With Knitting, Anything Can Be OK

There was a massive earthquake in Italy the other day. As of today, the death toll was 207. Saying prayers for all the dead and injured and families. "What does this have to do with knitting?" you may ask. Here you go:

A 98 year old woman, Maria D’Antuono, spent 30 hours knitting as she waited to be rescued. "I worked, I knitted," said Mrs D'Antuono, from the village of Tempera, close to L'Aquila. I wonder if she just wanted to stay occupied, or if this kept her sane. Probably both.

Here is the news story. They mention Maria at the bottom of page 1 and continue on page 2.

God Bless Her.

To Mulch, or Knit Socks, That is the Question

It's summer. Almost, anyway. Memorial Day weekend is upon us and I am knitting instead of spreading the 5 yards of mulch (YIKES) that I obtained for my garden beds.

Actually, I have been spreading it off and on for two weeks now, building killer arms, and sometimes I just have to cover that pile up with the tarp, anchor it with my assorted rocks/cement blocks/bricks that I found in my yard and say adios till next time, baby. (It is gradually becoming smaller, though) My neighbors must think I am nuts, but then they already knew that... a few years ago our house was smurf blue. Quite an eyesore.

Anyway, since it is summer, there is no way Jose that I will be knitting anything but socks. Something small, that will not overheat my delicate lower body as I sit with the knitting on my lap.

I obtained some beautiful hand painted sock yarn from my LYS (local yarn shop) that I made into socks for my mother's 80th birthday. These are only part of her gift. I am also getting into needle felting and made a knitted felted appliquéd eyeglass case for her. I am taking advantage of the situation with my husband being in prison (see Knitting Him Home). Hopefully, she is feeling sorry for me and will accept handmade gifts this year, figuring out that I may not have much cash to BUY a present. Of course, this is not true. I have cash. I could buy a gift. I like knitting better and will use any excuse to knit something, anything else!

Also in the works are socks for my two oldest daughters, more for me, and an itty bitty pair of cute purple socks for little Sofia, my 6 month old granddaughter. I already knit some for Layla Louise, the other granddaughter, but hers were in Super Ugly Green (lime green to the uninitiated). Her dad has a couple of barber shops named Super Ugly and this green, along with brown are the corporate colors. (As you can probably tell by the name, the target market for the shops are young guys, teen to twenty-something.)

Knitting, mulch, birthday gifts, Super Ugly. There is a connection here somewhere....

My Other Passion

I have not been able to post for a while. Busy knitting! No, not just knitting. Although I did have to frog a seed stitch sweater that I had actually started to put together. It was WAY too big. And, I have been working on my scarf of many days (see previous post). I know there are some people who check back to read my blog, and I have been feeling extremely guilty not posting for a while.

I thought to myself, "Self, how come you haven't written anything in the Knitting blog?" The answer came to me:

I have been putting all my time and energy into my real job: I am an adjunct instructor at my local community college and am teaching Art History this semester, and last week, the students had to hand in their museum papers. I have 30 students....

So you know what I have been doing. If you have ever taken a survey art history class, you know the museum paper I am talking about. The required visit to the art museum, pick out an artwork, and write a paper (for our class: 2 pages, double spaced, times 12 pt. etc, etc, etc....) Of course, I also let them email their paper to me. Since we are on Long Island, the assignment is to go into Manhattan and either visit the Metropolitan Museum or the Modern Art Museum. Many of them have never been to either.

I have to tell you how much I enjoy reading these papers! Sometimes, they write about artists who I have never heard of, then I look them up online and get lost in learning about yet another artist and their technique. Three days later I still am grading papers! One that I found extremely interesting is Satoshi Kamiya, a Japanese artist who makes sculptures out of origami! Here is a video of him creating one of his works. (If you can understand Japanese, it would be even more interesting... 1,2,3!)

The students always groan when I give the assignment in the beginning of the semester, and they always say how glad they were that they had to do it in the end. They learn a new way to look at art in our class, how to analyze an artwork, recognize artists' styles and lots more. They leave the museum feeling proud of themselves that they know about art enough to understand and get more out of a painting than most museum goers. I love to see the smile on their faces when they tell me about their visits to the museum.

Since this is, after all, a knitting blog, here is something interesting for all you knitters: last year, the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC held a wonderful exhibit on, you guessed it, knitting! Here is the link if you want to read about this exhibit: Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting. Take a look for the tiniest knitted gloves you have probably ever seen (whew! would never want to count the gauge for those babies!)

Knitting Him Home

This post will be difficult to write.

But that will be OK, because this was not supposed to be a fluffy, doesn't really matter anyway type of blog. It was created in order for me to grow, heal, and share that with others. Using knitting as the vehicle.

My husband is a very good man. I have known him since we were kids in 8th grade health class together. Of course, then I had a crush on the guy who sat next to him. Turned out he was not so good.... Anyway, the boy that was to later become my husband, Billy, and I became very good friends the next year, when we were in ninth grade. At times during Jr and Sr high school, we would loose touch with each other, going our separate ways and having our own groups of friends, but we always had a close underlying connection all the while.

When we graduated high school, I remember giving him a hug, then saying goodbye. Then I went home and said, "I can't not see this guy anymore", so I called his house. Pretty daring for me, a girl who was raised with the idea that good girls don't chase boys. I wonder how many of you can relate to that? Anyway, we ended up going out together, and lived together for a while before eventually marrying We had three daughters together, too. Last year we celebrated our 30th anniversary.

Now for the bad part: if you read my earlier post you already know he had trouble with the feds. Well, he was the target of an investigation and had to plead guilty (FYI the feds have a 98% conviction rate if you take it to trial, then you get a really, really big sentence, so if you are ever in this position, for goodness sake, don't think you can win at a trial, even if you are innocent! I had no idea before this all happened that this is the way it works, and I bet many of you don't.... read this blog for someone else's story...)

Billy got an 8 month sentence and is now a guest of the Bureau Of Prisons. (The really bad guys who plead out did not get any time, BTW) The list of the worst days of my life only contain 2 entries: the day I hugged him goodbye last December 3rd, and the day my 9 year old daughter was in a horrible car accident at home while I was away in Canada. Even the day my 93 year old father died is not on that list.

I have been knitting like a fool since. It is the only thing that keeps me sane. It keeps me in the moment and feeling like I am doing something besides waiting. I have been beating myself up because, having received my Master of Fine Arts last year, I feel like I should be making sculpture, entering shows, getting on with my art, etc... Problem is, to create good art, I have to be passionate about it. I have not been passionate about anything for a while.

Today, I decided to knit him home. I wish I had thought of this in December! I am using my stash of yarn to knit a scarf. No one will wear this scarf. (It will probably be really ugly, since I am not planning on weaving in the yarn when I change colors and I am using all my colors and weights of yarn together in one scarf). I am using a different yarn for every day. I will repeat some yarns eventually, as I don't have 240 different yarns to work with (my stash is small yet, give me time, give me time). I cast on 35 stitches, one for each week he is not home, and started knitting back and forth. I am up to December 10th already. Only 3-6 rows for each day. I experienced a lot of pain in those first few weeks, and it is coming back to me as I knit each day. Helping me to let it go. YEAH for knitting!

Eventually I will catch up to the present, then I plan to only knit the yarn for each day as it passes. Me, at home, doing time. There is a saying in prison, do the time, don't let the time do you. I like this. I am doing the time. Anyone who has a loved one in prison will tell you that it is much harder on the family members than the one who is gone. I wonder if the authorities know this and count on it?

Will I use red and green yarn for Christmas Day? Ohh, I have a really nice Easter colored variegated yarn left over from a cap I knit for one of my granddaughters! What will I add for the days that I went to Pennsylvania to visit him? Maybe some strands of silver or gold threads, as these days are precious to me. These are some of my choices in the creation of my masterpiece.

They say when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. I am making a scarf.