I've Got It Covered

I am covered in glitter, I am covered in glue. Chalk dust, eraser dust, snippets of thread.
I am covered in flour and sticky and sweet.
I am covered in yarn and in paper.
I have got out my power drill, my sewing machine, my KitchenAid army.
I am covered in ink and paper cuts. I am covered in bits of notes of things I want to do, say, remember.
I am covered in cinnamon.
I am covered in cherry red pleather.
I am covered in silk, in bamboo, in wool.
I have hooks, I have needles, I have bobbins and sharp, sharp scissors - don't touch!
(And don't you dare use them for paper.)

Each stitch is a poem, every seam a sonnet, I write love letters with every detail.
I sit or I stand and I work on this thing -  just so - and I think of you.

I have not held your hand in sixteen years. Here are some gloves made of wool and remembrance and love.

You have moved to a new place, so cheerfully and like a pioneer - strong, resourceful, adventuresome. Here are some tastes from home to remind you that you are loved so much and sweet and savory and naughty and decadent and good for the soul.

You have wept inwardly over many things this year, but you always look out your windows skyward and see the beauty. Here is this teacup turned into a buffet for birds, so they can come and dine on fine china and sing to you of how much I love you.

You have given warmth and home and comfort to so many people, and I've taken more than my share from you. Here is this blanket, the color of claret - thick and rich - and I've made cables running up it like the sweaters you love because you asked me to even though you were humble about it and because I would make the whole world with my two hands and give it to you if I could.

You have transformed, worked hard, burst free. Here is a bounty of blessings in return: silk scarf in peacock blue with a new hat to match because you and I always cut off all of our hair at the same time - unknowingly, unwittingly - and are in dire straits for new hats. I made them with jaunt and with silk and with bows and they startle with their softness like falling water, each motif in the scarf is a secret prayer of thanksgiving for you.

You have grown up somehow, while I have stayed the same. You were a toddler, a child, and now so far away, you have the beginnings of woman about you. Here is this bag I have fashioned you of brocade silk and found, vintage cotton - the silk is a reminder of the home your mother and I shared as young-as-you people, the strength of friendship, the bonds of the family we make with our love. The vintage cotton is your reminder that even things that are old - unspeakably old! - like me (and your mother) are beautiful and sassy and it all depends on the context, young lady.

And for you and you and you and you, I send some sweetness: some is the kind that you can eat, some is the kind that flows from permanent markers gripped tightly in small hands, and some is the kind that you can frame and hang up on a wall. I have no words but thank you for the sweetness that you bring in stringing the garlands of sparkle and twinkle that connect my family to you.

And for you, gentle readers, I haven't spared much time. For that, I apologize again and again.
Here is my post, I've carefully crafted it for you. I want it to tell you the meaning behind the actions. The import behind the absence. I become ridiculous and stutter with my fingers when I think of ways to thank you for reading and thinking and indulging me so. You are all blessings and I would knit you all mittens if I could.


I am covered in glitter, I am covered in glue.
I am covered in love and in forgiveness, in connection, in transcendent joy.

Because

It's a bit of madness, creativity is. It's the kind of thing that makes you spend 3 hours on a rainy Friday afternoon trying to knit with foodstuffs for the pure enjoyment of it. You catch yourself ramming your head against a problem repeatedly, clock ticking, heart beating a little faster, fingers dripping with olive oil and reeking of onions - and enjoying it. For what? For nothing, really. And for everything. For taking your ideas and making them live, for seeing if it can be done, for trying something you've never done before, for using the element of us that is divine - the ability to create.

Somewhere along the line, some people learn to say I'm not creative because their own breed of creativity doesn't match what they see as the "right" kind, or because someone told them that, or because they tried something once and failed, or because, because, because... Sometimes I think it's because the madness is frightening. Because you do end up spending the afternoon with skewers, chopsticks, knitting needles and mutilated vegetables and the all-important question of life and death becomes "How can I weave in the ends of this spaghetti without breaking it?" And then because sometimes you discover after all of your effort, you can't. Not today, not with the materials you have, and you chuck it in the compost and go back to that first square and start again.

For what? For itself. That's what. But it's a bit of madness. It's irresponsible, it's unproductive, it's unprofitable, it's impractical. This bit of madness has changed the face of civilization repeatedly for millennia. Because somebody looked at the mold on bread and wondered about its properties, we can treat illnesses that used to kill. Because someone wondered if they could fly and crashed and crashed and crashed and then flew. Because somebody wondered why apples fall from trees, we now have vehicles that go into space. Because.

I'm not a Fleming, or a Wright, or a Newton. My dressing up a fish hasn't changed the face of civilization. I will likely pass into oblivion when I go, not to be studied by school children who would dress up in overlarge jeans with holes and muss up their hair so as to impersonate me on "biography day" at school. But I would argue for the civilizing effects of dressing up a fish.

 Because I met so many new people this week that I would not have otherwise: fishermen, shop keepers, artists, authors, actors, impersonators. I wandered parts of my city that I usually overlook. Because I spent a lovely afternoon with my daughter and my friend, basking in this small segment of our community who come together once a year out of a love of books and and food. Because I discovered that leeks knit better than green onions. A sole is related to a halibut. Cilantro doesn't knit at all. Crochet with noodles is easier than knitting. Because I gave away my sole to a strange man in impossible cowboy boots. Because I get to end my day with the reinforcement of faith that people are basically nice and strange and encouraging and unique and creative and I am part of that. You are part of that. Because.

Just because. "Knitted Comforts for the Sole"

Falling Back

I'm a bit chronologically challenged. My internal clock just doesn't tick at a steady beat. Time expands and contracts around me in relation to what I'm doing. For example: I have fifteen minutes to walk out the door. Plenty of time to get my keys, put my shoes on and get out. But then, as I'm stepping out the door, a quick glance at my pocket watch (a.k.a. my phone) confirms that I am, in fact 10 minutes late. What happened? Did I just black out for some indeterminate stretch of time? Did I slip through some sort of mini wormhole that speeds up time in 5 minute increments? I don't know. I can't even blame my kids for this. Granted, the whole getting out the door thing is exponentially complicated when you have 6 shoes to locate and put on, but I do this even by myself. But then earlier this week I went to a preschool Halloween party that was at least 6 hours long, except that the clock said it was only an hour and a half. No way in the world.

Blame this guy.
G.V. Hudson, inventor of modern DST

So it should be no surprise that daylight savings time always weirds me out. How can you just change time like that?! Even more mystifying are the certain states that just simply choose not to do it. (Or, in the case of Indiana, only part of the state does it, but I digress.) Compounding my little circadian rhythm problem, I willfully ignore almost all "news". I don't read news websites, I don't watch news on TV, I rarely read anything in the newspaper except for restaurant reviews. (I have some polka-dotted reasons for all of this, but again, I digress.) So, "Fall Back" is known in our household as "The Weekend We Are An Hour Early For Church" and "Spring Ahead" is known as "The Weekend We Suddenly Realize We Are Going To Be An Hour Late For Church, Should We Just Go For Doughnuts Instead".

But aha! I caught it this year. I don't remember how I caught it, but I did. So today I have what every busy person on the face of this planet wishes for: an extra hour in the day. Wouldn't we all be so much more productive if we just had that extra hour? I would be a better housekeeper, I would finish all the projects I've started, I would write the next great American novel, I would work out, I would give myself a pedicure, iron shirts, get my PhD. We all spend so much time running from this to that and back again. There are 27 fires that must be put out rightnoworelse. It seems the more time we spend organizing and scheduling, the more we have to do. I read countless articles about "penciling in" free time, or down time, or time with your kids, or me time. The very premise of that is a ridiculous notion if you think about it very long, but sadly, in a lot of our lives it's necessary. So we all long for that elusive extra hour. That golden Neverland where things get finished and our hair looks good. Well, today's the day, folks. By some calculus of agrarian time math, we get an extra hour. What will you do with yours?

What am I doing with this extra hour in my day? Well, pretty much what I would do on any typical Saturday night: write a blog post, eat some Cheetos, work on a knitting project, hang out with the Chief Lou, and listen to my monkeys snore. It's a crazy, madcap life I live.

Earning My Stripes

The other day at the park, there were a group of mothers with toddlers who looked to be about 15-18 months. That wonderfully dangerous age where they are suddenly mobile, but lack the sense to know exactly how to use this new-found freedom. While I was sitting on a bench, knitting a Sounders scarf for my husband and keeping my third eye on my monkeys, the toddler-moms were trying to have a conversation with each other about baby food making and the best walking shoes in between smelling bottoms, hovering near the end of the slide, and snatching wobbly little legs from the edges of things.

I caught a few sidelong glances from the moms and double checked that my own little playground monkeys were being careful around the wee ones. No problems there today. I figured I'd imagined the glances and went back to knitting. A few minutes later, as one of the moms scooped about a half a pound of sand out of her son's mouth for about the 67th time, she turned to me and said "When do we get to knit?!"

I remember all too well the hovercraft days. My wee hooligan ate so much dirt as a toddler, the doctor wanted him tested for Pica (turns out he was just suffering from an acute case of being two.) My J-Bird was born independent and out-going and would toddle off to chat with whomever was around, no matter where we went; often inviting them to our house or giving them our phone number that she had so proudly memorized. I remember not being able to finish a sentence before having to sprint over and catch one or the other of them standing at the top of the big slide, leaning their out-sized heads out over the void. One trip to the pumpkin patch a few years ago, while I was helping Jane struggle with the pumpkin cutting shears taller than she was, I heard the sweetest little voice behind me say softly: "Deee-wicious!" I turned just in time to see Joe taking a huge bite of the dirt clod he was holding. IT WAS AN ORGANIC PUMPKIN FARM! Do you know what they use to fertilize their fields?!

I remember viciously envying the moms with clean hair and jeans that fit. I remember fashioning a diaper out of public restroom paper towels.  I remember how giant and wild and solid and careening the 4-year-olds at the park looked compared to my little bowlegged adventurers. I remember unceremoniously scooping up squirming masses of legs and elbows and hoofing it out of Dodge before all three of us burst into tears of exhaustion and frustration.

And suddenly, I realized I was remembering this stuff. These things were no longer a part of my day to day existence. I have no idea now what baby food mills are the best on the market or what shoes are good for early walkers, but there was a time in the not-so-distant past when those very things occupied a great deal of my mental energy and precious free time. My monkeys and I have moved on to new preoccupations now that will eventually become irrelevant as well.

There are days that seem like they are 107 years long. Some nights, even longer. There are moments when you think you might just lie down in the sand box and kick and scream along with them. And there are definitely times when you think you will subsist the rest of your life on discarded Goldfish crackers, crusts of rejected sandwiches and 16 gallons of coffee a day; that the rest of your life you are destined to make small talk about bodily functions; that you will never again be witty or intelligent because perhaps half your brain cells exited through your birth canal. But suddenly one day, you're sitting at the park with freshly washed hair, knitting a scarf while your monkeys play nicely on their own two legs and sipping a cup of coffee for its flavor instead of gulping it for its restorative properties and taking a moment to enjoy the sunshine and the scenery.

 I'm nowhere near done parenting yet. Not even halfway. I could strangle every person who says "Oh, they grow up so fast!". But this sudden bit of perspective, provided in the plaintive question from a frazzled mom - "When do we get to knit?!"- reminded me that nothing is forever, even when it feels like it might be. We just keep trudging, skipping, catching, playing, changing, wiping, yawning, crying, laughing through these days, one after another until suddenly we find ourselves on the other side of something.

That day at the park, I changed colors on the stripes I was knitting, tried my very hardest not to look smug, and smiled as I told her "Sooner than you think."

Congratulations on your bundle of freak

Some good friends of ours are due with their third child in September. They're one of those maddening couples who refuse to find out the gender of the baby before it's born, making it very hard on the potential gift-givers in their lives. 

I am so proud of myself, though. I started knitting a darling little sweater out of a scrumptous rust colored yarn: a little cardigan with Peter Pan collars and I'll finish it with some Noah's Ark buttons I found. It will be done in plenty of time for the baby's arrival and it will be the perfect weight for unpredictable September. Except...

I knit while I watch TV because, as one of my friends says, it's just mindless enough that it keeps you busy but you don't have to pay very close attention to it. Except for when you do. I was feeling like such a domestic goddess and good friend as I whipped up this little creation the other night. It just flew off my needles and I picked up those stitches so evenly for the glorious little Peter Pan collar which laid down just right. On one of the armholes. 

So now I'm confronted with the two choices that all knitters eventually face: I can either pull all that mess out and start over, or I can secretly hope that their baby is born looking like this: