Lifescapes

On the needles

The current sock project, in Hook 'Em Horns tweedy orange. (You Texas fans will understand.) I confess, though, that I've been carrying this second sock around in my knitting bag so long that I've forgotten the pattern. Before I pick up the needles again, I'll have to hunt up my notes (I've got a little knitting notebook where I write down pattern names, needle size, yarn, etc). Love doing socks, almost as much as I love wearing them.

Also on the needles: a "spontaneous" blue scarf, done in seed stitch on #8 circs with homespun and bits of other yarns. Photo coming as soon as I get the time to weave in a few ends. You know how that is.

Altered Books

A few years ago, I spoke at a meeting of the Kentuckiana Herb Society. One of the group members, knowing of my interest in altered books, made one for me, from a discarded hardcover copy of China Bayles' second adventure, Witches Bane. It was made to serve as a holder for a paperback book. But I remembered it the other day, when I was thinking of buying a jacket for my new Kindle (Bill is inheriting the Kindle I bought back in 2008).

So what you see here is an altered book, jacketing another altered book--or rather a largish library of altered books, since I have nearly 100 books tucked into that ebook reader. Of course, this eReader doesn't really "alter" the book, just the experience of reading it, which (for me, anyway) is significantly different from the experience of turning the pages in a physical book. But I accept the idea that the "book" has been radically altered from the first books I learned to read. And I'm glad to have the luxury of downloading books (and audiobooks), sitting in my chair in the living room--no need to drive 90 miles round trip to the nearest large bookstore. And if you want to see a few other really altered books, check them out here. It's an art form I've been wanting to explore, if only I had a little time. If only...

Fiber stuff. Speaking of time and art forms and the like, I've been knitting string bags. I made the first one of string (literally--plain cotton string) and liked it best. The one pictured here is made of Aunt Lydia's "Denim" (mostly cotton, thicker than string). It's okay, but stretchier than I would like. The one I'm currently knitting is made of some yarn I bought for a weaving project--really liking it. The pattern is finicky and requires some attention. But once you learn the changeover from one round to the other, it works out. I had never done any faggoting work before, so this is a new experience for me, and fun. I can see more bags in my future...

Book report. The Darling Dahlias are out there, and getting good reviews. If you want to make the peanut butter meringue pie, though, please use the corrected recipe. (Special thanks to Dani and Geni for pointing out the problem.) Next up on the writing desk: The Tale of Castle Cottage, the last of the Cottage Tales series. But I won't start that until next week: I'm heading for Houston toward the end of this week for a family visit and a Saturday noon booksigning at Murder by the Book. If you're in the area, do drop by. The Dahlias and I and David and McKenna (the owners of this terrific bookstore) would be delighted to see you.

Guest blog alert. On Tuesday 7/20, I'll be a guest blogger at Molly Weston's Meritorious Mysteries, blogging about (what else?) the Dahlias. Molly has already posted her review of the book (yes, she liked it!). We're holding a book drawing, too, so be sure to come on over.

What I'm reading. I was inspired by a friend (thanks, Sid!) to post a page of my reads and reviews. I'm just getting started with this work-in-progress, so check back every so often and see what I've listed. In the meantime, have a great week--and cross your fingers for no hurricanes in the Gulf and a quick kill on that blasted oil well.

Stephen King, to his readers: I don't want to just mess with your head. I want to mess with your life. I want you to miss appointments, burn dinner, skip your homework. I want  you to tell your wife to take that moonlight stroll on the beach at Waikiki with the resort tennis pro while you read a few more chapters.

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