The One Good Thing about Saturday

On the way to our friends' house before E. got hurt, we had to stop by Shuttles, Spindles and Skeins in Boulder for Irina. She annoyingly didn't have enough yarn to finish the scarves she's knitting for herself and her parents. As the book G. got out of the library, Tibetan Tales for Little Buddhas reminds, though, "Who knows what's good fortune or bad?" because the rest of us were certainly lucky! The store was hosting an outside fiber arts demonstration. G. and E. immediately fell in love with the inkle looms and are excited to receive in the mail the bookmarks they wove. I watched a woman make some incredibly tiny, intricate lace with her bobbins. AND best of all for me, at my request one of the spinners fetched a couple drop spindles and roving, pulled up two chairs, and proceeded to teach me - finally! - to spin. I think I've actually got it. My yarn is still a bit lumpy in places and generally uneven, but no more so than lots of the "professional" yarn I buy (like the beautiful, jewel-toned Manos del Uruguay). And it saved us the 35 bucks I'd been planning to invest in the class! (Of course, the kids are now begging for $70 looms for Christmas...)

Knitting Dedication

My friend moxiegirl has this trick when she's knitting a pair of something. She mixes up the colors. I totally understand this. It's such a drag to start a second identical sock when you've just finished the first; it's like "been there, done that, pleeease give me something new". However, I often, for one reason or another, really want the colors to be identically placed. Normally, I just engage my Scorpio-Leo willpower and muscle through it. But yesterday, while reading an interview with bodybuilder Shawn Phillips in "What is Enlightenment?" magazine, I had a new inspiration. Dedication!

Substitute "knitting" for "training" in SP's following words: "This includes dedicating the training to something or someone else to bring in some force. For example, right now my father is very ill, and I'll use that as a dedication. You can only push yourself so hard for your own good. But if you put it in a context of greater good for the world, or for someone else, it's a different story. You can literally double the output of the exercise."

Knitting may sound a bit frivolous to some in this context. But I don't agree. And - Hauptsache (main point) - it works for me. Dedicating my knitting of the second mitten to something critical honestly makes the process OK, even motivates me.

You know, if it isn't already, this idea should be included in the "Knitting Sutra".

Knitting, Eloise, Gwyneth and Irina

All I wanted to do last week while the kids were in FULL-DAY school was knit, right? Somehow it just NEVER happened. Steve was like, "What did you do all day?"

"Well, first I had to go through all that paperwork on the office floor, then..."

He stopped me with a laugh, "The things you have to do are like Eloise: 'Then I have to open and close the door for a while and as soon as I hear laughing I run down the hall and if a door is open I have to...'"

That seemed relatively patronizing and untrue. On the other hand, I'm not really bothered being compared to Eloise.

Esmé's best friend at school's name is Saylor - not a common name, right? To follow this Eloise-theme to its end, Eloise has a doll named Saylor with a very hard head and no arms, who was in "the most terriblest accident".

(Is my knowledge of this book a little over the top? Just keep in mind, my friends, I have a 6 and 5 year old who love it - and after reading it for the 10 billionth time, anybody with half a brain would know it verbatim, too.)

Irina, the new 17 year old member of our family, is a lovely girl. However, she's not very self-entertaining. Thus, I bought her "Die Nebel von Avalon", which she's now reading voraciously. Seeing it lying around on the kitchen island all the time, Steve and I decided to reread the English version ("Mists of Avalon"). So, speaking of Ez and literature, did you know there's a minor character named Gwyneth in it? Irina, by the way, is also learning how to knit. Books and knitting - she's got to do something, poor girl, since we don't have cable and she doesn't have any friends.

And with that, my post comes full circle.