Countered

COUNTERED

An easy climate with all the elements,
earth, air, fire, water.
A desperate system solid as it is human.
Dust is falling where dust has climbed.
The sun is patient, moon calm, 
the sin of knowledge almost innocence.
Love has become goodwill, as grief has, 
as torturing strength has warped to sanity.
Now dustbowl earth completes its nothingness,
every bright image, lark or cardinal,
has dropped its wings, has moulted in disgust.
The lucid mind fumbles to doors and falls.
The crusted eyes tears cannot clarify.
But traveller dust which notices our earth
we totally invite until we die.
Now earth must spin as little as it is
as it has spun before our vast illusion.
Now loves will tumble on dark beds of space.
Loves will tumble now in any case.
But eyes of power, the long mileage to stars
our sleep will dreaden and intensify.
Lovers will love, and all the instant world
will tether joy, creation's sweet pathetic trust,
while our participating marrow
clicks with destroying dust.

Phyllis Webb
The Sea Is Also A Garden
The Ryerson Press, Toronto, 1962

Summer Was Just Yesterday

It's snowing and windy today - the first real winter weather of the year. I'm not psychologically prepared for this! Thankfully, I find myself to be entirely unscheduled today for the first time in ages. Leisure! Pursue leisure. It feels imperative, especially today.

What better way to pass a cold, blustery November morning than by sharing some photos of a day in September? It was just two short months ago that my friend Sally and I ferried over to Toronto Island for a jaunt and I am enjoying remembering the sun and the water.

The city skyline is impressive though I couldn't help reflecting on how
much it's changed in the 30 years I've lived here.

Our friend's front door. We knocked intending a surprise visit.
 Alas. No one home.

Yep. I wore a bathing suit in public!
Not bad for a gal in her fifties.

Joy.

Scrappy

It started with my frustration at being no longer able to take decent photos. Then I realized I just wasn't knitting as much anymore. My yarn is in storage and there is no comfy chair here. 

My time and energy have been spent elsewhere these past months. The Fight for $15 and Fairness is urgent and I spend a lot of time attending rallies and doing data entry. I even wrote and gave a speech at Queen's Park in July! You can't knit while doing that.

However, the air is colder now and I got a new job that's farther away. My 45 minute subway rides there and back translate into much knitting and podcast time. It's been nice to get back to.

Scrappy socks. Scrappy cat.

Red and More Red

Yes, I finished it the evening of the Olympic closing ceremony. It's a relatively simple pattern but it was rejuvinating to knit to deadline. That's something I've not done in a while. It took a while to get it blocked and photographed but it was cast off on February 25.

I used four of the five skeins in the Frabjous Fibers Cheshire Cat, Mini Skein Pack that I purchased in Chicago. Funny story! As I was nearing the end, I held it up and asked my partner if I should continue with the next lighter skein or go back to the darker reds. He chose the darker and he was right! That burgundy edge really frames the lace. Who knew the dude had colour sense?

I like my picot edge which, as I explained on Ravelry, I did because I knew it would be stretchy and fast. I think it defines the edge quite nicely. 

Nearing the Finish Line

I've  only 14 rows left on my unofficial Ravellinic shawl. The problem is, being a top-down triangular scarf (with lace!), each row gets longer and longer. Then there is the cast-off.

I'm working all day tomorrow. Do the Olympics end on Sunday? If so, I may have a chance. If it's tomorrow, there is little hope.

So There's a Sporting Event Going On?

Apparently there is some kind of event on television right now?

Actually, I do enjoy the Winter Games. I watched, as I have for the past 12 years, the opening ceremonies with my knitter friends. I also cast on an unofficial Olympic project. My knitting has been in a rut so I'm taking the opportunity to switch it up and knit one thing exclusively.

It's the Indian Paintbrush Shawl by Vera Sanon. It's not a hugely challenging project but is interesting enough to keep going at a quick pace. Mainly, it's a great opportunity to knit with the Frabjous Fibers Cheshire Cat, Mini Skein Pack I purchased two years ago in Chicago. I'm hoping the graded colour change will look attractive with the simple lace.

As luck would have it, I've come down with a cold so yes, I am watching a lot of television and knitting away. This shawl will be done by Games end for sure.

Subject To Dispersal

"One is not oneself. 
One is several, incomplete and subject to dispersal."

                                                                      Virginia Woolf

I have been struggling with my multitudes of late. There is so much I want to do, so many things I want to be. I am trying to knit, trying to write, trying to be a labour activist. Add to that my overriding, almost animal instinct to be a giving partner and mother. There are not enough hours to accomplish everything and I find that if I devote the majority of my focus on one aspect of my personality, I miss the others. So I practice a little of each and do none of them particularly well.

This feels urgent. Time seems to go faster as I age. Also, as I don't have what people call a "career" but rather just a boring job where I exchange my precious time for dollars, there is the shame and discouragement of that issue.

What's best? Should one focus intensely or be a scattered mess of activity? Where's the balance and how to find it?

This is just a meandering - an attempt to get it down. 

Here are some photos of weirdness on the Don Trail taken two Sundays ago when it was unseasonably balmy and we went for a muddy bike ride.

  

As Those Who Are Too Old

As Those Who Are Too Old

he is inventing me
but I cannot say to him
she is not real
even as he held me
he was destroying me
and creating her
he was puzzled when
I walked away
as fast as those
who are too old to die
he writes her letters
which I intercept
and answer with great care 
and imprecision

Joy Kogawa
Jericho Road
McClelland Stewart, 1977

PS:  I found out today that Joy Kogawa and I share the same birthday - the day and month though not the year. Obvoiusly. She is actually one year older than my father.

She speaks in an interview I watched on line today, of the point in your life of "crossing over". That time, she says, is when you decide to cease becoming a victim. In a great spirit of gentleness, she acknowledges that, of course, there are moments when you are thrown back. However, if you stay stuck in the identity of the victim, and stay focused on how hurt you are, then you are not aware of others' suffering. You are only aware of your own and that is how you can do great harm to others. When you cease to be constantly aware of your own suffering is when you know you are seen and then you can see others.

And so, imprecision. But very great care.

New Year, New Knitting

I have noted that my knitting has really slowed down the last several months. I notice this because I also notice that I miss it. Quiet evenings with my records or a podcast, knitting away, used to be common. Those solitary peaceful evenings are much more seldom these days for several reasons. I work mostly evening shifts at my current job and when I am home, it's rarely quiet. Not to be complainey (well a little complainey), the fact is I share a teeny living space with a person who likes to watch a lot of loud TV. He finds it relaxing. I find it jangly. In warm weather I sit on the balcony and pretend I am not dangling in the sky by keeping my eyes locked on my project. In winter, it's more difficult.

There is a solution. We have a few common spaces in our condo that people rarely use. I have sometimes packed up my tea, mp3 player and knitting and taken myself off to one of them for an hour or so.  It's a bit of trouble but I think I need to do it more often in the new year to preserve my sanity.

I finally started the sleeves on my Bombus!

Knitting can always be a learning experience. That's one of the best things about it. Notice the awesome tidy edge on the ribbing? It's because I learned a new cast-off. It's not a fancy or difficult technique. You just do a yarn over before the purl stitch, then pass over both that yarn over and the previous knit stitch. It creates more stretch and that beautiful straight edge. Even as I was doing it, I was excited about the result. It's so great when it all feels fresh again, isn't it?

Laundered my socks yesterday. See?
Continuous knitting results in warm knitwear.