Diving In

Summer weather is here. Recently my daughter and grandson invited me to spend a late afternoon at the swimming pool with them. Water play with an almost three year old was fun and exuberant. Over and over, my grandson jumped into his mother's arms with reckless abandon. He also requested at least fifty games of "Ring Around the Rosy" so he could duck under the water. When asked about his soon to be born sibling, E. predicted he will have a sister. Although I knit the little boy sweater first, which is my guess, I have baby sweaters ready for either sex. Recently I knit another little girl sweater, the Louise Cardigan from Vintage Baby Knits in Sweetheart sock yarn from Tanis Fiber Arts. The pattern and the yarn were a good match. I'm currently knitting a hat to go with the sweater. Someone in the family will eventually have a girl.

I also decided to knit a shawl for my daughter, the soon to be the Mom of her second child. I wanted to make a soft shawl to wrap up my daughter whenever she needs warmth and/or a hug. Looking on Ravelry, I found this knitting recipe for Diving In, an asymmetrical shawl. The contemporary geometric design with stripes seemed just right for Kate. Besides becoming a mother is rather like diving into deep water. One never knows what lies ahead. Thankfully, most of us find our way through those first months of being new parents. Still a handknit shawl to wrap around my daughter was one more way to give her a hug so I asked her to choose three colors of Quince and Co. fingering weight yarn. Knitting the garter stitch was meditative and just what I needed during my last days of June summer school. The way the designer created the stripes was quite ingenious and kept me interested in the project.

I'm not sure if I find serendipity between knitted projects and life because I look for it or if the stitches carry memory of their own. Regardless, I told my daughter, the asymmetry in the shawl was a reminder that life can be off kilter, that is, sleep will be interrupted by a new baby needing to be fed, housework will pile up, and E., still a young preschooler may have some moments when he is out of sorts. Even so, crazy days can still be good. One of my wishes for Kate is that this shawl warms her with unconditional love and support. God's speed as you dive into yet another new adventure.

Bindweed and Broccoli: Growing Like Crazy

This Spring southeast Nebraska has had adequate rainfall which means vegetables, flowers, herbs, and weeds are growing well. I learned to garden from my grandfather and my mother. Mom began with a yard of clay and celebrated anything that would grow. One year, she allowed summer squash to grow up a hedge of lilacs. She loved bright clematis vines and red zinnias. Vegetables from my grandfather's garden were plentiful and near perfect. Even on the hottest days, he donned his battered straw hat and carefully tended rows of beans, broccoli, corn, cucumbers, onions, peppers, and tomatoes. I can still remember his summer smell of dust, sweat, and sun. When he finished working, he sat down in an old metal lawn chair which he placed in the shade of a big elm. My grandmother never understood why he spent so much time in that chair. She used to say, "I don't understand it. He just sits there." Now I wonder if he thought about his mother who loved to grow hollyhocks and vegetables.

Even though I wasn't able to plant tomatoes and basil until early June, they are thriving. My youngest grandson brought me three leftover broccoli plants from his garden which did fairly well for awhile. This week, since I prefer not to use chemicals, I pulled the broccoli out. The leaves, although quite good sized, were full of  jagged holes and I didn't want nearby cucumbers to become infested. Cucumbers, fresh and pickled, are a highlight of my summers.

Herbs, including oregano, lavender, sage, chives, and parsley are also growing well. A new oregano plant has produced large leaves and is an improvement on the older plant which was more stem than leaves. Since the herbs are planted in a raised bed near the house, they are protected from the wind. I can dash down the deck steps to gather a few fresh sprigs for cooking. The bed is easy to weed when I have a few minutes in the evening.

Spring tilling and summer hoeing keeps weeds down in the tomato patch and raised the bed. However, the large perennial bed is another story. Between the rain, work, and personal obligations, I cleaned out only a small portion this Spring. Prolific larkspur and sweet peas battle bindweed for survival. A similar weedy vine has taken over the trellis meant for the sweet peas. Although I made a space for volunteer strawberry plants, nut sedge has popped up all around them. Now most of the strawberry plants look as if they have some sort of blight. Two volunteer trees are growing at the back of the bed. Usually, I chop them off at ground level but the tall thick larkspur tied together with bindweed makes it hard to get to the trees. In short, the bed has gone wild. I'm pretty sure neither my grandfather nor his mother ever had a flower bed that was such a mess.

Yesterday after I pulled several buckets of bindweed and cleared only a small space, I concluded maintaining the bed is no longer fun or satisfying. Come early autumn, I'm pulling it all out, reducing the size significantly and changing the shape so maintenance is easier.  

