

this is your internet on SOPA

2012-01-17T23:33:00.000-05:00

MLK

2012-01-16T08:24:00.000-05:00

Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr today.

One of my favorite MLK quotes, one which has served me well in my small efforts for social justice over the years:

"...we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured..."

---from the Letter from Birmingham Jail

Sweet Honey in the Rock - Ella's Song

"We who believe in freedom cannot rest
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes..."

Anne Feeney - Have You Been to Jail for Justice?

"Have you sung a song of freedom
or marched that picket line?
If you've been to jail for justice
oh, you're a friend of mine..."

peace, love & solidarity...

Saori Worcester Puppets Project

2012-01-14T09:23:00.001-05:00

Yasmin and Jasmin

Nat and Mihoko at Saori Worcester are so inspiring!
Their most recent project , Puppets of Glory, involved 4th-graders weaving, storytelling, puppetry and performance.
Worcester is a fortunate community.

For this project, elementary school students wove the fabric and, as they wove, imagined their puppet characters and their stories. Mihoko was charged with the task of sewing the puppets and imbuing each “…with the spirit intended by its young creator.”

Nat's task was to weave ".....all the wildly varying hopes, fears, fantasies, and insatiable desires of these puppets into a single narrative." I'm certain he did so with great skill & respect for the children's imagined storylines.

More pictures here.
Nat’s essay about the Puppets of Glory project.


Grumpy Dragon

)O(

my life notes this week

2012-01-13T12:17:00.001-05:00

I think I'm going to start a weekly writing here that's more personal, to write about events in my life and some of the things I generally put in my other blog. It has been feeling like time to let that blog go. Still, I want to share the kinds of the things I shared there and perhaps I can find a way to do so here without taking from the integrity of this blog's purpose of sharing art and my creative journey.
--------------------

A difficult week.
On Tuesday my brother-in-law passed away. It was sudden and mostly a shock, though he was having some health issues. And, as always, everyone is reminded how life can dramatically and irreversibly change in an instant.

We have to live with that in mind...and yet we must put it from our minds to live. Or we'll all be sitting around saying, what's the use...?

Death can make everything seem irrelevant.
Or it can make each moment exquisitely precious.

I'll go with the latter!

On Sunday night, our Lily slipped from her collar on a late-night walk and fled. It's a long story and we were out driving slowly through the neighborhood until 4 a.m., squeaking one of her toys at every alley beginning. Little did we know that about half an hour after her escape, someone had picked her up and taken her to the Humane Society, which is where we had adopted her.

Luckily, they microchip all their dogs and they were able to connect the collarless Lily with us. We got the call at 8 a.m., but were out posting flyers and looking and talking to people, so didn't get the message until about 9.

It was a terrible, terrible time - and for some reason evoked old trauma for me. So it has taken me some days to recover my equilibrium.
---------------
I'm working on:
Improvisational Scarves.
my hopes for the year and the way I want to be in it.
-----------------------------
I'm looking forward to:

tonight's small writing group get-together.

the opening of registration for the IU Writer's Conference (this year's step in dealing with travel phobia.)

participating in Pixie Campbell's Winter SouLodge.

the Tiny Tent -making event for Occupy Terre Haute tomorrow.

)O(

Improvisational Knitting - Scarf No. 2

2012-01-11T13:05:00.000-05:00

I’ve started another Improv Scarf.

Yarn: Araucania Liwen
Colorway: #5 & #9
Needle size: 13
CO: 27 stitches

I am really mixing it up in this one:

two colorways
short rows (varying increments, sometimes I do whole wedges, sometimes just a random short row)
mistake rib
eyelet
random yarnovers
random drops of yarnovers
garter, stockinette, reverse stockinette

It's liberating to give myself permission to knit or purl or yarnover or drop or short row or change colors randomly. My only constraint on this one is keeping with 27 stitches (on most rows) and maintaining a (more or less) scarfish shape.

)O(

Hundertwasser World

2012-01-10T09:35:00.000-05:00

I love Hundertwasser.
His paintings and architecture make me happy, sometimes fill me with a kind of wild joy.
I wish there were more buildings created based on his aesthetic.
But as a I watched this video, I wondered if I could live in Hundertwasser World.
(leaving the music out of the wondering, it's fine for 4 minutes, and rather suits the images, but not as life accompaniment!)

Imagine what that would be like, Hundertwasser World.
Who would we be if we lived in a world like this?
How would we behave?
How would we treat each other?
How would we treat Earth?

Would we behave as humans have always behaved if we lived in buildings that were "...a joyful mess of stacked color and shape..", buildings that "....laugh out loud"?*
Or would we change, surrounded by such saturated color and undulation of line?

If Hundertwasser was the everyday all-the-time, what would our art look like?
Our cookies and cakes? What games would we play? What music would we make?

All I can say right now is that I feel a little bit happier imagining the answers to these questions.
Imagining brushing my teeth with a Hundertwasser toothbrush in a Hundertwasser bathroom....

*Pam Mandel, 70s Pothead Aesthestics, Meet Austrian Art

More Hundertwasser:
http://www.hundertwasser.at/english/oeuvre/cover.php
http://www.squidoo.com/hundertwasser_art

)O(

Spinning-Rock Day/St. Distaff Day

2012-01-08T09:20:00.000-05:00

I did indeed spin yesterday.
Thought it would be most appropriate to spin with my spindle instead of the wheel. (Poor neglected wheel, I'll get back to you yet!)

As I spun, I thought about how I first started to spin, a story I may have told here before, but very long ago.

I started to spin as a homeschooling activity. I liked all those books that showed children the origins of things. We had books like From Flower to Honey, Pelle's New Suit, Anna's Coat.

I also liked experiential, hands-on learning experiences. (For "egg to butterfly" we opened The Butterfly Birthing Center, with a cardboard box and egg & caterpillar-laden dill from a friend's garden. There's a story here that mentions this but is more about my mother's experience of our homeschooling journey)

So, I ordered a spinning kit from a woman named Lucy in Wisconsin. What arrived was some combed top, small batts and two unusual Turkish spindles. At the time, I didn't know they were Turkish spindles or unusual.

There was also a 2-page handwritten letter, with spinning instructions and a most generous spirit of encouragement. I just looked for that letter but alas couldn't find it. (I know it's tucked in my copy of Lee Raven's Hands On Spinning.)

My kids were politely interested in the process, but I was besotted with it. I ordered lots of plant-dyed roving from Textile Reproductions and spun and spun and spun the last year I lived in Miami.

It's a good memory.

Here's one of the spindles:

I have other spindles, including the Ashford Turkish spindle, but I don't enjoy spinning on any of them as much as I enjoy spinning on these. I'm not sure if it's because I learned on these and spun only on these for years and years, or if it's because these are indeed The Most Wonderful Spindles in the World.

They aren't particularly pretty as spindles go, but they are beautiful.

So I spun, thinking of how much I love these spindles, glad I have two of them, thinking about Lucy from Wisconsin and how grateful I am to her. Her handwritten letter, these two homemade spindles...created a very human connection. Not long after I received the spinning kit, she sent me a surprise - a package with another batt and some raw wool.
That's when I discovered just how far back in the process of sheep to yarn I wanted to go, and it wasn't as far back as the raw fleece!

Spinning on Rock Day was a nice way to 'get back to work' after the holidays.

Spinning Mojo

2012-01-06T12:09:00.002-05:00

Back in September, I cleaned up and organized my spinning area (this is in my living room) which looked like this:

and then looked like this:

But I haven’t made the time to sit and spin ever since. I’m not sure why - perhaps it’s because I am no longer happy with just spinning to spin. I think I want to think a bit more about spinning to have yarn to use, though I doubt I’ll ever be a project spinner.

I admire the work of project spinners, the efficiency with which they go about planning a project, and spin to an exactitude which will never be mine, spin lots and lots of the same yarn, then spend another zillion hours with that yarn on the needles, or maybe quite a bit less than a zillion with that yarn on a loom.

I’m not sure if I could spend that much time and intimacy with the same yarn and then go around wearing it. In any case, I’ll never know because I won’t be doing A Project.

What I do want to do is have yarn for Saori weaving and, okay, a tiny Project. But I must get back my spinning mojo.

I can’t think of a better way to get my spinning mojo back than to get a little ceremonial and observe St. Distaff's Day, also called Rock Day. Go here for a nice historical explanation.

The short version is that Rock Day is the day after Epiphany & the Twelfth Night of Christmas and traditionally it's the day for spinners to get back to work. Nowadays, spinning & weaving guilds plan Rock Day spinning events to honor that tradition.

Our guild did not plan anything, but I hope we will next year. I totally forgot about this day until I read Jill's blog post about sewing her group's Saori banner, which included mention of St. Distaff's Day and also a very sweet story about her sewing machine.

My plans: spin on my drop spindle, maybe downtown at RiverWools. And also, to crack open Jacey Boggs' new book, Spin Art.

So, do spin tomorrow if you can and take a moment to think about a time when spinning was work that put clothes on your loved ones' backs or maybe some bread on the table.

Turn, turn, turn.

Winter = Retreat

2012-01-05T12:15:00.005-05:00

This is my third year of calling Winter by another name: Retreat.
I realize it's a luxury to be able to do this, but I'm not going to feel guilty about it anymore.
I clear my calendar as much as I possibly can, and focus on inner work and artistic expression. I try to make no commitments, but if I do they have to be fun and serve me well.
This year I have a created an inner guardian to whom all requests for my time & energy must be presented. Her name is Mama Lion & she ferociously guards my time! I may assign her some other duties as well...

My word for 2012: INTENTION
My mantra: Transform, Align, Shine

Have you chosen your word for the year? See Ali Edwards' blog post One Little Word 2012.
Picture found here.

Poetry Ahead: Liminal

2012-01-02T15:34:00.006-05:00

Oh, the constant back-and-forth in my head about the issue of posting poems to this blog and worrying whether I have to submit them only to those publications that accept 'previously published.'

I just shouldn't care. I should just share my poetry whenever I want, wherever I want and not care about that elusive, unlikely future of getting published. That's what I'm feeling like today. And, since I'm doing more writing than making visual art lately, if I don't post poems, I won't have much to post here. And now that perennial rant is done & I won't do it again. Ever.

Liminal

It’s space made of a bell rung sixty times,

pieced from the gaudy drama of autumn,

its insistence on being about dying

grandly.

It’s where I’m standing chilled and still

at an artfully peeling threshold, strewn with blue

paint chips, a sill covered

in leaf-fall, all priorities shed

and abandoned for the wind’s

taking.

Crossing that threshold

is part of a bargain I’m making.

First I draw a great inbreath.

Oxygen silvers my center

swirls down to my roots

splayed hungrily in the earth.

I burrow firmly

into the snug province

of gnomes, the dirt workers, the spirit miners.

Lithic glitter dances from my fingers.

Soon I’ll lie three months silent

in the crystal heart of winter, an inclusion

wrapped in wool, tattooed with dreams,

stitched wth silence.

My jitterbug pulse will slow

and I’ll enter a simple fairy tale

of a crone who appears to be sleeping,

yet crosses a bridge,

wildly awake behind her bruised lids.

-- Zann Carter 12.20.11

Rise and Root-A Gift from Rima Staines

2012-01-01T19:52:00.000-05:00

This drawing and the rune symbol below are gifts for the New Year from the UK artist Rima Staines.

She offers them in revolutionary spirit saying,

"... I give you this image to do with what you wish: download it, reblog it, print it, photocopy it, make it into stickers and take them with you in your bag to stick on the backs of public toilet doors, on supermarket conveyor belts or over underground advertising screens; make it into a poster, a projection, print it on bags and T-shirts, paint it large on the sides of petrol stations, pavements, parliaments.

Or take the rune as a symbol we’ll all recognise when it’s chalked on our doorsteps, and tattooed on our foreheads...."

Read her whole blog post here.

Rise & Root!

)O(

Improvisational Knitting - A Scarf

2011-12-31T09:47:00.000-05:00

Back to 'what if' experiments.

This scarf in Noro Iro on #10 (6.0mm) needles is the answer to these questions:

What if I combined short row wedges and basket weave pattern?

What if I throw in a bit of garter stitch now and then?

What if I randomly change the basket weave in various ways?

I love the texture and motion happening in this piece. I think it'll eventually take about 3 skeins of Iro.

And now I've got more questions to answer in a future improv project:

What if I vary the stitch increment I'm using for the wedges? Randomly?

(For this scarf, I'm keeping to an increment of 3, so a garter stitch wedge is:

Row 1: K3, wrap and turn,

Row 2: K3

Row 3: K6, wrap and turn

Row 4 K6

Row 5 K9, wrap and turn

Row 6 K9

....etc.)

What if I get more random with the number of stitches in each basket weave segment?

(For this scarf, with 36st cast on, I've been working with 6-stitch segments, as in K6, P6, K6, P6....occasionally I am starting a wedge with K or P 3, then doing 6-stitch segments and ending with K or P 3.)

Hope this makes some sense.

What I'd also like you to know is how much fun this knit is - though I'm not at all muscial, I want to describe it in musical terms - it's like.... riffing on a basic melody. (I feel like I've said that before here...)

Many blessings for 2012!

)O(

LINKS: Dharma Trading Tutorials, Spindicity

2011-12-30T11:52:00.000-05:00

A very useful link:

Dharma Trading Company's how-to page.

DTC is all about textile surface design and dyeing. At that page you can find tutorials on using their vast array of products, as well as basic technique how-to's.

And for spinners:

Spindlicity has ceased publication, but there's still an archive of past issues here.

)O(

Finished: Collage Scarf

2011-12-29T12:08:00.001-05:00

Inspired by a project in Belle Armoire 2011 Summer, the Scrap Scarves of Lindsay Ostrom (here, scroll down the entry a bit), I thought this would be an easy zip-zip whip up. Hah! I got so involved with the seemingly random freestyle sewing & then major overthinking with placement of my scraps...typical me.

Ingredients: muslin, cotton fabric for the base, cotton scraps, orange cotton thread.

Wordless Wednesday / Carved Crayons

2011-12-28T12:39:00.000-05:00

Picture found somewhere on this wonderful blog. I think.

)O(

Belle Armoire - Winter Issue - my pin!

2011-12-27T09:21:00.000-05:00

It was very exciting to get this in the mail the same day we did the Releasing ceremony and I found the lost crystal.

It was a complementary Winter 2012 issue of Belle Armoire, with a cover sheet with these lovely words:

Inside, on page 134 is one of the pins I submitted to their Perfectly Pinned challenge, with a nice little paragraph in the story which printed the construction notes I submitted along with the pins.

My pin is the orange felted one on the top right.

I'm jazzed.

Great way to end a year!! Thank you, Belle Armoire!

)O(

Solstice2011 - part 2 Tattoo

2011-12-26T11:16:00.000-05:00

As promised, here is Part 2 of the Solstice 2011 Mother/Daughter Adventure.

Back in August, Molly suddenly said we should get Mother/Daughter tattoos. "...a little moon or something. I'd put it by my ear like you were whispering wisdom to me..."

We talked about it again here and there, but didn't make definite plans. Then on Solstice Eve, Molly suddenly said," We should get tattoos tomorrow."

And so we did.

Little blue crescent moons.

'Whispering wisdom' - what a lovely way to reframe "mom nagging."

For me, besides the connection to my daughter and what we share, this is a nod to the forehead crescent on priestesses in Mists of Avalon, my connection to Goddess, to Things of the Spirit. Also to carry around my own blue moon, to remind me the extraordinary is all about, not just 'once in a blue moon...'

Blessed be.

)O(

Solstice 2011

2011-12-25T17:43:00.000-05:00

This year, we had our small family gathering on Solstice Eve as we've done for many years now.
This gathering is when we decorate our tree and exchange gifts.
I grew up with Christmas Eve being the day we got and decorated our tree and for years continued that tradition with my own family. But when we moved up here to Indiana, we discovered that trees are nowhere to be found by Christmas Eve and become scarce even in the week before. That was the original reason for the switch and also satisfied my desire to allow my children freedom to create their own traditions on Christmas Eve and Day as they grew up.

I never wanted to be the mom in the sentence (usually preceded by a heavy sigh) "No, I can't do that - I have to go to my mom's for Christmas." And yet I'm rather okay with "No, I can't do that - I've got to go to my mom's for Solstice."

So daughter Molly came in for two days and we had a sweet little Solstice Eve. Granddaughter Sophia, Son Shaun also came and we opened the gifts from Son Ian and his wife Lisa. One way or another we were all there and though we didn't talk about Patrick much, I lit a special candle for him and I imagine he was as much on everyone's mind as he was on mine.

Solstice 2011 Mother-Daughter Adventure Part 1

So I invited Molly to join me at dawn the next day, to join me in rattling up the returning sun and to participate in my version of The Mother of All Releasing Ceremonies created and widely made known by Pixie Campbell.

Ingredients we used for Releasing: seed pod rattles, white sage smudge stick, tiny cauldron, crow feather, rose solid perfume. Unseen are the bundle with herbs & tobacco and the numerous tiny slips of paper upon which we wrote things that do not serve us well, all that we wanted to release, to make room for things that will serve us well. By the time I took this picture, they were burnt to smithereens - turned to ash, buried, vanished into air and earth.

It was spectacular to share this with my daughter and also a very mysterious thing happened.
We smudged ourselves and rattled seed pods at dawn. Crow was cawing and flying over. It took a long time to burn our bundles in the tiny cauldron I have, and it was a good time of raising energy and reflecting.

We swept away the smoke using a beautiful handmade broom my sister gave me, with a branch handle and dark purple straw.  Some discussion over what to do with the ashes. We decided to bury them. More discussion about where.   We decided on a spot by a bush that birds like to hang out in.

I began to tell my daughter about the full moon of 11/11/11, the one where I left out a bowl of stones & crystals & totems and some animal took it and dragged it off several yards.
I told her how I found everything strewn about, except for a crystal a friend had given me & a black stone that was holding grief.  I wrote here that day about that experience, about how I looked and looked for those stones...how, as I wrote in my journal:

"... Of all the objects I’d placed in the bowl for charging, these two had deepest emotional energy for me.  The quartz crystal had a beautiful occlusion suspended in it. It was mined from Earth by a dear old friend and given to me as part of a public ceremony of gratitude. But it had some subtle negative energy attached. My old friend and I, while not having a falling out, have had a falling away. We are out of alignment, and that has sadness to it, and came to me every time I touched that crystal.  The black stone was included to represent the Dark Moon, the Shadow….it had my grief attached to it.

  I am thinking perhaps it is a gift that these particular objects were taken, that it is about letting go.

It’s more, though, it’s about help in letting go, I think. About knowing I have Guides and Helpers, that the current of Mystery in the universe flows all about me, that Spirit permeates physical reality.

  It’s possible these objects may be returned to me.  And if they do, I think they will be cleansed of any negative energy,while still representing the Shadow of things. "  

Since 11/11, I'd continued to stir the leaves about, looking for the stones, most every time I was out in the yard.   I'd just finished telling Molly that story and she turned to go in the garage to get a shovel and I brushed away some leaves from the spot where we chose to dig....and, with a cry of utter astonishment and delight, I saw the quartz crystal!

It has been returned. And at such an auspicious moment. I felt blessed and...deeply awed and full of reverence.

Next, I shall tell you about that afternoon, and Part 2 of Solstice 2011 Mother-Daughter Adventure.

Bright blessings to all!

)O(

Poetry Ahead: Charles Olson

2011-12-19T12:42:00.000-05:00

I just took one of those cyberspace wandering journeys of serendipity.
It began when I clicked a friend's link on Facebook - a link to a new MIT initiative in putting courses onine which led to:

MIT OpenCourseWare,
current MIT courses online where I clicked on:

materials for a course in poetry which used the 1999 edition of Allen's The New American Poetry and began with the assignment to read:

Charles Olson's Kingfishers which led to:

1. me getting up and searching my bookshelves for my copy of The New American Poetry (a trade paperback edition from the 60s)
2. reading Kingfishers.
3. going back online to the MIT course and going to:

a link to the American Academy of Poets page on Charles Olson which led to:

me looking for his 1950 "influential essay "Projective Verse" " which I found here at the Poetry Foundation site, read just a fraction and have made a copy to print and read later.

And throughout this journey, I was googling a bit, reading, and searching YouTube and watching and listening:

The Kingfishers

By Charles Olson

What does not change / is the will to change

He woke, fully clothed, in his bed. He

remembered only one thing, the birds, how

when he came in, he had gone around the rooms

and got them back in their cage, the green one first,

she with the bad leg, and then the blue,

the one they had hoped was a male....

--------------------------------

So what am I thinking after this journey?

That I intend to read "Projective Verse" and think about breath and poetry.

That I'll read more Olson.

That I'll explore the Black Mountain school of poetry.

That I won't need to get a copy of the newer edition of The New American Poetry...my 40+ year old copy ($2.95 cover price, but which I apparently paid .35 for* ) is spine-broken, but it's a sewn binding, not glued, and seems like it's got quite a bit of life yet.

That I'm reminded, once again, how little I know and how much there is to know.

That I need to remember that I can't know everything, that perhaps all I'm meant to know is just what comes to me from the great world, what I encounter as I breathe in it, as I wander in it.

-----------------------------------

*I recognize the handwriting in that .35 penciled price on the front free endpaper, so I know just where I got this book, if not exactly when. I got it at one of the Indiana State University used book sales for the American Association of University Women, which used to be my annual birthday-present-to-myself. They were always held in late September, when we had run out of money over the summer, so it was wonderful to be able to spend $20 and come home with bags of books. The price was written by the late Elizabeth Bevington, who volunteered her pricing expertise and clerked at the sales. She was one of my mentors in the business of selling used, out-of-print, collectible books. She was from the pre-internet days. She didn't have a television. She carried on her business (Books Below, in the basement of her home) with a typewriter (manual) and 3X5 cards and the ABA listings of books wanted. I bought lots of books directly from her and I even have a book that was hers when she was a child, Legends Every Child Should Know by Hamilton Wright Mabie. Her name was Elizabeth Hodson then. Then was 1916.

Amazing what seeing that penciled .35 evoked. I'm thinking about Nicholson Baker now.

And now I'll stop.

)O(

Long Delayed Report on Gwen Bortner's Entrelac Workshop

2011-12-15T15:33:00.000-05:00

Posting that picture of my entrelac scarf yesterday reminded me that I never wrote about the Gwen Bortner workshop held here at RiverWools many moons ago. Many.

Gwen is the author of a great book on entrelac knitting, Entre to Entrelac:

and designer of many magnificent entrelac projects for it.

It was a thrill to take a class from her. But it was even more of a thrill to get to go to supper with her and hear her talk about designing, publishing and her journey to doing what she’s doing today. There’s an interview with Gwen here and for more from Gwen’s own self, she blogs with another knitter here.

To prepare for the class, I knitted two entrelac scarves (one of them in yesterday’s post) and learned to knit “backwards.”

Though it’s not exactly backwards, I don’t think.

Whatever it is, it’s the most wonderful skill to have. Entrelac is made up of little segments of stockinette knitting, just a few stitches across, 8-12 stitches usually. If you don’t know how to knit backwards, you will be constantly turning your work to purl back across, then turning to knit again and turning to purl. Every few seconds (or however long it takes you to knit 8-12 stitches.) Over and over and over again.

knitturnpurlturnknitturnpurlturnknitturnpurlturnknitturnpurlturn——arghhhhh!

(that’s the best way I can represent it without a video of the hellish sequence)

The project though which Gwen taught the class was a hat - entrelac in the round, and each block a different color or colors, all freely chosen by the knitter. You could even mix it up with the stitches, too, we were not limited to stockinette. So there was a nice blend of the structured element of the pattern, with the unique color and texture choices of each of us.

I chose silky Noro Shirakaba and didn't get too inventive with stitches.

Luckily I've learned that weaving-in of ends can be meditative. There were a lot of them with all the color changing. (Hecate has a great post on the weaving-in-of-ends and the intentions with which we knit.)

End-weaving is also good to take to social knitting groups at the yarn shop - the conversation and laughter flows and before you know it...it's done.

A picture of the workshop:

Gwen and Jen, who usually works Mondays at the shop. ( Jen makes lots of lovely things, and ever since taking Andrea Wong's class in the Portuguese knitting style, that's the way she knits. You can see the little pin on her shoulder. Very cool.)

Finally, I just have to mention that I was sitting next to Lana Holden. Yes, that Lana Holden, the designer of Skew and a whole host of other patterns.* (She wore her Involute wrap to class.) Now, it’s not the sitting next to Lana that is the noteworthy thing. Lana’s from here and we meet up with each other all the time.

No, what’s noteworthy is the little glimpse of Lana doing what she does so well— becoming intrigued by a stitch challenge, getting an idea of a permutation, then setting about figuring out just how it can be realized.
You can see in the top picture, she's finished her class hat.

But here she's gotten quite busy on something else:

That day, she thought for sure that the entrelac hat could be knitted top down. So she spent the last bit of time in the workshop playing with that. Next time I saw her, she let me take a picture of what she managed to come up with.

Sure looks like the perfect beginning of a top-down-knitted-in-the-round-entrelac hat to me.
I'm in awe of people who can visualize, then proceed to do mathematical incantation and manifest the vision.

Lana’ blog is here, though she spends way more of her time thinking, experimenting, designing and getting her patterns out than blogging. Maybe that’s as it should be.

---------------------------------------------------

*Skew on Ravelry has to date been ‘favorited’ by 7878 knitters and shows up in 2883 projects - that means 2883 knitters on Ravelry have knitted her pattern AND taken pictures of their socks AND taken the time to post them. Impressive!

)O(

Wordless Wednesday / Noro Furin Entrelac

2011-12-14T16:38:00.000-05:00

Poetry Ahead: John Lennon

2011-12-08T13:45:00.001-05:00

John Lennon lived until December 8, 1980.
And what a gift to us was his work!

John Lennon Plastic Ono Band (with The Flux Fiddlers) - Imagine by Yoko Ono

I remember reading this book of his.
I still use phrases from it, like instead of saying I'm having a nervous breakdown, I say I'm having a nervous breadvan.

Maybe you had to read it, too. Did you?

[edited to include this photo 'cause I think the nervous breadvan came out of In His Own Write ]

---------------------------
The night John Lennon died

we were in a meeting,
all the servers and busboys squeezed
into that big-party corner booth.
who said it? Sam? the bartender?
I only remember looking up in horror
and how the only other horror-filled eyes
were yours,
how our gazes locked, tractor beams colliding,
drawing us back and forth into each other’s shock--
what was the meeting about?
I only remember us fiercely hugging after,
going for pancakes,
how bereft the world felt
how everywhere we wandered that night
his music played and played.

--Zann Carter

Published in Ides of March Journal June issue

)O(

Wordless Wednesday / Merry Lovecraftmas

2011-12-07T19:03:00.000-05:00

Picture found here.

)O(

Miscellany: WordFest, First Friday, Lily at the Window

2011-12-06T19:30:00.000-05:00

Just a quick check-in to say the weekend creative writing symposium, WordFest, went splendidly. I had a wonderful time. It was hard for me to agree to lead a workshop for this event and I'm very glad I did.

You might wonder what was hard since I've written before about doing writing workshops. I guess it was the venue. My other experiences were working with The Maple Center for Integrative Health and for ArtReach. At the former, the context was sharing the ways writing helps when struggling with loss and grief. At the latter, it was informal - me and a bunch of teenagers usually. (And adults with teenage souls!)

At WordFest, I was offering a workshop for writers. Alongside academics with degrees and much more experience in classroom and workshop presentation and being published. Scary. Oh yes. But my workshop went well and the other presenters were warm and welcoming and friendly. So it was a good experience all 'round.

For the last couple of years, I've been trying to accept challenges that come my way. Even though it's scary, I'm ALWAYS glad I accepted. I learn and grow through each one.

At the same time, my fiber work was being displayed in two venues a couple of blocks away.

Display at The Passion Window, my 2010 Freeform Guild Challenge shawl, felted vessels, textile necklaces & pins

Display at RiverWools, fingerless mitts, Florabelle hats, cotton scarves

...presided over by Birdwoman's Council Shawl.


John Salamone, my friend & weaving mentor, who moves very, very fast in order to do all that he does: weave magnificient pieces, create delightful window displays, and commit random acts of extreme kindness.

And now that this busy weekend is all over, now that I have NO commitments, I am ready to begin my annual Winter Retreat, something I started two years ago. It's 3 whole months when I accept no great responsibilities, take time for my spirit, my writing and art, tend my grief issues, and set my course for the rest of the year that follows.

This year is especially important because of the turning sixty thing. I'm in liminal space right now, a threshold before me. I feel it in my bones and soul. I need to honor this feeling, explore it and see where it leads me.

This picture of Lily astonished me when I saw it - the way the light just glowed, blue-violet, from outside as this short day darkened. This is the first time I have seen Lily, standing on this chair, peering outside.

This picture is particularly poignant as the mini-blinds were broken a dozen years ago, by Clover when she first arrived. And engraved in my heart is the image of her sweet little face peering out at me whenever I was outside, whenever I arrived home.

Clover loved looking out there, and it seemed silly to replace the blinds as I suspected she'd just break them again. When she died, I remember thinking I might go ahead and get new ones.

I'm glad I didn't replace them.

)O(

Poetry Ahead: = DADA! +

2011-12-02T01:36:00.001-05:00

Marie Osmond talks about Dada sound poetry and reads Hugo Ball's Karawane on an old episode of Ripley's Believe It or Not :

Listen to Christian Bok's rendition here.

Now, your turn to read it. Yes. Out loud.

Karawane

jolifanto bambla o falli bambla
großiga m'pfa habla horem
egiga goramen
higo bloiko russula huju
hollaka hollala
anlogo bung
blago bung blago bung
bosso fataka
ü üü ü
schampa wulla wussa olobo
hej tatta gorem
eschige zunbada
wulubu ssubudu uluwu ssubudu
–umf
kusa gauma
ba–umf

Now, go write a sound poem of your own. (Share in the comments if you like.)
-----------------------------
Here's mine (written after I first posted this last night.)

t’pta

ilp ilp respituto
iiiiya iiiiiya iiiiiya
lumbo paru
sono-o-o-o-o--ba elubin
herago gaganga
omp swempo timp
plpl op-op
pik’il prak oood
ahka sem
a kasem vy
ch ch ch
macaroo macaroo
harfam tatrum
plemp sucra til
fe’feek ola kreptil
plan-ta-rah abdoo-oo
tt’pta tt’pta tt’pta
uptra pt
oolp. plip. plap.

----------------------------
Next step of course is to see if I have the nerve to perform this at the next monthly reading! Or make and post a recording of me doing it. I have to say it's great fun to write and to read aloud.

)O(

Wordless Wednesday / Dancing Tomato Stars

2011-11-30T14:14:00.000-05:00

Picture by me, from the Playing With My Food series.

)O(

Fixed + Finished

2011-11-29T16:03:00.000-05:00

Florabelle 2 is finished.

But I've lost 2 other hats. Most peculiar. I'd blame Lily, but (unless ~~my husband~~ someone is covering for her) she's terrible at hiding evidence of her chewy misdeeds.

Shelf in kitchen. She seems to get excited about what goes on in the kitchen and just has to sink her teeth into something.

Yes, that's what you think it is. If you're a spinner.

It's one of these.
At least she didn't gnaw on the sheave end (I had no idea what that end was called until I looked at that page) where the band has three different grooves in which to sit - which, non-spinners, is to give different turning ratios so the wheel turns the bobbin more times or less times in one go-round. That won't mean much to you if you are like me and must actually SEE things of a mechanical nature in action, rather than try to visualize from words. Odd that, I'm a very good visualizer in most other ways.

Oops, digression. So, I have a chewed up bobbin that I may still be able to use, but I have a feeling that even if I sand it a bit, there will still be gouged areas that will be catching the fiber.

Now. Where are those hats???

)O(

Poetry Ahead: Joy Harjo, then me

2011-11-27T13:20:00.000-05:00

Joy Harjo - A Poem to Get Rid of Fear

--------------------------------

So now I'm not afraid to follow Harjo with one of my own poems...haven't posted one here in a long time. Mostly because of that 'previously published' issue in case I want to submit somewhere. But I'm tired of not sharing my work here. Tired.

This one is new, read it at the last Poetry at the Grounds, started out to be an Occupy poem and then shapeshifted a bit....

No Lipstick

I hear there will be no lipstick
come the revolution.
So we will stain our lips
with pomegranate juice

and know forgetting

forgetting how afraid we are of change
forgetting how afraid we are of loss

forgetting our capacity for violence

We will high five ourselves and let everything go,
there’’ll be a river for all that stuff.

We will be wearing all that we own.

Come the revolution

cooking will be a communal rite,
eating together a sacrament.

No one will talk about what they let go

we will all be poised on the edge of each moment
reveling in what is

deeply understanding the nature of forgiveness

knowing
that the spiritual world
permeates everything in the physical

that every bird’s wing
has a shadow
that shifts through us

as they fly by

that all our beloved dead drift
through us like white smoke
on the deep sky of our souls

We will hear them with us always.
They will draw nearer.
We will co-create the universe with them.

We will know love at last.

Come the revolution

we will see there is something pure after all
at the beginning of everything

at the beginning of our truest selves.

---Zann Carter (2011)

-----------------------------------

)O(

Kite Weaving

2011-11-26T14:25:00.000-05:00

Imagine...getting the wind to help you weave....

Video first discovered here.

)O(

On The Needles: some ripping to do

2011-11-25T13:54:00.000-05:00

I was so happily coming to the finishing of another Florabelle cap, when I noticed something wonky.
I discovered that I had somehow picked up an extra stitch.

Well, I know exactly how. When you are working on double points, and have a lot of stitches on them, it's easy for that left needle to slide under the yarn between stitches at the end of that needle. If you're not careful (i.e. knitting while talking to visiting granddaughter then watching a jazz piano video your husband has invited you into his study to watch in near dark) you might find that for four rounds you had knitted into that accidentally picked up stitch.

I had a flare of hope that I might be able to drop that stitch back to where I picked it up and do some adjusting of that extra yarn, but seeing just how much was extra extinguished the hope flare pretty quickly.

Any ~~rage~~ irritation I might feel upon having to rip back four rounds is tempered by remembering the way Stephanie the Yarn Harlot patiently (if gnashing her teeth) manages to go back and fix much more egregious mistakes*, mistakes that in a less patient, less skilled knitter's life (mine) would be fatal to the whole project.

So I'm off to patiently rip back and redo those rounds.

-----------------------------
* for a real repair saga, read these Yarn Harlot posts about a sweater she dealt with while on her recent book tour (scroll down in the entries, she writes about the tour first, the knitting calamity at the end):

In Which There is a Little Trouble (begins with scorching her almost-finished sweater)
In Which Baltimore Brings It (and she tempts fate by proudly posting the fix of the scorching)
When in Chicago (posts a picture of a miscrossed cable astute readers have pointed out & promises to fix it)
In the Pews in St. Louis (she CUTS her knitting & performs mysterious magic to fix the cable - I don't do cables, I have no idea what she did, but there's lots of pictures of the process)
On Leaving Texas (Apparently another astute reader suggests she fix the cable on the back, too. She does)
A Little on the Side (here she reports she has kicked Gwendolyn's [the sweater] arse & it's DONE.]

If the Gwendolyn saga isn't something by which to measure most knitting tribulations and persevere in dealing with one's own bagatelle of a calamity, I don't know what is.

)O(

I'm Thankful for Poetry

2011-11-24T08:44:00.000-05:00

AUTUMN MOVEMENT
by Carl Sandburg

I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go, not one lasts.

__________________________________

more autumn poetry here.
picture by me.

Thanksgiving for me is pretty much like this still.
Only this year I'm making chunky ginger applesauce, too.

May there be much to be thankful for in your life!
Blessed be.

)O(

Wordless Wednesday / Kandinsky, Color Studies

2011-11-23T00:42:00.000-05:00

)O(

Words, Knitting, Play

2011-11-21T16:46:00.001-05:00

I’m getting psyched about this upcoming creative writing event here in Terre Haute.

I’ve been on the planning committee and I will also be facilitating one of the Saturday workshops. We hope this will become an annual event and I think it’s off to a good start, with the incoming poet laureate of Indiana doing a Friday night reading to inaugurate.

The picture I submitted for the workshop flyer was this one of me holding one of the three big letters I knitted for the for the UK Poetry Society and the Much Wenlock Poetry Festival.

It’s emblematic of my longing to combine my fiber art with word art, to remain open to possibilities.

Ah, possibilities. Giant knitted poems created by hundreds of knitters from around the world…what playful minds dreamed that up! And what playful hands brought it all together!

Wenlock Poetry Festival, the knitted Carol Ann Duffy poem still a work-in-progress

UK Poetry Society, completed Dylan Thomas poem

My writing workshop is dedicated to possibilities and is called WordPlay. I think of it as ‘a playdate with words.’ I want it to be, above all, fun and playful, with the underlying message that play can be a very serious creative laboratory.

So lately I’m thinking more deeply about play and creativity and I’ve found quotations like the one below to ponder here.

Ritual grew up in sacred play; poetry was born in play and nourished on play; music and dancing were pure play.... We have to conclude, therefore, that civilization is, in its earliest phases, played. It does not come from play...it arises in and as play, and never leaves it.-

-Johan Huizing Dutch historian 1872–1945

There is also this book, which I have been reading on and off for ages:

-----------------------------

Here's an entrance to the play laboratory I use often. Finish this question, then try to answer it:

What if I _______________________? *

So how do you play and improvise in your creative work?

---------------------------------

*I was inspired to do this by Jude Hill and her Spirit Cloth blog, where she regularly documents the results of her textile and stitch what if’s.

PS. Here’s another nifty little bit of play - write a poem & print it out in knitted letters here.

)O(

Makin' Hats

2011-11-20T11:24:00.000-05:00

I'm on a hat-making binge.
Some for Occupy winter. Some for sale at RiverWools in December.

My own pattern, Florabelle. Top-down. 1/1 rib.
(Yup, it's on my list of Patterns To Write Up)

These caps are made with Noro Kureyon and (the one on the right) Noro Hitsuji.
Hitsuji is fat Kureyon.
Normally I don't love working with fat yarn, but Mr. Noro does it so well, I'm finding it fun.

Wordless Wednesday / My Studio Window

2011-11-16T13:00:00.000-05:00

Mini Mitts

2011-11-14T17:09:00.000-05:00

One of the things I started making last summer for my booth at the end-of-August Block Party was fingerless mitts. Ones that just cover the hands.

My own pattern, in Noro Kureyon and Dream in Color Classy.

I keep a pair tucked into the pocket of my hoodie, others in my beloved Polartec300 jacket, and my coat. There may even be a pair in the….glove (!) compartment of my car.

Since the ribbing is done in DIC, 2 skeins of Kureyon will yield 3 sets of these fraternal twins.

On colder days, I can slip on a pair of those ultra-thin, extra-cheap gloves underneath. I then have layered warmth and still have the dextrous use of my fingers. On the really, really cold days…oh, I don’t want to be out on those anyway.

Since it was 80+ the day of the block party, I sold no mitts.
I have higher expectations for them at the December downtown Terre Haute event, Miracle on 7th Street, where I’ll have some things for sale at RiverWools.

Another thing about these mitts. I’m going to say this very softly: I harbor a secret desire to design and write knitting patterns. And this might be the first one I try to write up.

Wordless Wednesday / Saori Love

2011-11-09T09:19:00.000-05:00

Picture found here.

Pigeon Suits or, When Meaning is Lost on the Internet

2011-11-07T11:28:00.000-05:00

I received a link on Facebook the other day which had a picture of a pigeon in colorful crochet. I started to pass it on quickly by sharing it on my Wall. Instead, I decided to go further. And I’m so glad I did.

I traveled that link to other links and finally arrived at the site for the artist (Laurel Roth).

It was interesting to see the commentary & presentation of her work along the way. At the first link, the author is confused about why pigeons would need “knitted (sic) outfits,” but they're “adorable.“ She calls the project “Pigeons in Costume’ and describes it as ‘hilarious.’

The next site, linked to from the first, is entitled “Pigeons in Costume”, and there is more information, the proper title for the series - "Biodiversity Reclamation Suits for Urban Pigeons.” This author describes the work thusly:

“…Roth takes pigeons (hand carved mannequins), sets them on stands, and crochets yarn coats for them to look totally and wholly fancy in. Everyone loves a little fancification, right?
Even dirty birds like to feel loved and to look super sassy….”

And includes one reader comment: “These people has etirely too much free time! Lol”

When I finally arrived at the artist's site, I discovered that she dresses wooden pigeon mannequins in suits "that disguise them as extinct birds, thereby (visually) re-creating biodiversity and soothing environmental fears. "

I don’t know about soothing my environmental fears, but in finally getting to the artist’s site and statement, seeing the pictures in the web setting she chose for it, I felt immensely enriched by knowing the deeper meaning of her project.

And was given a key to open my own door of meaning and associations upon viewing this as the art work it is meant to be. I felt awash in a sense of loss, and then began to think about how we try to recreate stellar moments or experiences or capture them in photographs and how sometimes it just seems sad….

In addition, I got to see the Laurel Roth's other work, which gave even more context to this series, and realized she probably also carved the wooden pigeon mannequins.

The lesson here for me is twofold.
1. On the internet as in real life, it’s wise to go to the source of things.
2. When I present something here or am tempted to do a quick repost to social media, I should take a moment and be sure I’m not just sending a pale iteration - a pigeon in an adorable outfit- when I could be sending something far more meaningful.

-------------------------------

Here are the links in the order I followed them:

http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/pigeons-in-costume
http://worldfamousdesignjunkies.com/color/pigeon-power/
http://loloro.com/section/54968_Biodiversity_Reclamation_Suits_for_Urban.html

top picture found here
bottom picture found here

Occupyin' the Needles - Hat One

2011-11-05T15:41:00.001-04:00

My first hat to donate to an Occupy group for winter warmth.

Ingredients: #8 & #6 dpn, MC: Araucania Quillay (color 14), CC: Cascade 220 Superwash

Just a simple top down knit, an improvised pattern I’ve been doing for years.
I believe its basis is the top-down hat directions in Knitting from the Top, by Barbara Walker.

I started with 8 stitches on 4 needles, increased 8 every other round and then checked for gauge to know when to stop increasing. Knitted around and around and around ’til it measured about 7”, then changed to the smaller needles and the CC, began 2/2 rib.

If I make another like this, I’ll probably make the body a wee bit shorter, start the ribbing earlier and make it longer.

Quillay is 57% superwash wool, 43% acrylic - I think an easy-care hat is most appropriate for the purpose.
It’s a new yarn to me and I liked working with it.

I’d have liked it even better if the lighting in my living room was better.

This happens to me all the time: I see a yarn in RiverWools which thrills me colorwise, take it home, begin to knit and find the color not so thrilling. (Sometimes even unpleasant - some colorways just irritate my very soul. )

Then I take my knitting or finished object back into the shop and am totally surprised at how much I like the color again.

So either Martha has some sort of magical lighting that makes yarn colors look extra yummy or I need to find better lighting.

Next I think I’m going to try either MK Carroll’s Top Down Beanie Recipe (that link will take you to a page with yet another link to the free pattern at Ravelry) or the one by Charisa Martin Cairn , which is another free pattern. (Look around there, she’s got some other cool top-down hat patterns.)

Next post I'll talk about fingerless mitts, another item Occupiers might really appreciate.

Wordless Wednesday / 21 Year Old Film Developed

2011-11-02T10:11:00.000-04:00

Patrick and sister Molly, 1990, Miami

Poem for Samhain - Longfellow

2011-10-31T10:52:00.001-04:00

Haunted Houses
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We meet them at the door-way, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.

Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires;
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
And the more noble instinct that aspires.

These perturbations, this perpetual jar
Of earthly wants and aspirations high,
Come from the influence of an unseen star
An undiscovered planet in our sky.

And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
Throws o'er the sea a floating bridge of light,
Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
Into the realm of mystery and night,—

So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O'er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.

Picture found here.

Yarn, Dog, Occupy Terre Haute

2011-10-27T10:56:00.001-04:00

If I was a better blogger, I would have pictures of the stunning amount of new yarn that arrived at RiverWools this week.

But I’m not a better blogger, I’m a yarn ~~addict~~ collector. And I was quite overcome by the stacks and stacks of bags of new fiber goodness that covered a good deal of the floor space in the front of the shop.

As I gazed at new colorways and saw the knitted-up samples -- oh, all right, yes! Yes, I also fondled and sniffed -- as I did all that, I never once thought of stepping back and getting out my camera and becoming Documenting Blogwoman.

Before I go on about the new yarn, I want to digress just a wee bit. You may have noticed that there is not much going on in the realm of art on this blog. And that’s because there’s not much going on in my life in that realm. Well, I am writing poetry regularly, but I'm wary of posting it here because I'm trying to get published and many journals have submission rules which deem publishing online (even on a personal blog) to be 'previously published.'

I am in a kind of doldrums with my visual creative work, but I’m percolating in other ways. Inner stuff.

Also, there’s that new young dog in the family. She eats things she really, really shouldn’t

and so must be watched a lot and gently guided over to the Good Side. That takes time and patience. And I’m loathe to get all involved in a project or try to dress a loom and have Lily-tending become an irritating interuption.

I have, however, become a little bit involved with the local Occupy group. While they haven’t gotten to the point of a 24/7 Occupation, they have been gathering and marching in downtown Terre Haute. On Monday I joined them for a time .

Yesterday, I made about 50 buttons

to give to the group as a donation and planned to stand with them again for awhile after I finished work at the bookstore, which is right across the street from the Occupy Terre Haute gathering spot.

But it was raining and chilly and my jeans & sneakers were starting to get wet and water was dripping off my rain visor and onto my nose if I was looking up at taller people and….and…the new yarn I’d only had a glimpse of earlier was calling to me. (Did I mention that RiverWools is just two doors down from the bookstore? I could clearly hear that yarn from the street corner.)

So. I handed over the buttons and bailed.
Yes, I left Occupy Terre Haute, abandoned a bunch of dedicated people willing to stand in the rain to get the message out.
Worse, I left them and went to consume.

On the left, 1 Araucania Milodon (100% wool, kind of tweedy),

the other 2 are Araucania Liwen (50% superfine alpaca, 50% wool- thick ’n’ thin)

Martha did make me feel a little better by reminding me that my purchase supports a local owner-operated business, that it wasn’t like I left the demo and went to WalMart.

For penance, I shall knit some hats and scarves for winter Occupying.
(There are several initiatives for this out there, including this free hat pattern on Ravelry. , a Facebook page called Knitters for the 99% and this blogger's Occupy Our Needles. )
Another blog: Stitch for Occupy

Wordless Wednesday / Inspiration

2011-10-26T00:23:00.000-04:00

Belated Happy Blogiversary to Me

2011-10-23T12:50:00.000-04:00

As I was making the changes to my template, wondering if I wanted to make more drastic changes, I was thinking about when I first started this blog. It was 6 years ago in August.

I wrote then that 'terrible things' had happened in my family the previous two and a half years. It's hard to go back and read that and remember quite vividly the day I started the blog, the feelings and hope I had. I want to go back and hug that woman, who did not know that even more terrible things were coming, that bigger challenges were fast approaching.

That fall my mother tumbled swiftly down the rabbit hole of dementia and I became torn between her needs and the demands of my son and his drug abuse. The next spring, our Patrick died. Died. (And writing this still makes me feel I've been punched in the stomach, gotten the wind knocked out of me.)

And I blogged. I tried to keep the very personal to a minimum because I wanted this blog to be mostly about my creative work. But there's a place where one's life events and one's art intersect and sometimes the place should be revealed.

I know that it was good that I had this blog, that I could put my sorrow into words and share it. I received comfort and warmth from friends and strangers and, in sharing my story, I think I gave some back to others who are walking the path of grief and loss. And that was also a gift to me.

I want to thank everyone who reads my blog, regularly or occasionally, and everyone who takes a moment to make a comment when something delights them or touches their own experience.

So I don't think I'm going to drastically change the appearance of Lizards in the Leaves, it's got the face of a familiar friend. Maybe a tweak here and there. And maybe more of a connection between this blog and my de-cluttering blog, A Chair Is A Closet.

I might let a little more personal come through in the content- I turned 60 last month, and it feels like a big deal, and I'm acknowledging that by making some changes, a lot of them of the 'letting-go' variety.

I think that's story worth sharing, too.
Namaste, my friends!

Messing with the Blog Template....testing....testing

2011-10-22T21:29:00.000-04:00

My blog appearance has been bugging me for awhile. Not so much the clutter, I know the sidebar is chockful of Stuff, but it's all Stuff I want out there. The main thing has been the small blogging space and all the empty space to either side. It's weird, but I feel like it used to be wider. Don't know how that could be though.

Anyway, I've been fooling around in the template code and changed a few parameters and it sort of looked like I wanted it so I made the changes. Saved a copy of the old code in case.

So it looks better to me, but it loads a bit funky. I apologize for the funky loading and I'll try to figure out how to fix that, but I do like the changes overall.

Now I think I can have larger pictures (This is how many bananas a couple wind up with when they each go to the store and don't tell the other they are going. Also they wind up with four bags of apples and extra peanut butter.)

The Myth of a Revised Principles of Knitting

2011-10-22T09:47:00.000-04:00

A revised edition of Principles of Knitting has long been a mythical object , a knitting Grail, with tales of it told around the knitting circle for years, tales which, c. 2008, began to include its imminent publication.

I was very excited to see last May that there was a definite publication date for a revised edition of Principles of Knitting by June Hiatt. Definite enough that Amazon had a picture of a new cover

(quite similar to the original) AND a pre-order button. Now that was new and a very hopeful sign. If I remember correctly, it had a release date of September.

I went ahead and pre-ordered and since then have gotten several updates from Amazon, each one pushing back the publication date. The latest one puts it off until Valentine's Day 2012. Sigh.

You can read my tale about me and my mother and the original Principles of Knitting here. (If you do read to the end of that rather long post, you will see why it's mighty significant to me that Feb. 14 is the new release date...)

Third Thursday Poetry - Vera Pavlova

2011-10-20T09:54:00.001-04:00

A Remedy for Insomnia

Not sheep coming down the hills,
not cracks on the ceiling—
count the ones you loved,
the former tenants of dreams
who would keep you awake,
once meant the world to you,
rocked you in their arms,
those who loved you . . .
You will fall asleep, by dawn, in tears.

---Vera Pavlova

Read more about Vera Pavlova here

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Tonight marks the 3rd annversary of Poetry at the Grounds, the monthly open mic reading founded and co-hosted by me and Sarah Long. "There Will Be Cake " is our anniversary slogan. There will also be door prizes and frivolity and poetry. Life is good. Poetry makes it better.

Wordless Wednesday / L'Amour et La Paix

2011-10-19T10:40:00.001-04:00

Picture can be found many places, including here

Another Different Lines

2011-10-18T17:08:00.000-04:00

I said I'd miss it - my fingers were itching to start another Different Lines shawl.
So I did.

This one in Dream in Color also, but I've gone to their worsted weight, Classy. And gone up just one needle size, to #10.

Colors are Spring Tickle and Gray Tabby. The latter is almost a solid gray, but there are subtle tonal variations.

It's a perfect autumn day to be knitting a shawl - rainy, chilly, hinting at the promise of the winter's turning inward.
I love the view from my Big Chair, tea, pocket Tarot, wheel and dozy Lily.

The tea in that cup is gift tea from my son Ian and dil Lisa.
It is JinJaa Citrus Twist Green Tea from Teavana. Orange, lemon, ginger...mmmm.

Lisa and I spent a lovely hour at Teavana when I visited Boston last spring.
It's wonderful that their tea is available online, but you miss the experience of having an eager Teavana worker open a giant tin and use the lid to waft the scent of it your way. An olfactory tasting.

This tea was made for wafting. And drinking with just a bit of honey on a perfect autumn day.

Reading:
Oct. 17 New Yorker
Learning to Breathe by Priscilla Warner

Wayback Post : My Saori Intensive

2011-10-13T07:59:00.001-04:00

Way back in May, I made a huge step climbing out of agoraphobic exile in Terre Haute and went to Boston to visit my eldest son Ian and his wife Lisa. (Many blessings on my son Shaun for accompanying me and taking care of all the travel details. And blessings on granddaughter Sophia for being a great example of an Intrepid Traveler.) I was left free to manage me. And I managed me very well, nary a hint of the panic beast, just normal levels of excitement and travel apprehension. Quite seriously, the Zen Flow Worry Chart was a useful tool throughout the trip.

Whenever I found my anxiety level beginning to rise, I posed those questions and it really helped me to stay in the situation and be pretty close to present and calm. Certainly my anxiety level remained low.

When we planned the trip, it seemed ridiculous that I might be so close to Saori Worcester and not take advantage of the proximity. And so I planned a two-day weaving intensive in Worcester while Shaun and Sophia traveled to NYC. Intrepid Traveler duo.

Nat and MIhoko have created a beautiful home and studio there and I had an amazing time. Mihoko was able to cover everything I had on my list to learn and she was a splendid teacher. Nat’s enthusiasm, generosity and life force make me smile today. There were lessons all around. And here are some pictures:

I knew we were in the right place when I saw the Saori banner at the front door.

Nat and Mihoko

The beautiful, light-filled, loom-filled studio space

The cubbies where projects are stored.

One of the very special properties of Saori looms is the ability to switch work-in-progress.

This is accomplished by having multiple 'inside sets' which consist of the two harnesses with heddles and the reed.Warp is wound on a sturdy cardboard tube (you can see it in the picture below, it's actually a square tube ) which slides off the back beam. Heddle frames and reed are removed, the completed part of the weaving is unwound from the front beam, and the front tie rod slipped out.

A table with bobbins, shuttles and basket of 'treasures', bits and pieces of waste yarn and fiber that become lovely and interesting inlays:

Some finished pieces that were around the studio:

This is a t-shirt with reverse applique - a beautiful use for Saori scraps!

------------------------

And, finally, here is a watercolor of a stunning project organized by Saori Worcester: The Saori Bridges of Elm Park, in which several bridges were hung with banners woven by Saori weavers around the world. The pictures are breathtaking, I can only imagine what it might have been like to see it in person. You can get more details and link to see the individual banners through this page: Saori Bridges

Thanks Nat and Mihoko, for all that you do in the world!

Wordless Wednesday /The Guru by Robert Bissell

2011-10-12T02:01:00.000-04:00

picture found here

Finished: Different Lines Wrap

2011-10-11T14:20:00.000-04:00

This was a great carry-around knit.
I will miss it. I hope I enjoy wearing it as much as I enjoyed knitting it. It's cushy. And the colors....mmmm.

Details and pattern info here

This last pictures shows my favorite part of this design - there is energy and movement here - radiance.

----------------------------------------------

2011_Oct. 10-16 - Reading This Week : *

SageWoman magazine Issue 81 Weaving the Web
Mark Doty, Still Life with Oysters and Lemon
Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought
Leanne Praine, Hoopla / The Art of Unexpected Embroidery

*being on the list doesn’t necessarily mean being read cover to cover, I might just be dipping my toes in the vast ocean of words out there

Adventurous Weaving Workshop

2011-10-09T09:44:00.000-04:00

I'm not a very good documenter, an issue which makes blogging difficult. I forget to take pictures.
I especially forget to take pictures of events in which I am very engaged. I feel pretty good about documenting yesterday's event, though, because:
a. I remembered to bring my camera
b. I remembered to take pictures before the workshop was over.

Just before.
The picture above is everybody after 4 hours of adventure. John is taking his finished sampler off the loom, Cheryl and Dennis are watching, Dawn is reading a Saori book (probably not actually reading as it's in Japanese) and Susan is finishing up for the day.

The workshop focused on two techniques and permutations thereof: inlay and clasped weft with 2 and 3 yarns. It was planned to be an intermediate workshop, with previous experience on rigid heddle required. Participants were to come with a loom, warped and ready to weave. On registration, everyone was provided with 400 yards of black cotton 8/4 carpet warp, and instructions to create a 9' warp about 9" wide.

Oh the rebellion! Cheryl and Susan weren't experienced rigid heddle weavers and had little weaving experience. (They are, however, fiber people and great knitters, and adventurous, and I am not such a stickler for rules, even my own.) John offered to come in before the workshop and help them warp borrowed looms. So, they were essentially weaving for the first time in a Saori-inspired way.

Cheryl's weaving

It was so rewarding to work with Cheryl. She was using a 20" loom, and was having to navigate the learning curve of using it. Adding in clasped weft, juggling two and then three weft yarns going at the same time - well, that's a whole lot to encounter for first time weaving, and I very much admired her for plunging in and exploring the process. And not throwing up her hands, even when she chose mohair to work with at one point!

Susan's weaving

Though it doesn't quite show up in the photograph, there was a tremendous amount of motion expressed in the beginning part of Susan's weaving. It was very lively and lovely to see.


Dawn's weaving

Dawn is an experienced rigid heddle weaver. I'm not sure I've seen anyone take off the way she did. For weeks after her first class, every time I saw her in Riverwools, she had a new scarf or wrap to share. Since she was trying lots of different yarns, I got to enjoy seeing (and feeling) how they worked up.

Two things are interesting about her work yesterday -one, her choice to use white as her sampler base color. It was a practical thought she had, so that things would show up better. I don't think she realized how amazing it would look. The other interesting thing is that weaving freestyle is out of her comfort zone. You'd not know it to see how she enthusiastically engaged and created some visually striking work.

John and his sampler weaving

John is a master weaver - he is actually my weaving teacher. I learn to tri-loom weave from him and he is also the one who started me on rigid heddle. So it was a great thrill to be able to share some weaving fun with him. He has one of the Saori principles deeply in his heart: weaving as a group, the sharing of weaving with others. It was very generous of him to help Cheryl and Susan to be able to take the class, and he has been more than generous with me over the years, sharing his knowledge and weaving wisdom, booth space and lots of laughter.

This is my post-workshop weaving. My own weaving in the workshop was demonstrative, and done more to show the techniques. But I was certainly inspired by all the discovery of the day and came home and continued to weave. I'm using up some Opal sock yarn here.

If fibery clutter is evidence of a good time, we had a great time.
I learned some new things, found inspiration from my students.

And Susan and Cheryl bought looms.

Lily

2011-10-08T09:33:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday, I posted wordlessly a picture of Lily:

Lily 2011

She's come to live with us.

Yes, she looks very much like Clover:

Clover 2006

Very much.

It's all very mysterious and rather a shock how this happened so quickly.
But it did.

We found her at the local Humane Society shelter.
At first, I didn't even want to consider having another dog. Then I didn't want to consider having another dog that so resembled Clover. Then I had an epiphany of sorts. I realized that lots of people like a particular breed, say Golden Retrievers. They have a succession of them, and they each surely resemble the others.

They found her early in September. Four blocks from my house. Two blocks from where Clover began following me home 12 years ago.

Mysterious. We joke that Lily must have been on her way to our house when she was intercepted.

We joke, but kind of believe it.

We'll try not to expect her to be Clover. She is Lily. Lily with the polka dot ear. And we're just getting to know who she is.

Rigid Heddle /Saori Inspiration - A Runner

2011-10-07T16:29:00.000-04:00

I took my 12" Ashford Knitter's Loom outside to weave on a lovely autumn day this week.
Working on another piece to take to my Saturday workshop. Thought it would be a scarf, but I like it as a table runner.

Ingredients: 8/4 cotton carpet warp in purple, Noro Silk Garden Sock and Noro Furin , assorted treasures: bits of recycled sari cloth ribbon yarn, banana silk, cotton cloth strips, snippets of leftover yarn from projects.

Wordless Wednesday / Lily

2011-10-05T00:08:00.000-04:00

National Spinning + Weaving Week

2011-10-03T13:32:00.000-04:00

What a glorious autumn day here in Indiana! It's all the cliched wonder of a cloudless blue sky and russet leaves. AND I just discovered it's National Spinning and Weaving Week.

On some level, I must have known it was coming - why else would I have spent some time last week turning this noisy hooligan of a space:

into this serenely waiting space:

And fitting, too, that I will be teaching a new Riverwools weaving workshop at week's end, Adventurous Weaving / Freestyle Techniques for the Rigid Heddle Loom, a Saori inspired workshop. So many people have gotten rigid heddle looms here, I thought it would be a wonderful way of passing along the Saori joy. We'll be having creative fun doing a sampler with inlay experiments and and clasped weft work. Here are some pictures from the sampler I made as I thought about doing this workshop.

I believe I will bring my rigid heddle loom up from my basement studio and weave outside today!

Where will you be spinning and weaving* this week??

Namaste!

*if reports on such activity involve strong drink, must also include a spinning wheel, drop spindle or loom.

Day of the Dead Stitch Markers

2011-09-30T09:34:00.000-04:00

Little bone skulls and vintage glass beads.
Maybe I'll have some ready to sell soon in my as-yet-unstocked etsy shop.
For sure I'll have a few sets at RiverWools in Terre Haute.

Wordless Wednesday /Fireworks in Venice - Lucien Levy-Dhurmer

2011-09-28T20:20:00.001-04:00

Poetry / Mark Doty

2011-09-25T08:03:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I finished the book Dog Years by Mark Doty . Oh. my. It’s an elegant memoir about his dogs, Beau and Arden - the loving and the losing of them. Although it had me in tears often, they were the kind of tears evoked when you have your own emotions and experience mirrored in another’s story. Pain is evoked or renewed, but there is healing from it as well.

Mark Doty is a poet and writes with a poet’s keen ability to observe and pierce through the superficial. And to use lovely turns of phrase. The book’s flow is unusual, it meanders and strays from the linear. From some of the Amazon reviews, I can see that is problematical for some, as is the poetic sensibility Doty brings to this work. I loved it, though.

And I loved this poem, too - the way he captured what I like to think of as Dog Mind.

Golden Retrievals
By Mark Doty

Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention
seconds at a time. Catch? I don’t think so.
Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel who’s—oh
joy—actually scared. Sniff the wind, then

----read the complete poem here

That link takes you to the Poetry Foundation website. Bookmark it! It’s filled with treasure.

Bright blessings and namaste,
‘Zann

Mabon

2011-09-23T14:51:00.000-04:00

Today is Mabon, the Autumnal Equinox, the day when we are balanced between dark and light, and moving toward the seasons of darkness. I always think of this time as time for inner work and renewal and I am especially looking forward to that this year as I approach my sixtieth birthday.

A simple Mabon observance: think about all you've harvested this summer, sweep your porch, tidy the entryway to your living space, eat an apple mindfully.

Picture from the blog of Beth Owl's Daughter. Read her wonderful Mabon post here.

Calypso Shrug

2011-09-21T16:52:00.000-04:00

A finished object, of which the knitting has been finished for quite some time. It has been languishing while waiting for weaving-in-ends, steam-iron blocking, and the sewing of buttons, all of which I did in less than an hour this morning. The cry of The Procrastinator rings out - "Sheesh, that was easy-peasy, WHY did I wait so long?"

The pattern is Calypso Shrug from One-Skein Wonders:

I left off the beading called for in the pattern, and it was a very nice take-along knit, just a large rectangle with no shaping and a pattern that was easily memorized. I used Fleece Artist's Sea Wool and am very happy I have another skein in a different colorway because it was lovely to work with.

And here's a close-up of one of the vintage buttons I used:

Can't wait for some cool fall weather - it will make a nice little warming layer.

Matchy Matchy

2011-09-16T21:49:00.000-04:00

I bet this happens to a lot of knitters, you look down at your lap and suddenly realize you are amazingly color-coordinated, that you look as though you picked out your work-in-progress just to match the clothes you picked to wear that day. It makes sense that this would happen more often than not, since I assume most knitters like both to knit and to wear their favorite colors. And that most knitters have a lot of WIPs to choose from. Still, sometimes the match is so spot on that you just have to take a picture of your lap.

I'm working on Different Lines, a scarf/wrap pattern by Veera Valimaki, on Ravelry here.

I'm using Dream in Color Smooshy in Flamingo Pie (I LOVE this colorway) and Punky Fuschia.

I originally started this on the recommended needle size, 6, in two other colors of Smooshy, a green and brown and I kept telling myself it was all forest-y and earthy, but it what it was, was depressing. I have no idea why I kept on at it for as long as I did. But suddenly, in addition to having issues with the colors, I realized it seemed awfully small at the point I was, and didn't have the drape of a nice wrap.

Of course I didn't check gauge at the start. When I did check gauge and realized how off I was, only then did I feel I had "permission" to frog... and frog I did. I went back to the stash and picked out colors that cheered me right up and went up 3 needle sizes to a 9, and started all over again.

It's a perfect take-along knit, lots and lots of garter stitch, and it's very soft and nice and I can't wait to finish it!

Garage Sale Find - $2 for a bag of....

2011-09-06T13:49:00.000-04:00

...nearly 100 year old artificial silk cord for embroidery and couching.

Love The Google! I was able to search and find information on Collingbourne Mills, even the patents held by Albert B. Collingbourne of Elgin, Illinois. You can actually download a copy of his 1927 patent for Artificial Silk Floss.

I was actually trying to find out just what the artificial silk was made of, but the patent was no help. It was not for the composition of artificial silk, but for his special twisting process used to make embroidery floss.

Another interesting thing (to me, at least!) was that there was apparently a Silk Association of America objection to Congress (found in a book on merchandise misbranding bills) about the many artificial silk products that were labeled in a misleading way, so as to make people think there was silk in the threads and flosses when there was not.

In any case, I found nothing definitive about my artificial silk's fiber content, but it's lovely and shiny, so I'm guessing it is rayon, maybe a rayon/cotton blend.

I have no idea what I'll use this for - it seems to be in great condition - but freeform work comes to mind, or using it as inlay inclusions in a Saori weaving. Or maybe I'll give some to my daughter who is using recycled and found objects in jewelry she's making.

Hidden deep in the middle of the pile of cord in the bag was this little tool, an "art needle" for "French embroidery." It's dated 1922 and it's all there with it's various-sized needle punches and the original instructions, too.

This is a whole other Googling opportunity! What a sweet find...

Block Party Booth / Sneak Peek

2011-08-15T15:12:00.000-04:00

Getting ready for my booth at the Downtown Block Party, August 27.

Today I’m putting the finishing touches on felted vessels and Marvelous Mixed-up Mitts.
Must make more!
Back to ~~work~~ play!

Clover 1998-08/04/2011

2011-08-05T10:35:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we helped our beloved Clover out of this life and into the next.

It was wrenchingly sad and achingly beautiful. As if Mother Nature were bestowing mercy and welcoming our sweet dog friend into Spirit, there was a break in the terrible heat of these days and a gentle breeze.

So we were able to take her outside,in the shade of the tree she danced around hundreds of times, to allow her to die mercifully seeing blue, blue sky and our loving eyes, with the wind in the leaves and the sounds of squirrels and birds. As the initial sedative took effect, and we told her good-bye and how much we loved her, she burrowed her head into the crook of my arm, stared right into my eyes. and I saw....love, gratitude, consolation.

Now she’s everywhere in the house and nowhere in the house and we miss her as we miss any beloved.

My task right now: to remember that Clover’s whole being vibrated with the frequency of Joy. What will most honor her spirit and our deep, deep soul connection, is for me to tune myself to that vibration.
I’m trying. I’m trying.

We spent our last hours together in the peace of my spiritual room. Paul came in regularly to talk to her, give her a treat. She dozed peacefully and I prayed, meditated, knitted and drew some Tarot cards. I said good-bye to her and blessed her in many ways.

Someone called her my “spirit mutt” when she first arrived.

And so she was and is. Paul, too, is deeply bonded to her, she was his midnight walking companion, Cheerio chaser. And for both us, Clover was always there, comforting as we went through years of losing loved ones.

May the Goddess guard her.
May she find her way to the Summerland.
May we carry for the rest of our lives the joyful spirit she so freely shared.
May we know deep peace in the Great Mystery.

Merry meet, Clover, and merry part and merry meet again.

Finished: Jane Thornley's Little Vest Knit Along

2011-07-06T10:29:00.000-04:00

Details are in previous posts.

Today will just be pictures...

I think I shall wear it today!

Finished: Kusha Kusha

2011-07-05T10:45:00.000-04:00

Finished this the other day.
The Kusha Kusha scarf made with Habu Textiles' silk stainless steel and fine merino yarns. I used a dark purply merino and navy silk stainless.

Finished scarf before felting.

Part where the merino & silk stainless ends and you start knitting only with the silk stainless.

That same part after felting (and I decided to felt heavily.)

The whole scarf, drying. It will be like wearing a sculpture, I think.

If you're on Ravelry, take a look at all the amazing ways people have knit Kusha Kusha here. If you are not on Ravelry, join! If only for the opportunity to see how a pattern looks in a wide variety of interpretations.

Finished Weaving with the Kids & Thornley KAL progress

2011-06-22T20:54:00.000-04:00

Me and the ten kids who wove this banner at Casa Picasso Art Camp.

The banner hanging in the camp gallery. The kids loved the idea of making something that would help people, so the banner is for sale. $85. Every penny will be donated to Doctors Without Borders.

This is my favorite section of the banner.

In addition to weaving on the Saori loom, the kids created a small piece on a Harrisville Friendly Lap Loom.

Progress on the Jane Thornley Little Vest Knit-Along
(That's the link to Jane's main page, her knit-alongs are on the drop-down menu under Blog)

Lots of the others (in the Jane Thornley Ravelry group) have named their vests and I have, too. As I knitted, I kept thinking of rainbows you see in street puddles - the rainbows from the oil. I tried to think of dragonflies and other iridescent things: beetles, abalone. But kept coming back to the oily puddles. Joni Mitchell has a lovely image in her song "Michael From Mountains" and I also kept hearing those lyrics, '...there's oil in the puddles / in taffeta patterns/ that run down the drain / in colored arrangements / that Michael will stir with a stick that he's found...' I thought about just calling this Michael from Mountains, but have chosen the equally alliterative and less obscure: Rainbow on the Road.

A back panel was knit first, then some rows added to either side to make it be the width I need. Side panels will come later.

The fronts are picked up from the shoulders. With the first, I was doing such improvisational knitting and color combining that I knew it would frustrating and unpleasant trying to knit the second one identically. So I decided to have them be different. With the addition of the side panels and a front opening bands, this should come together coherently. We shall see!

I felt like making a little visual collage of strands of all the different yarns I'm using, in order of their weight.
From the left: Interlacements Carolina (?? it's cotton), Noro Blossom No. 20, Rowan Summer Tweed, dark violet, orange, Itata in orange and green, Robin Edmunson Cotton/Rayon in blue and shimmery purple.

I also wanted to highlight the cast off that I did on the back panel. I've been casting off this way lately: rather than knitting every stitch, I alternate a knit with a purl. This balances the knitting so these loops sit right on the top of the edge, rather than leaning over on one side or other of the fabric. That always annoyed me. I think of this as 'seed stitch cast-off' but use whether or not I've been working in seed stitch. In this case, it was garter stitch.

Also, I really wanted to get this orange in the back add-ons, but doing another row and then the cast off on each side would have made this too wide. So, I change to the orange just for the cast off. I've never done that before and I like the effect. When I pick up to add the side panels, I will just pick up the WS half of the loop, and I should have a nice thin line of the color.

-----------------
Tomorrow is a balloon release held by our Compassionate Friends chapter, for bereaved parents. I'll be there to send off one with Patrick's name on it....sigh.

Casa Picasso Art Camp

2011-06-14T18:18:00.000-04:00

This week, I'm bringing weaving experiences to the art camp at my UU church.

I have a separate, quiet room in which I've set up the loom and the children come to me during the afternoon 'Open Studio' time when they rotate between weaving, a woodworking project and other projects, including making pinatas. Hanging on the door are the sampler I wove at my Saori intensive and the banner woven by my granddaughter Sophia's kindergarten class at Ouabache Elementary.

I set the loom up by the green-filled window view.

We've probably woven about 3 feet so far, with two days left to go. I've had a learning experience in free-weaving myself during this time -- the children liked making inlays that are all twisted and bunched up, instead of just laying the inclusion yarns out straight. I am loving the look of this and will be experimenting with this technique with my own work.

Today and Jane Thornley Vest Knit Along

2011-06-13T11:12:00.000-04:00

I have so many things I'd love to write about, my trip to Boston, the intensive Saori workshop, but it always seems daunting to play catch-up. So today I'm just going to write about....today.

Today Clover is still doing well, in month four since her diagnosis of bone cancer. The lump on her leg has grown, but her life quality is good. She's eating well and maintaining her normal weight, she loves her outdoor time defending her yard from squirrels and wandering felines, letting the birds know she's still in charge of this little bit of Mother Earth. At her last vet check-up, her heart and lungs were sounding good. Still taking it a day at a time and today's a good day.

Today, when I finish this, I'll be headed over to my church (First Unitarian Universalist of Terre Haute) to hold open studio weaving for a dozen kids at a week-long art camp. We'll be working on Earthpeace Banner No. 4, my final commitment for the grant project which bought me my adored Saori loom.

Today, I'm very excited to be working on a vest in free-range knitting, in a knit-along (KAL) guided by the brilliant Jane Thornley. I've had a difficult time finishing free-range knitting projects, but this one is going to be different, I just know it. I am hoping that doing this project will break the resistance I've had for follow-through, and that I will be able to work on freestyle knitting without the handholding! It's certainly fun, though, to be part of the group on Ravelry that is participating and see everyone else's color choices and stitch variations.

So here's a picture of my progress so far:

The yarns, clockwise, starting with the green: Araucania Itata, Interlacements Carolina (?), Robin Edmundson cotton/rayon boucle, Elsbeth Lavold Hempathy, Noro Blossom, Araucania Itata.

Great fun so far, and Jane promises that the fun is just beginning with the back panel done!
That's today!

Poor Tulips

2011-05-10T10:35:00.000-04:00

Every year, a group of red red tulips pops up by the garage. Every year, squirrels (or someone) eats them. This year, they seemed to be staying there longer than usual and I've been enjoying them as part of my view from the back porch.

Alas, we had a storm that whipped through here Saturday night that was quite nasty. At least 10 minutes of hail more intense and louder than I've ever heard in my life and then a battering rain so intense the storm drains were overwhelmed and my street became a river that reached over the curb, the sidewalk and up into my yard. I'm left with a bunch of debris stuck in the undercarriage of my car and....poor tulips.

I grabbed up a tote basket and collected the petals, thinking I might add them to some weaving as in Homefree's blog entry here.

-----------------------

I've been spending a lot of time outside in the yard with Clover - whenever the sun is shining and the temperatures aren't too chilly. We are having lovely days - one at a time. Being there. Present in each moment. Dog time and dog mind...

I began picking up bits of plant from the grass and made a couple of things while we were outside the other day.

Storm Charm I

Storm Charm II

-----------------
And today, I'm packing for a wonderful trip to Boston. This is big for me. I've had travel phobias that have kept me here in this city for....well, many many years. Well over a decade. I have my son Shaun to thank for getting me to try this. Last year, he said he wanted to make sure I got to Boston to see my eldest son Ian and his wife Lisa. 'In the spring,' he said, 'I'll make all the arrangements. You'll just have to pack and come along.'

The thought of doing this was like the seed of a beautiful, exotic flower - it sprouted, grew, bloomed in my heart. I even planned a trip within the trip...on Friday Ian will drive me to Worcester and I will spend two days at an intensive Saori weaving workshop here.

So....I will miss my husband and I'm worried about Clover missing me, but all in all, making this trip is a very good thing for me. Healing, I think.
Namaste!

Fabric for Saori Hats

2011-04-19T17:08:00.000-04:00

Just ran across these pictures in a folder, thought I'd share.
A while back I made a hat with a fairly short length of cloth woven on my Saori loom and I decided that it would be a nice project to make a length of cloth to cut for half a dozen hats.

So here's what I wound up with, 12 feet of fabric, composed of 6 very different 2-foot sections:

At the time, this was my favorite section:

...and it still is.

Here is one section that I gathered in preparation to make another hat:

I've since taken the gathering out and I'm no longer sure exactly where I'm going with these fabrics.

It will not wind up as 6 hats, as I used one section for the wall hanging (Breach) in my last post.
And I used another section in a series of woven and stitched soft vessels I'm working on. Those aren't really ready for blogging about yet, but I'm very excited about doing them.

Arts Illiana Spring Exhibition

2011-04-13T10:09:00.001-04:00

Last Friday, Arts Illiana (a local non-profit for the support of art in our region) opened its Spring Exhibition. I'm thrilled to have several things there this season.


Textile Jewelry (pins & necklaces), Gnome Pots

Breach (2011) Cotton, silk, wool, woven, stitched, felted, 12" X 12"


Angel of Golden Apples and Small Green Dreams (2011)

Wool, woven, felted, stitched, found pin

Finally, I'm very excited to have the first display of an Earthpeace Banner, the community weaving project I've been doing with the Saori loom for which I received a state grant. This is Banner No. 2.

I really need to create a whole post on the Earthpeace Banner Project (and update that page!). It's been an amazing experience and I have probably had more than 100 people, mostly children, weave on the two banners. Banner No. 3 will be started this weekend at the Earth Day celebration out at St.-Mary's-of-the-Woods. I will be presenting Banner No. 1 to the White Violet Center for Eco-Justice and set up the Saori loom for public weaving during the event.

Maybe I'll see you there!

My Spirit Mutt Clover

2011-04-09T12:56:00.002-04:00

Such a sad post to write, but until I write it here I won't be able to write anything else here unless I do. The joy of all the wonderful things that have blessed me recently has been tempered by this.

My beloved dog-being friend Clover has been diagnosed with osteosarcoma, bone cancer. And it has begun to spread into her lungs. And...that's that. We are in hospice mode here: taking each day as it comes, being present with her, hoping to keep her as comfortable as possible until we must do the hard, compassionate thing and let her go. Months, maybe.

Right now you'd almost not know she was sick, though. Both times I've been to the vet's office, people thought she was a very young dog, were astonished to know she is 12. The lump on her back leg, the 3-legged gait give it away that she's ill, but that vanishes when she's running around outside. She is still following me wherever I go, up and down the stairs, even though I try to make her stay when I'm just going up to make tea. She's eating well. We've been told not to play fetch with her anymore, as there is risk of fracture in the leg, but otherwise, she can go as she pleases about the yard, take her late-night walks with Paul.

I've written about her over the years here (this is a nice post) but probably not enough to convey just how huge her presence is in my life. I am rarely in a room alone for more than 5 minutes. I've always thought of her attachment to me in terms of energy fields...that there is something that she wants/needs to have by being near mine. And from her there emanates a great sense of contentment when she's nearby, and it radiates out to enfold me as well. Symbiotic something, I think.

And she's been with me for everything sad and difficult I've endured over more than 11 years, all the loss and grief. And I can never stroke the very softest fur around her ears without feeling connected to Patrick - every morning, every morning, before school (no matter how late we might be running) he had to sit at one end of the sofa and spend some time petting Clover, and that softest fur spot.

She's brought so much joy, comfort and peace to this house. I pray we'll be able to live up to her devotion, honor her with gratitude for all the blessings of her sweet presence with us over her very healthy lifetime, and do the very best things for her now.

Max Ehrmann Poetry Competition

2011-04-03T18:09:00.000-04:00

I'm floating right now, my feet dangling farther off the ground than usual! Because Friday night I had the most wonderful surprise: both of the poems I entered won in the ArtSpaces Max Ehrmann Poetry Competition. If that wasn't enough, one was the Grand Prize winner!!

The awards ceremony was held at the Swope Art Museum and all the winners knew going in that they had won something, but the organizers were able to keep secret just what that something was. I also had no idea that they would allow a poet to win more than one prize. So, when my poem The Way Your Dog Lies Down received 3rd Place in the Nature category, I assumed that was it. And was quite happy, thank you! So it was a huge shock and surprise, when my name was called for the Grand Prize announcement.

Huge. I'm not sure I've ever had such a good shock and surprise. Certainly not in public with a good number of people around.

Whatever the word might be for ears doing a doubletake (a doublehuh?) that's what my ears did. I have a vague memory of my friend and sister winner Ann giving me a poke, walking awkwardly to the podium and reading my poem Initiates with a fuzzy low hum in my head, which was likely the surprise of it all but could also have been from the whopper of a head cold that was manifesting that very evening.

I'm blessed. I'm so grateful.

My thank you list starts with Mary Kramer at ArtSpaces, which created this event that honors poetry and poets in the name of Max Ehrmann, a Terre Haute native who is best known for Desiderata, but whose whole body of work has a great gentle wisdom. Here is my friend Brian's blog post on Max and the lifesize bronze statue which ArtSpaces installed. It's at the intersection of our two main downtown streets, delighting me because I can see it from both RiverWools (my local yarn shop) and from BookNation where I spend a few afternoons selling books.

My thank you list continues with all the businesses and people who sponsored this competition, who contributed money and prizes to make this a very rewarding competition to win. I will specifically mention the sponsors of the prizes I won -- ArtsIlliana for the $100 3rd place and St. Mary-of-the-Woods College for the $500 Grand Prize. Oh, yes, you read that right.

From a January article by Mark Bennett in the Tribune-Star:

Kramer wanted worthwhile prizes for the competing poets, “because it’s not nothing; it’s a lot of work.”

Poets, she added, “don’t make any money — if so, rarely, so it’s important to make the prizes significant.” Ehrmann didn’t get rich off “Desiderata,” which only became an international favorite in the 1960s, nearly two decades after he died in Terre Haute at age 72.

And finally, I thank the three poets who served as judges:

The three judges are professional poets with Hoosier ties, including J.L. Kato, a technical editor from Beech Grove whose poetry includes a collection based on his mother’s experiences during the atomic bomb blasts in her native Japan; Arthur Brown, an award-winning poet and English professor at the University of Evansville; and Rachel Contreni Flynn, a National Endowment for the Arts fellow and poetry instructor at Northwestern University.

I had the opportunity of hearing Arthur Brown read at BookNation prior to the awards ceremony and I'm looking forward to hearing the other two poets read at events later this month.

And, of course, I must thank Max!

My Winning Poems

(3rd Place in Inspired by Nature)

The Way Your Dog Lies Down

Lie down on the grass with your dog
the way your dog lies down,

stomach and heart pressed flat to the ground.
Move yourself into the soil, grab onto

the dignity of the dirt until you feel brave,
brave Earth. Listen.

Her grass has a thousand stories
and her roots speak the great tree mind.

You may get up freed.
You may get up defined.

You may get up redeemed, with your talk
and walk and spine all aligned.

So lie down on the grass with your dog
the way your dog lies down,

stomach and heart pressed flat
to the sacred. To the holy,

holy ground.

-----------------
(Grand Prize Winner submitted in the category: Inspired by a Work of Art)

Initiates

Woman’s work is incantation,

ritual to manage the dirt of the world,
ensure steady turning through the wheel of days.

Barefoot on a hot roof, a woman hangs wet laundry.

You may think she’s thinking about cooking supper,
or making a shopping list in her head

but she’s really reading shadows,
consulting the oracle of empty,
billowing shirts before her.

She’s asking a question about love
that will never be answered
by her husband’s clothes

and she knows what’s going on
on all those other rooftops.

Sister calls to sister through the golden simmering air,

a secret circle in plain sight, women holding this city tight
in a spell cast with cloth, water and soap.

Clothespin-wielding adepts,
they’re just working the elements on wash-day,

loving the way windblown skirts kiss
their bare thighs,

as they bend, reach and sway.

Initiates is after John Sloan’s painting Sun and Wind on the Rooftop (1915).

Kusha Kusha Progress

2011-03-31T09:35:00.000-04:00

I'm in the home stretch of the Kusha Kusha scarf, a project that is so aesthetically pleasing to me on so many process levels that I don't so much want to be finished knitting it.

But wait, when the knitting is finished, it must be fulled/felted and that's a whole other delight, one that involves transformation, serendipity....ahhh, a total bliss project.

Never mind that the knitting is like knitting with hair, that with this fine a yarn and the needle size, it's difficult to discern just which side of the stockinette is knit and which purl. That at least once I picked it up and got it wrong and so have a section of reverse stockinette. Yes, never mind - felting heals such things. And if not, it's really okay. The personality of this scarf is so plastic and whimsical and unconventional it can handle it, act like a bit of reverse stockinette was intended from the beginning.

On a serious note, even before the earthquake and tsunami, I had been thinking a lot about Japan lately, about how much there is the Japanese influence on my fiber art. Perhaps not so much in design, but in the materials I work with - my favorite yarns, SAORI weaving, the concept of wabi-sabi I often ponder.

So as I began the Kusha Kusha with Habu Textiles yarn, and am in the beginning my SAORI journey, and am making textile jewelry with Noro yarns, my thoughts have been of gratitude that these things have come into my life, how much deep joy I have in working with the textures and colors, the freeing process of SAORI. Gratitude to the Japanese artists who have created them. Those have been my thoughts for awhile, and so I feel connected in a more personal way to the deep sadness over the terrible, incomprehensible devastation that has come to Japan.

May healing begin.

Remember Aestlight?

2011-03-29T13:21:00.000-04:00

I almost didn't. In fact, I completely forgot about Aestlight. Until I got a brilliant idea that I would just let go of old UFOs (Unfinished Objects), give them to someone who would have no compunction about frogging them and use the yarn for her own projects. But when I came to Aestlight, I was shocked to see how very close it was to being finished and put it right back into the WIP (Work-In-Progress) category.

If you care to follow its slooooooow journey to completion (I began it 11/28/09), there's a post here from last summer that will help.

Information on pattern and yarn is in the sequence of posts available throught the link above. I will just add some thoughts I had on the whole of the project. I had some difficulty with keeping up with the exact stitch count, especially during the border phase. I have no idea why, I just remember it being somewhat tedious and aggravating to be so out of whack again and again. I did wind up with 4 less stitches than I needed on the first side of the edge, but I was able to compensate by working into the same stitch for 4 rows spaced out over several repeats.

One of the reasons I think I abandoned it last summer was because I really didn't like the change of color for the edging - no matter how often I told myself it was the only sane, fiscally rational solution to not having quite enough yarn in the first colorway. I just couldn't justify buying one more skein of Starry, in an attempt to match the first when I already had the color I chose to substitute.

However, once it was finished and I could stand back and look at it draped over Zelda...I LOVED it! And I've decided that if I keep it, it will be my Dark Moon shawl, that it well carries the energy of the dark moon/new moon time.

Okay, well, I must confess it hasn't been completely finished as I haven't blocked it yet. That's a whole new category I've thought of - it's an FBFB now (Finished-But-For-Blocking.) I'd say I have at least 4 projects in that particular queue....

New Work: Textile & Vintage Button Jewelry

2011-03-25T21:10:00.000-04:00

Hope to have some of these in the Artisan's Marketplace part of Arts Illiana's Spring Show....really enjoying working on these, as well as being thrilled to find more ways to use vintage buttons that doesn't ruin their buttonness.

In the above photo are also some pins I've been making, as well as a necklace using a vintage plastic buckle. I'll do a post on the pins at a later date.

Five Years

2011-03-24T07:52:00.000-04:00

Kathe Kollwitz, Lamentation 1938

It's barely comprehensible that it has been five years since my son Patrick died. That five years ago today, we brought home his ashes.The hurt, pain, longing, grief....it's all still here. It's with us every day. Sometimes it's just a low hum in the background and sometimes it's the loudest sound in our world. The loss of a child is indeed a grief like no other.

If I talk about it less, it's because I feel like people just don't want to hear it anymore. Or people will think I'm "stuck" (as I heard one person said about me), not moving forward. And when I don't talk about Patrick when I'm thinking about him, or when I'm missing him, then I feel less than authentic. My silence on this, my solitary tears, separate me from people more and more often these days.

So that's how it is, five years tending the grief garden. I'm not who I was before. I've learned to live with enormous pain and grief while engaging with a creative, healthy and joyous life. It amazes me that when I touch the grief place, it is as raw and painful as it ever was. It amazes me that I have moments of pure bliss and contentment. It amazes me that my being can be composed of such powerful, conflicting emotions, that I feel cursed and blessed at the same time. But that's how it is.

A poem I wrote last week:

tomorrow my son died.
today i hugged him for the last time.

this today my daughter texted
that she misses me.
i texted back
i miss you more

then cried in my cereal.
i ate strawberries & tears for breakfast.
i made that my facebook status.
i tweeted it.

i think i'm like Persephone.
i spend half my life
with the dead.

i think i'm like her mother Demeter.
i move through the land in disguise,
sorrow and stones weighting the hem of my dark cloak.

oh. please. i'm not Goddess in archetypal myth.

i'm a mortal mother whose child died tomorrow
like mothers' children do every. day.

tomorrow my heart cracked open,
its infinite capacity exposed
so everything started tumbling in.

tomorrow i began this endless poem.

i'm always imagining it is reposeful
under winter's earth,
how the withered stems of dreams
still dream in the roots below.

it's all in-breath.

and always - so far-
the day after tomorrow
the sun has returned
color rises
warmth kisses

out-breath begins.

Ah, we miss you, Patrick, and always will. Love, love, love...

Catching Up / The Gopalan Gallery Show Part 2

2011-03-23T14:20:00.000-04:00

Here are better pictures of the Ritual Objects series:

Altar Mat with Charms and Wand (2008)
   Happy Childhood Charm
   Unlocking a Song from the Heart Wand
   Meditation Knot Charm
   Intention Focus Charms
Wool commercial yarn and wool roving, hand-dyed, woven, spun, wet-felted, crocheted, needle-felted, stitched

Dreamtangler (2010)
Wool roving, hand-dyed, spun, wet-felted, crocheted, needle-felted, stitched

Secret Keeper Talisman (2010)
Wool roving, hand-dyed, wet-felted, needle-felted, stitched

Smokewalker Stick (2008)
Wool commercial yarn and wool roving, hand-dyed, woven, needle-felted, stitched

Truth Spy Fetish (2010)
Wool commercial yarn and wool roving, hand-dyed, spun, wet-felted, crocheted, needle-felted, stitched

Ocean Oracle Shrine (2010)
Seashells, wool & nylon yarn, wool roving, hand-dyed, spun, crocheted, woven, wet-felted, needle-felted, stitched


Sun Power Shrine (2010)River stone, wool commercial yarn, wool roving, hand-dyed, spun, crocheted, knitted woven, wet-felted, needle-felted, stitched

I also had two pieces in a series to which I'm still adding. It's called Meditation Solitaire and it's based on the idea of the tabletop Zen garden. Instead of arranging sand and stones, one arranges a variety of shapes (spheres, circles, discs, strands) of felted fiber on a knitted mat. I include a lidded felted vessel to store the pieces in, and the vessel and lid itself can become part of the changing landscape one designs. Kids loved this and quite a few adults found it soothing and fun. I only have a picture of one of these right now, but as I make more I will post them.


Meditation Solitaire: Game #2 - (2010) Cotton, silk & wool commercial yarns, wool roving, hand-dyed, knitted, crocheted, wet-felted, needle-felted

Finally, felted river rocks, which were a part of the Ritual Objects series:

Remembering/Forgetting/Letting Go Stones (2010)
River stones, wool roving, hand-dyed, needle-felted, wet-felted

Catching Up / The Gopalan Gallery Show

2011-03-22T11:51:00.000-04:00

Back in October 2010, I had the thrill of being part of a gallery show (my first!) It was held at the Gopalan Contemporary Gallery. I had the fun of doing it with dear fiber friends, Cathie Laska and John Salamone. Our fiber exhibit was paired with the work of Stephanie Doty, whose mixed-media really complemented the fiber.
Of course, so giddy and self-absorbed, my pictures are all of my own work, so this is a very one-sided presentation of the show. It was gratifying and amazing to see my shawls, hats and sculptural objects displayed. It was also a real challenge to figure out just how to do that!

I am especially proud of the stands I made for the hats - I knitted covers for vinyl balls and attached empty yarn cones to them. The cones fit fairly snugly into heavy-duty, yarn-wrapped cardboard tubes (saved from rolls of bubble-wrap.) For stability we had cans of beans at the bottom of the cones, wrapped in socks so they, too, fit snugly. I really do like the way the hats look displayed on the round balls, rather than mannequin head-type display.

Forest Floor Shawl (2007)
Wool, mohair, silk, nylon commercial yarn, woven, crocheted, stitched

Wrapping Hat - Small Homage to Chakaia Booker (2009)
Wool commercial yarns, plastic button, knitted, stitched

Joy After Sorrow (2008)
Wool commercial yarns, crocheted, stitched

Mangos For Breakfast By the Startling Bougainvillea (2010)
Cotton, silk, wool commercial yarns, woven, crocheted, stitched

Motley (2010)
Wool, nylon commercial yarns, woven, crocheted, stitched

Ritual Objects Series (2008-2010)

The Mermaid Breaks the Net and Wears It In the Deeps (2010)
Cotton, silk, wool commercial yarns, woven, crocheted, stitched

Sujata Gopalan, the gallery owner, was very supportive of my wish to include a few of my poems that went with some of the pieces. And I had to write an artist statement, something I'd never done before. I had a very difficult time, until I decided to think of it as another poem....

Zann Carter

Artist Statement

at first it’s all about process:

the rhythms of

the spinning

the weaving

the knitting

the crocheting

the felting...

endorphin bliss of process

and then it’s about transformation

(the unspun wool becoming

the yarn becoming

the object)

all happening in my hands

in my hands!

Oh, the lovely tools,

the healing ritual of familiar movements,

the spell cast by repetition,

the falling completely under that spell.

enchantment moves me through loss and sorrow,

the wound of the world in me,

into the sacred joy-space of creation.

it happens often enough that

i do these things again and again:

spin weave knit crochet felt

then it becomes about story

story told by bits of texture and form and color colliding,

a wild trajectory of stitches, the way fibers meet

each other just so,

intersect, join, move away again, leap and arc

and play around spaces...

sometimes the story is whole,

sometimes there are only fragments,

solitary images that find poems to hold them, too,

pieces of a scattered puzzle, hints, clues

to a mystery that will never be solved

but wants simply to be.

i make garments to wear in dreams and fairy tales,

artifacts from a world permeated with magic and myth, a bearable reality’s

Incantations.

My friend Brian Morton did a review of the show and I love the way he described my work as "...airy, chaotic and bizarre..."
Next post (I hope): details of the Ritual Objects Series.

Wurm done, Kusha Kusha begun

2011-03-01T22:10:00.001-05:00

Finished Wurm! It's a funny-looking hat and looks funny on me, but oh, it's soft and warm and I'll bet I wear it next winter for sure. Then maybe I'll take a picture of it in use. For now:

And yup. I've been sucked right into another Yarn Harlot project. Wouldn't you know, the very day I wrote about wising up to the fact that I love reading about Stephanie's projects but don't find them the sort of projects that hold my interest...the very day, she wrote about starting a project which uses Habu Textiles' silk stainless steel yarn.

I have been intrigued with this yarn ever since I saw it in a project featured in Living Crafts Summer '09 issue. Scroll down a bit on that page and you can see a thumbnail and brief description of the beaded scarf-necklace. So when Martha at RiverWools got in some Habu, I picked up some of the silk stainless steel. I never got any farther than playing around with it and making this.

So I've started a Kusha Kusha Scarf which uses this fine, fine yarn along with a fine, fine strand of merino wool. 2/3 of it uses both yarns and gets felted. I love this. But I'm telling myself I won't be making the Kusha sweater YH wrote about. I won't.

Wurm, or Yarn Harlot Groupie Project

2011-02-21T11:25:00.000-05:00

Yes, I am a Yarn Harlot groupie. I love Stephanie's blog and I always want to do what she's doing because she makes it sound interesting, mostly fun, and if not fun, at least not boring. However.

We are very different knitters, have very different tastes in objets de tricot.

Hence, I have never finished anything I've started when I've succombed to the compulsion to Knit What She's Knitting. And furthermore, I usually wind up intensely disliking the project, and (not quite so intensely) myself for once again falling into the spell she casts around the projects she loves.

One example: the adorable French Press Felt Slippers. I think Stephanie made several hundred pair (she even tried a mass felting in the bathtub!) I could not even finish one slipper.

In any case, I believe I have learned from my mistakes and get that I may enjoy the Yarn Harlot's witty writing about what she's knitting, spinning and weaving, but that does not mean that I will enjoy doing the same thing.

However.

Recently, she wrote about making a hat that...well, you can read her blog post here.
Although I don't really have the same hat issues as the Harlot (mine involve looking like a very old bag lady in certain hats) I was very intrigued by the pattern:

Wurm. Free pattern. Quirky. Whimsical. MOI!
And I WILL finish it. See, it's almost done. I actually have the feeling it will not look very good on me, that I've made it too small. But I can see myself making another, larger Wurm.

The yarn is Dream In Color Classy in Cocoa Kiss.

And I adore the nifty doubled brim/edge it begins with:

So thanks, YH, for this one!

Imbolc Ice Thoughts, Saori Hat Fabric

2011-02-02T16:03:00.000-05:00

Writing from the ice band, that relatively narrow swath in the big storm that tumbled through here over the past couple of days. North of us there were many inches of snow, south of us a smaller amount of ice. Ice storms have been (along with tornados) my biggest Midwest disaster fears (I just don't have much room to think about the New Madrid fault, despite being awakened by an earthquake a couple of years ago.)

From my journal: The actual precipitation is over, the trees and power lines are coated with a layer of ice, the wind has picked up and gusts at 30-40 mph occasionally and a bit of snow falls now and then. I think this is the worst ice event since I moved here and it’s very surreal. I keep thinking of the fragment of lyrics I wrote a couple of years ago:

It’s bitter and beautiful
where the Snow Queen reigns,
where icy winds roar from the plains,
and the crows fly in
to feast on all that remains.

That’s what it’s like in its essence, though I haven’t seen a single crow. It’s the sounds that are so eerie. The wind blows and the trees crackle and creak. The wind chimes sound and just now I heard dozens of sparrows calling in the bushes in our yard.

It's the loss of power during an ice storm that has me spooked, and all the awful stories of people going days into weeks without it in some areas. The fact that I live in a small city and close to its main roads has somewhat mitigated my fears, but ever since Katrina, I have an awareness that disasters can demolish whole cities. You'd think I'd have been well prepared for an ice-storm related power outage, but alas I am not.

I gathered together my meager supplies: 8 cans of Sterno, 2 emergency 50-hour lamps, a bright orange AM/FM radio/light with batteries, solar, and hand-crank power sources. I imagined closing off doorways with plastic (a la the old Homeland Security advice for attack situations), donning many more layers and spending days bundled in blankets. I joked (but not really joking at all ) about Clover being our alternate heat source.

My improvised Sterno stove

The good news is that we did not (yet) lose power, and, with a few exceptions, have had Internet access.

Besides making me aware of a need for us to acquire better emergency supplies and plans, I have spent the last two days being immensely grateful for everything I do that requires electricity. Every time I washed and dried clothes, took a hot shower, did dishes, cooked food, I said thank you. Every time I charged my cell phone and iTouch and camera battery, socialized with friends online, watched the news and weather or a favorite TV show...I was acutely aware of how all these things depended upon electricity. And I was grateful for it.

I was also aware of all that I do that I love to do that doesn't require electricity: weave, knit, spin, read books, make collages, Tai Chi, play guitar (though I just doodle more than play), sing (weeeellllll, using the word loosely), dream, meditate, write (I've always kept a couple of old typewriters around, both for the retro look of the type, and, well, just in case there's no power.) There's a need for light for much of that, but even at its murkiest, through clouds, the sun provides hours of it.

And Imbolc, I haven't honored the time and Brigid as I'd like, but I wonder if electricity isn't a form of fire and that to feel this gratitude isn't a way of honoring this goddess of fire and light. I'll order my beeswax candles for the year, and maybe send in my poems for the Max Ehrmann competition, tie a ribbon outside tonight and hope she'll pass by again to bless it.

Saori Weaving Update - Hats
I'm on the 6th and final part of my long fabric I'll make hats of. Here's some pictures of the yarn I chose and the resulting woven fabric of part 5:

Winding the main yarn, a hand-dyed fine cotton boucle called Cotton Warbler from Indiana dyeing artisan Robin Edmundson. Do check her out, wonderful colors, and I think her prices are very reasonable.

The other yarns.

Stay warm!

'Zann

Patrick's Birthday - 2011

2011-01-31T13:42:00.000-05:00

Finished Objects!!

2011-01-29T12:51:00.001-05:00

I am inordinately proud of this stack of Finished Objects - completed between November and early January. Imagine also in the pile, the two scarves I knitted for my brother and husband.

What's really amazing (to me, anyway) is that only one of these items was an actual UFO. The stripey shawl on the top of the right hand pile. (one skein of Noro Kureyon sock yarn, Simple Yet Effective Shawl - it's quite mini.)

I'm not sure what the temporal criterion is for an object to be granted the UFO degree, but I believe that more than 6 months of languishing on the needles is required. And much time should have been spent in the knitting equivalent of a black hole, which doesn't even begin to form until 6 months have passed. I think Simple Yet Effective was begun in 2009, so it's fully qualified.

Of the rest of the pieces you're looking at, none were begun before late October. You're looking at
4 shawls, 1 shrug, 3 scarves of my own random stitching, 2 looooong entrelac scarves, 1 woven, stitched hat. Add to that the knitted gifts I gave (2 scarves and a shrug) and that's for me an amazing record of completion! Maybe I'm not inordinately proud. Maybe justifiably proud!

I'm running back here to edit this post to add:

I completely forgot to give credit for some of my industriousness to Martha at RiverWools. She had a fun event in December, called Knit Down, Crochet Down, Weave Down. Leading up to that, we reported finished objects, and received for each one a ticket for a drawing at the mid-December party. Obviously the more things you finished, the better the chances of a prize. I won a $35 certificate towards any class of my choice.
My choice would be using it towards the upcoming weekend retreat with Gwen Bortner, author of this book:

who will be doing workshops in kumihimo and working magic with entrelac!

Birdwoman's Council Cloak

2011-01-26T11:36:00.000-05:00

Weelllll, not quite a cloak, but I love the alliteration.
I worked on this piece in the late fall. I began with a woven triangle, picked up stitches around it and then knitted it the rest of the way. I used 8 different yarns (my working title for it was Eight), changed colors whenever I felt like it. It's mostly stockinette, with a band of seed stitch and occasional garter.

I want to put some kind of magickal medallion at the point of the triangle and maybe dangling from the ends, as I did in the Serendipitous Soul Shawl. (See, I love alliteration!) In fact, this shawl was inspired by that one. See that post for more construction details.
I pulled it out to wear at the opening of the fiber art show I was part of last October and loved wearing it so much I couldn't believe I hadn't made others like it. And immediately began this one.

And why Birdwoman? Well, sometimes things just come to me as I'm working, bits of stories, characters. As I was finishing this piece, wondering what elements I'd use for the medallions or charms, I just saw/felt a being called Birdwoman, and she was attending a great meeting for which she wore special garments. It seems like I might do a series of these cloaks for others attending that meeting. I will have to see what unfolds...

Vintage Button Jewelry

2011-01-24T16:48:00.000-05:00

Very happy to have time to get back to playing with my vintage buttons and beads. I have, well, not tons, but pounds of them and I really want to use them more in my art and fiber work.

Here are a couple of things I came up with over the weekend.
A pendant:

and a pin:

Not sure what these will become, but the combination is speaking to me...

Right now, I'm using black artistic or bare copper wire and trying to maintain the integrity of the buttons. I know there's a lot of discussion here and there about crafters who use vintage and antique buttons, who take off the shanks, drill holes in them or otherwise alter them.

I wouldn't do that to a truly antique or rare button, but most of the buttons I like and prefer to make things with are vintage plastic or cloth buttons, neither very rare or expensive. That red square above is likely Bakelite, a plastic which is collectible, and one of my favorite types of buttons.

And now, back to weaving my length of Saori fabric to use for 6 hats. I'm at #4.

Wishing everyone a mindful, creative day!
'Zann

Solmate Socks

2011-01-19T15:18:00.000-05:00

For two years now, I've run a special fundraiser for the memorial fund in my son Patrick's name. The fund is at a local nonprofit, The Maple Center for Integrative Health, and the money is to go to workshops and programs which promote the use of expressive art as a healing tool. For four years, we've presented a major workshop focusing on meeting the challenges of loss through creative work.

In addition to grant money from ArtsIlliana, ArtReach and private donors, this workshop has also been supported by more than $1,000 raised for the programs through the Rock Your Socks fundraiser. The more I find out about Solmate Socks the more proud I am of being able to run this FUNdraiser (and it has been fun!)

I knew at the beginning that Solmate uses yarn made from recycled cotton and that the socks are made in the USA and that they are committed to fair practices in labor and in environmental responsiblity. Then last year I found out that the remnants, seconds, etc. are used by a wonderful rag rug weaver, Hilary, who has created an amazing studio and life in an old house in New York state. She calls her studio Crazy as a Loom Weaving Studio. When I wrote to her last year to say how delighted I was to discover the further green practices of Solmate, she very generously donated one of the Solmate Sock Rugs to be sold for the fund! (Yup, I bought it. It's my prayer rug now.)

And now I discover yet another Solmate Sock-related item (scroll down just a bit on her studio page). Hilary has created a potholder or looper loom (from recycled wood!) and sells it along with a huge bag of Solmate Sock loops (enough for 8 squares.) I love this loom - it's 9" square, larger than the ubiquitous red metal looms usually found for potholder weaving. And I love the loopers in those great Solmate Sock colors.

I'm looking forward to making squares with Sophia, we've already started one. But I'm also looking forward to use this in some of Noreen Crone-Findlay's projects for potholder and small square looms.
Her book, The Woven Bag, is chockful of them!

Namaste!
Zann