The Child Is the Father of the Man

While we were visiting Detroit I had occasion to rummage through several boxes of old family photographs. Two taken of me at age five seem uncanny in their foreshadowing of the adult I would become.



"Keep your hands where I can see 'em, pardner, while I go fetch the lasso."



"Hey, Mr. Sondheim! Here I am!"

I'm beginning to understand why my parents didn't look all that surprised when I came out to them.

Knitting Neuroses on Parade

When blogging was brand new to me and I was trying out everything including memes,* I took a bunch of those online quizzes that were being passed around like smallpox and discovered that I am:

• St. Vincent de Paul;
• the color orange;
• Paris, France; and
  
• a pelican.

There was also at least one quiz about what kind of Knitter you are. I didn't bother taking that one. I already know what kind of knitter I am. I am a Weirdo Knitter.

To those who have known me long, this will come as no surprise. I was an odd baby, a quizzical child, a peculiar teenager, and a strange young adult. Now, with dotage fast approaching, I share my apartment with a cigarette-smoking sheep and fifty balls of talking, homosexual sock yarn. Le Tricoteur Bizarre, c'est moi.

I offer the following two Unfinished Objects in support of my diagnosis.

Exhibit A: A Nearly-Finished Baby Surprise Jacket

Once again, I'm knitting for a baby with no baby in sight. Inexplicable. Especially as on the continuum of Inborn Parental Urge I lie somewhere between a bag of Fritos and the witch in Hansel and Gretel.

Exhibit B: A Single Poetry Mitten Cuff

I was so excited that I almost hyperventilated when a nice lady at Knitting Camp turned me onto a Piecework Magazine pattern for mittens with poetry worked into them. Oh yes please, I squealed, and ran right out to Arcadia Knitting and bought this perfectly luscious yarn in three colors, and the proper needles, and then I sat down and knit the first cuff all at once and then I stopped short.

Because the poem in the pattern, while appropriately wintery, is just not me. It doesn't speak to my experience of winter and mittens and snow. I simply can go no further until I've picked out verses that do, and fit them into the chart.

So for four weeks I've been staring at the cuff and rummaging through my library in search of Just the Right Poem.

I've considered the Shakespeare lyric "Blow, blow thou winter wind," but then I've thought it might be too pessimistic and does one really wish to look down at one's mittens and feel depressed?

I thought about Ezra Pound's 'Winter is icummen in" but worried that the repeated "Goddamm" might render the mittens unwearable at, for example, elegant holiday parties and job interviews. And again, there's the pessimism issue.

I tossed around some lovely winter haiku, but then I realized I hate haiku.

I've woken up at 3 a.m. seized with sudden inspiration, and jumped out of bed, and spent an hour paging through a stack of anthologies before realizing the poem I'd been thinking of doesn't actually exist.

And you may threat, cajole, or place a gun to my head, but I cannot continue with these mittens until the matter is settled. At this point, I expect I might finish them by July. Of 2009.

Since You Asked

Marie in Florida wanted to know what's on the little card on my altar. It changes from time to time–I write down lines from sutras, or koans, or what-have-you that seems appropriate for the time. Right now, I've got the Four Bodhisattvic Vows, which we say at the Zen Center after each period of zazen and which I recite every day:

All beings without number
I vow to liberate.
Endless blind passions
I vow to uproot.
Dharma gates beyond measure
I vow to penetrate.
The Great Way of Buddha
I vow to attain.

Rather a tall order, yes, but you gotta have a dream.

(I wonder how those would look worked into a pair of mittens?)

*No, I don't anymore, and no, you shouldn't send me one. Thanks.

Just Eat

A little introductory note: I've noticed in my stats and on Bloglines that there are suddenly a whole lot of new readers. Welcome! I'm pleased as punch that you're here. I just want to warn you that this is not a knitting-only blog. I often veer into other topics that interest me. Chalk it up to the male fear of commitment.

One of my favorite Zen stories is about two novice monks from long ago who were discussing the relative merits of their teachers.

The first said, "My teacher can do amazing things. He can stand on one side of a river with a brush, while an assistant stands on the other side of the river with a sheet of paper. As he moves the brush through the air, writing appears on the paper."

The second said, "Interesting. My teacher can also do amazing things. For example, when he eats, he eats. And when he sleeps, he sleeps."

To which the first monk replied, "Yo' mama."

The first time I read this (and the second, and third, and fourth–it's a Buddhism Greatest Hit) I thought I understood it. When you sit down to eat, pay attention to your food and to eating. Do not distract yourself with thoughts of other meals, of a past you can't change, of a future that doesn't exist. When you lie down to sleep, let go of the day's worries and don't invent new ones for tomorrow. Just sleep.

Sounds rather impossible; but okay, fine. Great. Got it. What's next?

Well, I didn't get it. As popular as stories are in Zen teaching, Zen isn't about words. It's about experiencing things directly, yourself. You can't get that out of books.

Me, I love books. I love books the way that Fafnir, the dragon in Siegfried, was rather fond of treasure. Books have been my greatest, sometimes I think my only, teachers. So when I've been told that reading books on Buddhism isn't going to get me anywhere, I've nodded and said, yes yes. And then I've gone out and bought another book.

Time for an attitude adjustment.

Sunday was a great big helping of Direct Experience. Our center held "zazenkai"–a full day of meditation. This was my first time. Here's the schedule:

• 7 am-10 am: zazen (seated meditation) and kinhin (walking meditation)
  
• 11-noon: teisho (lesson)
• noon-12:45: lunch
  
• 12:45-2 pm: zazen and kinhin
  

I love zazen, but that's a whole lot of sitting still. By the time teisho was over I was definitely ready for lunch. I imagined kicking back around the big table with the other Zennies and comparing which parts of our bodies had gone numb and might very well fall off.

Instead, I was shown in silence that I was to help myself to the soup, rice, fruit, and crackers in the kitchen and then take a seat in a chair in the living room. And just as in the zendo, the seats were arranged to face the walls.*

There I was, after five hours of not talking, being sent to eat soup and crackers while looking at nothing and speaking to nobody. For just a second I considered slipping out of my robes and into my clothes, and running away into the street shouting at the top of my lungs.

Instead, I sank dutifully into a chair by the fireplace. There's a small bronze Buddha on the mantel. I looked at it and thought, "2,500 years ago you had a bright idea under a tree, so now I'm sitting here in Chicago dressed like Obi-Wan Kenobi having lunch with a wall."

I took a spoonful of soup and my eyes rolled back in my head. The taste was incredible. It didn't make sense, though. This was pretty plain stuff. Broth, vegetables. But it blew my mind. So did the cracker when I bit it.

I kept eating, trying to get a grip on the sensations rocking my head, and then I realized this was possibly the first meal of my entire life in which I was permitted–compelled, really–to just eat. No checking e-mail, or making calls, or dishing friends not present. It was just me and the soup.

The word that sprang to mind was luxury. I've never enjoyed any meal so much, not even dinner on the Minerva II, eating five French courses while watching the sun set over the Aegean. It felt unspeakably indulgent. I stretched out my bare toes and sighed, which in the hushed room sounded like a car alarm.

Oops.

And so...so what?



I don't know. There's no pat conclusion here. No specific lesson learned. I'm not going to start declining dinner invitations so that I can have tete-à-tetes** with a sheet of plasterboard. I do feel that I've been shown something interesting. I might never have seen it if it weren't for practice.

Reason enough to keep practicing. (Plus I get to wear cool robes. I look pretty darn cute in the robes.)

* In the Soto Zen tradition, which I practice, we meditate with our eyes open, facing the wall. It's an homage to the Zen ancestor Bodhidharma, who is said to have reached enlightenment after meditating for years while facing the wall of a cave in China.

**Where the hell is the circumflex on this keyboard?

How to Survive a Lousy Business Presentation

I was cleaning up my office files and ran across a folder of notes from a business conference I attended two weeks after beginning my present job.

I remember writing the sheet posted below. We were about forty minutes into a presentation that was slated to continue another forty. I was certain that I was going to die from boredom. Truly. It seemed inevitable that I would slip, unconscious, beneath the waves of inanity gushing from the speaker, and there expire.

Doodling might have saved me, had I not been seated next to my boss. Scientific evidence suggests that busy hands actually help one's retention rate, but bosses don't care. Bosses always expect one to do the professional thing: keep the eyes forward, nod every so often, and fantasize about sex with a tabloid celebrity.

If you can't do that, and I couldn't, you can pretend to take notes. Doesn't matter what you write, unless your boss has superior eyesight. On this day, the Latin word matella (-ae, f.), which means "chamber pot," popped into my head. Highly appropriate during a presentation that was a pile of crap.

I amused myself by inserting matella into a couple of sentences. Alas, my vocabulary was limited by a curriculum heavy on Caesar.

(Jean and Vivienne, get out your red pens. But be nice. I'm just a grammar school boy.)



If you don't enjoy Latin, letters of resignation in any language are always fun.

Actually, I'm thinking about writing one right now.

Sesame Street On My Mind

I just finished doing a most enjoyable portrait shoot and the results are downloading.

Meanwhile, for no particular reason I'm thinking about "Sesame Street," a show from my childhood that was not so much popular as omnipresent. We watched it at home, we watched it in school. We had "Sesame Street" toys and sheets and bedroom slippers and books and tapes. I think there was also a breakfast cereal, but we were strictly a Rice Krispies and Cheerios household.

Do you non-American readers know "Sesame Street"? I'm thinking perhaps you do. I know Basil Brush and "Blue Peter" and Babar, so maybe Big Bird and the rest also have an international following.

"Sesame Street" was, in general, a brilliant educational show. Perhaps it still is, but of late I've not been watching. The aim was to teach basic reading and numbers skills, along with a smattering of ethics and manners. It taught me most of what I know about comic timing, and instilled in me a love of ridiculous lyrics and overblown production numbers that persists to this day. Rare is the morning when my line-up of shower songs does not include a heartfelt rendition of "C is for Cookie" or the club anthem of the National Association of W* Lovers.

Sadly though, some recurring segments didn't quite pack the same wallop. Two come to mind.

The first was a film montage of...something. Usually an animal. Let's say, a cow. There would be various shots of the cow in tight-close up, never revealing more than an ear, or a nostril, or half an udder. Over these shots would be played the extempore rantings of unseen schoolchildren, all trying to guess what the thing was, even though it was painfully obvious. "It's a dog," one would say. "No," another child would counter, "It's a centipede!" At last, after two minutes of this, there would be a full shot and a simultaneous, surprised shriek: "IT'S A COW!"

What a shocker. Hand me the smelling salts.

I always wondered where the hell these little geniuses were from. We lived in suburban Tucson, Arizona and my closest personal experience of a cow was the one in my Play-Skool farmyard set, and yet I could recognize an udder without undue strain.

And then there was the interminable perennial "One of These Things Is Not Like the Others." In case the title's not explicit enough, let me walk you through it.

You are watching a screen that has been split into four equal segments. In each segment is a child. Three of the children are doing the same thing, like sleeping. The fourth child is doing something else, like jumping up and down on a pogo stick or singing "Celeste Aïda."

Over this, the following ditty plays:

One of these things is not like the others.
Come on, can you tell which one?
Can you tell which kid is doing his own thing?
Now it's time to play our game,
It's time to play our ga-ame.

I'm not sure, but I think the lyric is by Ira Gershwin.

Then a voice-over would guide you slowly and carefully from one square to the next. See, this kid is sleeping. This kid is also sleeping. And this kid is...sleeping! But then this kid is making bobbin lace! He's not like the others!

Congratulations all around.

The creators of "Sesame Street" were known for being market-savvy and I can't imagine "One of These Things Is Not Like the Others" would have been repeated in every episode if it had not proven itself popular. But with whom? What person, even at age five, needs four minutes, a jingle, and personal coaching to be able to tell a kid playing ball from a kid eating ice cream?

It might have been interesting if they'd upped the ante. Say, three Sunnis and a Shiite. Or three genuine Rembrandts and a forgery. Or three Republican presidents and an elephant's butt. Never happened.

When either of these gems popped up on the screen, I took it as my cue to go to the kitchen for a glass of milk. I figured maybe they were aimed at the girl in my class who used to space out during storytime and eat her own boogers.

*The letter. Not the president.

What Is the Sound of One Bitch Slapping?

So. I have now been practicing Japanese-style zazen (silent meditation, both sitting and walking) for about a month. I've left the sangha I'd been sitting with on Thursday nights and begun practicing at the Chicago Zen Center, which offers the community I need under a teacher who impresses me mightily.

(Also, I get to wear a kicky brown floor-length robe.)

The upside of this is that I notice already a shift in my bearing. Less of my time is spent fuming over things that make me angry, more of it is spent being productive.

You might not think that facing a wall for 30 minutes a day at home, with an additional two hours or so at the zendo (meditation hall) twice a week would make much difference in a person. I certainly didn't expect it. And to be sure, I'm not becoming a goggle-eyed automaton. I still want to slap at least twelve idiots upside the head every day.

The change is more like the faint tinge of green you'd see at the base of a plant which appeared dead a month ago, but which with water and care is beginning to show the smallest sign of revival.

Certainly nobody else would notice such a subtle shift, right?

Wrong. Other people are making it crystal clear to me what a sour-pussed bitch I've apparently been.

I came into work a couple days ago feeling good, but not radiant. Just a normal me, on a normal day, following the usual routine.

Passing the reception desk, I said good morning, then went upstairs to my office. I'd just sat down in my chair when the phone rang. It was the receptionist.

"Um, Franklin," she whispered. "You can tell me. I'll keep it a secret. You're so...happy...today. Did you get a new job?"

Later that day, I was in conference with my boss regarding a pain-in-the-ass bullshit project that's been plaguing us for weeks. He told me a point of design about which I had been adamant was being overturned at the caprice of a big-spending volunteer. I said that on reflection, it didn't seem like such a big deal and I was fine with the change.

My boss leaned over the conference table and said, "Is there something you'd like to tell me? Did you get a new job?"

Still later, there was a small meeting of about seven of us from different teams within the organization. Nothing remarkable about it at all, that I noticed.

Afterward, I stayed to go over copy writing with one of the directors. We were in mid-edit when she sat back in her chair, crossed her arms and said, "Come clean. You're out of here, aren't you? I can totally tell. You're in much too good a mood."

When I was about five years old and living in Tucson, Arizona, my kindergarten class received monthly visits from a Native American teacher. He taught us a bit about the indigenous culture of the area and over the course of the year gave some of us "Indian" (his term) names.

Mine was Little Thundercloud.

Now I guess I understand why.

Rotten Egg

(I had a mighty fine fiber adventure on Saturday, but I'm not going to tell you about it just yet. My gracious hosts took pictures which they've offered to share with me, and once I get those I'll write an account. In the meantime, an Easter memory.)

I was about twelve years old, and a dedicated goody two-shoes, when I signed up to join the Catholic Youth Organization associated with our base chapel. There was pressure at home to get out of the house, do something, make some friends my own age. Trouble was, I didn't like most kids my own age. The boys were as obnoxious as they'd ever been. The girls, who had always been my buddies, suddenly sprouted breasts and withdrew into giggling secrecy.

The CYO met near our house once a week, and was supervised by a quartet of happy, shiny adult volunteers. I hoped the adults could keep the other kids in check. If the whole thing became too much to deal with I'd simply walk home.

It wasn't so bad. Most weeks we'd just sit in a circle and talk about a topic of deep import (drug abuse was a favorite). Occasionally there were spaghetti suppers, field trips, or craft projects. Every once in a while we'd indulge in Good Works.

Most of the Good Works were pretty dull. We'd pick up trash along a stretch of road, polish the pews in the chapel, or sort clothes donated for homeless. As Easter Week approached, we were asked if we'd dye the eggs needed for the Interfaith Easter Egg Hunt. That was the kind of Good Work I could get into, even on a Saturday afternoon.

A lot of the other kids felt the same. About twenty of us showed up in the chapel kitchen, where 500 white eggs had been boiled by the Christian Ladies Circle and were awaiting decoration. One of the ladies directed us to a tall stack of dye kits in the corner, told us to help ourselves to sodas from the refrigerator...and left to get her hair done.

Big mistake.

Not that, at first, you would have noticed anything untoward was going on. We didn't fling eggs or cups of dye at one another. On the contrary, as we sat dipping eggs with teaspoons and showing off our handiwork, we could have been an ad for Wholesome Teen Fun.

Then I found the crayons.

I was startled to find that some of my coworkers didn't know that if you drew on an eggshell with a crayon before you dyed it, the wax would resist the dye. You could decorate a egg with a message or drawing that way. It was much more fun that using only solid colors. I showed off a festive "HAPPY EASTER" egg and everybody clamored for crayons. There weren't enough in the kits to go around, so one of the boys snuck into a Sunday school classroom and came back with a box of Crayolas.

After the fifth egg, writing "HAPPY EASTER" lost its novelty. But Easter is short on alternative taglines. If these were Christmas Eggs we could have written "Joyeux Noel" and "Season's Greetings" and "Ho Ho Ho" and whatnot, but with Easter you're pretty much stuck with "HAPPY EASTER."

I did a bunny face, just to be different. But it's very hard to do fine detail with a crayon on an eggshell, so I gave that up. Then Satan, who was hanging around the chapel looking for somebody to bother, came over and whispered in my ear, "You know what would be funny?"

I picked up a blank egg. Giggling to myself, I wrote "THE EASTER BUNNY HATES YOU" and dropped the egg in the dye. As the dye coated the egg and the message showed up in large block capitals, it seemed unbearably funny and I burst out laughing. Heather, who was sitting next to me, looked over and squealed.

"Omigod I cannot believe you wrote that! That is so funny!"

This was an entirely unexpected reaction. Most of the CYO kids never noticed anything I did or said. Now they all crowded around my subversive egg and hooted.

"I'm totally doing an egg like that," said Heather. "Do another one!"

How could you top a slam from the Easter bunny? No problem. In these situations one has merely to wait, and Satan will oblige with inspiration.

"TOUCH THIS EGG AND DIE," I wrote. And dropped it into a cup of pink. As the message appeared, the crowd went wild.


All the way down the table things were haywire. About half the finished eggs going back into the empty cartons were suddenly saying the most dreadful things. Heather held up a two-tone (orange and blue) on which she had written "YOU'RE UGLY" in a legible, if lopsided, hand.

Suddenly I was the most popular kid in the CYO.

"YOU WIN A FREE PUPPY!"
"YOUR DAD IS AN ALIEN"
"NOBODY LIKES YOU"
"A CHICKEN DIED TO MAKE THIS EGG"
"YOU WERE ADOPTED"

And perhaps most ironically, from a kid who probably went on to become a Nietzsche scholar:

"GOD IS DEAD"

We were so enthusiastic that we finished 500 eggs in record time. When the Lady in Charge came back from the beauty parlor, the filled cartons were already in the refrigerator.

"Great job!" she said. "You'll be back tomorrow to help hide them, right?"

Oh yeah. We sure would.

I didn't go. In fact, I didn't even go back to CYO after that. It wasn't out of fear of punishment. All twenty of us had written nasty things, and one of the side effects of being a goody-goody is that when somebody points at you and says "He started it!" the adults don't believe it.

I just knew, somehow, that my brief, shining afternoon of popularity was a temporary fluke. I wasn't a bad child, really,* and when the others realized that I'd go back to being the little nobody. Better to go out on top and leave a fabulous memory behind you. Even if it's only written on an egg.

*I felt so guilty about this that I brought it up in confession. The priest told me to say ten Hail Marys, do something nice for at least one little kid, and think about pursuing a career in advertising.

Memory Skein

The first knitting shop I ever went into with the intent of buying yarn for myself was Woolcott and Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was a student, and under the spell of a friend who was an advanced knitter–the only knitter I'd ever met who was my age. She had given me basic knit/purl lessons with a scrap of alpaca, and I liked it enough to wish to continue with my own tools and materials.

After peppering the saleswoman with a volley of stupid questions, I left with an armload of incredibly pretty, breathtakingly expensive blue worsted (to make a sweater, of course) and my first pair of needles.

The sweater never happened, but over time the worsted became a succession of tediously long scarves. I never went back to Woolcott, as knitting was something I did once a year. In October, I would knit a scarf. In April, I would lose it. In between, I didn't knit.*

That was years ago. I no longer live in Boston, and many of the places I knew in Harvard Square have long since dried up and blown away. But Woolcott is back on my radar, due to a very happy coincidence.

Sean, a fellow blogger whose projects are an endless source of inspiration to me, has taken over as manager of the store. I wrote to congratulate him, and the response I got should cause Boston-area knitters to shake their needles with joy.

He's been working at the shop in a part-time capacity since 2001. He's a hardcore knitter. He knows what it's like to be a customer. He knows advertising, merchandising, marketing, etc at a professional level. And he's been given a mandate to do with the place as he sees fit. His goal? "I envision empowering people with a belief in themselves and their own creativity."

I read Sean's message to Dolores. "That's very touching," she said. "Ask him again what his vision is after somebody's kid barfs up Juicy Juice on the Rowan display."

(Dolores is not having a good week. She's got a bad cold and refuses to do anything but lie on the sofa drinking orange juice, reading Germain Greer and writing disgruntled letters to the editors of Vogue Knitting and The Economist.)

Anyhow, Sean, if you're reading this: congratulations, and good luck. Also, I was digging around in my stash and found that I still have a full skein of that blue worsted. Is fifteen years too late for a return?

*I know. I can't believe it, either. What the hell can I have been doing?

Aristocracy Fixation

It's been so long since I posted any project photographs, I decided I'd better show you something in order to preserve my meagre allotment of knitter's street cred.

(If you're a new reader, welcome. Also, apologies. This is a very odd knitting blog in that actual yarn makes only occasional appearances. I keep meaning to post the latest ten rows of my whatever and never quite get around to it. So I draw pictures to distract you. Now you know the custom of the country.)

Here's the Regicide Scarf, front (right) and back (left).



I am still deeply in love with this yarn, which is Four Play from Brooks Farm. I can't believe how much yardage was included in the skein for a mere $14 or $16 (can't quite remember which). The scarf is 6 inches wide and a bit over 4 feet long, and I still have a good 1/2 the ball left to knit. That's generosity.

As you can see, the reverse of the scarf has the pebbly texture of reverse stockinette, because that's mostly what it is. There are traces visible of the King Charles Brocade diagonals, but they disappear at two paces. I quite like the look, especially in the variegated colorway.

C was away this weekend in New York City, so I spent a lot of time on another project as well, the square baby shawl from Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's Almanac. I'm working it in Dale Baby Ull.

The shawl pattern is simple (two paragraphs or so) but includes a lot of fun stuff, like Emily Ocker's Circular Cast-On (done with a crochet hook). If unaltered, it produces a very simple square with faggot stitch dividing the four plain stockinette quarters.

I decided to put Version II of the Tulip Lace from Barbara Walker Volume I into each quarter, with the strong central line of the stem running diagonally to the corners of the square. I also plan on a lace edging using some Shetland pattern or another, courtesy of Sharon Miller's Heirloom Knitting. My first attempt was good, but not what I'd hoped for. I frogged it all completely, started over, and am much happier.

Pictures forthcoming. No, seriously.

I finished the beginning of the shawl during the final minutes of the last episode of The Pallisers, and so in honor of one of my favorite characters from English fiction I have re-named the project "Glencora." (Susan Hampshire, I love you.)

A scarf commemorating a dead king and a shawl named after the fictional Duchess of Omnium. Boy, some democrat I am.

Cast On: Episode 17

Thank you for all the enthusiastic comments about Episode 17 of Cast On. My dominant feeling is relief. Relief that my trusty essayists (C and Buzz) turned up trumps in both writing and performance. Relief that I got my bits recorded. Relief that said bits successfully arrived in Wales. Relief that I did not, in fact, sink Brenda's ship by rambling on incoherently and then making everybody listen to bluegrass.

People have been asking to see the sweater with the Latin inscription worked into it. It's here.

My Former High School

A concerned parent from Honolulu also wanted to know the name of the awful high school I went to. Here's their Web site. My disappointment at learning that the place hasn't been shut down and replaced by condominiums or a Pizza Hut knows no bounds.

I was particularly amused to find the following listed as an aspect of the school's educational mission:

Celebrates the value and dignity of each person and nurtures the development of the whole person.

I guess the faculty are no longer allowed to publicly single out members of the student body who ask questions like "Why are there no female authors on any of our reading lists?" as "stupid fucking faggots."

They've probably also dropped the lesson in biology class where AIDS is explained as God's punishment on men who sleep with men. And the attempts in gym class to find out who was gay so that they could torture the suspects.

(Before anybody starts an anti-Catholic or anti-Catholic school tirade in the comments, don't. I have [extremely] bad memories of this particular school. I don't allow slams at any religion on this blog, and I'll delete them without exception or apology. So hold your fire.)

And Finally

Hot gay cowboys on pretty horses.





See? You forgot all about how I didn't take pictures of the baby shawl, didn't you?

I Used to Knit

I was searching my archives for a particular photograph tonight when I ran across the shots I took during a trip to the English Lake District back in 2002.

I was there for work, believe it or not, acting as The Smiling Face of the University on a tour for alumni. It was a dream assignment, as I'd wanted to see that part of the world almost since birth.

Beatrix Potter (one of the District's two most famous residents, the other being Wordsworth) was the first writer whose name I learned and sought out, and her drawings are undoubtedly one of the reasons that my retirement fantasy includes a stone hearth under a thatched roof in a green valley. I'm not sure how I'm going to get there, or when, but one of these days I'm moving to some part of the UK or another.

My pictures from the trip are a source of frustration to me now. I'd only had my first camera for about three months, and I had no idea how to use it. I saw shots all around, but I couldn't capture them. The most advanced picture I took was a self-portrait at Ruskin's grave in Coniston. The remote-release is hidden in my right hand.



Most of what I got was decidedly in the tourist snapshot class. Such wasted opportunity. Sigh.

If you know the Lake District at all, you know it could just as truthfully be called the Sheep District. Aside from a petting zoo or two, I don't think I'd ever in my life seen a sheep up close and personal. Now, I was surrounded by...millions? At least tens of thousands, surely. I shot about 600 frames during the week, and if you look carefully you can see at least one fluffy, grass-munching poop machine in most of them.

We had a fantastic travel director, a local woman named Janet, who was so deeply in love with her part of England that even the stuffiest members of the group fell under her spell. She was passionate about local farming and husbandry, and so we learned an awful lot about sheep breeding and the sad state of the local wool industry. In this day and age, she told us, the modern demand for Lake District wool was so small that most of the annual clip was burned instead of being sent to market.

I'll give you a minute to recover from that one.



All those sheep, all that wool, and the only evidence of its use that I saw was in a small National Trust Shop not far from the Beatrix Potter Museum. In an effort to find some outlet, any outlet, for local wool, the shop was offering knitted garments made from local fiber and a small selection of yarns spun from same.

I distinctly remember looking at the yarn, and remarking to a fellow tour member that "I used to knit," and then walking out of the shop without buying any yarn.

"I used to knit." I think about that now, and I wonder how I can have said it. How I can have used the past imperfect with such finality. As though the idea of never picking up the needles again could be contemplated with anything other than shuddering horror.

I think there's a line one crosses, a subtle line, on the day one changes from a person who knits into a knitter. It's not quite the same as Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's distinction between knitters and Knitters, because I'm not necessarily thinking of the acquisition of technical prowess. I'm thinking of the difference between a person who thinks knitting is a nice way to spend some time, versus a person who becomes actively disturbed when kept away from his needles.

I'm thinking of the man who looked at those skeins on sale in Hawkshead, dark and lustrous in the light of a watery English September, and walked away because he had no use for them. I wonder what ever happened to him?

Christmas Past: Music

Last night C made dinner at his apartment, and while he was cooking he played Christmas music recorded by an artist named Sufjan Stephens. It’s a toss-up whether you’ve heard of the guy or not. He’s young, alternative, and writes interesting songs with titles that sound like lines from Walt Whitman. His current project is a series of albums commemorating the fifty states, one at a time.

Sufjan's holiday songs were a mix of traditional and original, and when he launched into "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" I started thinking about how important the muscial aspect of Christmas has always been to me.

As with so much else, I get it from my parents. Our stereo was played year-round, but Christmas music (even secular stuff by Bing Crosby) was a specialty only available from December 1 to Epiphany. Having to wait for it made it that much sweeter.

To this day, I cannot bring myself to play an album of carols at any other time of year, and the sound of “Silver Bells” coming over department store muzak in early November makes me cringe.

(In her own blog, my sister wrote that she broke the embargo early this year. I fear for her soul.)

I’ve written repeatedly what a weird child I was, and my taste in Christmas music was no exception. According to David Sedaris in “The Santaland Diaries,” most of the little kids who were asked to name a favorite Christmas song chose “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

Not me. I eagerly awaited Rudolph’s annual animated special on television, but I didn’t like the title song. Too folksy. It pandered to the peanut gallery.

In first grade, preparing for a school Christmas pageant, I got into trouble for refusing to sing it. The music teacher took me aside and admonished me for folding my arms and pursing my lips instead of shouting “Like a lightbulb!” with proper enthusiasm and correct hand gestures. I told her it made me feel silly. She told me it wouldn’t kill me to act like a normal boy for three minutes.

We finally compromised on shouting, with no hand gestures, but only after she threatened to report me to Santa Claus. Bitch.

When allowed to choose my own music, I gravitated to stuff that sent chills up my spine. This generally meant ancient carols, usually in minor keys, sung by choirs. “The Holly and the Ivy,” in other words, instead of “Frosty the Snowman.”

Half the time I didn’t even understand all the words of the songs, I just liked how they sounded, and felt in my mouth when I sang along. I loved lying on the living room rug, on my back, with my eyes closed, head under the Christmas tree, floating away on the music.

The first carol that I can remember listening to ad nauseam was the “Coventry Carol,” which we had in two versions: a choir whose name I don’t know, on one of those gigantic multi-LP collections one used to be able to buy; and John Denver on his Rocky Mountain Christmas album.

Lullay, thou little tiny child,
By, by, lully, lullay.
Lullay, thou little tiny child,
By, by, lully, lullay.

O sisters, too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day,
This poor Youngling for whom we sing,
By, by, lully, lullay.

Nobody I knew in Tucson, Arizona in the early 70s used words like "youngling." Maybe that’s why I liked it. And I remember thinking it sounded like music you would really sing to a baby to put it to sleep, holding it in your arms and swinging it gently back and forth. I sang it to Raggedy Ann. I sang it to my baby sister. Both fell asleep.

I read the liner notes of the albums to try to find out more about it, but there was nothing but a title. I finally decided that it was so old that maybe Mary had actually sung it to Jesus in the stable when the mooing from the cows was keeping him awake.

When I finally realized the last verses were about Herod killing the innocent children, I decided she added that bit later, when they were living in Egypt.

I had no evidence that this was so, but the idea was pretty so for many years I chose to believe it. (And there, in one sentence, you have the story of my life.)

We also had a choral recording of “I saw three ships come sailing in,” which I loved for the melody, and for the lines that always sent chills up my spine:

And all the bells on earth shall ring,
On Christmas Day, On Christmas Day.
And all the bells on earth shall ring,
On Christmas Day in the morning.

You must remember that I was perhaps six years old, and living in mid-1970s America. Christmas, to me, was a universal phenomenon; so I took this line literally. In my own family, Christmastime was so wonderful that I assumed it must be so for everyone. I knew there was poverty, and suffering, and war, but I truly thought that on Christmas Day it all stopped for twenty-four hours. And I was certain that on the morning of that day, bell ringers would go into churches all over the world and ring the bells.

I liked that idea, of everybody being happy together for at least one day.

I still like it, actually. I’m just far less certain of it ever being achieved.

Then peal the bells more loud and deep,
God is not dead, nor does he sleep.
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, goodwill to men.

How I Came to Knit

I've told this story enough times in person at Stitch 'n' Bitch (where it is of course the second most natural conversation starter after "What are you making?") and for no particular reason except having a little time to kill, I'm going to write it down.

I went to a great big ivy-covered university in Cambridge, Massachusetts with which I had a love-hate relationship. The hate part has been worked through. The love part grew out of finding there people for the first time in my life who actually understood me. Not all of them, of course, but enough so that I no longer felt like The Lone Weird Kid.

Contrary to the popular stereotype, we were not all rich (some of us were - not me), nor were we all geniuses (some of us were - certainly not me). If we did differ from rank and file college students, I think it might have been our affinity for what you could call cozy anachronisms.

For example, my house insisted upon throwing two large parties every year - a waltz party in December, and a swing party in May. Both were black tie. Never mind that maybe twelve people arrived on campus as freshmen knowing how to do either type of dance. It was a tradition, it looked pretty, and so we took lessons and made it happen.

For me, Eliza's knitting fell into the same category as the Lowell House Winter Waltz. I wasn't so much interested in the thing itself as in realizing the mental picture I had of myself doing it.

Eliza herself was a living bit of history, the latest twig on a rich New England family tree old as the hills. Older, perhaps, depending upon which hill you mean. She wasn't matronly or dowdy, but with a slight change of hairstyle she'd have looked perfectly at home in a lace collar and black bombazine skirt, sitting for a portrait by John Singleton Copley. She was the first person my age whom I'd ever seen working a pair of knitting needles, an activity that seemed all of a piece with the rest of her.

It wasn't long before bunches of us were pestering Eliza for lessons. I don't know about the others, but for me knitting seemed to be one more step closer to my youthful fantasy of changing from the ethnic, blue collar boy I'd always been into something much better. Like, say, Abigail Adams. It seems incredibly stupid to me now, but my real motive for going to Harvard wasn't to enjoy access to unparalleled learning opportunities. It was to somehow achieve a racial purification that would render me a candidate for the D.A.R.

(A firm grip on reality has never been one of my strong points.)

Eliza arranged for a group outing to the yarn shop nearby. I remember very little about it, except that the salespeople were not overly friendly. I insisted that I was going to make a sweater, and with Eliza's help selected 6 or 8 hanks of pretty blue yarn. Given that the shop was in Cambridge, most likely it was hand-spun from free-range organically-fed sheep on a lesbian collective somewhere in Vermont. I don't know. I just remember that the cost emptied most of my bank account.

And so needlework evenings began, five or six of us sitting around on beds and chairs. I struggled through the beginnings of a scarf, adding to Eliza's patient "this is a knit, this is a purl" instructions with the diagrams in a cheap teach yourself book I acquired somewhere or other.

I kept at it, even after we got tired of the picture of ourselves knitting around the fireplace like the March sisters. In the first few years after college, I particularly enjoyed being able to knit scarves that met MY definition of what a scarf should be - about nine inches wide, and at least eight feet long. I moved on to mittens, and there I stopped - scarves and mittens, scarves and mittens, for about three years.

Then, gradually, I got discouraged. I have always been a timid person, and trips to the yarn shops in Boston were frightening. My favorite place to go for yarn and embroidery supplies was the Women's Educational and Industrial Union. It's one of those places you're not going to find anywhere in America but Boston. Founded by suffragettes, and run by their spiritual daughters. They were (and I believe still are) in their Victorian-era location, which hadn't changed all that much. Embroidery floss, for example, was dispensed from a gigantic, ornate cabinet with hundreds of tiny drawers in it. The air was hushed, the light deliciously cool and still. I truly loved it, and loved the idea that by shopping there, my money would go to a noble cause.

And every time I went in, I was treated like a rapist.

It didn't matter how often I shopped there, how much I tried to smile and make lighthearted chat, how much I pathetically flashed bits of current projects to show that I was not only serious, but somewhat accomplished (none of the female embroiderers made their own patterns, far as I ever saw). They were not having it. I was a freak, and treated as such.

And as for other men to knit with, or women for that matter, forget it. My friends just thought it was odd, and as any knitter reading this will know - nobody care less about your knitting than a non-knitter. And, finally, I wound up spending five years with a partner - the less said of him, the better - who managed to mess with my brain to the point that all my creative projects stopped dead.

When the whole Knitting Craze started, I felt vindicated. See! I told all you morons this was fun!

So here I am again, finally tackling a sweater. And I'm still having bad yarn shop experiences (although in Chicago, this seems to be universal and unisex) but this time, I'm sticking around.

That's my story. What's yours?

Live and In Person

The Cell Block visit was a non-starter - too crowded and too dark to get a decent shot. (Note to self: Don't go out of your way to photograph things you don't like to look at in the first place. Diane Arbus you are not.)

Sunday was better, though. I got a message early from Leif from the Lakeview Stitch 'n' Bitch, reminding me that Debbie Stoller (aka the Mother - or maybe I ought to say Slightly Older But Still Extremely Young-Looking Sister of Us All) was doing an appearance at Arcadia Knitting and asking if I wanted to go.

Oh, mais oui.

As a rule I'm not a Personal Appearance guy. Prior to this, I once waited in a short line to meet Julia Child, God rest her soul, but that's it. I usually prefer to keep a safe distance between myself and famous people whose work I've enjoyed.

My 40 seconds with Mrs. Child (the memory of which I'm sure she treasured) were lovely. I was starstruck, she was cordial, and she spelled my name correctly in my copy of The Way to Cook.

Aside from that, my only other brush with celebrity was less happy. I once encountered Aretha Franklin during her pit-stop at New England Conservatory, where I spent seven miserable years after college. Aretha dropped by for about 10 minutes to snag an Honorary Doctorate, and my department - the Public Relations team - had to deal with her and her staff of approximately 11,000 very entitled agents, publicists, secretaries, bodyguards, sisters, cousins, and aunts.

In comparison, Queen Elizabeth II and the Pope are a pair of traveling gypsies.

Now, I have always liked Aretha's music. One of the greats of all time, no argument. Unfortunately, I have trouble listening to her now without remembering how, after months of working to meet her incredible list of demands, she was rude to the NEC staff, aloof from the other degree recipients, and sat through the ceremony looking like she was awaiting gum surgery. Queen of Soul, yes. But also a Royal Pain in the Ass.

Now, where was I. Debbie Stoller. Yes. Remember Debbie? This is an entry about Debbie.

Leif and I got to Arcadia pretty early and there was already quite a little crowd there. Nice for the shop, as they've just moved to a new, larger location and this encouraged everyone to scope it out. We got low numbers for the book signing afterwards - mine was 13, which is by coincidence (and I'm not kidding) a lucky number for me.

I was hoping she would talk some about how she came to knitting, and she did. Her story about learning from the example of her late grandmother, her mother, and her female relatives is told in her first book and could stand alone as a fine piece of memoir writing (pretty unusual for a craft book) and it was just as touching hearing it told in her own voice.

She had arrived via Amtrak (poor thing) and had every right to be haggard, aloof, exhausted, brief. However, if she was feeling less than 100%, she didn't let on. Instead, she was just what I'd hoped - as articulate as one would expect the publisher of BUST to be, and as charming as one would expect of the woman who helped to bring back the knitting circle.

Leif and I weren't the only guys there, but as usual we seemed to be the only guy knitters (the other fellows being attached to girlfriends or wives). I had a short chat with one of the owners of Arcadia - I should have remembered to ask her name - telling her how grateful I was that on my first visit the previous week, they had been so cheerful and helpful. Unlike the hateful woman at The Nasty Little Yarn Shop in downtown Evanston, who seemed to think I was going to mug her, or steal a big pile of Lamb's Pride and a pair of US10s at gunpoint. Ms. Arcadia was suitably sympathetic to my tale of woe, and so now I like her store even more.

Debbie did all the right stuff, just like Julia. I mentioned that Chris had been a BUST subscriber and she seemed happy (I may be imagining it) to have somebody comment on something other than her knitting. She spelled my name right. She was cordial, she was smart, she was funny. Well done!

(So if you're reading this, Debbie, thank you. I hope you didn't mind the lousy Chicago weather too much. And since we're such great friends now, may I call you with questions about intarsia?)