Where the Mind Goes

I was sitting on my deck yesterday, plugging along at my pretty little capelet below and became suddenly conscious of how my mind was drifting away.....tipping out of the room of my current consciousness (chitter-chatter between the kids, playful screams from the kids across the way, the dog scurrying around, etc, etc -- you know the drill) and into random thoughts of this and that. My mind was making a million little mental notes but not in a stressful kind of way. It was just a tender friendliness to remember to do this or mail that or call this person or another. And I thought about how much I love knitting for just this reason. I like sitting there, productive the whole time but drifting into and out of my thoughts. I like sitting down for just a moment to be with my thoughts like that. And I like the way the thoughts come to me .... not like those morning, turn off the alarm and jump out of bed kind of thoughts .... but more of a.....oh, I don't know.....a different consciousness of some kind. Just gentle. And while I'm nowhere near the skill level that my sisterfriends are on these blogs that I jump to .... I feel happy for how far I have come. I thought I'd forever be stuck on knitting five foot scarves.

Anyhow, thanks to Necia and Josiane and Nakachi and Mary-Heather for coming to the rescue this weekend for much needed pattern interpretation help. I'm still such a newbie .... still in a state of panic when I don't understand the directions.
I suppose I'll get past that sooner or later and the language won't feel so foreign.

Hope your weekend's been a good one.

Peace,
A.

The Obvious Questions

....So the obvious questions after so much time has passed are: how are you? and how've you been? and what have you been up to? and, of course.....what have you been knitting?

And the answers are: fine, well, a whole lot and nothing at all.

I'm well. Doing really, really well since spring has kicked in. In truth, the feeling I get from the first show of buds on a tree or the parade of crocuses from the ground, simply can't compare to the finest written poem or even the softest cashmere yarn. When spring comes I feel alive in a way that I don't at any other time of the year. I'm often anxious to begin my garden, clear away winter's cover so that the Earth can bare Her beautiful soul. I'm like a mad woman at the garden shops, buying more perrenials than any sane person should. I can spend a whole day in my garden without ever tiring, anxious to watch Life take root and bloom into something beautiful. We've had a wonderful spring here...the temperatures no more than 70-75, most mornings filled with a crisp, cool freshness and afternoons full of blue skies and white clouds that look like soft, fluffy lambs. So far I've planted verbascum, coneflowers, blue chip campanulas, pin cushion flowers and stella d'oro daylillies. A friend who's moving gave me the most beautiful purple columbine from her garden and I've planted that too. I've got some sweet basil, oregano, and chives going in pots and big boy tomatoes waiting in the wings.

I've been living my life, too. The life of a mother who writes poetry and stories and essays and novels while her children are in school; a mother who works as a nurse when her children are sound asleep; a mother who volunteers to read to the children in kindergarten and first grade one morning a week; a mother who travels to college campuses to talk about the world water crisis; a mother who packs lunches, signs field trip notices, checks homework, helps study, shuffles children to band practice and stroke clinics at the pool; a mother who's trying her best to have it all....not all at once, but all....so that somehow, in the end, it all adds up to one beautiful life.

And the determination to have it all is not easy. There is an ebb and flow to life that warrants holding on at times, and at times letting go. I had to set the knitting aside for a little while because there was simply too much going on. But creativity has a way of finding its release somehow and some way and before I knew it I was making these:



lovely little stitchmarkers:



from beads that were just irresistable and begging to be made into something beautiful,



and as I held them in my hands I remembered how much I missed my bamboo needles; how much I wanted to feel the excitement of casting on a new project. I remembered the feeling of opening up a new skein of yarn:




and watching it slowly take root, take shape, take form into something beautiful. And so last night, as I watched my daughter and her band class perform their first fourth grade spring recital, I opened up my purse....pulled out my size ten circulars....released a foot of Soft Pink Estelle:



and casted on:



knowing that soon this little seed of yarn will grow into something beautiful:

.

Thank you, to Mary-Heather at RainyDay for both a beautiful photo and pattern.