March… yes, yes, yes! It rained yesterday… such soft, tender rain. It was delightful! This week we are leaping into temps in the 70’s… which is insane to me… just insane. My poor snowdrops will soon be over at these temps… sigh. But…
My DAFFS are going to have A YEAR!
Yes, those 10 Colossal Daffodil bulbs I planted a mere 3 years ago have a whopping 30 buds emerging! I am over the moon with this… and I would like to thank Carole for showing her braided daffodil greens last year. I did that and if that is the reason behind this bloom-athon, you can bet that I’ll be doing that again this year! But, this is not a gardening post… so let’s get to the making!
It is moving along. I actually let my second attempt at the Waffle Sweater sit quietly since I finished those short rows… partly because I was having a bit of disgust with it… partly so I could just let my maths simmer in my brain for a bit. I am happy to report that I picked it up again on Monday night and I think my increase plan is absolutely the right work around! That helps remove all traces of that disgust and I am back in knit mode to finish this sweater! I know that there will be plenty of days to wear this before it needs to be packed away for the summer!
I also started a sock… from a Miss Babs Sock Blank. I have never knit anything from sock blanks but I have to tell you, unraveling that blank, dividing the two strands, and winding two balls of yarn in increments was not a task that was… easy. However, it worked well to sit down and do this whilst watching a very moving movie on Netflix. (I highly recommend the movie I watched, The Swedish Connection. It was so, so, so good!) But despite the slowness of all that unraveling and winding… sock one is off to the races and I love everything about it! I went back to a much loved pattern, Carole’s Picot Edge Socks, which is exactly what this yarn needed to show the beauty of the dye… say hello to my Sakura Socks!
Cherry Blossom Socks!
The reading this week… mmm, mmmm, mmmmm! So good! I finished Bernd Heinrich’s Mind of the Raven… and have a new love for corvids and wish I saw ravens in my corner of the world. If you are a birder, I think you’d love this in-depth look at ravens. I listened.
Next, a new release by Allegra Goodman… This is Not About Us. I loved it. Really, really, loved it. It is a story about people, in particular an extended family and their relationships with each other. It starts with the death of one family member, and slowly evolves from there. These are not perfect people… they have problems, issues, opinions, struggles, desires… and this book really highlights how sometimes the messiest life is the best thing ever. It felt so good to be nestled in amongst these very real people. (One might say that I fit in perfectly, lol!) Anyways, I did not want the book to end… at all and I highly recommend it.
On a side note, I am phasing out my use of Goodreads. I have merged over, almost completely, to The Storygraph. It is really a nice interface and I love supporting something other than the dude from Amazon.
And with that, there you have my making and reading highlights for the week! What about you? What does your March making and reading look like?
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
‘March’ is a sharp word, brusque and bracing, like its month. ‘January’, ‘February’; they meander like rivers; ‘April’ is like the sound of raindrops on the windowpane; but ‘March’ is a gust of wind flinging grit. — Adrian Bell, A Countryman’s Spring Notebook
I read these words yesterday morning as the sun was just rising, welcoming the meteorological spring… and I am very eager for it. Of course, Mr. Bell’s beautiful words reminded me of other beautiful words… Maurice Sendak wrote of the March winds blowing in a door and spilling soup upon the floor… and the best part: Blowing once, blowing twice, blowing chicken soup with rice. Yes, bring on those March winds!
Yesterday, as if on queue, I watched the winds blow the delicate Snowdrops… their blossoms swaying on thin stems, yet they are sturdier than they look! Snowdrops, who straddle winter and spring in the very best way. Snow cannot defeat them, nor can the early March wind… they sway delicately as a few brave bees buzz around them. In my corner of the world, they are the earliest flower that offers something sweet to bees who wake after a winter’s slumber.
I recorded the return of the Red-winged Blackbirds last week at my feeders, the earliest I have ever seen them. They joined a trio of juncos searching for seeds in the still sleeping grass. A reminder that these two seasons, Winter and Spring, like to play a good game of tug of war before one relinquishes to the other. Yes that means a month where all the weather’s can happen… even summer takes a turn here in the south hills of Pittsburgh. (Yes, we have a forecast for temperatures in the 70’s [F] here this week, sigh.)
