sorry Miko...need I say more...the book is going to get it....

xx

am

.....last post in March 2008....yes, in five months there has been knitting, dancing and rugs....again, with the punctuation.....again, with the half-thoughts....

I purchased a rug, while showing a co-worker how to bid on ebay. Ali was turning forty, and she appeared to like the rug, so when it was delivered I gave it to her as a birthday gift. The rug that we had spread out in the office and dug our toes in, lived with us for only a week. Here, it lives virtually and for as long as there are bits and bites and electricity. It has the most unusual deep cherry red, a colour I crave, yet never manage to hold onto for long. Like all shiraz rugs, it's filled with little emblems, flowers, medallions, signs from G*d, animals and aliens. One day I'll study one of my rugs, and read it for a couple of months, checking for cast-off symbols, reckless camels or deliberation of design.

Those Scandinavian socks sure got around. Christening Sarah in Hudson Quebec in January 1987, wearing only pantyhose with a skirt was folly...

My Mom's pair of scandinavian socks are modelled by moi, at the base of Sterling Mountain, Smuggler's Notch, Vermont, January 1967. I look at this picture and I feel cold. I remember that thin little jacket, when we regularly skiied at zero farenheit and lower temperatures. I think my wool fixation comes of having been so cold as a kid. Now I'm outfitted with hats, mufflers, scarves, gloves, mittens, thrum mittens, wristies, sweaters thin and heavy, down vests, down jackets, hand-knit socks up the whowho, silk long-johns, cotton long-john underthings, cotton and wool turtlenecks and even electric socks. Those long cold days of eastern skiing ice and rock, frost bite on my face and toes have left with one me with one notable driving force in life; knitting in the chalet at the base with a nice cup of hot chocolate in front of a fire.

...missed last night's belly-dance drill class...cling.shwish.ding.bling....too much snow, too much winter, too dark, wearing winter socks and hiding under a blanket....dulled noises from industrious neighbours shovelling outside...back under the blanket....complete sentences to come....

The Scandinavian ski socks as they were originally worn in 1970 (see January 18th for a 1989 modelling).

Knitting Stash circa 1988...working my way to two closets, five baskets, and an outside storage facility....

I did a wool inventory; 20+ WIPs, seventy lots of yarn sufficient for a large sweater each and 10,000g of sock yarn. after i gave away three boxes and a garbage bag full.... i don't know if I'll be able to finish this in a lifetime, but i'll try ;)

Forgive me blog for I have knit more socks. It's been many months since my last confession of sock completions.... I finished khaki green ribbed socks for Clive, same version different colour (burnt orange/brown) for Lisa, kiddie primary blue/red/green on a white twist for Lynn, hideous white/orange/fushia for me (because they're not going anywhere) . WIP include pink lace from Nancy Bush, briggs&little work socks, and plain socks with selfpatterning mauve,fushia,orange,tan and browns.....

Knitting on a cruise to Central America...ever practical, they were socks for my sister's return trip to the wooly north in anticipation of blowing snow off the steppes of the prairies...

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+).