A Better Day

The morning begins with Sock and Icarus cuddling in bed.


After waking to the sun streaming in their windows, the couple head to the balcony to enjoy breakfast and an ocean view.


Right after breaskfast, Sock and Icarus head down to the pool for a little sun.


After Icarus heads to the hospital to visit Grandfather, Sock stays to sun himself some more...


...and watch Son swim.


He decides to stick his toe in.
Sock is offended! He is really a bit more than half a foot.

Soon he is even more confused:
He makes a note to talk with Knitter David.

Feeling like perhaps he does not belong by the pool, Sock heads for the beach to check out some naked feet. Looking at the footprints, he wishes Icarus could be here to appreciate all the bare shoulders.


Not wanting to turn red from too much sun, he relaxes under an umbrella.


Sock wearily climbs the stairs back to the hotel where he takes an afternoon siesta.


After his nap, Sock relaxes with a good book while Son finishes his nap.


After the boy wakes up and they await the return of Icarus, Sock joins in a raucous game of Twenty-One.


Sock is overjoyed when Icarus comes home with Grandfather!



P.S. My deep gratitude goes to David. Not only has he been willing to humor my fiber addiction. Not only has he learned to knit (this is his first sock making its debut in today's adventures). In an effort to entertain the sock y'all as well as amuse me at a time I'm under a lot of stress, he conceived of this post and took the pictures.

BTW, David informs me that it is even more dorky for a middle-aged man to take pictures of an unfinished sock on its touristy adventures than it is for me to do it.... I love you, David--especially your geekiness. Thanks for being here. And thanks for bringing the sock.


Also see Sock Goes to the Amusement Park

A hard day.

Monday afternoon David and I took my father to the radiologists for his regular appointment and told them how weak he was. They decided to give him intravanous fluids to help his dehydration. After we left their office, we brought Dad back to the hotel. David dropped us off at the entrance while he went to park the car. Dad almost passed out in the elevator. I caught him and basically carried the 200 pound man into our suite. The 10yo girl in the elevator with us was so frightened.

We continued giving him fluids throughout the evening. Last night David was up every two hours feeding my father by tube and watching him for half an hour after he ate. This morning he was so pale and weak that we called 911. Amazingly, the ambulance and the EMTs were already downstairs, creating a map of the newly renovated hotel. They were able to be at the room in seconds. They took him to the hospital where he was admitted with dangerously low hemoglobin and a high BUN, meaning that he was both extremely dehydrated and in need of blood. As we knew, his blood pressure was very low and his pulse extremely high. He was not getting enough oxygen.

After the hospital admitted him, they set him up to get four or five units of blood and planned to scope him this morning to figure out where the bleeding was. He is there now.

When there is a crisis, I knit.

I completed the third chart for Icarus:


and slipped Pi off the needles onto waste yarn so I can knit the edging without having it all bunched up. Because Pi is a project so connected to my father's illness (See Lace 1, 2, and 3.) I am really glad I decided to do it. It gave me a chance to see it all laid out, and even though it is not blocked, to see a work in progress that seems so much more whole than I had imagined. Suddenly I can see that while there is a lot of very hard work to get through, it is not quite as impossible as I had begun to fear.


One of the weird things about raising young children is that even when things seem at their worst, life must go on. Sometimes Son is sad and scared, and as parents we feel we must be as calm as possible to make this easier for him to go through. Sometimes Son is precociously aware of my sadness. He drew a picture of me sitting as the spinning wheel with a balloon of my thoughts--a father in a hospital bed. In the picture I looked so absent and drained. But most of the time, Son is still his active funny self, eager to run around, play with words, go swimming in the pool or the ocean, and laugh. At moments, this makes me want to crawl into a hole and abandon my child. But fundamentally I recognize that this is the greatest gift my child gives me.

(By the way, Son wrote a story about knitting on his blog, The Little Giant. Please visit him!)

Car knitting--and the beach

On our drive to South Carolina on Saturday, I knit up the handspun. Because the yarn was so thick in places, I used very large needles (size 13) and seed stitch, a stitch pattern that produces a lovely drape. After seeing the fabric, I suspect that smaller needles would have been preferable. Unfortunately, when I sampled at home, the yarn was at a thick point and looked best on the 13, and I did not bring a good alternative. As it is, the knitting looks somewhere between lacy and just scraggly.

