a surfacing light

A Puddle of Roses

The "Diva" Scarf

I finally finished my first crochet project, a scarf that grew into a long vine of two dozen vintage roses and tends to puddle dramatically when nonchalantly tossed aside, much like a snubbed diva pouting.  It took a while for me to complete as I didn’t really know how to crochet when I began the project–but it is true what they say, when you finally figure out what to do, crochet does go a lot faster than knitting.

Puddling Roses

I chose the colors as a Valentine’s day gift for my daughter and as I worked on the scarf, I found myself remembering my wedding, twenty-five years ago this month.  Like the colors in the scarf, my bridesmaids wore deep burgundy satin gowns and carried bouquets of fuchsia, dusky pink and bing cherry colored roses, set off by creamy old lace and trailing ivy.  The wedding was themed around my dress, a Victorian fancy popular back then.  I wouldn’t have that theme now, and honestly, I only had it then because the dress was just the right sale price for our broken shoestring budget.   Sadly, due to my severe affliction of calendar dyslexia–symptoms of which include a non-existent ability to use calendars, reversing dates and crying a lot when stuck in airports due to having booked the wrong week on travel reservations–my lovely rose and cream colored wedding, perfect for Valentine weekend, occurred on…February 4^th, not February 14^th.   Sigh.   Never mind, it was all about the honeymoon anyway…a gift of unparalled and deeply appreciated generosity from my new in-laws, a week on the romantic isle of Bora Bora in the South Pacific.

Zoe in "Diva" Scarf and Mitts - Scarf adapted from Lion Brand Blossom Scarf Pattern  (I used one strand of worsted weight wool, H/8 Hook and crocheted 24 roses.)

I used some of the yarn left over from the scarf to knit a pair of fuchsia and cherry colored fingerless mitts, added a crochet trim that matched the petals on the scarf and a little crocheted drawstring tied in a bow to pull the edging tighter and make it “rufflier”–is that a word, rufflier? It should be, because that word even looks ruffley, with those two “f’s” in the middle.

So on this ruffley, lacey, candle lit and chocolate cream day, why not send yourself two dozen roses?  Real ones will do just fine or if you’re feeling the creative urge, pick up four or five skeins of yarn in luscious colors that bewitch and enchant all of your senses and crochet yourself a garden.  If you find yourself wondering who the love of your life will be as you’re smelling your roses or running your beautiful yarn between thumb and forefinger, follow gypsy lore and go to sleep tonight with a bay leaf beneath your pillow – the Romany say if you really believe, you’ll soon be seeing the countenance of your true love in your dreams! 

To finish off with a flourish, I’ll say that for us romantics, (and I think that’s all of us) there’s nothing else that can set hearts on this gorgeous green and blue planet to spinning like Pablo Neruda.  I’ll end here with a few lines from his Cien sonetos de amor (100 Love Sonnets):

XXVII

Naked, you are simple as one of your hands,

Smooth, earthy, small, transparent, round:

You have moon-lines, apple-pathways:

naked, you are slender as a naked grain of wheat.

 

Naked, you are blue as a night in Cuba,

You have vines and stars in your hair;

Naked, you are spacious and yellow

As summer in a golden church.

 

Naked, you are tiny as one of your nails-

Curved, subtle, rosy, till the day is born

And you withdraw to the underground world.

 

As if down a long tunnel of clothing and chores:

Your clear light dims, gets dressed-drops its leaves

And becomes a naked hand again.

 

© Pablo Neruda, 1959 - translated by Stephen Tapscott

© 1986 by the University of Texas Press

 

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Instant Pumpkin Gratification

First Day in the Light

We planted pumpkin seeds in the middle of our lettuce patch, thinking they would be too late for Halloween but might grow in time for Thanksgiving.   About a week after we planted them there was still a bare spot in the ground and I thought maybe I should buy another lettuce to fill in.   The very next morning, the little pumpkins were 3" tall.   I am not exaggerating even a little bit.  

Like Jack with his magic beans, Tad and I stand over our small patch every morning, coffee & chai cup in hand, (me coffee, him chai) amazed and deeply renewed by this plain little plant and its simple and glorious act of growing - and growing quickly.   If you are feeling a little worn down, worried, stressed, I recommend instant pumpkin gratification to get back on track.  

Just pop into the nursery, spend about a dollar for a pack of seeds, loosen up some soil in a sunny place in your yard, drop in the seeds and get ready for action. They're hardy too, even with the Santa Ana's hurling debris and howling hot and heavy up here, they just keep on going.  Here they are this morning, just seven days after that first blush:

I LOVE this Freckle's lettuce, we found it at Armstrong's Nursery.  I've never eaten it before so I can't vouch for its flavor, but something about a lettuce named Freckles is just so...endearing.  

Freckles Lettuce - First Week

I got brave and tried some new knitting, the boho beret.  It turned out a little big - okay,it's Shrek sized - but I did pick up some really nice new techniques.  I love the eyelet pattern below and I enjoyed knitting with the Tonalita yarn.  I notice that I tend to pick yarn that matches the flowers blooming in my garden–right now the Lantana is blooming all over the place:

  

I don't normally work with bright yellow but I'm deeply inspired by the Black-Eyed Susan's (and Cosmo's) blooming in my garden.  They're just begging to be knitted, painted, what?  Any ideas?  Maybe a felted bag with a gold and brown base and a Cosmo colored magenta kicker? 

Well, how does your garden grow?  Let me know if you decide to plant pumpkins or anything else and most importantly, how does it make you feel?  Because that's the important thing for me, I want to feel differently–not worried, stressed, scared...I want to be motivated, inspired and feeling good about what I do and how I do it and I'm finding that it's the little things, like planting a pumpkin patch in my front yard that helps me with that.  Also, how does color inspire you?  How do you pick your colors?  I'm looking forward to hearing your ideas!

Breathe

"BREATHE" - Valenzuela, 2008  (Ink & Colored pencil, drawn at R. Moacanin's "Enchanted April" in Palm Springs.) 

I promised myself I wouldn't look at the news today, but it's not even 7:30 am and I've been online at cnn.com and Foxnews.com twice.  (I like to be fair and read both sides!)    How I wish this election were already over…It's really adding to the fear and panic already shaking our core due to this financial and economic crisis.

My suggestion is to find 10 seconds that you can do with whatever you want.  No matter how busy we are, asking for 10 seconds for ourselves isn't asking for that much.  

When you have approximately 10 seconds or so to call your own, close your eyes, inhale deeply, and hold your breath for as long as you can.   As you hold your breath, see a beautiful light flow down through the top of your head.  The color of the light will be the EXACT color that you need in your life RIGHT NOW to manifest healing, abundance, joy and all manner of wonderful things.  Let the light flow throughout your entire body.  As you exhale, see the light flowing out into the world, manifesting healing, abundance and prosperity for all beings everywhere.  Repeat as often as you can.  

Okay, I feel better now!  Now we can get back to the important stuff–knitting and making soup.

It was cool enough this weekend to cook and Tad made Albondigas soup–chock full of meatballs, rice and FLAVOR!   We usually make it as a traditional holiday dish, but we needed a lift this weekend and there's something about a good pot of soup simmering away on the stove that soothes the soul.  Sooo delicious!  If you're interested, remind me to post his recipe.  By the way, I LOVE all the emails I get, but you can leave comments on the blog too if you don't mind other people reading what you say.   It's very safe and easy to do!

Here are a few pics of the knitting I mentioned in the last blog.  The red and blue hats below, (modeled by Zoë)  will go with a few others to "Operation Gratitude" for the troops:

Red Hat:  Bulky Acrylic,  CO 72 stitches. Size 10.5, 16" circular needles.  Tighter fitting on Zoë, she has the brim rolled up - (Approximately 1" ribbed brim = k1,p1 for 6 rounds,  Knit 30 stockinette rounds before decreasing.)

Blue Hat:  Worsted weight acrylic,  CO 80 stitches. Size 9, 16" circular needles.  Very big, loose hat on Zoë, she has the brim folded up-good for men's head size  (Approximately 1" ribbed brim = k2,p2 for 6 rounds,  Knit 32 stockinette rounds before decreasing.)

Interestingly, I like the red hat better, even though it was much easier to knit than the striped hat.  (I need to keep a journal of my knitting so that when I want to make the same thing again, I don't have to start all over from scratch!  Thus the little technical notes below the pics. Someday I'll start a proper knitting journal...I've handmade TWO and bought THREE and still haven't written anything down!)

My favorite set is below, mostly because of the different colored thumbs on the mitts–for some reason, those thumbs just make me happy.  (Yes, I'm easily amused...)  I'll keep this set because it's made out of wool and if gets thrown in the wash, the poor soldier who received it will have a tiny little set, maybe big enough to fit a four year old.  How disappointing would that be!  That's the thing about wool, it comes in the most beautiful colors but it needs to be hand washed in cold water and laid flat to dry.  Yes, I can certainly see some 20 something year old soldier in Iraq hand washing his or her hat...NOT! 

Colored Thumbs below:

Well, I'm off to work and maybe to make more soup!  Chicken and dumpling this time, I think.  It is much warmer today than it was this weekend, but maybe I'll just up the air conditioning and pretend it's Fall!

Remember, breathe in color and light and love and when you breathe out, you and all those around you will share in and be encompassed by the beauty, joy and abundance in your heart!

Re-Surfacing

 

"Three Little Hats"  - Valenzuela, 2008

That was one heck of a summer and I’m not talking about long meandering days picking berries and evenings on the porch with a glass of whiskey laced lemonade - although the mint patch in our garden did produce more than enough mint for several evenings worth of Tad’s “guaranteed to make you howl” Mojito’s.