Just as I finished cleaning up, my grandson and daughter arrived with warm cinnamon rolls from a local bakery. Sitting on the deck in dappled shade with them was much more pleasant than pulling bindweed. As my daughter and I talked about mulch and ground cover in flower beds, my grandson pushed a monster truck toward me. Then he joined our garden conversation by telling me, "my broccoli is growing like crazy." I love the thought of this almost three year old and his parents carrying on the gardening tradition in our family.

Multiple Perspectives

                                                                          

I regularly walk a route around my neighborhood, walking cul de sacs, up and down a hill, and then retracing some of the route to lengthen it to 2.75 miles. After late snows, plentiful rains, and crackling thunderstorms, my neighborhood is lush and green. This morning, storm clouds threatened rain so I shortened the route by walking some blocks in the reverse direction.  

Walking the opposite direction, I caught a glimpse of a sweet backyard vegetable garden I'd never seen before. A row of lettuce and another of onions grew in front of tomato plants. A few yellow flowers lined a small fence designed to keep critters away from vegetables. In another yard, I saw a color combination in a planter that would translate into a colorful quilt. Yellow and lavender petunias with their green foliage cascaded from the planters fitted to a front porch railing. Usually I watch the southwestern sky for interesting colors but today I watched clouds clear from the eastern sky. While doing so, I noticed a large bird I dismissed as yet another common crow. As she circled the neighborhood, I saw thin long legs stretched out behind the large flapping wings which identified the bird as a Great Blue Heron.  I also remembered a morning in August when early haze and high humidity made spider webs, usually invisible, appear to hang like ragged lace all over the neighborhood. These observations and thoughts keep me walking.

Truth and beauty are found in multiple perspectives. In addition, different perspectives create a richer notion of what I have in common with others. For example, my great grandmother loved to garden.  My aunt told me Charlotte had a beautiful garden until the day she died in August 1940. While I garden haphazardly, I prefer spending time with knitting and quilting. Below is the baby girl sweater which is ready for a new grandchild should it be a girl. (See previous posts for the little boy sweater.) Although my hobbies are different than those Charlotte enjoyed, the work of our hands creates beautiful and useful things for our families.

This summer I hope to finish my story about Great Grandmother Charlotte. When I began, I thought of her as a mother of two World War One soldiers. Then, while reading between the lines of my grandfather's letters from France, I began examining her life from other perspectives. I searched for information in family photos, old newspapers, land records, and history of central Nebraska. Differing perspectives helped me get acquainted with her as a woman of her time. I also hope I have crafted a story which comes closer to the truth about her ordinary days.

Empty Basket

Carving out writing time and space is challenging. In the late 1990's, I set up an old computer on a table in our basement. I knit a lace shawl and wore it to signal to my family I was writing and wanted to be interrupted only in the case of blood injuries or similar catastrophes. When my daughter went to graduate school, I claimed her room as my own. I pushed her desk under a window, piled files on a twin bed, and began searching for a story about my great grandmother Charlotte. In 2011, I moved a smaller more comfortable desk belonging to another great grandmother, Lucy, into the room. I draped the shawl over my chair and placed an empty basket inside the door as a place to drop off "to do" lists and school worries. Last summer, my dear husband and I moved everything out of the room, ripped up old carpet and had new flooring installed. After he repainted and set up the twin bed in the basement, I stored knitting supplies in the closet, reorganized the bookshelf, and set up my writing space. I hung a few pieces of handwork done by my sister, mother, grandmother, and myself on the wall.  Finally, as Virginia Woolf wrote, I had a "room of my own."

For twenty nine years, I have arranged my family, writing, knitting, quilting, cooking, housekeeping, and vacations around a school calendar.  In 1973, the first year Nebraska was required to hire certified teachers for significantly disabled children, I graduated and was hired to teach children with mental disabilities. Four of the six of us hired for the program at Arnold School were new graduates. Together we learned as much as the children. In 1977, I earned a Master's Degree in Early Childhood Special Education from the University of Kansas. Once again, I was one of the first in the state to be certified in a new speciality.  Later that year I married. In 1980, I became a mother and stayed home for eight years.  Since 1988, I have worked as an itinerant Early Childhood Special Education teacher in homes and community settings where I supported parents and caregivers of preschool children with developmental delays. Over and over I have watched as children with challenges learn to eat, walk, talk, and play. Teaching allowed me to be home with my children on most of their vacation days and the changing seasons of a school calendar suited me. This week marked the end of my last official school year as a public school teacher. After working ten days in June, I'll officially retire. I am proud to have been a public school teacher. Like many others, I worked hard and gave my best effort. I made a difference in the lives of many children and their families. 

Before you ask, let me say I don't know what I will being doing every day of the coming years.  Instead, I am going to be. Right now, I am watching the morning light reflected off the birch bark as a robin feeds her young. I want to savor the seasons with my family, blow bubbles with my grandchildren, eat dinner with my husband, study the sunset, and read deeply. I have a 401K of lovely yarn, mostly blues but some reds, lavenders, and greens. On weekday mornings, I plan to make a pot of coffee and finish the story about my great grandmother Charlotte. I have a room of my own and the basket is empty.   