When I had knit about three quarters of the scarf, our car's air conditioner gave out. The temperature outside was just shy of 100. We rolled down the windows, almost getting whiplash from the wind coming in as we sped down the interstate. Sweat dripped off of my fingers. The thick wool went back in the bag.

When we neared my parents' home, the air conditioner miraculously started working again. After a few minutes, I picked up the yarn and finished the scarf before we arrived at our destination.

And here is is, displayed on the balcony outside our room.

My parents both grew up at the beach. We are staying in a hotel suite, my father with us, while my mother gets a little break at home. Dad is not feeling well at all--no energy, a lot of nausea and vomiting, etc. He is sometimes so weak that he cannot easily lift his head off the pillow. It is hard to see him so sick.

We're feeding him via an implanted tube. The syringe that attaches to the port comes in a plastic case. Son has decided that the cases make perfect rockets, perfect sand toys, and perfect...

knitting needles:


David and I alternate who takes care of my father and who takes care of Son. Son, meanwhile, has spent almost all his time alternating between the pool and the beach. When he and I were jumping waves this morning, the lifeguard called us all out of the water when she saw a large school of fish approaching the shore. (She was not worried about the fish but rather about what might be attracted to them.)

After watching the fish jumping in the waves we had just been in, we came upstairs to our room. The school of fish was a bit further out, a darkness in the water. And swimming around the patch was, just for Shanti, a group of pelicans!

My Notions Bag

Ages ago, Jenn asked us what was in our notions bag. I saved her post on my bloglines but never got around to posting my answer. Recently, Theresa reminded me. So here goes.

My notions bag is a little zippered velvet pouch from the Tibet Collection, a store that sells fair trade items handmade in Tibet. Although the store is a predominantly online venture, the warehouse is located near where I live and has periodic sales of the sample items they use in photography for their catalog.



Inside there are two compartments separatated by a patterned woven insert.


On one side I keep a needle sizer that belonged to my grandmother, a small pair of sewing scissors, a stitch holder or two (one is currently in use), and a couple of crochet hooks for mismade stitches and the like. Usually there is a tape measure. Often I have a pen in here as well.


On the other, I keep wooden (and sometimes plastic hook-shaped) cable needles, two little handpainted needle cases (one large enough for tapestry and seaming-up needles and the other small for little sharp needles), and a tiny zippered plastic bag with stitch and row markers. I often have a travel-sized spool of some neutral-colored thread, or a hotel fix-it-up sewing kit, or a bit of yarn from a previous project. This is also the side that hold copies of the pattern I am working on, folded in quarters. Often there is a spare bamboo circular needle of some random size as well.


Although I usually do not carry this little box with me, at home and on long trips I keep a few additional supplies (more markers, a thimble, spare row counters, etc.) in a small round tin that used to be filled with delectable dark chocolate wedges.

Knitting (and Spinning) to Go

My friend R. gave me the fiber to spin up a couple of skeins of this yarn. After it is finished drying (and yes, it is being weighted down by a tomato can in the picture since it is, ahem, overtwisted), it will be packed in the front-seat travel bag along with the books on tape, bags of nuts and raisins, and maps.

To be OTN (on the needles) during our drive: a scarf, my first knitted object from homespun.

The Ravenous Raven: Local on the Road

We are traveling today--and here's our local meal for the road:



Sandwiches:
Hummus from Olive Tree (Takoma Park, MD)
Bread from Spring Mill Bakery (Bethesda, MD)
Lettuce from our garden



We also took some peaches from our CSA. The sandwiches are packed in reusable wraps that we love. They serve as not only a wrap but a little plate. Very civilized. We also packed water in our Klean Kanteens, an reusable alternative to plastic water bottles.

Tour Update

Although there is quite a bit of time left in Le Tour de Fleece, I have almost finished spinning the bag of unidentified wool. I have enjoyed sitting at the wheel every day, even if it was just for a few moments, and watching the colors change as the wool passes through my fingers.

Can you see the bottom half of a drawing in pink on the window ledge? It is the place-marker board Son made for me. A sheep on a bike has to climb a mountain and then come down to finish the race. You can see a person cheering at the finish line. I am getting close to the bottom.

The yarn is much thinner than I expected it to be. And unlike my usual spinning up to now, it is UNDERTWISTED rather than overtwisted. Perhaps it is time to change to my faster whorl.

The colors are incredible. My neutral-color personality is somewhere between shocked and joyous that I'm allowing myself to enjoy this experience so intensely.

Knitting: Complexity and Dependability

For years and years, I knitted the most basic items: plain seed stitch scarves, simple drop-shoulder sweaters, perhaps the odd horizontal stripe. Although I had years of knitting experience, I had no interest in staring at a pattern for every stitch I had to make. I wanted knitting to do at conferences, knitting to do while studying in the library, stitches to make while reading subtitles.

When my son was little, everything changed.

When I was writing my dissertation, everything changed.

So which is it? Kid or book?

Book first. I wanted a challenge that would completely absorb me when I walked away from the dissertation. I craved not background knitting but stitches that would not allow me to stay in my frantic academic mindset. The academic in me still needs something that brings out my perfectionist streak just as much as writing does--just so ALL of that streak doesn't get put on the writing.

Change story.

I sat next to my child, too young to play interactively but old enough that he was happy playing with me nearby. I could not read on the couch, for that took me too far away from him. As I discovered, I could knit--knit and watch him play, knit and sing, knit and tell stories. When I could be silent and just be present, I felt the need to knit small little complex things. And I wanted to knit things that would appeal to my son.

And so I began to learn to knit little toys. I started with the bear in Kids Knitting. Seaching for more patterns, I found Toy Knits, Teddy Bears, and World of Knitted Toys. Now there is Knitted Toys and The Knitted Teddy Bear. Although the patterns were not always obvious, they were well explained. The knitted pieces were small and usually had extremely short rows. A row counter allowed me to free my mind of counting larger sections.

Quite recently I've begun challenging myself more. Now that my dissertation is long finished and its book is published--and a second manuscript is at the publishers--I have the drive to make larger projects.

I cast on. I start my first cables, my first lace.... At first I rip it out again and again, wondering how anyone ever does this stuff. And then, after a repeat or two, suddenly my eyes open and I see how amazingly obvious it all is, how regular, how symmetrical. The knitting tells you what to do next. The chart starts seeming superfluous!

And then I get to the edging, or the button band, or...

Don't get me wrong. I very much do not have to make deliberate mistakes since my knitting is always full of them, no matter how easy or obvious the pattern may begin to seem to me. But errors when we deeply understand are so much more fascinating than errors when we feel like we are faking it all the time. When we make mistakes at things we want desparately to learn to do, we feel embarrassed and disappointed. When we get it but make errors anyway, it teaches us more about the flaw of our perfectionism and the need for acceptance.

So here I am, now at the end of Chart 2 of Icarus and loving the lace--and feeling, somewhere between joy and relief and disapointment, that I KNOW how to do this. The knitting is showing me. "You see that little right-side purl? Keep doing it, even on the wrong side. See that fan-like feather? Make it widen by one stitch on each side as you progress.")

I guess it is weird that I am surprised by this regularity, over and over. Is it only true of well-written patterns? As I begin to design my own pieces, will I have to work the essential simplicity in, or does it happen naturally?

Now the real question: will I find this peace in colorwork? Yikes!

Lace and Veggies

My still-in-progress Pi Shawl makes a perfect market bag:









Other lace posts:
1, 2, 3, 4

The Deliberate Mistake

When I was a child, I fell asleep under a quilt handstitched with appliques of little dolls on a bed of yellow ginham and green twill. In one quadrant of the coverlet there was a odd square of pink chintz, a piece of cloth that violated the incredible artisanry of every tiny matched stitch, every well-ordered block. If that quilt had not had that strange and obvious error, I might have slept under it for years without ever realizing that the quilt was handmade. As it was, I fingered that garrish piece nightly, contemplated the sewing of the quilt and imagined a its history, wondering what its maker was thinking when she interrupted the quilt's perfection. Surely she didn't stitch in the pink square without realizing that it could never pass as correct. Surely the patch was a deliberate mistake.

This quilter's decision to put a deliberate mistake into her work unites her with countless other artisans from around the world. The makers of those meticulous Persian carpets made obvious errors in their rugs to show that noone was perfect except Allah. Some people believe that the Gods might be angry about arrogance of a human effort to produce a work of art without imperfection. Navajos thought evil spirits could escape only through an error in art.

Some people question the truth of the idea of the deliberate mistake. For example, one source quotes an interviewer who suggests that Amish quilters, often believed to use the deliberate mistake in order to prove they were not prideful, actually believe that "an intentional error is saying just the opposite--that their work is perfect and that they would have to be purposeful in order to make mistakes." Another analyst suggests that quilters, when asked about the concept, uniformly reply, "I make enough mistakes without making them on purpose." Wouldn't it be more arrogant to believe that one has to make a deliberate mistake in order for the quilt to be imperfect?

I did not need to make my mistake deliberately, but I did have to make a commitment to keep it in my knitting. I tried first to correct it--and proceeded to screw it up a bit more. I could have ripped out a couple of rows--but I did not. Learning to live with my mistakes occasionally helps me break my perfectionist streak and its stranglehold over my productivity. It is this mistake that separates my Icarus from the zillions of other Icari appearing all over blogland and the Stitch-n-Bitch Universe. It is these little mistakes we make that remind me that our works are made with our hands, our hearts.

The Ravenous Raven: This Week's Local Dinner

Soft Tacos:
Steak strips from Smith Meadows bought at our local farmer's market
Shitake Mushrooms from Calvert's Gift Farm, bought at the farmer's market
Spring onions from our CSA, Linking Creek Bend Farm
Garlic from our CSA
Tomatoes from Hummingbird Farms, bought at our local food co-op
Corn Tortillas from Moctec in Hyattsville, MD, bought at our local food co-op

Salad:
Assorted lettuces from our CSA
Fresh peas from Musachio Produce Farm, bought at the farmer's market

Beer: Hook and Ladder in Silver Spring, MD


Dessert:
Blueberries and blackberries Musachio Produce Farm, bought at the farmer's market

Le Tour de Fleece

I am spinning away in Le Tour de Fleece this month. What a great idea. A perfect combination. (Every time I mention my spinning wheel, people assume I mean some fancy excercise bike. They must marvel when they look at my figure and try to reconcile it with the fact that I spin almost every day.)

My goal is to turn this:


into this:


and finish the bag of fleece by the end of the race. So far, so good. Initially I wanted to learn to Navajo (or chain) ply it, but the yarn is protesting and stating that it would very much like to stay as singles. Since I believe in child-led learning yarn-led spinning, I am following.

I bought this fleece at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival very inexpensively (as in less than $3) a couple of years ago to use on my little pipe-cleaner dolls. But now that I spin, I've found that it spins up beautifully. I'm not sure what kind of wool it is. There is about 4 ounces--not a big challenge but since I am going to be out of town for part of the race and am also trying to finish a knitting project--as well as being a spinning newbie--I think it will be enough. Wish me luck!

Le Maillot Jaune! Le Maillot Jaune!

Icarus

I am FINALLY a couple of rows from the beginning of the lace charts in Icarus! And I am cheating--cutting out a whole repeat of chart A in order to make a smaller shawl. Sigh. It has still taken forEVER to get here....

When I first started the project, I thought the simplicity and regularity of the lace up until the last few inches was a huge advantage--and I suppose it is in many ways. I'm relatively new to lace and was happy to have this gentle introduction. I thought it would be interesting enough to hold my attention but mindless enough that I could knit in social gatherings and at meetings.

After knitting the chart A the first time, the pattern was ingrained in my blood and I did not have to think about it at all. And the pattern calls for the knitter to repeat that chart 5 more times, more and more stitches on the needle every row.

So "mindless" it certainly became--in a way. Unfortunately, the little tiny cobwebby yarn (I am using Lacey Lamb), the small needles (size 3), and the slippery needles the same color as my yarn (Addi Turbos--a really stupid choice here, although I love the needles for other projects) add up to a mindless project that requires a ridiculous amount of concentration. Others in blogland (from A to Y, at least--any Z blogs knitting Icarus?) have been talking about this same thing.

