daily fiber intake

Thursday, July 17, 2008

too hot to blog

so enjoy these kool kats:

Monday, June 23, 2008

knitter of color

i like frilly silly things. femme stuff like stinky floral perfume and pampering facials, shabby chic vintage fabrics and balloon valances. don't ask--i have no idea where i get it from since i grew up amongst white walls, lots of them.

growing up our home was a nice rubik's cubed apartment uniformly slotted amongst many other anonymous beige and gray buildings that make NYC look like a lego brick set gone blah. inside our 4 walls times a few bedrooms, we had white walls and white-wall living; not the white walls of a padded cell (altho i probably should have been in one at least a few times!) nor the current issue of some faddishly impractical shelter mag, nope, just white walls for the uninspired. a blank canvas some would say.

so me, now, somewhat evolved, i'm prone to all things vibrant and frilly, the total anti-thesis of bland and dull. on the blank canvas of personal reference, i throw splotches of colorful yarn--have a look--

noro sock yarn becoming Anne

knitpicks sock flat dyed with k1c2 culinary colors for this latent deadhead

handmaiden silk cotton making its way into Sprung

hey, if you've been denied a rainbow in your day, might as well make one for yourself.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

book smarts

i especially love any reference to my life as "hedonistic trangressions". heh.

You're Confessions!
by St. Augustine

You're a sinner, you're a saint, you do not feel ashamed. Well, you
might feel a little ashamed of your past, but it did such a good job of teaching you
what not to do. Now you've become a devout Christian and have spent more time
ruminating on the world to come rather than worldly pleasures. Your realizations and
ability to change will bring reverence upon you despite your hedonistic transgressions.
Florida will honor you most in the end.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

the braid-y bunch

color thy name is sweet sage but woe to the putrid lighting that rendered ye pea green.
pardon the goofy caption--, that celtic braid has me all in a faux middle english funk.

kepler is on the needles and Frog Tree merino melange has completely taken over my knitting hands. i lurve this pattern and i'm mad for this yarn--once my eyes stopped buggin' out over the twists and turns of this groovy cable, i've been cruising. i've cast all other knitting aside in a fickle passion for this pattern and yarn. don't ask me why--it's hot and muggy and a merino sweater is not gonna get worn any time soon. unless i move to cooler climes. hey, never say never. seriously, i've always been partial to cozy, and this one is particularly cozy. and if you could see the color in reality, you'd swoon too. it's a cool sophisticated heathery sage, and unfortunately this picture is horribly pea soup. as my subtle little S said in one of her 1st grade homeworks, "I don't like pees." i couldn't agree more. but i do heart this project.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

happy mother and 'others day

in my head i write this easily and many times. today i am actually going to write this and see what finally comes out.

today is mother's day. yesterday someone asked me if my mother was nearby and were we going to be celebrating mother's day together. i said "my mother isn't here--she's in heaven". there was a pause and then i said that i felt she was close by and that i wasn't sad that she wasn't here. once a little girl asked me when my father's birthday was, and i said something like "he's dead, he doesn't have a birthday anymore" and she said in a kind of admonishing tone "that doesn't mean he doesn't have a birthday". i felt kind of stupid. it was one of many such moments wherein i realized that just because someone is dead it doesn't mean all that was shared ceases to exist as well. and so i here i am remembering my mom on mother's day, as all children do, and as i have done for years.

4 years ago my mother died. in my observation, she had been dying for some time, but there was never a name to it so the formal recognition of an ending life complete with important yet contrived memories and symbolic gestures to soothe the raw mourning of those left behind was not to be. maybe as we age we just appear to be getting ready to become invisible: i don't know, but she was faraway in spirit for a long time before she died. the months before she died confused and angered me and when she finally died, i was relieved, then guilty for it, and then sad.

i think about my mom and her death because i don't feel sad anymore that she's not here. it's not that i don't feel anything or that i'm indifferent about her life and death. i do miss her, she was my mother after all--she was someone i liked to spend time with: hanging out with her, talking to her and telling her every boring detail of my various dramas, i miss having a laugh over something only we two would laugh over. i miss her advice which was sometimes useless, sometimes sage, and in later years, a lot more candid. i miss the clean cotton smell of her home, i miss the warm sun baked comforter on her bed and sprawling out with the newspaper lounging near or beside her. (for that matter i miss taking a nap on my parents bed: dad's side was always deep sleep inducing!) i miss seeing her interact with her grandchildren, surprising herself (and those of us watching) with a spontaneous warmth and affection i never saw her freely express before these two free agents R & S sprung forth from me launching her into grandparenthood with an unencumbered vitality. at least in their small circle of joy, around her grandchildren she could forget what was ailing her, whatever we could not name that would eventually take her away.

