today i saw this.
the contrast and the dimensional way the black, grey and white popped
against the rich blue really stuck with me.
when i tried to say how excited i was about it
it came to light that most of the people
around me saw this, and wondered what i was going on about.
today, that’s making fluid conversation sort of difficult.
sigh.
today, the knitting mocks me.
i can reach out and touch it, but the
actual knitting of it is shoved back hour by hour
because i am nearly buried under a mountain of forms.
camp physicals and permission slips and end of the year teacher notes,
state renewals and tax forms and more camp applications.
never have i felt quite so strongly as i do today
that what i need most as a mother of 4
and a self-employed designer
is a good secretary.
for the record,
my experience and job skills,
would not qualify me for the job. ha.
and irregardless pages that remain undone, the knitting hour is almost upon us.
truth is, the paperwork will be just as important tomorrow
as it feels right now. also, if i have to fill out one more ’emergency contact’
section before i get a good night’s sleep
the good secretaries at the camps
are likely to scratch their heads a bit when
they read that my kids have ‘people’ like mickey mouse,
batman and wonder woman for emergency contacts.
where, by the way, is wonder woman these days?
i sure could use her help…
‘tomorrow’ taken from 3:28 of proverbs.
(this is an ongoing series of posts chronicling
the process of my yet to be released collaboration with classic elite yarns.
to search, all post titles will include ‘cey & i:‘ and be tagged with ‘artistic differences‘.)
my 8 yr old has a lengthy list
of the things he wants to be when he grows up.
included are: author, famous scientist, doctor, inventor, and detective.
imo, he could honestly be any one of them.
his head just works along those lines.
this week at the dentist
he needed novacaine for the very first time.
i put on a brave face,
i asked the neighbors to pray and then
i tried to talk a positive spin onto it.
i said things like, ‘the pinch of the needle doesn’t last long…’,
but i was concerned that the whole numbness thing would freak him out.
because it always freaks me a bit.
i really should have known better.
he was, quite honestly,
thrilled.
he came home after telling us all how great it was,
‘poke my face here. it’ll be so cool. i won’t feel it’,
‘when can i get novacaine again?’,
‘watch this. i’m drinking cold water, but it feels warm in the numb side of my mouth’,
‘please get a picture of me smiling, because only half my face is doing what i tell it to’.
leave it to my boy to be the only kid i’ve ever known
(and i’ve known quite a few)
who wants a shot in his mouth at the dentist.
his fascination knows no bounds.
truly.
‘bounds’ taken from 7:4 of second corinthians.
this is not the picture
that my daughter was making last night.
she carefully imagined and cut out white paper shapes
(an oval, a square, a group of parallelograms and various rhombi).
she then proceeded to color each one a solid shade.
they looked nothing like this picture.
can you guess how this piece was part of that process?
no? this was the piece of paper she put under the shapes as she colored
to make sure no paint got on the kitchen island.
i watched her pass out her shapes
early this morning.
one for the van driver that takes her brother to pre-k.
one for her own bus driver.
one for the little boy who rides bikes in our driveway
on warm, sunny afternoons.
she about burst with the sheer joy of having something to give.
i almost cried watching her.
then, after she’d left,
i salvaged this page from the recycle pile,
because it was my favorite all along.
i guess i’m not only a ‘process knitter’,
seems i’m also more into
other processes
(like her one specific night of painting and her deep
concentration at covering all the blank white on each shape).
results are great. i get that.
still, getting there remains more than half the fun for me.
the back porch step asked me sit a spell and knit on it. seriously, it did. so i obliged.
i have this swatch.
it looks very simple,
but i knit it almost two years ago
and i have absolutely no idea what the stitches are.
i’ve stared at it until my eyes get blurry.
i’ve written down every possible stitch combo that i can think of.
at this point i’ve reknit them all and nothing comes close.
now, it’s an easy stitch pattern. i know that it is.
the result is a very simple textural-ness
that really appeals to me.
fed up, i’d almost
decided to throw the little swatch away
as seeing it everyday on my bulletin board
and not being able to conquer it was really dragging me down.
then yesterday morning,
i took a little ride with my friend wendy.
we talked about everything (like we always do)
and i finally got round to a little vent about the ‘swatch with no name’.
without missing a beat, she (focused on driving at the time) said,
“can’t you just undo the bind off and gently pull the stitches out
to see what they were in the first place?”
can’t i just undo…?
hey, why didn’t i think of that?!?
it took me all of five minutes this afternoon to unbind
a few rows and figure out the stitches that have been so eluding me for weeks.
thanks, wendy,
for letting me consistently
bum rides to in the loop sit ‘n’ knits
and especially this week, thank you for seeing through my confusion
to the straightforward answer
that has been right in front of me all along.
‘name’ taken from 1:3 of song of songs.
(this is an ongoing series of posts chronicling
the process of my yet to be released collaboration with classic elite yarns.
to search, all post titles will include ‘cey & i:‘ and be tagged with ‘artistic differences‘.)
spent the day
with my four year old
literally ‘looking up’, straining our necks to see
the 5 men on the rood making all the strange, but fascinating sounds
that we are surrounded by today.
they are tidying up now
and as i start looking more horizontally again
i am shocked to see that just a day’s worth of hours
filled with ‘looking up’ have given me a new perspective
on some of the things in front of me each day.
this seems to be becoming a theme for me lately,
the idea of looking at something in a new way. hmmm.
here’s to wherever it may lead…
as i took
this photo, this morning
it felt eerily familiar, like i’d seen it before.
only more than that, like i’d lived it before.
didn’t take long for the rest of the memory to hit me.
i was about the same age
that my middle daughter is now,
when warm weather holidays meant
decorated bikes and a parade full of neighborhood kids.
obviously my banana seat was better.
nothing that bike makers have come up with since has topped those.
but, the joy of the celebrating remains the same.
to all who have served their countries,
in big ways and small,
may our gratitude feel as good to you today as
brightly colored streamers flapping in the wind
and warm sun on your face.
‘gratitude’ taken from 24:2-3 of acts.
is this modern art,
addressing the consequences of industrialism
in a society fueled by its heated desire for ‘the next big thing’?
or is it a cautionary tale
about storing small appliances (say a family-sized crockpot)
in the ‘seemed a good idea at the time’ kitchen oven?
it is now both.
‘heated’ taken from 3:19-20 of daniel.