Sittin' & Knittin'

Out of respect for the "carppy" weather we've had this last week, I've spent a lot of time sitting watching season #1 of CSI and knitting. Last night's freezing rain was especially, um, special. My van looked like an ice sculpture this morning. Lots of hot water and lots of salt helped me chisel it out of the glacier it was embedded in. Ugh.

But I knitted. See? I have inches more Accidental sock. I don't think it's going to take me 10 months to make sock #2. (I did go to Loops & Links to knit yesterday afternoon and there in the Wall O'Savings were 3 other colorways of this sock yarn. Hmm, I could spend a bit of my mad money and pick up 2 skeins of each, just in case I decide to knit more socks like these. See, if I used the very same pattern I could have socks to mix and match that I made myself. (Justification? Isn't that a bit harsh?)





I'm just about ready to start the leg part of the Socks X 2. (If, um, when I get good at this technique the above idea would be a breeze. Really.)






I finished the second quarter of DIL's sari silk purse and immediately cast on the third quarter. I'm not letting socks monopolize my time.





I knit gloves or mitts for everyone for Christmas and I really want a pair of convertible mitts for myself, so I cast some on the other day. I got up past the thumb gusset before I realized that what I was knitting would maybe fit a seven-year-old. Maybe. I frogged it, balled up the yarn (I love using the ball winder), and started over.






Ooh, I forgot to show you the fun things my DD got me. Light up knitting needles! I know they're not new, but I think they're cool and a hoot. I've got some yarn in the stash to make into Meathead hats that needs this size needles. I should cast one on just so I can knit in the dark. (As if I need an excuse. I promise photographic evidence. Cross my heart.)

Icy

My minivan looks like an ice sculpture. I used a couple gallons of warm water to melt the ice on the windshield and was happy that I could get the doors open to let the van run for a while to melt the rest of the window ice. What's next? Hurricane? Tsunami? Or just your garden-variety blizzard? I need Don to tell me again why we aren't going away to Bonaire for a month.

January 3--13th Century Mosaic, The Tower of Babel. Pat lay on her back in the warm spring sunshine. She was by no means the only student taking advantage of the irresistible weather by sitting in the quad. The men who designed and built the red brick buildings around the generous grassy space used their heads and sited them so that one of them usually blocked the wind. Pat had found herself a prime spot in the sun and out of the still-cool breeze. She sat down intending to work on her homework for Ancient History but for some reason the excitement of learning about the Byzantine art influence in Venice escaped her, especially the overly ornate and busy mosaics slapped up all over every damned church, basilica, and palazzo that stood still for it. Pat had grown up in a firmly blue-collar family and had the devil of a time getting worked up over the doings of 13th century rich people. A stray breeze turned the pages of her textbook, stopping on a page showing a detail of a mosaic in the Basilica di San Marco that showed two men in togas on scaffolding building the Tower of Babel. She laughed out loud and said to no one in particular, "They look like Dad and Uncle Ralphie." Suddenly the 13th century wasn't so different after all.

Jennifer, I like your timid little kindergartner trying so hard to be brave. And I found an art page-a-day calendar to use for prompts. I'll bring it to show on Thursday. Yay, writer's starts again this week.
--Barbara

How many days until Spring?????

I cannot believe how much precipitation we have received this year in the form of rain and snow. If we have gone more than 3 days without something falling from the sky, I would be amazed.

Barbara, I love your Sunflowers piece. You really captured the feelings one gets from the familiarity of a work of art and how that piece tends to engrain itself into other aspects of one's life. Where are you getting your prompts, by the way????

You're Standing in a Doorway

I'm scared, but I don't want to show it. I try to swallow the lump in my throat but it's stuck like when you quickly swallow that last bite of oatmeal without having that final swallow of milk to help it on its way. I look around the room, my eyes staring warily at the others who are either staring back at me or don't even notice me because they are busy playing with all of the toys scattered around the room.

"It's going to be ok Sam", my mother whispers in my ear. "Kindergarten is alot of fun." I nod my head without saying a word because I know that if I say anything, my voice will crack and mommy will see that I'm not the brave little man she tells me that I am. I wrap my arms around her neck squeezing her tight, not wanting to let go. She returns the hug, her hands rubbing my back in the same way she does when she helps me drift off to sleep, but this time she lets go.

"Hi, my name is Michael. What's yours?" I look over my shoulder at the direction of the voice. "I'm Sam", I reply shyly. Michael holds out his hand to me. "Want to be my friend?" I look at my mom one last time and smile. "Yes," I reply. I take Michael's hand and we head into the classroom. I am no longer afraid.

Living My Life

It's funny, Jennifer, but your little bit of writing is essentially what my novel, Horizon, is about. My main character is a woman who has lived her whole life by what others think and how she changes. I like it and I hope you keep going on it so I can see what Claire does that's different from what Gail did. (If I ever finish it. Arrrgh. All I have to do is go through it once more to check for typos and then I can start trolling for an agent. God help me, I can't imagine it. Maybe I need an agent-finding agent. Maybe I need a novel-mother. Help meeeee!)

