Cats Knit and tango

Mouse Trouble

2008-07-13T20:23:00.000-07:00

There are no photographs documenting this story. Probably a good thing, for the sake of the dignity of the three cats and two humans involved.

I need to preface by saying that all three of the cats are bold and brave as any, and frequently bring home trophies of the hunt: gophers, mice, birds (sadly), butterflies (unharmed), pork chops, scones, rats and lizards. They are not afraid of much except the vet and the vacuum cleaner. They are certainly not afraid of a mouse. I too am not afraid of mice, in their proper place, which is outdoors. I once lived for a time in a horse shed, where the mice had the run of the premises night and day. Another time I was lost in the hills of Big Sur at day's end and had to sleep on the ground with only a poncho for cover, and had wood rats running and squeaking over me all night long. Those days are gone, and I don't want live mice in the house now.

During the night on Thursday, I was awakened as Brigid, singing her Mighty Huntress song, came in the cat-door, with her mouth full of something. Apparently whatever she had caught was still alive, and soon escaped her clutches: for the rest of the night I could hear scuttling and chasing and thumping and scraping. In the morning I found evidence that the missing playmate had taken refuge behind a large mirror leaning against the living room wall, and Brigid intent, still very much on the job. Suddenly, the mouse made a run for it, dashing out from behind the mirror, across the floor, down the stairs and under the closed door into my office. Brigid and I searched for a bit, but it was hopeless; I went to work, and Brigid went to take a nap.

After work, I was home sitting upstairs in the bedroom reading, and saw a small movement out of the corner of my eye. There, in the corner of the room, was a large, bold, brown mouse. I called Sean to bring in Brigid, still working hard at her nap on the couch, and to shut the door behind him. Brigid was not interested in forced labor and split out the cat door. Sean tried to convince me that she had taken the mouse with her. Right. Since I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday, I got the flashlight and immediately found the mouse under the nightstand trying to blend in with the extension cords and dust bunnies. We then called in the auxiliary cats, Brutus and Zoe Godzilla, and opened the sliding glass door that leads out onto the balcony. Brutus sensed his dignity was at stake and excused himself. Sean, armed with a yardstick, myself, armed with a towel, and Zoe combined forces. There was a lot of energetic activity, waving of sticks and towels, jumping and shouting, with the mouse appearing and disappearing randomly from view in a most unnerving way. Every time Zoe got close and faced down the mouse, he would turn on her, and squeak in his most terrifying mouse roar: "Back off, sister!" And Zoe would back away nervously, which made us fall over laughing. Eventually Sean impounded the mouse under a throw rug. While we were discussing how to catch him in something, he suddenly materialized from somewhere (not from under the throw rug), sped across the floor, out the door, across the balcony and flung himself into space. He landed in the bushes without a word of farewell. Brigid spent the next hour looking in vain for her lost playmate. Zoe still has not recovered her self-respect.
It's a story as old as time.

Smoky Skies

2008-07-08T19:40:00.001-07:00

It's bad. The weather satellite at NOAA shows the smoke blowing directly over us and just hanging. If it is this bad here, imagine how bad it must be down in Big Sur. I just wonder about all the animals. I read that some of the condor chicks were lost.
We take our wonderful air quality for granted; it's sobering to see how easily it is taken away.

Vampire 'Nanners

2008-07-08T16:49:00.001-07:00

We have no bananas, but we have finished socks!
Wendy of WendyKnits shared this original sock pattern to all her fellow Plurkers, inspired by all the dancing bananas in Plurkland. I dug around through my yarn stash and found a beautiful skein of Blue Moon Fiber Arts lightweight, from the Socks that Rock club last year, in an exclusive colorway from the Raven series, called Lenore. The yarn told me it wanted to become....Vampire Nanners. So here they are all done; toe up, gusset heel, a lovely, easy-to-remember 12-row repeat, very stretchy, and a perfect fit. Wendy is so generous and a sock genius; it's been great fun having her be the first person on Plurk to achieve Nirvana!

Inspired

2008-07-05T19:28:00.001-07:00

July 5th, Indian dinner
Originally uploaded by tangocatmum

I can't say enough good things about the Indian cooking classes with Sangita and Arijit in which I have been lucky enough to participate over the last year. Such visually beautiful, soul-satisfying food, fragrant beyond belief, and nutritious as well. Sangita has demystified the ingredients and the processes so that making this meal for dinner with ingredients on hand was an enjoyable adventure.
Clockwise, from top left: Mango pickle, cilantro-ginger chutney, lime wedge, yoghurt, ghoogni, mach bhaja, cabbage rice, Trader Joe's multigrain naan bread (I was too tired to make roti from scratch after all)
Thank you, Sangita and Arijit!

Tastes of India class, June 28th

2008-06-30T16:07:00.001-07:00

The summer series has moved to a new location, it is definitely a more homey setting. We had three new students thanks to an article that appeared in a local newspaper about the classes. We also had two guests from out of town. As always the food and company were wonderful.

Here, Sangita is preparing chapati dough from scratch. It has to be kneaded until smooth and tender, formed into balls, and then left to rest prior to rolling out thinly. Then it is cooked in a dry, flat pan, and finally puffed up over the open gas flame. Delicious!

It's so hot here, we all had baths

2008-06-21T08:07:00.001-07:00

Brutus, all wet
Originally uploaded by tangocatmum

Record temperatures being set here. Not a good sign.
We came home from window cleaning in blistering temperatures to find all three cats totally melted and looking miserable. I'm sure I could hear their plaintive voices in a chorus of "Baths for all!"

It was so hot in the house (historically, we have no need for air conditioning), the two girl cats were dry almost immediately after their baths. They both had a complementary Furminator brush styling and were silky and beautiful. Although Brigid wasn't satisfied with the stylist's work, and spent the next three hours rearranging every hair several times.

("Yuck, I have wet cat fur on my tongue")

Poor Brutus, as an old codger-cat, has given up on grooming altogether (and he used to be such a "sharp-dressed man"). He hates being brushed and it's almost like his fur felts after a bath. He had several short sessions out on the deck of cajoling, brushing and coddling and treats, followed by our own baths, and bandaids.

It's already hot again this morning. I am certain all three of them have been out rolling in the dirt. There may be more baths for all today.

I haven't fallen in a hole

2008-06-19T16:44:00.001-07:00

...yet. There has been knitting. I finished the Tesserae socks for Sean.

I cast on for this beauty, it's by Kate Gilbert, in Shibui yarn.

Marina Piccola sock in progress
Originally uploaded by tangocatmum

Also cast on for Wollmeise socks, in her colorway Guinea Pig I.

I tried a couple other patterns, but it just didn't sing to me, so I went with Tropicana, originally from Magknits, and now I imagine, on Ravelry. I've also been plugging away on the Bigfoot lace shawl. No pictures, we all know what lace-in-progress looks like...nothing to get excited about.

The cats have been entertaining and silly as always. It's very hot today, so Brutus, who is usually photophobic, slept quietly through his photoshoot.

And there have been the usual days in paradise to put up with:

Mapping the sea floor

2008-06-10T16:23:00.001-07:00

Sea floor mapping ship
Originally uploaded by tangocatmum

At a recent window cleaning job, I heard a boat approaching the cove south of Pt. Lobos. We later saw the same boat up close on a trailer. It is a special CSU boat that does sea floor mapping.

Coming up (briefly) for air

2008-05-31T19:31:00.000-07:00

No rest for the wicked, that's for sure.
There have been acres of filthy windows to clean.
There have been views to savor in the midst of filthy windows.

There have been new-to-me foods to cook and taste for the first time; these fiddlehead ferns came all the way from Canada to Trader Joe's.

It is also our job to annoy sleepy cats pretending to be innocent

And to be thrilled by a slightly less domestic one that we glimpsed on our way to a job this morning.

Glorious gardens that give us visual pleasure as well as a giggle (because they symbolize pissing contests between neighbors who have more money than is seemly)

And these feral delights running free, which are much more our style:

And between bringing clean and light to the filthy-windowed homes of the Peninsula, time for nourishment and friendship from Sangita in the Tastes of India class

And everyday, reminders to take a moment to smell the roses (or petunias, in this case)

A blossom of a different sort, captured by my father on my 1st birthday, May 31st, 1948.

Stick with me

2008-05-18T10:45:00.000-07:00

The next few weeks are likely to be really busy with window cleaning. This is good and bad. Good because we are lucky to have work and are physically able to work. And bad because if I have just enough energy after work to either knit or blog post, I'll probably choose to knit a row before sleep. It doesn't mean I don't love you any more. We need to work full tilt when there is work to make up for the times when, for whatever reason, people don't get their windows cleaned. Our winter rainy season, when we get one, can last up to four months or so, and people generally wait it out. At some point the rain and winds and pollen and salt spray reach critical mass, and then suddenly we are inundated with jobs.

We had one of our annual giant-ass window jobs the other day, just as the current heat wave was getting started. Heat wave + window cleaning=not much fun. I did have an interesting supervisor though:

I'm used to all the spiders that we normally deal with in and around windows. We even had a pet spider living in the car, for whom we would bring the occasional fly, so that we could sit and eat our lunch while she ate hers. This little garter snake was just chillin' out, and more nervous about me sticking my camera in his face that I was of him sneaking up on me and running up my pant leg. The owners said they had recently killed a rattlesnake near the house, but after living in the Missouri Ozarks and dealing with copperheads and rattlers and moccasins underfoot, never mind the mosquitos, horseflies, ticks and chiggers, I guess I'm jaded.
There were also some gorgeous flowers, including this rose.

We can't grow roses here, too cool and too much fog, but I'm happy with the trade-off.
On the way back from the job was a pasture with fiber on the hoof.

Two llamas, rolling in the dirt, and a shorn sheep. The big brown guy was very friendly and came right over to the fence. He'd be a great addition to our back yard. I wonder what the cats would think?

I'm still squeezing in time for knitting. Almost done with the Tesserae Socks in Somoko. I've started the arch shaping on the Francie sock in Pagewood Farms yarn, and discovered an error clear back when I turned the heel. Sigh. Will I ever learn to count? I'm not ripping back. I've also done about 40 rows on the VLT shawl. I forget the name, I can only call it the catbutt shawl. You know which one it is (I think it actually called the half-curved shawl). After 15 tries at the cast on and first row, I finally got the hang of it, although I am putting in lifelines every few rows, and stitch markers with every pattern repeat. No pictures, no one wants to see errors in socks and lace on the needles.

Knock your eyes out

2008-05-07T14:42:00.001-07:00

Flowers everywhere, just going nuts. And some demonstrating a floral sense of humor.

Maker Faire

(pictures here) was fabulous, but so overwhelming. Like some bizarre museum, it is stimulating and fatiguing at the same time.
The place was packed, there was a traffic jam all the way out to the freeway. The Faire was bigger and better than ever this year. Having the Yarn Harlot there was the icing on the cake, and we held each other's socks-in-progress:
She made us laugh, and her book, "Things I Learned from Knitting" gives me hope that I may yet learn something. I'm dubious at the moment, having again tackled a project I suspect I am genetically unable to do: lace. I got talked into a VLT knitalong, and have cast on and knit the same 3 starting rows about fifty-eleven times in two days. I am pretty sure putting in a lifeline on row 1 shouldn't be necessary. I did finish a pair of socks for a friend's boy baby, who just turned 6 months old, in leftover merino/cashmere yarn.
Maybe I am meant to churn out only socks. Heaven knows I have enough sock yarn to keep me busy for a few months. (Define few?)

One nagging question has remained with me since the Faire. Where did I go wrong: none of my children got tattoos and joined the circus. I have hope; they are still young.

Drama queens

2008-05-02T13:00:00.001-07:00

Not enough hours in the day

2008-05-01T14:01:00.000-07:00

I'm on a cleaning-out binge. I have spent several hours going through random piles of things in random rooms and closets and drawers and cannot see any difference. So here I am, doing something much more enjoyable. Hooray for the internets!

Tastes of India class was wonderful as always, and Sangita and Arijit give us more than culinary tastes. History, geography, philosophy and humor mixed into a nourishing garam masala.

We had cholar dal, a spicy stew with chickpeas, fresh raita and paratha, which Sangita miraculously makes exactly the same size and thickness, and each one a perfect round. I guess after 999,999 she has it down.
For dessert there was a wonderful halwah, or pudding, make with milk and bottle gourd.

It's a very nice group of students in the class, I'm looking forward to the next field trip.

On the knitting front, I finished the April 2008 Mystery Socks, from Goddess Knits.
These will be a gift, but I don't think the recipient reads my blog, so no danger of a spoiler there.

I also finished another gift, a silk scarf made from Schaefer Patty, in the colorway Rosa Parks. Quite beautiful, but a nightmare from start to finish. Ten knots in two skeins, and color running like crazy. I have read all the tutorials on how to set dye and done my best. Fingers crossed and I will warn the recipient not to get into a hot tub wearing it.

Break time is over, back to the closet monsters.

more knitting, less blogging

2008-04-22T15:00:00.000-07:00

I realized today, after reading someone else's blogiversary post, that this week marks two years for Cats Knit and Tango. Hopefully what I find still entertaining and inspiring to post is amusing to others, though I mostly do it as a form of visual and verbal exercise. I have wondered occasionally, what happens to someone's blog after they die? I've never kept a journal or diary, that might be found and read 100 years from now. What will become of all the online
murmuring of blogs in the years to come?
I guess my knitting projects will survive, at least for awhile, but they too are ephemeral in the end.
I finished the toe up socks, thank you again, Amy, for the yarn.

I've also continued to race along on the Mystery Socks, from Goddess Knits. Love the yarn from the Knittery, in Australia. Who wouldn't love cashmere and merino together? I think these will be gifted; I hope they wear well.

I am plugging along on the man socks in Fleece Artist Somoko. The yarn fabric is beautiful, it fairly glows with the silk content. Mohair, silk and merino should make it long-wearing, I hope so. I just hope it is up to the challenge of daily wear in Dansko clogs by hard-working man feet.

Work on Imogen has resumed. From zero. I nearly had the whole back done when I realized I had made a hideous error. Again. Again with not fully reading-understanding-following instructions. Straight stitch does not = knitting straight. After a night spent trying to dodge the inevitable, I ripped out a month's worth of knitting, and began again. This photo is all that remains of the "wrong" version, there's not enough worth showing of the restart, but it has promise, and the yarn is so lovely, Blue Moon Fiber Arts Peru, from the Raven series, Thraven.

I also cast on for a scarf for Wendy for combined Mother's Day and birthday gift. Since she cannot wear wool, I'm always on the lookout for the right combination of color and agreeable yarn. I found Schaefer Patty, which is 100% silk, in the Rosa Parks colorway, gorgeous stuff. No picture yet, not enough progress to be picture-worthy.

I'm also noodling on a sock design of my own, in Shibui
with cables and other nonsense. Given my penchant for not being able to follow anyone else's instructions, and having 811 projects going at once, there are no promises.
And finally, instead of blogiversary cake, a view toward Cypress Point:

All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by...

2008-04-18T14:58:00.000-07:00

...And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking..." John Masefield
We were cruising to find a lunch spot between jobs the other day, and around the bend of the road, spotted this out in the bay:

It's the Privateer Lynx which spends six months of the year sailing up and down the West Coast, and will, for a fee, take on apprentice sailors and students willing to live in very tight and spartan quarters, with no mutiny allowed.
As we watched, a mysterious puff of smoke appeared, and then drifted away, and the sound of a cannon finally reached us on shore.

A few days later we took the dockside tour. She's a sleek and dangerous seductress, even tied securely at the wharf.

I spoke with the captain, tan with a graying queue and calloused hands (even the girl crew member had incredibly tough hands); we talked about Monterey's sailing history, and Richard Henry Dana's dismissal of Monterey citizens as "the laziest creatures he had ever met, they'd rather ride a horse than walk 50 feet." I asked him if he knew about Hippolyte Bouchard, the Argentine privateer that sacked Monterey in 1818, and he did not, so he was delighted to hear the little I knew.
There's a shorter voyage that's almost tempting: from Half Moon Bay to Oakland, the end of the month. Ah to sail beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, with the cry of the gulls, the slap of waves on the hulls and creaking of a living ship breathing beneath one's feet. And the guaranteed sound of me, retching over the side.

Tastes like home

2008-04-10T18:42:00.001-07:00

My mum never cooked like this, but when I step into Sangita's kitchen at school, I feel like I've just come home after a long, hungry time away.

The fifth session of the Tastes of India classes has just started up. Sangita has been away in India working on projects and visiting family for six months, and she was missed. She and her husband, Arijit, form a great team, making the classes a multi-media presentation that stimulates all our senses, and enlightens and enlivens the evening.

This week she taught us to prepare Alu Makha (seasoned mashed potatoes, Bengali style), Moong Dhal (thick dhal soup made from split green gram), Sada Bhat (plain rice, also Bengali style), Mach Bhaja (Marinated spicy fried fish), and Ghoogni (Garbanzo beans cooked in spicy sauce).

The fragrances from the spices being heated, as well as the sauces and cooking rice were intoxicating. From the first bite to the last morsel cleaned from the pan, we were all glad to be home again.

I was inspired to try and replicate it a few days later at home. Practice, practice, practice.

Unravelling my way home

2008-04-05T11:58:00.000-07:00

Ravel:
1. To separate the fibers or threads of (cloth, for example); also to unravel.
2. To clarify by separating the aspects of.
3. To tangle or complicate.
4. To become separated into component threads; unravel or fray.
5. To become tangled or confused.

1. A raveling.
2. A broken or discarded thread.
3. A tangle.
[Obsolete Dutch ravelen, from ravel, loose thread.]

Unravel:
1. To undo or ravel the knitted fabric of.
2. To separate (entangled threads).
3. To separate and clarify the elements of (something mysterious or baffling);
To become unraveled.

Funny how ravel and unravel mean essentially the same thing, and their meaning is both to clarify/separate AND to complicate/tangle.

Following the railroad tracks back up the coast toward home had a strong similar sensation for me; I was sorting through tangles of thoughts and feelings traveling and spending a week surrounded by people but mostly alone. Walking through supposed historic areas mostly tarted up for tourists who are looking only for a margarita and a t-shirt. Passing through the Santa Ana train station, where I arrived with my mother in 1951, while my father was away during the Korean War; the same station where my parents said goodbye only two weeks after their marriage in 1943. Eavesdropping on the the threads of other peoples' lives all around me. And knitting, knitting, knitting. Since visual perspective makes what appears to be a single thin strand in the distance become a wide ribbon under the wheels, it felt like I was winding up miles of yarn.

The dawn version of the Pacific Surfliner was completely opposite from the midnight train of a week ago; full of fresh faces and optimism, instead of the nadir of humanity. The San Diego station is full of gorgeous tilework, colors softened in the dark.

The two trains idling in the crisp air were poised like horses at the starting gate, occasionally exhaling impatient puffs of breath.

Once on board I gave up my paired seats for an elegantly dressed couple to sit together. They were a lively brother and sister in their 80s, who travel by train from their respective homes to visit another sibling in Laguna Beach. There was a very young musician, who loaded his bicycle and his guitar onto the train in Oceanside and got off looking hopeful into Los Angeles. And outside the window, ecru clouded sky, mirrored in the ocean, all soft edges and lacy curls.

Morning in Union Station was just a more hectic version of the previous week's late-night film noir. There is aching beauty in the high ceilings, arches and tile work,

mostly ignored by hurrying, harried travelers, intent on coffee.
Sharply contrasted with a crude, hand-lettered note taped to the window of the information booth:

Missing grandma. Last seen standing on the Amtrak platform, March 19th....

How sad, all the ways we lose the threads of each other, and ourselves.

Finally we made the long trek down the tunnel to the boarding platform, clambered up the narrow stairs, settled in, and began to roll along toward home.

The railroad on both sides of LA is densely twined with other train tracks, as well as freeway and the Aqueducts
with the walls covered by hieroglyphics

and people making a home in various notches and outflow setbacks.
Eventually the refuse of this fading industrial empire gives way to beaches with solitary swimmers, windsurfers, and hills glowing with the beginnings of will be a riot of lupines.

I know home cannot be far away, when I see fog spilling over the hills to the west of us.

All those miles of thoughts and tracks and yarn started as grass eaten, grown into wool, shorn and processed and spun and dyed, touched by many hands, given by a friend and knitted by my hands into socks that will warm and cushion feet as they walk many miles.

San Diego

2008-04-01T15:51:00.000-07:00

One tiny corner of it anyway.
After being dumped out of the train at 1:30 in the morning and feeling generally rode hard and put up wet, I bounced back the next morning and set off on adventures. I found a quirky place where I ate wonderful eggs with fresh avocado and mango; they also served a pair of very comfortable sparrows that flew in and feasted on floor tidbits. I spent most of the day working furiously on Ryan's socks, and after a fitting to insure perfect length, all 2 miles of them were finally finished.
His work schedule meant we were able to share a late dinner and then he was off to bed, since 5 a.m. comes very early for someone whose body is still on East Coast time. I explored Old Town thoroughly. I learned that on overcast days it was quiet and nearly empty, on sunny days it was crammed with tourists, so I stayed hidden away, knitting, and updating Ryan's computer to Leopard.
There are historic buildings featuring early domestic implements.

Since I don't spin, I can't say whether these wheels would have been typical of the area.

My favorite place was the cemetery. This one used to extend much further into what is now the street; all but one of the graves were left in their original place. The sidewalk has several small brass circles that say "Grave Site" which belong to ordinary people. The single grave that was relocated belonged to a famous local politician. There were several plaques detailing an event that resulted in the hanging of several native people and at least one Anglo citizen that supported them in their revolt against "taxation without representation." Nothing changes, does it?

Common to all cemeteries were the graves of young children, lost to various fevers and the mothers, lost in childbirth.