It was a bittersweet summer for me - my oldest daughter was home for probably her last summer with us, she’s a junior in college this year and will more than like stay in Northern California next summer.  We had a lot of fun and took a family vacation to Oregon and Washington....I loved, loved, loved Portland and Seattle, but I think I prefer the state of Oregon to Washington.  Oregon just seems more accessible, while Washington is beautiful, but forbiddingly beautiful.  We toured the Olympic National Forest, (At  dawn! This is what happens when you marry a photographer!) and spent a few days at the beach in Oregon. 

Zoë and Abby in front of Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach in Oregon

 

This is what just the SIDE of a road looks like in Washington!  We had an impromptu picnic here!

Late afternoon at Olympic National Forest with a big storm coming.  Remember, this is AUGUST!!!

Same place the next morning at dawn, a full cloud blanket has settled over the valley. 

Admist all of the fun, we had our fair share of heartbreak including boyfriend breakups, a harrowing car accident, two serious illnesses in the family - heart problems for my brother and cancer has hit my father in law and so on and so forth.  Through it all - the good, the bad and the ugly (Clint Eastwood not included unfortunately) – I found my way to deal was through....knitting.

Throughout the summer, I have knitted hats for family and philanthropy (Operation Gratitude for the Troops), fingerless mitts for kids and friends, felted Bags (lotsa knitting in these babies) and many items that remain nameless and genderless due to operator error, as in “Gauge?  Why bother knitting a gauge, it’ll be fine!”  Famous last words, as any knitter who has progressed beyond their first scarf will tell you.

So I’ll be blogging this year about knitting and cosmos (both the flower and the drink), knitting with cosmos (the drink) and as usual, art and writing.   I’m working on a illustrated book that includes a little bit of...knitting, of course!   The hat illustration at the top is from the book. 

Right now, I'm looking for a pattern/idea/philosophy for getting through life a little MORE than sane and alive, I’m talking about living life with joy, verve, color and all that good stuff, so I knit…and blog…and make potato leek soup…and laugh and cry!

As always, I love hearing from you all and would REALLY love hearing that some of you are blogging too! Anyone game?

 

Full Circle

I have been blessed with the sweetest, most generous in-laws one could ask for–the sort of folks that are always ready to lend a hand and always have a kind word. Like many of the generation that lived through the depression and World War II, they have the bred in the bone frugality of waste not, want not. In other words, they cannot throw anything away. Anything. So their solution to their bulging closets and overflowing garage is to bring their stuff, I mean gifts, to our house whenever they get a chance.

Invited for dinner last weekend, they arrived with their usual bags and boxes. My father-in-law, a retired high school science teacher, hauled in three crates chock a block full of chemistry papers and biology text books circa 1963, a cigar box holding several neatly labeled fossils trapped in rocks, thirty worm dissectors–one for each student in the class (I’m not making this up, I swear), and a box of booze purchased THIRTY-FIVE years ago for a party which included two bottles of grenadine, one of which was OPEN and had been open for the ENTIRE thirty-five years.

Fish Tail Fossil:

My mother-in law’s stash included a crate full of jiffy pop popcorn, the kind you need the special popper for–sans popper, a never worn velour designer track suit that WE gave her in the eighties, nine glass flower vases, the top of a fruit strainer for canning fruits (ONLY the top) and two grocery bags jammed with different colored balls of yarn that were the remnants of a craft project she had led for my husband’s cub scout troop FORTY-TWO years ago.

The wool was nothing like the soft alpaca, cashmere or manos de uruguay wools so popular right now in the midst of the current knitting rage. It was thick and itchy, as if it had been sheared off the back of some kind of industrial strength sheep bred for war time blankets and soldier's socks. We laid it out along the counter and stood back, amazed by its hardiness and the depth and richness of the colors. I guess there’s a reason they say “dyed in the wool.”

I’d been wanting to knit a backpack for my daughter from “Kids Knitting” by Melanie Falick since I’d first seen it and although we‘d looked high and low for weeks, we’d never found the right yarn. It was either too soft, the wrong color or too expensive. You need alot of yarn to knit a backpack and ever since knitting became the new celebrity hobby, yarn prices have become equivalent to oil prices and there's just something that feels off about knitting a scrappy, throw around backpack with $200 worth of yarn. Well, here it was, the perfect yarn–happily arrived in my kitchen with no fanfare, no shopping and at the perfect price - free!

I can tell you that even before the roast chicken and potatoes were out of the oven, I knocked that yarn onto size eight 24” circular needles and started knitting. The packaging called for size nine or ten needles, but that’s the thing about knitting–it’s rare (at least for me) to have the exact size and length of needles called for, particularly with circular needles. I added some brick red and Naples yellow scrap yarn from my stash for stripes, but even doubled over it’s not thick enough to match the wool and is lending a textured (lumpy?) look to the bag, but I like it and I’m a happy camper, knitting an industrial strength keepsake for my daughter out of wool bought for her father when he was still into acquiring merit badges and building soap box derby cars. We’ll take some more pics when it’s completed. Now, anybody have any ideas about what to do with thirty worm dissectors?

Lumpy Stripes: