I bought a lamp on the weekend, which is the size of a small child. One and half years of unrequited love for this lamp, and last week I was driving by the store and saw they were shutting their business. Only a few lamps left, including the mother of mothers. After assuring the owner that I would have space for it (I don't really), and a relatively modest exchange of cash, it came home with me. For the last time. A beacon of light during the darkest days of the year, a week before the winter solstice. When I stumble to the kitchen in the dark at 6am, I put this light on, and I feel warm and safe, bare feet on the camp floor rugs. A drift of the souk in my dining room, I want to hum and listen to sufi music, call and refrain, light hands on a doumbek, sink into the dark with my coffee, and watch the light patterns on the ceiling. Morning, morning, remember? Music off, CBC on, suduko puzzle in hand, light grows, lamp off, day begins.

November. Not good. Could you tell? Between dark cold rainy mornings that make me feel guilty for sinking into my armchair three hours after waking still in nightie, work inertia and crying about Rememberance Day and my Mom, and spending sobby Saturday mornings reading books about bad daughters, I was hard-pressed to be an ambassador of joy on a blog. Years ago I got sober at the end of a November, washed out by those same cold rainy mornings and the lonely evenings that preceded them. %$#%$#%@.... walk to the light... After Naditu ended, we of the beginner twos, diehards, greater than the sum of our parts, beacons of light, burbling flows of joy (etc, etc), still came together on Saturday mornings to continue our meditations on infinity and peace and love, all while undulating and mayesculating our hips. Samira is a wonderful teacher, enthusiastic and articulate, and her meditations and readings can often reach right through my soft belly to my shiny spine. Now to the blingbling, raison d'etre, inner glitter girl motivation... we're dancing on December 15th at the studio Christmas party. It isn't a Naditu recital, but we get to jangle and slip with bright colours and happy music to a room of ball-room dancers. Reason to live through November. Reason for happiness#1.
Reason for happiness #2 - a new rug.














Reason for happiness#3 (actually this is #1)

A Vest. What a good idea. A loose vest, wool socks, stretchy pants and a buffet lunch. Just roll me out when you're done. Very much in contrast with how I felt this last Saturday. I went to a great b-d class with 15+ minutes straight of undulations, with partners, across the room, to slow music, to fast music, until all belly sinew (if there is any ached). My brain connected to a rolling belly right down to the tip of my inside scrunching woman parts. The meditation that class was about infinity, universal rythms... going with the flow. Sometime after that great class, I lost the tow line. I had one of those "just passing through" moments, and I felt weepy thinking about how mere stuff would outlive me, that all the hoarding that I could do wouldn't keep me from dying, or be anything to remember me by. You know, you can't take it with you, and the undulation at a Saturday morning belly-dance class is the truest you're ever going to be. I don't think I can explain that again. Since then I've just wanted to stay warm and covered and eat a lot of chocolate.

Hand knit socks #8

Inspiration for a gansey, gurnsey, geurnsey, seedstitchy type sweater. I scanned all the little photo booth pictures I used to take of myself recently. Photographic evidence that I did exist as an 11 year old gamine, photos in my family of origin being a rarity. I didn't have many clothes, but I do remember this sweater, probably some low grade Simpson's department store synthetic turtle neck. I remember loving one other sweater when I was a kid, also an aran/gansey type cardigan. I liked the fineness of the pattern. Years ago I stashed some authentic gansey wool, tightly twisted navy blue, ready for a sweater like this. So many ideas, so many sweaters, so much yarn (stashed), so little time...

Handknit socks #7

Hand knit socks #6

A week ago I got all excited by how cold my new office is. I had one of the guys go out and get me a thermometer so that I could coo about the new lows in this little space that has no heating vents and single pane windows that leak hissy wind (and possibly snow). I felt the cold would mark the need to wear wristies, as demonstrated in picture, that went beyond being affected to de rigeur computer wear. I made those for a co-worker last year because she had a propensity to write or take phone calls outside mid-winter. I made the second pair for another friend who works outside, scribbling away in the dark and cold. Last I heard, her daughter had appropriated them. Finally, my turn, to have wristies, Dickensian scribbler gloves, justification for another cup of hot coffee and a cookie, a pink nose, and chilly martyr complex. There was a reason for all those socks (which are on the feet under the desk). When a cold front started to move in, the same front that buried Buffalo, I started knitting a pair (with leftover mourning boyfriend sweater black wool). I even brought them in to complete on the morning that I anticipated the temperature in my little abode away from home was going to dip below 60F. I unlocked the door, waited for the cold to slide out and hit my knees first... nothing. The wind had shifted back to the west, and apart from a slightly musty cool, there was no freezer burn, no paper shifted in the inbox from blasting winds. Bah, h....


This woman was knitting in the Forbidden Palace in Beijing, outside, in January. Beijing was as cold as Montreal. No doubt she was knitting wristies.

Hand knit socks #5

Hand knit socks #4

I think I knit like I drank. Anything goes better with knitting. I knit to calm myself down, to dispel rage or when mania takes hold. I have celebratory knitting, lifting needles loaded with expensive yarn in a toast to getting the job or losing the man. I knit in groups, I knit alone. I knit first thing in the morning, and bleary-eyed and wobbley late at night. I knit in grief and depression, rote mindless plain blanket or shawl knitting, seated in the captain's chair, not changing my clothes or bathing or even getting up to eat. I knit at the beach on a sunny day, and on the front veranda when the sun is going down on a summer day. I am stirred by lanolin rich smoky Ontario yarns, trill to rich Italian merinos, and trash out to Wal-mart crayola synthetics jewelled toned pop wines. I hoard wool, stock it, cool and dry. I'm greedy for wool, dumpster diving for it at the goodwill. I negotiate and manipulate for yarn, insuating my way into the lives of non or part-time wool holders for purposes of relieving them of their meagre stashes and redistributing them into mine. I knit when I'm bored, hungry, lonely, angry and tired. I knit when I'm elated or serene, enthusiastic and focused, panicked and scattered. Knitting is my other.

Happy 45th Birthday sweet baby girl sister Lynn!!!!!!

First known knitting picture of moi, circa 1984. Taken in a very cold apartment in Parkdale, in which I slept in hand-knit sweaters from September 1st on to stay warm. The landlords were cheap, and one year the furnace conveniently broke and wasn't turned on until December (that was the month of sleeping in a sweater and a hat). I was knitting a pair of mittens in this picture, some burgundy silk/wool tweedy brit yarn, flecked with fushia. My boyfriend K took the picture. At the time the only sweaters I knew how to knit were some variation of a lopi icelandic sweater, body and sleeves on a circular, decreasing to neckline. I knit him a "like" sweater, with a coarse blue wool flecked with white (like little snowflakes). Our relationship was very on and off again, for many years. When I was reacquainted with him twenty years later, for another round of on/off, he told me had just lost the sweater in a divorce. Tossed in a box into the basement with all his other belongings after his leaving the family home, the sweater had likely been tossed by a pissed-off ex-wife or disappointed mother. But it lived for twenty years after we had been together. He held hands with his wife, walked his children in ravines, tossed the frisbee, raked leaves, skated outdoor rinks and smoked a joint in the backyard while he wore that sweater. Which is a question I and many others have posed to ourselves, where do all the other old boyfriend sweaters go to die?

Hand knit socks #3

Handknit socks#2 - a lesson in not wearing boy shoes. A tan might not be a bad idea either.

Always good for a wooly shot

My grandmère, Mémé, almost uniquely knit socks for my cousin François. She was among other things a stage actress, who was taught to knit by someone who worked with her at the theatre. To calm nerves, pass time. She also smoked Viscount cigarettes, and lit them with tiny elegant imported Italian matches that had slim waxed paper matchsticks. We fought over blowing out the match, and the boxes the matchsticks came in. Each of them had a different picture, formative classical art education I guess. I remember my grandmother only knitting once for my sister and I, these two sweaters. They fit us for one cold August, and were promptly unravelled and knit into socks. I came by the sock thing honestly.

Handknit socks#1

Lake Huron, August 2006

Cottage sock knitting memories from August. Leaving a Toronto heat wave for Lake Huron. The first thing I did when I got there was to put on my bathing suit, and get smashed by waves for a couple of hours. I was able to breath again. It felt like I stopped oozing and expanding into a heat where I couldn't tell where I stopped or started. I could feel my lines, my perimeter, my skin, my organs. My brain shifted back into focus. And then I came into the house, dishevelled, cool enough to wear a jacket, and I resumed sock knitting. what else?
Today is a sock day, cool, autumnal stirs, maybe rain. A summer of heatwave sock knitting, and I can finally enjoy the product. Yeah!

Done, done, done. Dancing in the recital was fun, looking at the pictures after was difficult. Fat and hypercritical, bad combination. This is a picture of me and the ensemble in the mumu gulf state rich fat chick dress with great hair and nails dance. I wish my intellect and self-image were meshed. Mouthing off middle-age defiance about youth culture, and shaking boobs and jelly bellies is a great release in the present tense. The evidence is wrenching, to me. "you're as young as you feel" makes me "feel" like I'm living an arthritis commercial. I feel seventeen, but I look like what I am. Big disconnect. So what was good about it... my friends came out on a school night and sat in uncomfortable chairs in a very warm room, hooted and whistled, and I loved them for doing that. I danced with some wonderful wonderful wonderful women. Who all looked beautiful and lush to me. Not an intellectual or aesthetic beauty, but a juicy life-giving and breathing sumptuousness. Seeing the age and body type spectrum of women all dancing together was happiness. I loved being hot and sweaty, and going outside onto the Danforth in my bare feet to cool down, occasionally catching the eye of some guy from the hood stunned by the vision of all these half-dressed women out on the pavement on a cool September evening. Forget what it looks like, it felt good to do it.