Etherknitter

Rhinebeck II 2006

The winds came Sunday to rip the glow from the trees and send it swirling around the yard.  The unrest on the other side of the windows takes a psychic toll on the spirits.  The main furnace conked out again. The yarn and fiber I bought last weekend at Rhinebeck suddenly makes much more sense.  The inner chill is chased by the handknits.  Of course.

I ignored the seductive calls of many fibers.  While there are those of you who would laugh at what I consider an epic stash, it is large for me.  I bought carefully.  Alpaca Kathy sent an admonition to me through Moth Heaven Julia:

Persimmon Tree roving, Mushroom colorway, 50% wool, 50% mohair

Persimmon Tree yarn, same mix, Potluck colorway

Foxfire Cormo/silk blend, for next-to-face wear

Laceweights (Skaska Superlamb, white Cormo from Foxhill Farm, Tongue River beige Icelandic)

Sock yarn (Cormo/nylon) from Foxhill Farms)

The rovings were very hard to photograph.  I suspect they are better served by posing on the bobbin at the appropriate time.  A list (for the sake of honesty and completeness):

-Stefania Corriedale/silk dyed with Indigo and Osage. Everyone at the Marriott had a bump of this one.

-Tongue River Farms blends, both grey/silver, Icelandic/angora and Icelandic/silk.

-Dark grey Shetland bumps from Weston Hill Farms. I can't find a website for them.  I really don't want you to know about their beautifully prepped fiber in natural colors.  Nor should I tell you that Lorrie dragged me to their booth the instant we met in one of the first barns.  She was brandishing THREE Shetland fleeces and crowing about what wonderful fleeces she had found.  Despite my no-fleece vow, I whipped out my checkbook when I saw a wee Shetland lamb fleece, 1 pound 10 ounces, multigreys and creams.  Lorrie is an extremely dangerous festival companion.

I came home to a neglected garden in full fall glory.  I also found a husband who did not go feral during the three day wifely cavorting.  He not only had organized two closets, he did not utter any discouraging words about more fiber flowing into the house.

Acer rubrum 'October Glory' and the fall colors of Acer palmatum dissectum 'Viridis'

U is for Unhurried

The labyrinth as sacred, meditative space has existed in human consciousness for several thousand years.  I found one at a special place in the Berkshires.

I approached the idea of a semi-guided Labyrinth walk with scepticism and unkind thoughts.  Even a month later, I still think about what I thought as I circled the stones, and how I approached the experience. 

The guide noted that people enter the labyrinth through the gate in their own way.  I hopped in on one foot.  I didn't know why I did that.  Later, I laughed at myself.  The analogy was exact, and unconscious.  In the labyrinth, insight arrived, and perhaps even a small bit of wisdom was gleaned from the shards of my doubts.

The labyrinth as path, and from afar:

The Rhinebeck Post

Two days of recuperation and reflection haven't helped much.  The blogpost themes are similar:  too little time for too many people, crowds, good fiber acquisition.  The whole weekend played out as blogger-bumper-cars for me, also.

Rhinebeck is timed as a fall harvest festival.  Held before the time of the great chill, the festivals celebrated busy summers and productive harvests.  In times past, these were critical social rituals that knit small, struggling human groups together.  Alliances were forged, or reinforced, that set the stage for future commerce and wars.   Connections that would get you through the winter were solidified.  Each festival included amusements and entertainments.  Has your year been good relative to others?  Then the celebration included joy and fun, a piece of life not part of the usual summer routines.

So it was with Rhinebeck. 

The Marriott lobby on Friday night as the tribes gather; the incomparable Julia, gathering strength for the coming days; Juno, measuring......what?; Kat entertaining herself in her own way while Risa greets her people; the blogger meet-up on Saturday, big beyond huge; and Kathy, one of blogdom's best traveling companions:  she'll always make sure you don't miss the entrance to the Taconic Parkway because you turned off the annoying GPS voice miles earlier.

The fiber haul was modest by previous festival standards.  I'll try a second round of pictures today to see if I can get some truer colors.  Much of what I bought was Icelandic and Shetland neutrals, undoubtedly influenced by that subtle enabler, Cassie. 

The wheel story continues.  I remain one of the few spinners with one wheel, and nothing on the horizon.  The one that got away stung for several hours.  Those who heard the tale said, "It wasn't meant to be."  They were right. 

Convergence

I am knitting furiously.  I am casting on indiscriminantly.  I am running around the house insanely, collecting all the myriad things that need to come to Rhinebeck with me.

The first Whisper Rib Shepherd Lace sock is done.  The second one is  waiting...waiting...waiting...for that exact harmonic moment when I will focus on and finish the picot hem.

While she sits in temporary and minor time-out, I have begun Blogland's ubiquitous Feather&Fan sock in Lisa Souza's yarn SOCK!.  The colorway is Pacific.  By Etherknitter standards, I'm blasting through this one.  It'll be car knitting on the way to the Convergence known as Rhinebeck.

F&F isn't a total mindless knit.  One of every four rows, I have to pay attention.  So I started Ye Olde Basic Stockinette Stitch sock for the sole purpose of hotel lobby and blogger-room knitting.  The specialness of this sock is not in the pattern or the purpose, but in the yarn.  It is Nancy Finn's mohair/merino worsted sock yarn, Lagoon colorway.  Each color change sings.  As the transitions blow past my needles, I vow to ask her to dye yarn just like THIS ONE for a sweater.  Thirty seconds later, my fickle heart has fallen in love with a different shade of blue.  Thirty seconds later, yeah, this time it's green.  Knitting was specifically tailored for the cheap thrills of visual people, and for this I am thankful beyond measure.

My colchicum is in full bloom.  Known as autumn crocus, it is the plant that initially supplied colchicine, which is an anti-inflammatory useful in the treatment of gout.   Leaves appear in the spring, then die back by early summer.  The blooms shoot up in the fall, displaying their sleek leafless nudity until frost and rain bring them down.   

It's a wonderful time for a Sheep and Wool harvest festival.  Winter is coming.  Shorter days, longer nights, hoarded hours of daylight warn us of the winter.  Our New England temperatures have been perfect - crisp warmth, cool nights, all causing yarn to spring from the stash onto my needles.  I can't wait to spend time with my knitblog buds. 

Like most of what I reflect on, my pleasure in your company is also hard-wired.  New data is emerging to suggest that in times of stress, women "tend and befriend" rather than get ready for "fight or flight".  The article below discusses that which suddenly becomes clear:  why we knit in groups, why we rely on each other for support, solace, and why your presence heals me.

The authors say it better than I could:

"A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special. They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we really  are. By the way, they may do even more. Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis............(follow the link for the middle part of the discussion)......Yet if friends counter the stress that seems  to swallow up so much of our life these days, if they keep us healthy and even add years to our life, why is it so hard to find time to be with them? ...... We should NOT put our female friends on the back burners. Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do is let go of friendships  with other women, explains Dr. Josselson. We push them right to the back         burner. That's really a mistake because women are such a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another. And we need to have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind of talk that women do when they're with other women. It's a very healing experience."

I'll raise a glass to that, and to us.  See you there!

T is for Table

This picnic table sits outside my Aunt's house.   Each year, her house plants would vacation here, in semi-shade, taking the air.  She's 93.  It's been several years since she's been organized enough to get them outside. 

Yes, the table serves as a metaphor.  It is slowly decaying.  Since this picture was taken a year ago, the table has sagged, more moss has grown, and the spaces between the slats have widened.

Auntie stopped knitting about 18 months ago.  She throws off the omission in her life with a toss of her hand and a laugh.  "I don't know why, I just don't feel like it.  I've been knitting since 1934, you know." 

Seventy two years.  I knew when I composed the picture last October, that the only question was how fast the decline would go.  Auntie moved to a nursing home at the end of August.  I've spent several weekends since helping clean her house to sell.  You could see the residues of disorganization as her mental world constricted.  Double-point needles are strewn as singles in odd places.  Stitch holders are scattered in amongst pens and paperclips.  Her various bags of stash seem hurriedly stuffed in closets and cabinets.  There are labelless half-balls and skeins everywhere.  The needles were well organized.  I can't imagine why they escaped mirroring her confusion. 

The final common pathway of the knitter with Alzheimer's?  This.

Finding her last WIP felt like uncovering Pompeii, where figures and lives were frozen in mid-stride.  She stopped in midrow, unable to fix what she had done wrong.  The pattern is not with the project.  There are no notes, and no other skeins to indicate what the FO would have been.  It looks like it was a sweater.  This picture breaks my heart.

I keep thinking of a poem I learned in high school.

GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

It is  "To the Virgins, to make much of time",  by Robert Herrick.  It's the last day to post a 'T'.  I knew I had the picture, but I wasn't sure what I could share.  In the end, it seemed like both an important thought, AND a necessary homage to a great knitter, a wonderful, warm woman, and a superb auntie.

Now I have to go take a cry.

Music meme

Lorette tagged me.   This was a difficult one.  Is it my favorite song on the ray-dee-o driving to work?  Is it my favorite piece that I currently can't play on the piano?  Or is it a song that brings me back to different times, saturated in the swirls of memory that you feel rather than think?

1.  Vivaldi's Mandolin Concerto in C

When I fell in love with this piece, it wasn't pop culture muzak.  I still can see the Walker Art Center slide show (on the human body in art) that accompanied my first recognition of this piece. 

2.  John Barleycorn Must Die     Traffic

I love everything by Traffic.  This rendition of the old folk song is plaintive and haunting.

3.  Dust in the Wind     Foreigner

Who knows.  I like the minor key, I empathized with the lyrics at the time.  If it gets play on the oldies station, I turn it up loud and sing along at the top of my out-of-key voice.

4.  Beethovan's Sixth Symphony (Pastoral)

Disney's Fantasia did this to me.  I can still see the fauns, the centaurs, Bacchus, and the flowers. 

5.  Sorcerer's Apprentice      Paul Dukas

Fantasia once again....I'm visual.

6.  Up On The Roof    Laura Nyro

Ovarian cancer is a bitch.  It took Laura Nyro before her time.

7.   Space Cowboy     Steve Miller Band

These guys were c o o l.  Everything they sang was c o o l.  And so was I.

8.  Koln Concert     Keith Jarrett

This is just one very long song.  It's one of his best.  I wish I could play what he plays.

9.  Grieg  Piano Concerto in A Minor

Beautiful.  I also love Wedding Day At Troldhaugen.  Yes, I'm cheating. 

10.  Rachmaninov Symphony #1

Some days I like #1 best.  Other days, it's #2.

11.  A Day Without Rain    Enya

I feel about this the way I feel about watching Survivor:  guilty shame and pleasure.  I use her music for stretching and for yoga.  I listen to it on planes to calm my hatred of flying.  Anything that counteracts adrenalin can't be bad.

Consider yourself tagged.