I spent most of the winter… wintering. It was a season that understood my grieving and settled in around me like a comforting blanket. Dark mornings where I could walk quietly in the silence. As January gave way to February, it seemed to me that the gradual increase in daylight was somehow timed to ease me out of that deep grief, I know it was not… but it felt as if the earth was very much a participant in my grief process. And now my early walks are not in dark (at least until we turn the clocks back next weekend, grrr) and it is no longer silent. I am accompanied by birdsong… Song Sparrows are the first to jump on the Spring is Coming Train… their melodious chorus is so loud! Robin’s soon join in and Carolina Wren’s as well.
I want to steep myself in spring as deeply as I did winter, except I know that won’t be as easy as I am imagining. Spring is a lot more everything happening all at once, everywhere, all at the same time… so don’t blink because you will miss it. So I am adjusting my schedule to make more space for the delight that is spring. A good schedule shake up is not always welcome, but I think it will be a very good thing so I can spend more time appreciating the wonders of March. Rilke writes frequently about this desire: want the change. I think there is some wisdom in that edict… change happens without our control, so rather than fighting change, I am contemplating how to be a Wanter of Change… and March is a very good month for that!
Greetings gentle Unraveler’s and welcome to the last Wednesday of February!
I am happy to say there has been no unraveling this week, whew! (right?) However, I have not picked up the yoke since we last checked in… so it is safe to say that in my neighborhood, at least, the “bang out” phase of urgency has passed. I am reminding myself that knitting is not a race and that this sweater will be a welcome addition to my sweater drawer whenever it is finished!
I do, however, have an almost completed pair of socks! And I am very happy about that. I have about 10 more rounds of toe decreases to go and I predict that these socks will be done and in the “wearing rotation” before I need to put all the socks away for the year! (In fact, you can count them done by the time you are reading this!)
I mentioned on Monday that I took the MDK class on beading with Natalie Chanin… I am channeling Vicki as I am slowly working on my bandana. I am not to the point of beading the bandana yet, I opted to get all the backstitch reverse patches done first but I will soon be full on immersed in beading this small project, which I am stunned at how quickly it goes… or should I say that I am stunned at how quickly I lose track of time when beading? This beaded piece is a huge step outside my “clothing comfort zone” but I will be the chicest dog walker in all of Pittsburgh! Ha!
Slowly finding a rhythm with backstitch… I am really enjoying the basics of stitching!
Yesterday, I finished the seventh page of my twenty-page, 100 Day stitch journey. We have a phenomena in the sky on Friday, which was my inspiration… behold the Planet Parade!
I am still finding ways to use that sock… Yarn as Rings of Saturn, FTW!
The reading has been very good… I finished a newly released book by Sadeqa Johnson, Keeper of Lost Children. It is a story I was not aware of but I really appreciated how Sadeqa brought the story to life by telling it through the characters… each with a different perspective. It is about babies born to German Mothers after WWII. The hiccup was that the babies fathers were Black American servicemen. It was the work of one woman to bring a group of these babies to the United States to be adopted… the story is told from a German Mother’s perspective, the American serviceman’s perspective, the adopted child’s perspective, as well as the struggles the woman who worked tirelessly to bring these babies home faced. It was well done and is quite moving.
I am almost done reading Allegra Goodman’s latest novel, This is Not About Us. I am enjoying this book as well… but it is entirely different from Sadeqa’s book but not in a bad way. It is a bit of an extended family story… beginning with the death of one aunt. I almost don’t want it to end… but I will be finished with it soon.
During the day I am listening to Bernd Heinrich’s Mind of the Raven and I am LOVING it! Vera has sang the praises of Bernd’s writing for some time now and I see more of his books in my reading future!
How is your February winding down? Are you trying to finish something up? Or are you contemplating a springtime make?
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
It has been a curious month, my friends and here in the south hills of Pittsburgh, it has been a snowy one. In fact, we had more consecutive days with snow on the ground since I moved here almost 14 years ago now. And while most of my neighbors have found this phenomenon upsetting, I have loved it deeply.
