Lifescapes

A Beatrix Potter Quilt!

Isn't this a totally, incredibly, absolutely gorgeous quilt? It was designed and made by Jinni Turkelson of Grand Rapids MI--and then she sent it to ME, to keep me warm on cold evenings when I'm knitting by the fire. (That's Jinni, standing on a bench on her deck, holding the quilt.) Jinni, I love it, and I'm more grateful than I can say. You're a peach. And oh, BTW, I solved the mystery: Jinni said she practiced doing some alphabet work with her new sewing machine and told me to look for it. "It's a mystery," she said. This isn't the greatest photo, but maybe you can see that she's embroidered "Cottage Tales Series" at the top and my name at the bottom of this lovely panel from The Tale of Peter Rabbit--Peter watching Mr. McGregor weeding the lettuces.

UPDATE. 5/22/08. After I had a chance to study Jinni's quilt more closely and read everyone's comments, I've decided that I'm going to take it when I do book talks at libraries. The quilt will give me a chance to talk about the way one person's creativity (Beatrix's "little books") can inspire other people: can inspire the Cottage Tales, biographers like Linda Lear and Judy Taylor and many others who have written about Beatrix's life and work, as well as quiltmakers, artists, knitters, and embroiderers. Wouldn't Beatrix love the circle of friends her work has created?

Writing note. I have the feeling that Jinni's quilt will do more than just keep me warm--it will inspire me, as I settle back to work on the next Cottage Tale. I'm into the third chapter now, in a scene with Beatrix and Will Heelis. The trick is to bring them closer together, romantically, but still find believable ways to keep them apart. This is only Book 6, and they can't get married until Book 8! Today, I'm working on a scene with a new character, Fritz the Ferret, who lives under the bridge over Wilfin Beck.

Gardening note. I was a little late getting the squash in, but both the zucchini and the butternut are up and looking good. The madonna lilies are blooming. Photo tomorrow.

Reading note. From Linda Lear's biography, Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, p. 234: [Beatrix] squeezed out every available moment at the farm, gardening and looking after the haying, but had little time or energy for books. "I cannot screw anything out of my head at present!" she told Millie [Warne, Norman's sister]."I have done a little sketching when it does not rain, and I spent a very wet hour inside the pig stye drawing the pig. It tries to nibble my boots, which is interrupting. I don't think it ever answers to try & finish a book in summer..."

Wild socks

Fun socks. These are for Paula, my co-editor on the Story Circle Book Review website. I chose the colors by picking up colors from the multi yarn.  I love the way the heel worked out, multi twined with orange in a salt-pepper stitch. They're a bit on the wild side, but so is Paula, who blogs at redneckcrime.com. Working with her on the book review has been a blast. And that's the second big project. The first one was What Wildness Is This (the book we edited together a couple of years ago). A pair of socks is scant thanks for all the good times we've shared, most of them over the Internet. Isn't that wild, too?

I'm still not writing, but I'm working, working hard. Peggy and I have assembled some issues of All About Thyme so they'll be ready to go out every Monday. That's a huge job, but I enjoy it and never fail to learn something I didn't know in the process. I've been thinking, though, that maybe I should go to bi-weekly, instead of weekly, just to cut down on the workload. If you have an opinion on the topic, weigh in. I've also been putting the blog tour together (more on that toward the end of the month), finishing the notes and citations for the memoir. Oh, and cleaning the office--that perennial chore that I hate while I'm doing it and absolutely love when it's done.

The storm that caused the tornado devastation in the mid-states on Tuesday night went through here on Tuesday morning, dropping our temps by about 40 degrees. One brave daffodil is blooming--as soon as the wind drops, I'll go out and get her picture. I won't have many garden flowers this year (because the gardens were so badly damaged last summer), so I'll cherish every single one. Doesn't look like there'll be many wildflowers, either. No rain to speak of since September, so the bluebonnets will be sparse.

But that's the blessing of living in a place for a long time. I know that while there may be only a few flowers, they will be beautiful, and that when the rains come--next year or the year after--so will the bluebonnets. I know that the hummingbirds will arrive around the 15th of March, and that the Monarchs will be sailing north through our woods not long after. Paintbrush and blackfoot daisy and monarda, all in their time. I can wait.

Reading Note. Home is where we have a history.--Terry Tempest Williams

Candy mitts & more

Yum! Doesn't this look good enough to eat? Now, never mind the obvious little bobbles, and please overlook the crocheted embellishment where there was supposed to be a couple of garter stitch rounds. Just concentrate on the colors, which truly are yummy. The pattern (slightly modified) is from Knit Mittens by Robin Hansen--the cover pattern. I can't decide whether to do the second mitten in entirely different colors, or stay with what I've already done. What do you think?

Tomorrow's the official end of the blog tour, but there's still time to enter a few of the drawings (as of this moment, I mean), so hustle on over there and do it! One of the things I've learned on this tour is that computers and servers and networks don't always behave the way we expect them to. But the tour hosts and Peggy and I have persevered, and plugged on ahead, and just plain bullied our way through this, and it's almost over, thank goodness. Honestly, this has been nearly as much work as getting in the car and driving around from here to there! Except I get to sleep at home, which is pretty nice, and I don't have to eat on the road, and I can sit in my own favorite chair in the evening to knit candy mitts, so yeah, I like it.  Think I'll do it again, when the next China comes out.

Brrrr.... About 3 this afternoon, I looked out the window to see a flock of 30-some robins having lunch in the grass. Robins are migratory here, and they usually fly down with the first serious cold front--which was forecast for around 5 pm here in the Hill Country. Sure enough, about an hour after the robins, the wind picked up from the north, the leaves began to blow, and the cold front arrived, just in time for the dogs and me to have our evening walk in cool comfort. After yesterday's near-record 86 (honestly!), this was a delightful change. Warmest November on record, so far, I've heard. So what else is new? But last night I watched a TV show about running out of oil (the inevitable conclusion of our spendthrift ways) and felt very grateful this morning when I woke and the world was all in one piece and so was I. I was glad for such an extraordinarily ordinary day, writing and robins and a north wind and a breezy walk with the dogs.

Reading note. I am grateful for every such ordinary day, knowing that these will draw to a close somewhere beyond our seeing. I hope to go on picking vegetables, pulling bindweed out of the fields . . . enjoying the birds, the dogs, even our elderly cat, whose last season this likely will be....Going on is, after all the ultimate pleasure of our lives.--Maxine Kumin, Always Beginning

Jazzy blues

I was possessed by the urge to sit down at my loom last week, and this blue scarf, jazzed up with orange and reds, was the result. I warped the loom (a rigid heddle) on Thursday and spent Friday weaving--finished the scarf on Friday night, just about the time Bill got home from New Mexico. (Yes, that means that I didn't get any writing done on Friday. But I put in some good book-think time while I was weaving, and came up with a new plot twist I really like. Also, I watched Night Passage, Tom Selleck's version of the Robert Parker novel. Yum yum. I am definitely a Tom Selleck fan. If any of you see a resemblance between McQuaid and Selleck, you are dead on.)

The scarf is a bit of this and that. The weft is of different weights and blends, mostly wool but some acrylic. (A purist would sniff.) The warp is hand-dyed handspun, along with some commercially dyed wool yarn. Here's how it looked on the loom.                                                                                                                                                   

I warped it a different way than I used to (warped it directly on the loom, according to directions I found on the Internet), which is much quicker--or would have been, if I had bothered to read the directions closely. I didn't, so it wasn't. Next time, I'll pay more attention.

And there will be a next time. Soon. Like right away, actually, because I've just realized how close Christmas is, and how little time I have to finish making stuff. I've also got a huge stash of handspun, and this is a good way to use it up.

Now, which of my favorite guys gets this scarf? (No, not Tom Selleck.)

Reading note. Motivational speakers often pose the question, "If you were on your deathbed, would you look back and be sorry you didn't spend more time at the office?" The right answer is, of course, no--you'd be sorry you didn't spend more time with the people you love, or doing the work that will make the world a better place. I think maybe I'd be sorry I didn't weave and spin more, too. Because the more I do, the better everything else seems to fit together. The more I weave and spin, the more in touch I am with myself, the more meaning I find in my daily life. You know? --Linda Ligon, This is How I Go When I Go Like That

Jason's tam

A few weeks ago, my grandson Jason left a comment on my "Blue Daze" tam post, saying that he'd seen my tams and coveted one of his own. (When was the last time your grandson asked for a tam?) After some back-and-forth emailing, we settled on an orange/brown color scheme. I made one, but it was much too small (was I thinking of Jason at 8 or 9?). Finally finished another for him, just in time for his graduation next month. He's been studying to be a sound engineer--the sort of person who mixes music for concerts and recordings--and already has a job! (Who knew that all that punk rock might someday pay off?) Happy graduation, Jason! I've already cast on the next tam, although I lost track in the fifth row, wasted one whole hour trying to figure out where I was, and then--in a fit of frustration--ribbited the whole durn thing.

I'm writing (you'll find notes to the WIP on the Pecan Springs Journal), doing some housecleaning (where DOES all that stuff come from?), reading a little, and watching Ken Burns' The War on PBS. Have you seen it? I like the way the stories have been woven together, soldiers' stories, home front stories. What strikes me so forcefully about it is the extent to which everyone agreed that it was a necessary war. The US stayed out of the fight until it was absolutely essential to join it. And all Americans joined the war effort (I'm old enough to remember for myself some of what was going on in those days) because all Americans understood how important, how right it was. Our current situation stands in stark, sad contrast.

Reading note. Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.--Dwight D. Eisenhower

Blue Daze

                                                                                                                                                          














The latest tam. There are a couple of unintentional little ziggy-zaggies in Blue Daze, but otherwise I like it. I added a little duplicate stitching in pink (it's really coral, but the blue tones it down), which sets off the top. I've already started the next tam (I'm telling you, these things are addictive!), using a tubular cast-on that is picky as all heck but gives the ribbing a very smooth, polished edge. Another virtue of the tubular cast-on: you can thread in some elastic if your ribbing is too loose (which mine almost always is, after a little while). There are several online tutorials for this--google it and you'll find them. I'd do it for you, but I'm also packing this afternoon, as well as blogging.

Tomorrow is the Great Getaway Day. The three dogs and I are driving out to NM to join Bill, who is already out there with the cat. Yes, we do have too many animals, which you count in the cows, sheep, and geese (who are not going along on this trip). But we can't figure out which of them we could possibly live without. Actually, I could. I could do without those particular ganders, who are particularly nasty during testosterone season. The funny thing is that what we have (through no fault of our own) is a pair of ganders, one of whom pretends to be a goose during the months of January-April. We do not inquire too deeply into this arrangement, you understand. We just observe.

Anyway, tomorrow morning bright and early (dark and early, probably), I'm outta here, heading west, with enough yarn for a couple more tams, and some quilt fabric, and a big box of books. Oh, and three dogs. Can't forget the dogs. They would be very unhappy.

Reading note. Maybe we need different places for different phases of our lives. Maybe cherished places remain alive inside us even if we have to move on--our attachment to the earth not thinned, but widened. Still, I worry over the pile of fragments in my past, the running of one place into another. Wherever I am is cluttered with the memory of dozens of other landscapes.--Deborah Tall, From Where We Stand: Recovering a Sense of Place

Dancing the Blues

I'm still mostly writing (Briar Bank, due at the end of August), but I couldn't resist doing some felting this weekend, since Bill is still in New Mexico and I can leave my stuff out without getting in anybody's way. (We live in a small house, and when two people strew their stuff around, it's crowded, not to say messy.)

So here I am, felting at the kitchen counter. The first photo is a stack of dyed, carded fibers ready to be felted. I'll wet them, mash them, and roll them, then roll them some more. Takes some elbow grease, but that's basically all there is to it.

This is the felted piece. I like to name things, so this is "Dancing the Blues." I love the bright, swirly colors. It's pretty loosely felted, because I also love the textured surface.

In this photo, I'm still playing with surface. The wonderful thing about felt is that it (unlike canvas) is infinitely malleable. You can see that I've gathered and tucked the ends, emphasizing the swirls of color. When it's to my liking, I'll sew and needle felt the surface to an underlying felt piece, to stabilize it. Fun!

Briar Bank is also fun--oooh, I love my dragon! (His name is Thorvaald.) I discovered a new book by Edith Nesbit (author of The Wouldbegoods). New to me, that is: The Book of Dragons was written in 1900 as a charming series of stories in The Strand. (That's the same British magazine in which Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories were published. Nesbit was paid 30 pounds for each story--quite a lot, at that time!) If you like dragons, you'll love this whimsical, enchanting book.

Reading note. This are the first two paragraphs of the first story, "The Book of Beasts."

He happened to be building a palace when the news came, and he left all the bricks kicking about the floor for Nurse to clear up--but then the news was rather remarkable news. You see, there was a knock at the front door and voices talking downstairs, and Lionel thought it was the man come to see about the gas, which had not been allowed to be lighted since the day when Lionel made a swing by tying his skipping rope to the gas bracket.

And then, quite suddenly, Nurse came in and said: "Master Lionel, dear, they've come to fetch you to go and be king."

How can you not like a story about dragons that begins in this magically off-hand way?

Maple Sugar

                                                                                                                                                                     














Heads up! Here's the finished tam (my first) which I  am calling "Maple Sugar." You can see a detail of the body here. I'm using Palette yarns from KnitPicks.

One of the things I like about the book I'm using (Knitted Tams, by Mary Rowe) is the freedom to mix-match patterns for structural elements (band, body, wheel) and colors. There's enough guidance in the book to keep you headed in the right direction, but you're forced to make your own choices. This can be frustrating (why doesn't she just TELL me what to do!) and freeing (hey, wow, this is really interesting!). In fact, I'd have to say that it's the interest factor that has really kept me going on this, wanting to see what it would look like if I did this, or that, or the other thing. I've already cast on the next one, in blue, using an intricate tubular cast-on that Rowe gives in her book, designed so that you can slip an elastic into it to keep the ribby band from stretching.

Book work. I still have a couple of chapters of Briar Bank to finish--the roundup chapters--and the back matter (recipes, glossary, sources, historical note). But with 80,000 words in the file (this is going to be another biggish book), it's time to go back through from the beginning, revising for style, tucking in a new subplot, and cleaning up a few problems. Bill read the book over the weekend and came up with a nifty idea for a dragon subplot that can easily be worked in and provides an interesting complication. Back in the "old" days, before word processing, adding in a subplot at this point would be a major complication. Now, it's duck soup. (But hey! typewriters really weren't that long ago, and Dickens wrote very complicated books in longhand.)

Authors with pseudonyms. Linda, at the Nashua County Public Library in Nashua NH, has posted some interesting comments on authors with pseudonyms. Take a look. Barbara Mertz and Nora Roberts, both prolific writers, are heroines of mine, so it feels good to be featured with them.

Reading note.
     "I rewrote the ending of A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times before I was satisfied," Ernest Hemingway once told an interviewer.
     "Was there a problem there?" the interviewer wanted to know. "What was it that stumped you?"
     "Getting the words right," said Hemingway.--Judith Applebaum

A good day for dyeing

I dyed yesterday. Five batches of Coopworth, for more felt play. This is not a lot for somebody who really dyes, but it was a substantial project for me. I'm trying to get the dyeing done before Bill comes back next week--you know why. This roving was dyed in the crockpot, and will be carded with other, less feltable wool, of which I have a lot. (At some point, I seem to have made a major investment in superwash merino, which doesn't felt by itself, but can be coaxed. I believe I had socks in mind at the time.) I'm feeling virtuous, using up some of my stash. Of course, "using up" probably isn't the right word here, since I'm merely converting the wool from one form (roving, top, batts) to another: felted stuff. The real product here--for me, anyway--is the learning and the fun of playing with this fascinating material. Maybe the other products (the felted stuff) will eventually be good enough to give as gifts. Maybe I'll even use them as giveaway in contests--now, there's a thought!

Also yesterday, more work on the book (Briar Bank--the fifth book in the Cottage Tales series). I'm at 75,000 words now, and thinking wrap-up thoughts. I'll probably do another 3,000 words or so, and then go back to the beginning and work through the whole text again. Somehow, it's always easier for me to write the last couple of chapters when I have the whole book in mind. As it is now, I have only the last few chapters in mind. If I don't go back, I'll risk dropping a plot line. Haven't you seen that happen, particularly in mysteries? The author gets so busy resolving the major plot that s/he forgets to tie up a loose string or two. The result: irritated readers.

One sad consequence of all the rain: the rosemarys are struggling. I have a dozen or so, most waist-high and as big around. They love it when it's hot and dry, but they hate wet feet, and there's nothing I can do for them, poor lambs.

Reading note. We humans have a strong desire for groundedness in place. We want to be rooted; we want to be somewhere real. The saying, 'Wherever you go, there you are,' seems also to be an acknowledgment that wherever you go, of course, you take places and people from the past with you. In other words, you can't escape who you are. Wherever you go, there you are, facing yourself again in the mirror.--On Ice: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, by Gretchen Legler

Dyeing for fun

Lest you think my life is filled with nothing but words words words, here's what else I'm doing these days.

Bill's in New Mexico, and when he's away, the dye pot is usually busy. Dyeing is a messy project, and it's better to do it while nobody's looking. I've been dying merino roving for some felt projects, and running the dyed fiber through my carding machine. (Click for a larger view.)

There's another step beyond this one, for this is superwash merino. (Don't ask me why I have so much of it--if you can remember the impulse that drove you to acquire a particular fiber for your stash, you're a better woman than I.) Superwash doesn't felt very well, but I can blend it (on the carder) with fibers that do felt well, and come up with a satisfactory blend.

Here are my first efforts at making felt vessels. I love their organic feeling. The mohair of the gray vessel on the right comes from Lisa Shell's angora goats; the handspun yarn that decorates it is couched on.

And here's the tam I'm knitting--an interesting project, from Mary Rowe's Knitted Tams. The book has plenty of helpful general instruction, but the photographs of the finished tams are not keyed to any specific pattern. You have to imagine what a given graph might look like, in colors of your choice. So this is very much an experiment. This is what Rowe calls the "body" of the tam. When the top (the "wheel") is done, I'll post another photo.

And for those of you who are sending DRY thoughts, send more! We got another 3" of rain yesterday. I don't know how much we've gotten in this last two-week rain event, since the 6" rain gauge overflowed the night of the big storm. Judging from radar reports, though, it looks like we got about 12" that night--and another 7" after that. We've had more rain in the past six months than we normally get in a wet year. I'm planning my ark. And there's a rumor that the neighbors are bringing in a truckload of rock for the road. I hope it's more than a rumor. Everybody's getting stuck at Boggy Junction--including the garbage truck!

Oh, and if you went to Amazon looking for my review of Miss Potter, they've dumped it--goodness only knows why. (Maybe they didn't like something I said?) So I've posted it in an update to this post.

Reading notes. "A poet is somebody who stands out in the rain, hoping to get struck by lightning."--James Dickey