Coneflower Ranch

Brigid in Cyberspace Poetry Reading

It's that time again! Time for the Annual Brigid in Cyberspace Poetry Reading. It's also called the Brigid in the Blogosphere, or the Silent Poetry Reading since there will be no recitation, only you reading to yourself. There will be lots of you reading to yourselves but it won't make much sound. This is the Fourth Annual Brigid ... whatever and there are many participants. If you go to the comments of the linked post above you will find links to the blogs of other poetry lovers. Enjoy!

For my contribution I've got to stick with what works for me. In honor of the Celtic Goddess of Poetry (and other things) a poem by my favorite Celtic poet: William Butler Yeats.

 

THE CAT AND THE MOON

by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

THE cat went here and there

And the moon spun round like a top,

And the nearest kin of the moon,

The creeping cat, looked up.

Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,

For, wander and wail as he would,

The pure cold light in the sky

Troubled his animal blood.

Minnaloushe runs in the grass

Lifting his delicate feet.

Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?

When two close kindred meet,

What better than call a dance?

Maybe the moon may learn,

Tired of that courtly fashion,

A new dance turn.

Minnaloushe creeps through the grass

From moonlit place to place,

The sacred moon overhead

Has taken a new phase.

Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils

Will pass from change to change,

And that from round to crescent,

From crescent to round they range?

Minnaloushe creeps through the grass

Alone, important and wise,

And lifts to the changing moon

His changing eyes.

Belated Christmas Present

 

My sister and I have a deal when it comes to Christmas gifts: Even if we don't get each other in the Kris Kringle, we make each other a gift. Sometimes it's fudge sometimes it's jewelry, this year she is getting my version of a Noro Hat.  On Ravelry I posted it as Noro Hat Redux. 

 

It's made from about one and a half skeins of Noro Kureyon color #182 and I knit it on a 16 inch size 7 circular and when it got too hard to work with I switched to double points.

I liked the way the original pattern takes advantage of the color changes in the Noro yarn but I didn't like the crown. So I changed it.

 

It's pretty straightforward for a hat. Saartje de Bruijn, the designer of the original has you cast on with 95 stitches. I upped it to 96 just to make the crown decreases work out easier. You start with 8 rounds of knit, then 4 rounds of purl, then 4 rounds of knit, then 4 rounds of purl. I kept going, alternating 4 rounds of knit and 4 rounds of purl until I had completed six purl sections. I knit one round then on the next round I K10, k2tog around. Then a plain knit round; then K9, k2tog around; then a plain round; then K8, k2tog around, then a plain round... see where this is going? I kept going until there were only 4 stitches on the needles and I pulled the yarn through the stitches snugging them tight and secured it inside the hat weaving it in like mad.

 

I'm way too pleased with how it turned out. I get a little giddy everytime I look at how those colors fade into each other on the crown. That little bit of swirl to the stitches makes me smile. I think I have to make one for me.

My favorite present I got this year also came late. I picked it up at Stewart Airport last Saturday.

Yep, Dennis is home. He's safe, sound and in one piece. Best present ever.

Actual Content (and why tendonitis sucks)

 

To say that having tendonitis is inconvenient wouldn't begin to cover it. I've been dealing with it for the better part of the past year and it's been a challenge. I'm not sure what I did to get tendonitis in the first place. I think there is more to it than just the doctor's explanation that I'm "getting older" which I think is doctor speak for "I don't really know, but you are over forty so I'm going with this." There was never a satisfactory answer as to why I could knit with no problem one day and the very next day I was in pain within ten minutes of picking up my needles. The good doctor's suggestion was to not use my hands for six weeks. To his credit he did smile halfway through, acknowledging that it was a ridiculous idea.

It wasn't just my hands. It was my wrists and elbows too. Without my usual diversion and stress reliever, knitting, I decided to walk everyday. That woke up the tendons in my knees. There is no reason that should have happened. I was walking every other day so walking every day shouldn't not have been such a stress. I don't care how old I am I shouldn't have gone from fine to broken over night without a reason.

My doctor had no answer for me so I went to my chiropractor. He wasn't able to figure out why it happened either but he did keep all my bones in alignment on a regular basis which minimized the pain.

He also taught me some stretching exercises and massaged the muscles in my forearms which all made moving much easier. After weeks and weeks of ice and ibuprofen I started knitting again. I could only manage ten minutes at a time at first. At that rate I was never going to be able to knit up all the yarn I bought when I couldn't knit. It was all very frustrating. At one point I aggravated my wrist by reading a book. Yeah, I'm a wild one.

So, I couldn't knit, crochet, read or type. I produced very little and had a hard time destressing. It took me all summer to knit that one Noro sock I showed you. In 2008 I barely posted to the blog. Shopping therapy will only get you so far and it's not as much fun when you are buying beautiful yarn you can't knit.

Slowly but surely I got it all back. One day I picked up my needles and knit a whole Noro Scarf while watching almost every episode of Firefly. Then over the following week I knit the Falling Water Scarf for Grandma Ellen for Christmas. I made the Feather and Fan Organic Wrap from Jane Thornley for myself in shades of green. I enjoyed that so much I made one in pinks and purples for Lori for Christmas. It felt like I'd been cured overnight.

I had lots of plans for keeping busy while Dennis was away. Aside from all the knitting and crocheting I had queued up, there were rooms to be painted and shelves to be hung. Those sort of things that would be easier to do with Dennis away so I could make a mess and take my time without making his life difficult. Only one room got painted and I haven't done the trim.

Once I was feeling better the last thing I wanted to do was paint walls and trim. Instead I made beaded necklaces for the three older girls as gifts. This one above is from Crystal Lace Patterns by Sandra Halpenny. She has more patterns on her website if you don't want to spring for the book.

I even had the wherewithal to make a necklace on commission.

 

It was inspired by Laura McCabe and is a combination of elements from her book. For Lori's birthday, before all the tendonitis nonsense, I made her one of these in amethyst. A friend and customer of Lori's wanted one for her daughter for Christmas.

  

The New Year's plan is to knit, bead, crochet and paint more often and then post all about it on the blog. Sounds good right?

Happy New Year!!

Every year we watch The Muppets Christmas Carol on Christmas Eve. It is one of the best versions of the story that I have seen. Of course my lifelong affection for the Muppets may be coloring my judgement. Part of the charm comes from the humor inherent in all the Muppets productions and part is that it's a musical. There is something so endearing about fuzzy little creatures singing; especially sweet little frogs. Bless us one and all in the New Year.

Spreading my wings ... a little

 

For the first time in twenty-one years I spent the night completely alone. Well, except for the cats, I was completely alone. All of my children were sleeping elsewhere and my husband is still off getting his urban warfare merit badge.

It was sort of weird but kind of familiar. I used to live alone after all. Except for the cats I had back then, I was completely alone.

There are changes that come on gradually and it's only in retrospect that you see the beginning. Then there is the night you find yourself alone for the first time in years and it's obviously the beginning of something new.

*the photo is from commons.wikimedia I'd love to give credit to the photographer but I couldn't figure out who it was from the listing.

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

"The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving." H.U. Westmayer

"I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has." Epictetus

 

"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice." Meister Eckhart

"Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving." W.T. Purkiser

 

 "To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven." Johannes A. Gaertner

"I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder." G.K. Chesterton

"Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy -- because we will always want to have something else or something more." Brother David Steindl-Rast

"If a fellow isn't thankful for what he's got, he isn't likely to be thankful for what he's going to get."  Frank A. Clark

"May you have a very Happy Thanksgiving Day!" Me

9/11 Message from My Husband's Unit

I found this through Bouhammer. I'm not even sure how I originally found his blog but I occassionally check in there. Today I found this video. It seemed appropriate to put it up here as well.

There are about 1700 men in Task Force Phoenix VII and my husband is one of them. On September 11, 2001 while we were glued to the TV like everyone else, his National Guard Reserve unit got activated. By noon that day he was gone to patrol the streets around Ground Zero and I didn't see him again for two weeks. There is a sort of strange continuity from his patrolling the streets of lower Manhattan to patrolling the streets of Kabul that I'm not sure how to express. I've given it a lot of thought, way too much actually, and I haven't come up with anything so I'm just going to leave it alone.

Today is our twenty-second wedding anniversary. In all of those twenty-two years I can count on one hand the number of times we've spent our anniversary together. September 12, 2001 we were going to go fishing. I haven't actually seen him in over five months so missing our anniversary doesn't mean much. There have been other videos and photos from Afghanistan posted on the web and though it's sort of ridiculous I look for him in there. Seriously, though, you take a bunch of men who are roughly the same size, shave off all their hair, dress them the same, slap a hat on them and it's hard to tell them apart at a distance. I could have been looking right at a photo of him and not known it.

More things I did while I ignored you

I spent some time sitting here admiring the view

I'm not a fan of Summer. While everyone around me is lamenting the inevitable end of this summer I'm silently ecstatic that it's almost over. As summers go this one wasn't so bad here in the Hudson Valley. July had some brutal stretches in it but August has been quite lovely so far. In fact when I woke up this morning it was 49ºF. I was so happy.

As lovely as that lake is, in all the years I've been bringing the children here I've only gone into the lake once (It was over 100ºF and my friend Tiffany can be very pushy persuasive). I can swim. I just don't want to. I'm much happier sitting on my chair under my umbrella knitting.

Yep, I'm wearing a skirt. I don't even go through the pretense of putting on a bathing suit. We all know I'm not going swimming. There is also the matter of my pasty white fair complexion. I burn like a french fry. When you take into account that all my ancestors come from Ireland and Newfoundland this is not so surprising. In my entire life my legs have never been tan. Never. There is little point in exposing them to the sun. The first trip to the lake this year I wore a long skirt, t-shirt, SPF45 sunscreen that I reapplied a few times, a hat and I sat under a huge umbrella. I still got a sunburn. And yet I keep coming back. The kids enjoy it and I like watching them enjoy themselves. There is a lot to be said about parking yourself in one spot and having nothing much to do. It can be very relaxing.

This is the new Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn in what I think is #95: the Lime, Orange and Hot Pink. The camera isn't doing the colors justice. That dark reddish pink is a deep raspberry and the green leading into it is a soft mint. It feels like raffia when you pull it from the skein and I was a bit nervous about it at first. What I've knit so far feels pretty good and I'm hoping that washing the finished socks will soften it up some more.

When I figure out how to explain my default sock pattern I'll share it with you.

Things I did while I ignored you

Grandma turned Ninety!

Okay that's not something I actually did but I did help her celebrate. The whole family did in fact. Grandma has nine children. Each of them is married and together they gave Grandma twenty-nine grandchildren. In this less than flattering photo she is flanked by her two favorite first grandchildren, myself and my older cousin, Bill. As you can see some of the grandchildren are quite grown and we've produced about thirty great-grandchildren. (It may be more like thirty-two but I've lost track). Anyway, just about all of us took over a resort in Pennsylvania for a family reunion/Grandma's Birthday party. All but two rooms at Lukan's Farm were taken up by members of my family. I highly recommend it. The place was nice, the food was great and having days to spend reaquainting yourself with your family is more relaxing than I would have thought.

In order to keep track of us all we wore colored T-shirts with numbers on the back. Since Bill's dad was Grandma's first child all the people related to him had navy blue shirts with a number one on the back. My mom is child number two so we all wore maroon shirts with number twos on the back. And yes, after a few glasses of wine there were rousing cries of "We're number two! We're number two!" Yep, after a few glasses of wine we can be proud of anything.

Grandma, as always, looked fabulous. In my entire life I've seen the woman in blue jeans exactly once. She wore them for working in her garden. Truth of it is she had a gardening outfit. I'll never forget it. I was a teenager and spending a week with her and Grandpa at their house on Long Island. She comes out of the garage in blue jeans, a button down blouse, gloves and a hat. All coordinated, of course. So, it's no surprise that she had a different outfit for dinner each night and while the rest of us dressed down with T-shirts and whatnot she had sandals to go with her skirt.

Grandma's a good sport too.

Happy Independence Day!