January 2--Van Gogh's Sunflowers. His yellow paint is rusting, turning dull as it ages. The lively strokes of his brush, wielded more than a hundred years ago, still fill the viewer with a certain energy. I want to paint my kitchen that soft blue-green hovering in the top left corner of the canvas. I'm not usually a fan of blue or green but the way he put it on there makes me think it is a reflection of something special right outside the frame. You see how he signed his name, Vincent, on the rude pottery jar that holds the flowers? Only his first name as if we are old friends, and of course I know Vincent. You do too. I like too that if you study it you can see that his perspective is a bit off, a little flat, as if the exuberance of the painting's feeling is the most important thing. I wonder why such a plain little painting of a handful of flowers in a farmhouse became so famous.

I'm stumped for a closing, some clever few words to make you smile and leave you with a warm feeling. Maybe it's the gray sky and promise of freezing rain. Ugh.
--Barbara

Great to be Writing Again

Nice description Barbara--perhaps it's the amount on snow on the ground, but I loved the grassy smell and can't wait until Spring.

Write About a Time When Someone Said No

It was only when I began to say yes to myself that I was able to say no to others. You would think it would have been easy, but it wasn't. Mamma always taught me that a lady never says no; only when her physical safety is in danger. But Mamma never considered that a lady's emotional safety was just as important, if not moreso. Perhaps it was because Mamma always taught me that a lady never shows her emotions. "A proper lady," she would tell me, "is constant, both in her actions and her reactions." My life, as a result, quickly became not my own.

For years I gently smiled and agreed to invitations I did not wish to accept, accepted requests to donate my time or my husband's money to causes that were not part of the beliefs that I still kept alive in the center of my heart. I upheld the image of happiness and love that others saw within my husband and I, although what I felt toward him and our marriage was sadness and resentment. Mamma would have been so proud.

It was after Mamma got sick and I went to her bedside to care for her that she gave me her final lesson. "Claire," she whispered between parched lips, "I was wrong. A proper lady is constant; constant to herself. Find the true happiness that I taught you to turn away from. Do this one thing for me." I gently smiled at Mamma and kissed her cheek with love as the life she led slipped away.

I stood up and walked away from her still form. My hand rested on the door frame as I looked at her one final time, "Yes Mamma. It is my turn to live now."

The First Writing of 2009

Nice start, Jennifer, I like it. The prompts can only get better from there!

Last night I wrote at my desk instead of in bed. I'm trying to train myself to write at my desk. It'll be an uphill battle, I'm sure. Let's see what came of it.

January 1--Renoir's Young Girl in a Straw Hat. Claire liked the way the summer sun sneaked through the tiny spaces of her straw hat. She had grumbled when Mama stopped her on her way out the door and insisted she put on a hat. At first Claire had grabbed the pink baseball cap Aunt Lynnie had given her for her birthday but then she saw the pale yellow brim of the straw hat peeking over the edge of her cubby in the back hall, so she tossed the pink hat at a hook, stepped up on the cubby shelf/seat where she sat to pull on her boots and pulled down the straw hat. It fell upside down into her hands. She thought it looked like a flower pot like the ones Grammy had on her screened porch but Claire decided she wouldn't mind having a flower pot on her head. As she lifted it she caught a whiff of the clean grassy smell of it. It smelled fresh and cool, she thought as she jammed it down around her ears and slammed through the screen door out into the freedom of what all the kids called "the back forty." The sun hit her like a hammer as she jumped down the steps onto the parched lawn. She picked up her butterfly net on its long handle and her canvas backpack of collecting jars and made her way down the yard and through the gap in the hedge. She passed the dog pen where her dad's beagle, Peggy, lay in the shade with her latest litter. Dad said to give Peggy one more week of peace so Claire only tiptoed over to peek once a day so she could count the five little pups before she walked on into the golden grasses that reached her waist and held a treasure of specimens waiting for her to capture and classify them.

Not a bad start to the year, if I do say so myself.
--Barbara

Happy New Year!

For once I don't have to make up some clever title for my blog entry. So, Happy New Year again! Did you ring it in? I stayed up until the church bells chimed but I was lying in bed reading and as soon as it was midnight, turned off the light; Don was already asleep. We're such party poopers anymore. We did have a lovely steak dinner. We had bubbly but decided it was too cold. Maybe later today.

Is everybody ready for a new year of writing? Got your writing resolutions all lined up? Me too. I'm looking forward to next Thursday so we can cheer each other up and on to bigger and better things in 2009. Sharpen those pencils and let's kick some writing butt. Here's my final effort of 2008, written about 15 minutes before midnight:

December 31--In anticipation of the night. All day long preparations are being made. Food is cooked. Drinks are chilled. Special clothes are pressed or aired. The tension builds until it's almost tangible, until you feel as if you could put out your hand and grab hold. When you pass people in the store or on the street you see the sparkle in their eyes, the glitter of expectation of celebration. This one night the barriers fall and everyone is the same. All are equal at this pinnacle of time, this instant when the earth holds its breath before plunging headlong into never-before-explored territory.

Happy New Year. If I had fireworks, I'd light 'em. May 2009 be even better than we hope. You guys are the best. Thanks for being my writing friends.
--Barbara