I have often heard talk of the nostalgia of snow, the way that we always imagine our childhoods to have been snowier than they actually were. — Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
This statement rang profoundly true for myself as I navigated February… and the snowy month helped tremendously! I wandered down the halls of the memories of my Winter’s Past in Holland, Michigan… a place that is much snowier than Pittsburgh will ever be… and I delighted in the brief encounter with winter I could enjoy this year and we even got some snow overnight! I will take a check on the snowiest February in recent Pittsburgh history chart!
But in this deep winter month, I also began to see (and feel) changes… more noticeable daylight, the return of birdsong, I watched the snow from earlier in the month melt, and welcomed new coverings of snow more than once, I saw bulbs begin to sprout, and then over the weekend… I saw snowdrop blossoms opening in the crisp February air… all good things and this latest blanket of snow won’t hurt them at all. I felt very much these outward signs mirrored my inward feelings. Some days I felt lighter and some days did not but all around me the world was helping me move forward.
I also spent some time learning this month… stretching my brain, trying new things that feel awkward and uncomfortable in my hands. I attended a talk by Mark S. Burrows, Ph.D on “The Outward Gaze: Rilke, Rodin and the Conversation Between Poetry and Sculpture.” (this was so incredibly good…I will be jumping at the opportunity to do this again!) I took the Alabama Chanin Beading workshop that MDK offered and was dazzled (or is that bedazzled… HA!) by what I learned. (One brief side note… can I just say that if MDK announced that Natalie Chanin was going to lead a class of her reading the phone book, I’d sign up… honestly, her voice is the most soothing, calming thing ever.)
And yes… I knit almost an entire yoke of a sweater only to have to rip back to start again. But I learned that sometimes row gauge is crucial… and I have “mathed” out the solution and have slowly begun yoke knitting again.
The thing that keeps circling back to me about this month is this… I am not certain I would have done any of these things in any other time. I needed to be immersed in Deep Winter to have the space to contemplate these things… to go deeper with Rilke, to slow down and pick up the thinnest needle, thread it, and begin to… stitch by stitch… add some brilliance to a piece of fabric in a way that is entirely unfamiliar to me. And to have no other distractions to sit down and math out the solution to my “row gauge” issue.
Things that could only be accomplished with no other distractions calling made me see a new value for winter and I am tucking away ideas of things that might be interesting to contemplate next winter!
Finally, I will close with a poem by Nikki Giovanni… it is a poem of hers that was part of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) Art in Transit program:
Winter Poem
by Nikki Giovanni
once a snowflake fell
on my brow and i loved
it so much and i kiss
it and it was happy and called its cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me
i reached to love them all
and i squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and i stood perfectly
still and was a flower
And that, my friends, is the most perfect way to wrap up winter. Next month begins spring and while there might be some back and forth days as winter gives way and spring takes over… spring will eventually win! I’d also encourage you to check out how Cathy and Carolyn did this month!
One poem by Fanny Howe has been calling me back to it since I read it in early January. It is short. It is simple. And I have it memorized. (and I think the best thing that this poem urges one to do is talk about our own letters now… today!)
[I won’t be able to write from the grave]
by Fanny Howe
I won’t be able to write from the grave
so let me tell you what I love:
oil, vinegar, salt, lettuce, brown bread, butter,
cheese and wine, a windy day, a fireplace,
the children sleeping nearby, poems and songs,
a friend sleeping in my bed—
You can find more information about the prolific poetess, Fanny Howe, here. And you will find more poetry here… a huge thanks to Bonny for gathering us together today!
A bit of an ironic aside today with a bonus poem… this week, we lost The Reverend Jesse Jackson and that saddens me so deeply. I liked Jesse Jackson very much and I believe his work leveled out the path a bit for Barack Obama. Anyways, way back in 1972 he was on Sesame Street and shared a powerful poem with the Sesame Street kids. It moved me when I first heard him recite it some years later but it is most especially moving hearing him share it with those kids. Thanks to the deep well of YouTube, I am sharing it with you today. The poem was written by the Rev. William Holmes Borders, Sr. Reverend Jackson recited this poem often… I think you will see why:
