Susan B

A good yarn

2007-01-11T20:17:00.000-05:00

Last summer I narrowly missed a reading and book signing by two authors, Stephanie Pearl McPhee and Kim Edwards. The Yarn Harlot (Ms Pearl McPhee) had just visited the Skaneateles bookshop I discovered on a hot afternoon walk. And Edwards, who grew up in that Finger Lakes town, had been there that same week.

This winter evening I am deep into Edwards novel, The Memory Keeper's Daughter. The writing is good but the very situation is one that made my heart ache when I read the back cover. In 1964 a man gives away his newborn daughter because she has Down's Syndrome. He hides her existence from his wife telling her only one of her twins has survived. The story follows the two children, their broken parents and the woman who raises the daughter. Edwards heard this bare outline of a story from a minister and carried it till it needed to be written.

I will be ready for the Harlot's zany knit lit after this book. There are not too many laughs in the Edwards novel though smiles of recognition and some tough and wise characters have kept me with the book. We humans are resilient and twisted and colorful. Knitting, anyone?

The imperfect is our paradise.*

2007-01-10T13:13:00.000-05:00

I am engrossed in a book, Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper, that is a fictional reflection on those of Mary Cassatt's paintings that feature her sister Lydia as model. Each chapter of the small book contains a reproduction of a painting. The writing is as lucid and lovely as Cassatt's paintings. Harriet Scott Chessman is the author.

Lydia suffered with Bright's disease and some of the novel centers on her illness and how she creates a world of beauty that sustains her. The artist-model relationship of the sisters is a metaphor that allows for reflection on how we are seen by those who love us. The title painting, especially, moved me with its view of a woman in pain focusing on what goes on outside the pain.
*My post title is a quote from Wallace Stevens that is the epigraph for the novel.

Peace for all!

2006-12-23T11:35:00.000-05:00

Up late:an update

2006-12-21T09:22:00.000-05:00

I have, in typical SusanB fashion, complicated my knit life by twice binding off when I should have gone back to knitting. This baby blue yarn has heard words it shouldn't have and I have tried to atone by having Renee Fleming sing to the sweater while I corrected my mistakes.

How can an unemployed knitter be late with Christmas knitting? We procrastinators know, don't we?

Stamps and stitches

2006-12-20T09:22:00.000-05:00

I am a Christmas card lover and so I signed up for a swap with others in one of the Yahoo groups. There are 25 of us and it has been fun to receive cards from all over. Some are from Canada and the UK, so we are international knitters. I finished my cards for that exchange group yesterday and will complete cards for family and friends today.

Knitting of the second sweater (for the newborn) has lagged and I will pick it up this afternoon and evening. Our group's sweaters are slowly gathering and it is quite a display! Mary will take these to work on Friday.

I shared on another blog that I knit these for the recipients but also for loved ones with difficult days just now. The slow stitching and counting feels peaceful and productive. My wishes are for their peace and for good gifts in God's good time.

Knittin' kin

2006-12-10T10:19:00.000-05:00

Last night we gathered at my mom's apartment for our bi-weekly Saturday get together. When I walked in, I was greeted by my ten year old niece Gretchen who needed help casting on for a pink baby hat. She was already working on a purple scarf ("or a headband, depending on how much time I have!"). Though she broke for supper, she was on and off knitting all evening.

My niece Juliana, fourteen going on fifteen, asked about joining the Wednesday knit group. She had heard that it was lots of fun. That group was founded by my niece Katie who got me and my sister Anne knitting. My niece Catherine knits, too.

I love thinking of this tangle of women who learn and create together. The learning is not a linear, passing-down type of tradition, but rather a web-like learning where age matters but doesn't determine, patterns matter but don't control, and each one teaches and learns.

Anonymous donor

2006-12-07T11:59:00.000-05:00

My knitting ready to be sewn together pile has two sweaters: the Mason Dixon baby kimono and the WoolEase rose-colored size 10 child's sweater.

The second sweater is for the family our knit group is knitting for. Mary met the baby twins and the two-year old and predicts their sweaters will be great fits. (I am nervous as anything that the 8 year old's rose sweater won't fit!)

I am knitting a baby sweater for one of the twins in Encore chunky, pale blue and white marled yarn. Kate is knitting the same sweater in darker blue. They will be cute, with hoods and I cord ties.

I am musing over the fact that my first sweater knitting is being done for people I don't even know. Maybe it just helps that I will never have that awkward feeling of wondering if the giftee loves my hand knit work. This group effort is so much fun in itself that if I found my sweaters in a thrift store I would only fleetingly consider never knitting again.

Baby clothes

2006-11-25T14:10:00.000-05:00

I am half an hour from finishing knitting my first MDK baby kimono. It is in a variegated green and white and is very small, really for a newborn. Of course I have no actual baby in mind but I couldn't believe the knitting is as easy as they say. (It is.)

Kate showed me how to post pictures and I will take some so there will be some color on the blog within the week. I am going to be doing a lot of sewing up and starting a second baby sweater, too. That sweater will be for one of the children our knitting group has adopted. Knitting group meets on Wednesday so I need to get going!

Sorrow's half life

2006-11-22T14:57:00.000-05:00

I am nearing the end of The Distant Echo by Val McDermid. It is a mystery set in Scotland and England in the past twenty five years and the narrative follows the lives of four university students who are suspects in a murder in their college town. Their lives are never the same.

What touches me so about the book is its heavy sense of how events and losses move in with families and friends and become part of who they are. This is, of course, the story of a murder, but something about her writing evokes my own sadness at losses that are touching persons I love decades after the events.

November gifts

2006-11-16T11:09:00.000-05:00

The leaves that are left are mottled brown and bright gold. Who would leave behind all that gold if not a gift giver extraordinaire? The wet black branches and the dreary rainy sky are a perfect foil for the gold outside my window. Thanks giving is on the way, but already here.

Women, weeping

2006-11-12T19:06:00.000-05:00

I watched Madame X today while knitting. Lana Turner plays a woman who has an affair and accidentally kills her lover. Her wealthy, wicked MIL forces her to abandon her husband and son because such notoriety would ruin all their lives. So, for twenty years, Lana wanders Europe and Mexico, drinking and sleeping around. Her husband and son carry on with their upper crust lives.

Of course at the end, an absinthe addict, Lana kills someone else and is defended by her son. She never reveals her identity to him, but the husband and MIL recognize her and Lana conveniently dies.

My God, don't we women get punished when we fool around? Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina come to mind. Arsenic, trains, and absinthe. I felt as if I were knitting a shroud, not a dishcloth.

Colors

2006-11-06T09:57:00.000-05:00

My niece was in a high school production of Aida this past weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed the two performances I attended and also enjoyed helping a little with costumes. My contribution was at the lower range of skilled hand sewing and I will happily steer clear of sequins for the years I have left. The tacking up of hems I am, at 5'3", quite familiar with, but glitter is not my usual medium.

It was fun, however, to see on stage the costumes I had handled. The colors of the costumes and of the stage set were a combination of sand, stone, river blues, and sunset rose,orange, and black.

The experience got me in the mood for handling brilliant colors and I hope to start knitting a black and jewel toned scarf this week. Meanwhile the dusty rose sweater is at the sleeve stage, but I will save its finishing for the next knitting night.

Making it interesting

2006-11-01T11:58:00.000-05:00

I am knitting the Guideposts children's T-sweater, size 10, for a charity project for the knitting group. It is my first sweater project and as simple as they come. In searching for long enough needles, I went back to some aluminum ones that I had picked up from the next to new table. My size 8's are two colors, one fuschia and one peacock blue, and I am enjoying the color. I thought that I would never leave my bamboo needles but these are great for a relatively boring knit. They are smooth and fast and pretty, and the clicking and color entertain me. The simple things!

I am into a new book, Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde. I read his first, The Eyre Affair, last winter and enjoyed it. The series features Ms. Thursday Next, a Special Operations agent in a Britain of the future, and the tone is light and witty. Other characters include Commander Braxton Hicks, Agent Kannon Phodder, Diana Thuntress, and Jack Schitt. The heroine is literally in and out of books all the time, righting fiction infractions and moving back and forth in time. Garrison Keillor would call this very English major stuff, I am sure!

Fall back reading

2006-10-30T12:01:00.000-05:00

Are there books you would rather not admit you read? Come on. If you had a blog would you admit that you read an occasional James Patterson?

I am reading London Bridges. I started Saturday night, the fall back time change night, read some last night, and will finish tonight. Saying I am reading this book feels like admitting that I watch The Young and the Restless three times a week, or that I avidly read People magazine in waiting rooms, or that I look at Go Fug Yourself on a regular basis.

The truth is that voracious readers resemble hearty eaters. Being both, I know (and now admit) that I enjoy both Cheetos and bruschetta, Middlemarch and potboilers. James Patterson and I will say goodbye tonight and I will return to blogging with a little more class tomorrow!

Paper woman

2006-10-26T15:13:00.000-04:00

Because of some schedule and living changes, I have been reading the morning newspaper on-line for the past several months. I can read that paper later in the day, but, news junkie that I am, I want to check the headlines first thing, to read local news, and to see the obituaries.
I find the on-line local paper experience lacking and I am surprised at this.
I am very comfortable with reading a wide assortment of texts on the web: blogs; journals; web sites of organizations. The web allows me to access so much more than my subscription budget does.
The newspaper as a physical experience, however, is part of my life ritual. The feel of the crinkly paper. The turning of pages and sharing of sections with another reader or readers. The dirty fingers after reading the Sunday edition. The comics page. The photos. The inserts. The editorial cartoons. The obits: Are there a lot today? Pictures of the deceased?
It isn't the same on line. Much of the content is there. But the feel of the news on paper, even hours old, is part of what I want. I want to read each section, see the ads, notice the typo's, do the puzzle and be able to cite Doonesbury, Dr. Donahue, and Mark Hare later in the day. I'll never be completely weaned of the newsprint.

Travels are over

2006-10-25T12:10:00.000-04:00

I pushed my way through and finished Gulliver's Travels and am glad I did. I can't resist a footnote, but I did not understand all of them.
There were small areas throughout all the chapters of GT that I enjoyed. Most were the precise, sometimes jewel-like, descriptions of the respective complications of Gulliver's huge or tiny size in the two first lands he visited.
I could not help but react to Swift's misogynist take on women of the visited countries. Are there women who write with such disgust about men?
I also read his satirical essay on solving the "Irish problem." A Modest Proposal is an essay that could be written today about other problems, I am sure. Or maybe Calvin Trillin could do a long poem for The Nation!

Books you work at

2006-10-21T10:57:00.000-04:00

I am reading Gulliver's Travels for the Knit the Classics group. I was an English major many years ago and have always wondered why I never read the whole thing, only excerpts in the Norton anthology. I think I know why now, but am merrily reading Book One and enjoying the mechanics and vivid descriptions of the big man in a little world.
Will my age give me insight and enthusiasm for the satire Swift is so great at or will I just flip over to The Daily Show or Bill Maher or read Molly Ivins? Stay tuned. This book lover is workin' it this weekend.

Knitting group last night

2006-10-19T09:26:00.000-04:00

Our group gathered last night and even though we were missing three knitters we had a great evening. We sat around the table for two hours comparing projects, sharing patterns, gossiping, and telling stories and knitting away.
We worked on our different projects. Jeannine, our teacher, completed some socks and helped us as needed. Anne and I began our Guideposts Christmas sweaters that we are doing for the family of six children our group "adopted" for Christmas. Dolores kept at her NY Yankees cap for her nephew. Mary plugged away at the socks for her sister-in-law and Katie showed off a cute baby sweater with a hood.
The conversation always ranges wide and deep. We shared several stories about dying, some family dramas were updated, and we laughed a lot too. The requisite chocolate and diet Coke accompanied sweets for those interested. It was a fine evening with some fine women!

Near the end of a book

2006-10-17T10:03:00.000-04:00

I am close to finishing the Piercy book. I don't want it to end because I want to rewrite history. The crises in the characters' lives seem all too similar to present day dilemmas in politics and religion.
Do I sometimes read to experience an alternate ending to a story playing out in real life? Oh, yes. I will not post any spoilers about the book's plot, but it is great writing.
Perhaps any book with war in its title must tap into the violence and dualism we usually bring to our disagreements.

A book about Susan B

2006-10-16T10:02:00.000-04:00

I am hoping to finish Sex Wars today. It is a book by Marge Piercy and if you have read her Gone to Soldiers you know the style: a rich mix of fictional and historic characters, female perspective, and lively writing.
I am enjoying Piercy's take on folks including Susan B Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anthony Comstock and Victoria Woodhull.

I grew up here in Rochester, NY and I just always knew about Susan B and her friends. When you frequently drive near Anthony's home street, you can feel that she is simply one of your older relatives whom you never had the privilege of meeting. And as with all older relatives, she is currently a subject of my curiosity and wonder.