But now, after almost losing my wings to the melt-your-brain heat of the oh-so-regular pattern, I am on the verge of the lace feathers! Oh joy! Oh rapture! Oh freedom to soar!

Peace March

Yesterday morning we rolled out of bed, drenched in sweat despite having the fans blowing directly at us all night. We swam through the humid air as we headed downstairs. We filled a backpack with bottles of cold water and walked about six blocks uphill to get to the line-up for the 117th Takoma Park Independence Day Parade.

Our family marched with Takoma Attachment Parenting, a chapter of API. David and I, along with four other families, are founding leaders of TAP. Our group's motto is "Peaceful Parenting for a Peaceful World." Attachment parenting is the name given to a style of parenting that encourages parents to treat their children with deep respect for their emotional needs as they grow up. At some point, I'll write a fuller post about AP practices and goals. Like many people, David and I found "attachment parenting" after we had already committed to parent in this fashion.

Although on the walk to the line-up I was wondering if the whole thing was really a lousy idea, the whole turned out to be wonderful! Son had a ball carrying our banner part of the time and then passing out brochures with more information about our organization. Lots of folks along the parade route cheered us on. TAP won a first prize Judge's Award for our peace dove!



After the parade, we went to a pool party/ cookout at the home of the parents of another TAP leader, about an hour out of town. The water felt wonderful. We also picked wild blueberries in the adjoining woods, ate fantastic tabouli, drank beer, and talked about our birth experiences with the 9-mounths-pregnant SIL of one of the leaders. I knit a couple of rows of Icarus and admired out host's beautiful quilts. Lovely afternoon.

We came back for fireworks in the evening. I decided to stay home and hit the sack while the boys headed out--and discovered as I walked in the door that our power had gone out during an intense afternoon storm. Despite the incredible heat in our now fan-less bedroom, I was asleep in seconds. Then the fireworks started, very near our house, making the bed rattle and me awake over and over with a start. I can't believe how exhausted I was!

Still no power at home. Son and I are at a local cafe. He's asleep on a comfy couch while I take advantage of the free internet access to make this post.

The Ravenous Raven: One Local Summer

In this house, we've been talking about the Eat Local Challenge ever since we discovered it just as it was ending last August. We were disappointed to discover at the last minute that Locavores decided to have this year's challenge to May in order to provide a new challenge to participants. Since we did not participate last year and were not prepared to do it this May, we've decided that August will be our own personal Eat Local month.

As we were exploring online resources about the Eat Local Challenge, we came across this proposal by Liz at Pocket Farm: One Local Summer. She asks participants to "make one dinner entirely out of local foods during each of the twelve weeks of summer" and report on that meal on their blogs.

Our CSA is not active this week due to the holiday. Therefore, we went shopping at our local food coop. We had a ball scouring the aisles and seeing all the new "locally grown" and "locally made" signs sprouting up around the store. After we came home, we had a lovely evening preparing our dinner.

The menu:

QUICHE


Crust:
Whole Wheat Pastry flour from Frankferd Farms Mill in Saxonburg, PA (255 miles, labeled as local at our food co-op)
Butter from Trickling Springs Creamery in Chambersburg, PA (87 miles)

Custard:
Eggs from Jehovah-Jireh Farm in Dickerson, MD (33 miles and in our county)
Milk from Trickling Springs Creamery

Cheese from Broom's Bloom Dairy in Bel Air, MD (62 miles)

Filling:
Zuchinni from our CSA Licking Creek Bend Farm in Needmore, PA (105 miles, with pick-up in our neighborhood at farmer Mike's house)
Swiss Chard from our own garden (0 miles)
Italian Parsley from our garden


Salad:
lettuce from our garden
tomatoes from Hummingbird Farms in Ridgely, MD (71 miles)
lemon verbena and opal basil from our garden




Dessert:
Cherries from our CSA
French Almond ice cream made by Island Style Ice Cream in Mount Ranier, MD (4 miles)


Tea:
made from spearmint, peppermint, lemon balm, and lemon verbena from our garden