My aunts Monique and Micheline went to Morocco last fall. They were a small group of elderly Quebecoise ladies (average age well over 70), including two very well known Quebec actresses. Their intinerary included camping in the desert. Camp was made for them during the day, and appears to be made with kilim rugs strung over wood frames. Their hosts then cooked and served the ladies a Moroccan feast before leaving them alone in the desert to cackle and twitter, gossip and theorize late into the night. The pee shack was away from the camp, by the tree in the background. Each of the little ladies probably had to make their own midnight toddle to the shack (chamber pots being out of fashion) under a big starry night desert sky. Monique gave me this picture when I was in Montreal last week, and it's formed the basis of my own little fantasy world of making a camp with all my rugs, cooking and feeding my friends in the twilight, and dancing to exhaustion by fire and under stars. The pee shack I'm not so sure about.

This is mourning knitting; rote, predictable, back and forth, mindless, rythmnic. Taking some pressure off my brain, an enforced breathing exercise. Sometimes when you don't know what to do next, you forget even how to breath, and you need to do those dumb knee-bend in/out breaths, to move forward to the next moment, to move forward to the next month, to get to the next hour, the next week, the next year. When I divorced my husband and broke up with boyfriend, I had mourning knitting; blankets and shawls and dark things. I love the colours and texture of Noro Silk Garden, and the distraction of waiting for the next colour combination, so I'm not exactly swathed in black right now. But I when I think of my Dad, I think of blue, blue for conservative, blazers with gray flannel trousers, blue eyes, noxzema hand cream, Italian wool navy business suits, mariner themes, blue sea water, and winter skies in Vermont. When the blue pokes through this blanket, I feel him. In my minds eye, he is moored in an inlet just around the bend. A good supper finished, he's on the deck with a big cigar watching and thinking. And I just knit, knit, knit, knit

My Dad died two weeks ago. Suddenly. We were on estranged side of the relationship curve. Since my sister called me that Saturday afternoon, after I had just finished a dance class, and was about to eat at Udupi, I've travelled many miles literally and figuratively. At that morning's dance class we had done an exercise of dancing carefully with an angel, to commemorate and celebrate a "full of life, woman loving" man friend of Samira's who had recently died. I must have had a premonition of my father's passing, because he was in my mind when I held his spirit cupped in my hands and held it aloft to wave it free. Hours later, emotionally obliterated, in Calgary, my sister and I arranged to have his remains transferred from the coroners office to the crematorium. He was explicit in his instructions about the disposal of his remains; no funeral, plain box, witness the cremation. I was still in my dance clothes. I had brought a pair of hand-knit socks to keep my feet warm on the plane (socks yes, underwear no... I wasn't thinking). We gathered some clothes for my Dad at his apartment and I gave the funeral home my socks, and asked that he be dressed in them. We brought a blanket that was a plaid wool car blanket made in Lachute (probably in the 1950s - I remember it as a kid) so they could wrap him in the event they couldn't dress him, and we also gave him some cigars for the road. Gray tweed sports jacket - check, white dress shirt - check, silk cravat - check, flannel trousers - check, neon orange yellow hand knit wool socks - check.... when does the crying stop?

Somewhere in FranceJune 18, 1917
Dear Mother,
I rec'd your parcel and two bundles of papers today and one letter today and one yesterday. I hope what that fellow says about the war is true. Yes I was in that battle you were asking me about. I was one of the lucky ones. What that fellow says about Raymond DeCoste is about right as far as what I heard. He was coming down a communication trench and a " Whizz Bang " landed pretty handy to him and a piece of shell casing hit him on the hip. He said he had a good " Blighty " and did not think he was hurt bad but he died the next day.
I was out about two miles today to the gas school to get a gas mask. As it was so warm I went in my shirt sleeves. I was just coming back when it started to rain and thunder all in about a minute when the sun was out as bright as a silver dollar.
I was over to see some of the 106th boys. I saw quite a few of them and some other boys from Westville. I saw Sergt-Major Jollymore and Sergt. Dan Adamson. I also saw Dannie Corrigan, Edgar Murray and a Morrison of Westville. I got a letter from Sergt. H. MacKenzie about two months ago saying he was coming to France. I answered it but did not get a reply and I wondered what was the reason as he always wrote regular. They told me that he was killed just after he came to France.
I will close now with love to all from your ever loving son,
Clarence.
P.S. Would you mind sending me a thin sweater with short arms in it. They are the clear thing for here. The cigarettes were good and glad to get them. Am receiving all my parcels, now.
C.G.F.

Between jobs again...spent all Monday watching the Vimy re-commemoration and all related programming...crying...thinking about my great uncle Clarence who was at Vimy and Paschendale as a nineteen/twenty year old, and imagining what he might have experienced. My second cousin posted this letter that Clarence wrote his mother from the front. Note the P.S requesting a "thin sweater". There wasn't a wal-mart in Londonderry at the time, so Mary Jane or one his sisters probably got to work on the thin sweater.... I don't know that as the practical people that his family were, that they consciously imbued the thin sweater with powers of protection, prayer, love, hope and steel... but I like to think Clarence received his parcels and felt the fierceness of kinship from his family back at home, cigs and all.

Nothing like a little compulsive shopping to take the edge off.... here is a resulting object of last week/month's emotional jag - an Hermes silk scarf (with British heraldry). Today feels like spring, smells like pooh, must be a duck, er maybe this means no more snow?! I have about five minutes inpiration/perspiration in me to work in the garden, and lose the stack of winter tires that's been sitting in the middle of gentle flower bed for a year.... maybe I'll still have juice for my little piece of meditative foliage after I've wheeled the tires to the curb. After this, I'll knit on my front veranda contemplating all the garbage that the snow so graciously hid during the winter, greet the neighbours who have been largely unrecognizeable in their cold weather layers, and take a little sun on the face....here we go.

This was my real March break, walking home along the boardwalk in near dark during a sleeting snow storm from a memorial service for an acquaintance of mine who died way too young. He is among four people within zero or one degree of separation who've died or been memorialized in the last week. And I've been on a death watch with Hector. What is going on?
We apparently do have a short and precious spin on this globe after all. Ironic, after the years of youth where I disdained living itself, that I cherish every molecule of experience now. I invited friends for dinner last night. We ate well. I kicked everybody out early, so we could all retire to the wombs of our respective beds, bellies full, warmed by the fellowship of breaking bread together, life lived.
Belly-dancing yesterday just about wore out my hip joints. J was going to be gone next week, and held us closer a little bit longer, with lots of enthusiasm and combinations for new techniques. The meditation yesterday was a wonderful visualization of swallowing the earth, moon and sun, and being one with the universe. The choreography had hippy figure eights, an execution of the infinity symbol with the pelvis as the cradle of life... Later, when I watched the younger dancers, I felt weepy for the life they imbued.
Bitter-sweet days.

March Break 1998 - Knitting in the Caribbean.
Don't gasp... I didn't just knit in the shade slathered in SPF75, covered in a mumu the whole time... I showed some skin, went swimming (a lot)...

The original dead boyfriend sweater, limp dreary reminder of my misery piece of knitting that it was (I still haven't worn it!).

This is my friend T. modelling wristies made from left-over yarn from my "dead boyfriend" sweater. Not that I made a sweater for the boyfriend who left me, but that I made a sweater to commemorate the event, in the depth of depression, in the cry-baby sobbing staring ahead knittting knitting month that followed his departure. My friend is an L.A. babe, and they look so posh on her. I had originally been making them as my Dickensian scribbler gloves for the cold offices I was working out of. Now the job is shaky, the wristies look better on T., it's spring and I'm hopeful, and I'm going to make another pair in my best most vibrant colourways for next fall. ... if I have a job ...assuming global warming doesn't kill next winter... See! The black thing doesn't work on me... I go art school dead poet maudlin in five seconds. Back to colour.

New Rug. Relatively plain for me. I went to J's house, belly-dance head-mistress, and saw a rug I had given her (in complete gratitude for the life altering experience she was sharing with me on a weekly basis). I forgot how lustrous and sharp the red/blue was, so five compulsive shopping minutes later I jacked another rug into my collection (now standing at 100+).

