WolfWeave

Aside from family and friends—whose worth cannot be measured—and good health all around, at this time of year there are also presents, and I received my share for Hanukkah, even if I did have to buy a few of them for myself! There were some books, including this intriguing one:

There was the Babylock Embellisher felting machine (with 7 felting needles) which I really wanted but haven’t even had time to take out of the box! It can make roving into sheets of felt without water by dry needlefelting or can attach roving/yarn/fabric to decorate other fabrics. I want to explore what they are calling “nuvofelt,” which is this dry felting form of nunofelt. Okay, okay, I’ll take it out of the box!:

At a local craft show I bought this lovely blue porcelain jar. I haven’t figured out what to keep in it but it made me feel happy just to look at it:

At the same show I bought an unusual ceramic bowl hand thrown by my childhood friend Vicki. I’d love to see it filled with bright red apples, set the contrast of red against the teal blue:

My most unusual gift was a surprise handmade by my husband…a personalized calendar made in iPhoto. In order to do it, he had to surreptitiously steal all my calendar and photos one day while I was in the bathroom and upload them to one of those tiny portable drives. He then spent the entire afternoon creating the calendar, which features different photos of my family on each page and has all my own personal dates on the calendar. Pretty amazing! That’s a photo of us in front of The Bean (Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate sculpture at Chicago’s Millenium Park) last summer:

Then, finally, another surprise, I got a new iMac, one that is faster, larger, and has the videocamera built in so I can video-conference with my sons when they are off traveling or at college:

All in all, a pretty good haul, wouldn’t you agree? I am so thankful for everyone’s thoughtfulness and caring! (Sorry about the poor quality of the photos but it is nighttime so I had to use the flash on my camera.)

Poor knitting…lying neglected on the bookcase shelves, (while boxes of new yarn inexplicably pile up in the closet—hmmm!). You may have noticed that I have yet to take photos of my Noro vest or of the aborted pair of RPM socks from Knitty I started from Socks that Rock yarn and splintering Crystal Palace dpn’s during jury duty. Okay, here’s the photos:

Back of Noro vest from booklet 19:

And beginning ribbing of aborted socks with lovely ball of Socks that Rock:

Could it be that we have had a whole month of disgusting grey weather to contend with? Nearly, and enough rain to flood part of our basement—not just with water but with silt (guess we’ll have to get that wall sealed, or whatever it is that you do to old walls). On the other hand, it hasn’t been cold enough to snow…yet. And then there’s been illness, and doctor’s appointments and the funeral, etc.

And I’ve been busily organizing my craft room and closet, in some perverted form of nesting instinct. Though I put it off as long as possible, I do like to get everything all organized and I like my life better when I can find what I’m looking for—but where are those elves who come in at night and do the job for you? (Remember that fairy tale? I think I read too many fairy tales as a child; one summer when I was 9 or 10 I read my way through the entire bookcase of fairy tale books at the local library—and it was a tall bookcase with shelves much higher than I could reach.)

But the greatest excuse of all is that I (and all of Bead Group) have been possessed by the Viking Knit and have been totally obsessed with making silver Viking Knit bracelets and necklaces. So, in my free (ha!) time, I have been carefully weaving (it isn’t really knitting) silver so that tomorrow next week we can pull our Viking Knit through holes in the drawplates to make it smaller and tighter and then darken it with smelly liver of sulfur to make the weave stand out. And then we are going to learn to put on end caps or cones and attach clasps. Here is what the wire looks like when it’s first woven:

Honest, when it’s finished, it will look like something resembling jewelry! It’s a good thing that there are so many talented wireworkers in our group, because when they first started to learn this wireworking stuff a few years back after classes with Lynne Merchant, I said, “No, no—not me! I refuse to learn something completely new and different that might be hard on my hands. I’m not paying attention at all.” Of course, NOW, I wish I’d started learning all this wire stuff back then! NOW I’m interested and want to make all sorts of jewelry, especially earrings and necklaces to hold the many artist hand-blown glass beads I’ve acquired over the years. NOW I have to catch up!!

The art vs. craft debate goes on endlessly but one of the best quotes I’ve heard about it (lately), I’ve just borrowed off Dale Rollerson’s blog. (Dale and her husband Ian own the wonderful Australian store The Thread Studio.):

“Craft is where you take the parameters and work within them. Art is where the medium is stretched to breaking point and emotion is conjured up.”

The quote is from Malcom Harrison, 2006, a New Zealand textile artist who lives on Waiheke Island. Dale thinks it says a lot and I agree.

Maybe it’s time to move beyond the parameters…to move out there beyond the patterns, even beyond the comfort of freeform…to the point where what you’re working with, what you’re doing is a little uncomfortable, where you’re a little unsure of yourself, a little afraid of what you might create, of where your creation might lead. I have gone to that place before and the resultant feeling is indescribable and what I’ve created is unlike anything I do on a daily basis. But it’s a constant uncomfortable push and one falls back too easily into the comfort of just doing the easy work—knitting the sweater from a pattern, beading the necklace from a kit, etc. Yet, as often as possible, if we want to lay claim to calling ourselves “artist” in any fashion, we need to give that extra push and reach out for the heavens, no matter how scary it is out there away from earth where we’re ungrounded and unsure of what we’re doing. Yet that reaching for the unknown, that striving to create or discover something that no one has created or discovered before, is what life is all about. I think if Janice’s death has meaning for me, it is this—don’t be afraid to push yourself to try new things; don’t wait to do it. Time is too precious.

Our dear friend, Janice Miller, lost her battle with lymphatic leukemia this afternoon. A member of our original bead group, (see our photo in Bead & Button #10, August 1995), Janice was often the glue that held our group together. Whenever some of us were away on vacations or business trips or working, Janice would still urge the remaining beaders to get together every Thursday to keep the group going; she never let the group falter for long—our friendship meant too much to her and I’m sure she knew how much her friendship meant to us. The memories I will most cherish are the ways in which she brightened our weeks with her companionship, her insatiable curiosity to learn every new craft, her sharing and compassion, her witty and poignant stories, and her incomparable baked goods. Janice, we will miss you terribly, but there will always be a place at the table for you.

No, really…jury duty. You don’t even want to know. Mind-numbing doesn’t even begin to describe how slowly the days passed. And at least I had something (knitting) to do. At least I was one of the few out of the 250 people in the jury assembly room who were NOT talking on their cell phones the entire day. I finally had to plug in my iPod for a little peace and quiet. Seriously, don’t people know how to entertain themselves without talking on the phone? Don’t people know how to read books? Anyway, I was only summoned once the entire time for a jury call and that was a positively stultifying experience. In the courtroom during jury selection, you weren’t even allowed to read. You just had to sit quietly and listen to the judge and the attorneys ask each potential juror about a million invasive questions concerning their personal lives, relatives, habits, etc. And then, after subtly insulting them in every way imaginable, asking them if they thought they could be a fair and impartial juror in the case. Seriously! It’s no wonder we get some of the verdicts we do. After hearing way more than I wanted to know about the backgrounds of some of these jurors, I can only hope I never have to come to trial myself! It was 2 hours before they even got around to me (one of the original 12) and by that time even the judge looked tired and had stopped asking so many questions. I, however, was excused, as certain facts in my background made it impossible for me to be impartial in the case (I could have told them that the minute I walked in the room). Back to the jury pool.

After the fiasco with the misfit 10.5 Bryspun needles, I gave up on knitting my vest at jury duty and instead decided to start knitting this pair of socks. Never mind that the last time I knit a sock was well over a year ago and I had only knit 3 single socks back then and never one this fine. I had my skein of Socks that Rock all wound into a ball; I had the book “Sensational Knitted Socks” by Charlene Schurch with me; I had my size 2 dpns all ready (of course the pattern called for 2 circulars, SIZE 1.5!, but we’ll ignore that for the moment; I certainly did) — I was set. I cast on with size 3 dpns, switched down to size 2, ignoring the rather sizeable lump where I joined the circle (I had tried to remember something I’d read about casting on one extra stitch and then slipping it over after joining for a smooth transition?). I proceeded to knit; 2 of my 5 dpns (Crystal Palace) proceeded to splinter on the ends quite badly and, of course, I had no sandpaper with me. I cursed and attacked them with my nail file, my fingernails, and some waxed paper. They still snagged the yarn but I continued. Somewhere along the way I dropped a stitch (later I noticed it was back in the 2nd round). Well, I got about halfway through the ribbing before we were dismissed for the day and all I can say is that it did keep me busy. Later, at home, I noticed my mistake about needle size and swore never to use Crystal Palace dpns again, ever. I’d like to try metal ones, Inox especially, but they don’t come in 1.5 except in 8″ long (which is a little too long). Anyway, I think I’ll sit down when I have a chance with Cat Bordi’s “Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles” and learn how to do it this way, as that is how this pattern is written. And then I’ll try metal dpn’s with other sock patterns. I want to get to the point (near the point?) that the Yarn Harlot is at, where I can just sit down and whip out a sock in a few days (okay, stop laughing!). Next, I’d like to try Grumperina’s Jaywalker socks too.

But jury duty is over and real life is back in full force. Time to finish up that vest. Time to take some photos to save you all from these boring blocks of text. Time to go to sleep!

Jury duty this week—mind-numbing and I’m too tired to post. Except for this: My son in an article on the front page of the Business Section of the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle. Aaron leads off the article and then there is more about him at the end. The mom smiles.

The mom knits too–finished that winter scarf (just in time as last Friday brought snow and freezing temps). Finished the back of the Noro vest and got a good start on the front today during the endless waiting that is jury duty, hampered only by the necessity of leaving my metal needles at home (metal detectors in the courthouse) and going back to the Bryspun, against which the Silk Mountain goes squeek, squeek, squeek but moves very slowly along. And even that was going all right until just this moment when I noticed (though there was a niggling in the back of my mind all day that the fabric just didn’t look quite right) that, for some unknown reason, the size 10.5 Bryspuns don’t fit through the 10.5 hole on any of the measuring gauges, thus making them larger than the 10.5 KnitPicks Options needles with which I knit the back of the sweater. Oh crud, as they say. Quick—I need another knitting project for tomorrow morning!!