  

 

 

Birds of a Feather

Spring weather has been cool with rain and even snow into late April and early May. The temperatures are too cool for planting tomatoes but good for knitting.  I finished this baby sweater and am knitting a hat to match.

                                                                   

I also cast on Piper's Journey, a crescent shawl with a simple border attached to a body of garter stitch.  I am knitting it in sport weight "Chickadee" yarn by Quince and Company. The yarn is 100% wool and has a lovely hand. 

Quince and Company, located in Maine, spins and dyes American wool and linen "sourced from overseas earth friendly suppliers" in a restored mill. Although they use minimal recyclable packaging, ink, and paper in products, their design aesthetic is sophisticated and beautiful. Cleverly, they named yarn lines after birds: chickadee, finch, tern, sparrow, lark, and owl.  For all of these reasons, I think their yarn company is worth supporting.

In other Spring aviary news, a robin is working on a nest in the clump birch outside my window. She is building on the southeast side of the tree where a strong limb meets one of the tree trunks.The tree will shelter her nest from the north and west wind while the house will protect it from the south.  This morning a pair of young cardinals call to each other and a chickadee searches for insects in the bark. A bluejay flew in to inspect the nest and a starling contributed one twig. Maybe this nest is a community building project. I'll be interested to see if the robin can maintain her claim on the nest.

                                                                                                                                                                 Meanwhile, a group of starlings continues to tut- tut on the ground underneath the tree. They keep their beady eyes on the small space in front of them, pecking at the ground for no good reason and then occasionally gobbling up earthworms before glancing around to see if their neighbor needs food.  Following each other in shiny black suits, they remind me of groups of U.S. Senators sticking together as they totter around opening and closing their throats in self-importance. In the evening the starlings roost together in the birch, cackling noisily and soiling the ground below them. Perhaps the robin's nest, just under another limb, is protected from the starlings' mess. I wish the American robin the best of luck as she attempts to build a home and rear a family during this precarious Spring.   

Spring Irony

I've finished my version of the  Deephaven Cowl and mismatched mittens from Prairie Silk Yarn by Brown Sheep Company. I modified the cowl pattern so both edges are the same. Working late into several evenings while listening to an audio book, I lost track of rows knitted on the second mitten. Although I tried three times, I made mismatched mittens. The thumb construction, made by knitting a piece of waste yarn into the hand which are later unraveled and picked up to make the thumb, left holes which I cinched up with needle and yarn. This may or may not be due to the pattern design. Still, I felt like my workmanship on the mittens was inferior. I planned to wear both pieces next winter and then the temperature dropped and snow fell.

 After trying on the mittens, I took them off and looked at the way my thumb grows from the top of my wrist.  The curve of my hand tells me a gusset made by increasing stitches just above the cuff makes more sense than knitting the thumb from an opening created by knitting stitches with waste yarn. I think the mitten would fit better and it wouldn't pull the cable sideways. Many mitten patterns use the waste yarn method so adjusting the position of  thumb stitches might improve the fit. The cable design in this pattern is the same on both mittens. Since I prefer cables to mirror each other, I'll pay more attention to cable twists in the future. However the mittens are serviceable and warm and there are no knitting police, I declared the mittens finished and counted them as a lesson learned.    

     

Life is full of irony, including spring weather and knitting. While the cowl pattern, was designed to be asymmetrical, I modified the pattern to make it symmetrical. The mittens were intended to be symmetrical but due to my errors ended up asymmetrical. For now, this yarn and I are finished. The two leftover skeins are in the basket of yarn scraps waiting for another day. Perhaps because I went to a funeral last week, life seems too short to reknit a mitten four times.  Even though the daffodils are drooping after April cold and snow, the rhubarb is up. I have a baby sweater that needs buttons, and a lovely garter stitch shawl on the needles.  Forward into Spring!

Butterflies and Robins in the Winter

Two days ago we had heavy snowfall and I am grateful for the moisture.  I love the peace of January but by March I'm ready for warmth and color. Today, the sky is blue and a stiff March wind is blowing.  I think it is a Spring chinook that will help melt seven inches of snow. Whenever I feel winter weary, I think of my great grandmothers and how relieved they must have been when the year turned toward Spring.

Right before this last snowfall, I spotted crocus and daffodils coming up in my yard. This group of robins, huddled in the neighbor's apple tree, makes me hopeful. Perhaps best of all,  I made some yarn butterflies for a baby sweater.  My daughter and her husband are expecting their second child in August.  Butterflies and robins in February, wind and snow in March, and a new grandchild in August are sure signs of a changing season.