Wooly day on the beach. I walked this afternoon with C. The waves were oily and slow, on their way to unfrozen I think. It snowed all day and I needed to get out and defy my lethargy. Hector was injured in a fight on Friday night. He went slack-jawed, like he did when he went kitty comatose last August, so I brought him into the vet on Saturday morning to check him out. Loaded on pain meds, anti-inflammatories and antibiotics, he's played inside cat for the last two days. He hasn't even bothered to look out a window. He prefers a green hand-knit blanket placed under a rug covered bench beside a heating vent, dark, warm, aesthetically pleasing. Or on my lap. Yesterday's bd class popped my hips with all the hip slides, so both Hector and I have been stiff legged and slow moving. Happy to sit in and knit...

Scarves in a closet... drugs in my pocket... aren't those song lyrics? Caffeinating with one of my knitty friends yesterday morning, she opened the closet on her own personal stash; miles of hand-knit scarves, made by her and (I think) daughter(s) or recovered from Goodwill. There were made from mohair, psychopsuedopoly ooh la la synthetics, and plain and sturdy nothing fancy ma'am muffler wool. I think this scarf collection is the yin to my sock yang. I probably knit a couple of scarves a year (my obsession this year has been alternating two rows of Noro kureyon alternate colourways - my take on looking at the world through pink coloured glasses).

So we all have these bits of scarves, which maybe we eventually tire of. When I'm ready to purge scarves, I think I would like to felt, cut, double and serge like sized pieces, and make a blanket (or a rug). Or unravel the Kureyon and start over again.

Eve. Rug#1. Ground Zero. Mother. Araignee. Maman. with Hector

Post dinner, henna hands, Marrakesh, Morocco, 2002

I just came back from my shoulder numbing wonderful beginner two belly-dancing class. This morning we did arms; persian, snake, temple, egyptian, flamenco-ish, front, side, back, down, combined with undulations and backward camels. It is, after all, undulation bootcamp month. The idea is that on Valentines Day, we should approach our lovers with dropping hip circles and undulations, and rise up in perfect undulation bearing a gift of chocolate (or tv changer or something like that). The studio was cold this morning. We all stayed covered until we were finally able to unfurl our shoulders away from our ears. Belly-dancing came into my life around this time of year, a mid February "get out" pot-luck dinner in a cold condominium party room where the hostess had invited a belly-dancer to show us some basic movements. This beautiful native woman pushed the on button on her portable stereo, and the music that played was music I had been listening to for the past year. I don't know why, but I had never made the connection between North African music and belly-dancing. At that time, I thought belly-dancing was a cheap glittery lounge act. Three years before I had travelled to Morocco with my step-mother and her crew. I was in great physical and mental pain, having just separated from my husband. We stayed in the cheapest hotel she could find in the old part of Marrakesh... no luxury Mamounia Hotel rose petals on the polished cotton sheets for us. Woken to prayers every morning in the dark of 4am, I knew I was in a different place. This was a geographic cure, as far away as I could get from the mess my life was in. I had never had any romantic feelings about North Africa or the Middle East. It was the last place that I ever imagined myself travelling, and frankly the pain of being there was still less than the pain of being alone with myself in an empty house in Toronto. We met wonderful, welcoming people, who invited us into their home, who showed us the hamman. Being with two avid shoppers, we spent a lot of time in the souks. There began a period of obession, passion and acquisition for all things North African; leather, glass, pottery, embroideries, and of course carpets. I had always cooked and shopped vaguely North African foods. My post-trip rug acquisiton phase was probably 60 rugs in the first year alone. Then I bought a CD of Najat Aatabu, so I could complete the mood as I ate my lamb & apricot tagine while lying back on my rug and embroidered pillow covered divan, the floor insulated with six layers of rugs. It was inevitable that a dancing girl had to appear... I just didn't know it was going to be me.

Ok, now I'm pissed... I finished this sock (ok, just about finished, just binding off the toe now), and I've lost the mate. Maria, my heroine cleaning lady, was here on Tuesday morning, and in my rush to clean up for her (yes it's true, I think the true purpose of a cleaning lady is the deadline they impose on your own tidying and putting away), I threw out the sock with pile of newspapers. I just started having the Sunday New York Times delivered, so the pile was hefty... and recycling day was Tuesday... so not only do dryers eat socks, but they can be lost to recycling depots. sniff, sniff, sniff.

Here is a picture of me and my two grandmothers, Gammy (l) & Meme (r). I'm holding Stephen, which was a not too subtle hint to my parents to produce a son, a gift from Gammy. Both of my grandmothers knit, but I observed my maternal grandmother, Meme, knitting more often. However, it was Gammy who produced knitted gifts for my sister and I; mittens, helmet hats, cabled skater girl headbands, sweaters for the two dolls (I only ever had) and an afghan blanket. Gammy was a record-keeper, book-keeper, archiver, not unlike her eldest grand-daughter. It's in her hand-writing that I find patterns for the afghan she knit me when I was sixteen and not particuliarly grateful for her time and colour choices. As a typist, she transcribed detailed patterns, the type that fascinated and scared me when I was approaching knitting for the first time. This was before grids, when all three hundred stitches of a row were painstakingly transcribed. She, naturally, kept a knitting notebook, with some of her more basic patterns. Gammy would have thought the current stash of Italian merinos and cashmere yarns in today's stores a complete waste of money. She was frugal. It was probably her mother that knit that plain little jumper/vest for John (below). In an era when the girls of the household were expected to move those needles and produce, I don't think that I could convince her to buy anything other than Paton's beehive, or the renewing effects of contemplative knitting (with cashmere!). She would have, however, gotten a kick out of the stitch'n bitch evenings that you find in public places these days, if you were to replace the coffee or tea with sherry straight up.

This is my great uncle John, photographed at 16, in 1916 Nova Scotia. I'm not entirely sure about the central heating situation in his home at the time, but I suspect there wasn't any. Looking more closely at the photograph, you can see that he's wearing a handknit vest or sweater in plain knitting. I met a woman today, who moved here from Florida to pursue an artists life, completing the picture by moving into a "real" artists loft with drafty windows, hard metal radiators and crumbling brick walls. Coming from Montreal, I don't think much about Toronto winters. In fact, I don't think any Canadian thinks much about Toronto winters. They aren't much more than a couple of weeks of iced up puddles, and some brisk walks to buy milk at the corner. But this woman from Florida is really cold. She said the transition from heated humidity has been a shock to her system, that trading an outdoor by the sea life for a brutish solitary existence in a loft reclaimed from Toronto's decrepit manufacturing factory stock is too much. I look at this picture of my uncle John and I think that you have to dress for it, accept winter as a contemplative time, put on your wool socks to go to bed, wear long-johns where necessary, and take comfort in hand knits. The trick is preventative... put the socks (sweater, wristies, scarf) on before you get cold. And don't think about it.

I gave my mother a picture book that I made for her birthday. Pictures of her as a young woman, our family life in Vermont with Dad, my sister and I as small children. It made me happy that she was happy to look at it. I inherited all maudlin musings from my mother, and you would think she would be sentimental about the past, but she's not. Visiting her house for years, there were no photos on the walls, no fistful of pictures shoved into the back of a drawer, nothing. But she travelled with her second husband, and they started to "plaque" travel mementos, followed by ensemble shots of them with work collegues (as a slight snickering homage to "careers"), all hung in the vestibule to the back door. Then my step-sister, followed by step-brother died tragically, and their pictures made it to the wall. Pictures of themselves as young people... it probably took ten years before my sister and I made it to the wall (my best friend, a red-head who my mother coveted as the perfect pseudo-scot daughter) got to the wall five years before I did. I sent my mother a large print of a photograph where I didn't look half bad (being a largely and large unphotogenic person, that says something). She cropped it (didn't like my framing), and it was mounted and finally hung, ten plus years after the gallery started.

A lot of people have been asking me why I write a "public" blog. I assure them no-one is reading it, and that it's my vestibule hallway to the backdoor, with some textual embellishments. Parts of my private person invariably come through; joy, estrangements, resentments, fears, desires, but to the person that wanders by this hallway I'm just one more mincing voice. Here's Mum in my hallway. Oh, my mother was a knitter, is a knitter. She started one of the arans that I finished, which my sister stole from me, which I don't have a picture of. She's not a very good dancer. I must have gotten the hip action from my Dad. My mother isn't or wasn't really a stay-at-home and knit kind of gal, so I'm not sure what to make of her knitting urges. I think they're insomnia related, post Letterman, Conan O'Brien, paid advertising, 3am before the newspaper gets delivered, wander from kitchen to den, worry rising, sort of knitting. She has made some amazing cabled afghans, items for which I currently don't have the patience to do myself.

Different knitters, different tension. Happy Birthday Mum.

Hand Knit Socks #9