on mother's day, when so many mothers celebrate with their mothers, i too celebrate with mine. she isn't here physically but really, she is still here. we are still laughing at those things that no one else would find funny, she is still listening when no one else hears me, and she is hanging out with me. here's how i know this: i know it every time i knit for she taught me to knit, and i do think of her almost daily when i knit. i remember sitting on the veranda at grandfather's house knitting and feeling like i was part of some great grown-up thing because this is what all the grown-up ladies were doing in between afternoon gossip and tea: they were knitting. i know a knitter who tells me, in an adult child's voice, that she never finishes her own knitted garments because that's what her "mommy" would do for her, so it's her way of honoring their bond. well, my mom used to sew up my knitted things too but memories of mommy and me time don't stunt my knitting joy. after all she launched me into my love affair with knitting and always encouraged it, even the black and white mod dress i decided to make in high school to go with my go-go boots (all acrylic, miles of stockinette, trend over long before the knitting was done, now in the UFO hall of fame). these days i seam my own stuff and revel in the invisible beauty of mattress stitch or the tidy success of a clean kitchener seam (say it with me, knit off, purl on, purl off, knit on, my favorite mantra). my mom rarely gave compliments but of my reluctant but significantly improved knitting skills, she would have said, "good girl" or some kind of efficient but dry affirmation.

this is but one of the ways i know we are always connected, i can hear her voice, i know how she would react. i know it every time i eat a crispy slice of thin crust pizza that reminds me of Josephine's on east 30th street and saturday mornings with mom on our way to Altmans via Josie's pizza or Schrafts ice-cream. Or when i go down to Florio's in Little Italy and i order just what we always used to have and enjoy it just as much with my family. i feel her presence when i am deciding between a pistachio and hazelnut gelato--she was fond of hazelnut, i like to mix it up once in a while.

periodically she shows up my dreams, like she did just a few weeks after she died and i said "i am so glad to see you" and grabbed her and gave her a crushing hug. then i said "i just miss you so much" and i was crying hard, i was really sad. and she smiled her benevolent smile, which i had not seen much of during her last two years of life, and said "but we are always connected, i'll always be with you" and i believed her because she was so certain, so authoritative. i remember as she said this, she was walking away from me, moving towards wherever she was going. i felt really small, as in little, my little girl self, and i was trying really hard to suck up those tears, like when we said goodbye outside the front door of the boarding house Gables on that first day of the first night of four miserable homesick years of boarding school.

ever since that dream, i have believed she is always with me which is the only way i can explain why i don't miss her with an oppressive suffocating sadness. it's how i can get past my jealousy that other folks have their moms right here within arms reach, and how i can enjoy my liberated adulthood as i watch adult children trapped in the dynamic of mother/child dysfunction well past their own middle age, struggling to assert their own voices in raising their own children. when i wondered why i didn't miss my mother the way i thought i would, or maybe should, i thought it was because i had some deep seated anger toward her or unresolved denial about her death since she died faraway from home and i could not get to her bedside in the last days and perhaps there is some truth to all of that but personally i think there is something else at work in my psyche: aside from the very powerful assurance she gave me through dreamspeak, it's my own children who keep me very connected to my mom. when i do something right by them, and when i feel hopeless that i can't get anything right--when i work really hard and ache to my bones and they still need my last drop of energy and attention, when i feel like mommy lion and i have to go kick someone's ass for slighting my kid (ok, so i never kicked anyone's ass but i really wanted to)--when i revel in their silliness and jump for joy over their personal accomplishments, when i gasp for air because they can't give me space and they need to be with every second, and i can't complete a sentence or a thought without a double soundtrack competing for my ear, when i succeed in soothing their woes and help them build a bit of self confidence, small victories, tall mountains of cascading joy. i won't get into specifics for the sake of my kids who are easily embarrassed by me these days, but all the texture of parenting makes me reference my mom so often, she can't possibly fade.

and for this reason, i feel so grateful for my children. i've heard so many cozy clichés about mothering and children, but mostly that's just saccharine pap. i don't subscribe to sugar-coated hallmark card philosophies about parenting and family life, and i know for a fact that super-hero husbands and five star marriages just don't exist. i don't begrudge anyone their fairy tale life, and i'm not cynical, just somewhat seasoned. as i said to my husband, i don't do knight in shining armor: that's for little girls and their dads. it's good to believe your dad is a hero, that he can rescue you and that he is larger than life. but these days, i'm quite able to rescue myself thank you very much. i'd say i got that from my mom too.

having children, being the mother of these two particular kids and being married to their father, it's that texture, or those many textures i experience that keep me very connected to my mother. sometimes i reference her and think about what she would do, how she responded or how she didn't. sometimes i think of how i would do it differently than her, or how i might do exactly the same, or how she would enjoy this moment with us or how she would fake it to please all of us while hiding her own discomfort. sometimes i need her guidance and sometimes i need to tell her she was wrong. sometimes i am so humbled i don't know whether to say sorry or to say a thousand thank yous.

all this to say that on mother's day, i think of my mom, and i think of the mother i am. i did not become a mother when i gave birth: that idea always perplexed me. physically birthing a child didn't make me a parent, and being a mom was not an instant event for me. i didn't have an epiphany and i didn't feel emotionally changed particularly. that happened in time--i have become a mother over the years, through knowing my children and parenting them, and being me the individual keeping her head afloat when many times i was drowning. i am still becoming. i think life is a journey, from birth to death and beyond and within that, motherhood is another kind of journey, singularly defining in its own way.

i'm pretty sure my mom would agree that her last days without her children were more urgent and desperate than she could have imagined and yet she'd lived a life of self-determined aloofness, often taking the most difficult road and the loneliest path. sometimes even with your children right beside you, it is lonely and cold. these days i am buoyed by their joyful noise, warmed by their humor, and comforted by their presence. a bright light shines within me as i am honored to have this job of being their mom--not the job of being a mom, but of being their mom. i can only imagine that at times and especially in her final days, despite the fact that i was a savage teenager with a prolonged adolescence that would make any parent disown their child, my mother felt that same way about me and my sister which must have made goodbye in those final days so difficult. that is, until she realized that we are always connected and will always be together, an urgent message she conveyed so clearly in that dream. i hope one day i can impart that same certain knowledge to my children so they can feel as okay as i do today.

Monday, May 05, 2008

pinkalicious

some folks don't do pink. some folks don't get it. i'm not one of those folks. i do pink a lot. it's my color. in fact so much so i have to sometimes restrain myself. every thing i knit has some kind of variation on pink to it. my knitting is getting redundant, my palette alternately bores or repels--others, not me. i can't help it. it's a ganesh kinda thing. think rosy plump elephant head poster god of auspiciousness. think pungent lilacs and vibrant lotus blossoms. think strawberries, cherries, plums bursting with fresh fragrant flavors. oh my, i'm licking my chops.

pink just evokes lots of lush wonderful cozy happy reference points for me: it's truly my color therapy of choice. so it will come as no surprise that i am knitting this and very happily so:

Manos del Uruguay in the Autumn Asters palette

it's Autumn Asters from IK Summer 2008. whoa! just the kinda juicy knitting i can dive into with utter glee. small needle fairisles with skinny yarn are not my thing, but this definitely speaks to me. IMHO you can never knit with too much pink and there is never an off season to knit with wool, especially soft squishy handspun (even if it's not my own handspun but ambition has to be tempered with reality so oh well) so here i go--fair-isling on size 9s.

you can poo-poo the pink or the embroidered collar or you can own up to your fear of fairisle knitting and and take the plunge! pick your own palette or use the pattern as a stash busting template. on size 9s it'll be over before you know it and then you'll have the yummiest sweater ever .

speaking of yummy, i have a fab new bag to go with my smokin' hot sweater knitting:

i rationalized it as a knitting bag since it's from Namaste Needles but really it's just a great bag, knitting or not.

i am so the glad the yarn world is a constant blast of technicolor tripping--it sure takes the edge off everyday crap.