I also found refuge at The Shepherdess,
a long-time bead store, which now also carries a small amount of very special yarn, such as Pagewood Farms, and The Fibre Company, and is owned by Cooky Schock. It is definitely worth a visit for the extraordinary fiber selection and the beautiful beads, as well as regular workshops.

There was music everywhere.

Musicians playing in patios and restaurants, and even at breakfast one morning, I was the only person in a small cafe; the owners were an older Latino couple, and she sang as she set the tables and served my huevos rancheros, and her husband sang as he chopped the onions and peppers. It was wonderful, the sun streaming in the old mullioned windows; she asked me about my knitting, and we talked about how our grown children drive us loco.

The wealth of exuberant and humorous plant life brought surprises on every walk.

Surely the plants are sharing a joke at our expense, laughing among themselves on some subsonic level as we stop to gawk.
I hope so.

Journey

2008-03-28T08:57:00.001-07:00

The perfect start for a journey. Clear, cool with bright skies. The Salinas Amtrak station still has a 1930s feel to it. I walked through a nearly empty lobby and stepped out onto the back platform. Gradually more people began to arrive. An older couple with their dog. A vibrant grandmother with her 10 year-old grandson, excitedly looking up the track every few minutes for the train. A pair of young Japanese girls with their backpacks and sparkly-decorated cell phones. The train arrived on time, but with the engine only pulling three cars. After the mudslides up north, the Coast Starlight originates in Sacramento instead of Seattle, until they repair the track. So no sleeper or dining car. Everyone piled on, the conductor settles us into our seats, and we're off!

The first scenery unrolling is miles and miles of agriculture of every description, nestled between the rolling hills studded with oaks. The lady sitting next to me observes that there's lots of agriculture, but actual farmhouses are rare, no resident farm families, just agriBiz. The vista is fluorescent green: we've had lots of rain, and it's spring. Eventually the valley narrows, we pass through several tunnels, which signal change: few trees, less agriculture, clusters of oil wells, steep hills with more wildflowers.

There is the feeling of time stretching out, calm, peaceful, in rhythm with the train. I knit on socks, the lady next to me crochets. We talk about children, our work lives, the scenery, the world. The seats are spacious, clean, comfortable. We walk through the cars, up and downstairs, explore, sit in the vista car and chat with other travelers, eat and watch the journey unroll on either side.

The further south we get, the more industry there is, some of it very mysterious. This plant popped up out of nowhere, with nothing else near it. Black oily looking dirt surrounded by fierce fencing, with all kinds of strange towers and equipment, and in the center a giant pile of livid yellow powder.

Later, miles and miles of other-worldly gantries and buildings that is Vandenberg Air Force Base. We were whizzing along so I couldn't catch any photos. Soon we catch sight of the Pacific near Pismo Beach, and begin to follow the coast south. Many stops in the beach towns to let people off and pick more up. As the sun begins to set we have endless windswept beach views.

There are stretches of long rows of faux chateaux, their toes already in the ocean; they will be the new Atlantis in the not-too-distant future.

Also areas that are empty of development with just rocks and beach and a few campers parked. Flashes of momentary vignettes: people camping, with firepits, lounge chairs, guitars, coolers, flags. An white-haired lady reading in her lawn chair, facing the sunset, next to her tiny camper, with her dog in her lap (I mentally substituted a cat and giggled at the absurdity of that!) and her feet to a cozy fire. There's whole strings of camping areas north of LA where people can pull up their campers and stay for the night, right next to the ocean. I mean, like 2 feet from it. Soon replaced with funky little beach towns and acres of ticky tacky homes and urban sprawl plopped down where there used to be trees and wildflowers and beach cliffs. Cars racing along next to us on the highway, thicker and heavier the further south we go.
And finally the sun sinking into the ocean, and colors fading into black.

The closer to LA area we got, the less delighted I felt, like a weight was piling on my head. Like being in some kind of grim and grimy post-war Fellini movie. One scene coming into LA epitomized it all: Giant mega Box store area, Worst Buy, Bad Bath and Beyonce, Petsmarter, Targette, Crappery Barn, CaloriesRUs on one side, huge parking lot in the middle, almost empty, either because of the hour or the economy or both. On the OTHER side of the parking lot, was a whole string of Storage Units. And they kept going for blocks and blocks and blocks. And miles. UStoreIt. Storage RUs. StoreItAll. StoreMore. StoreNow. StoreLater.
Apparently people stock up on stuff on one side, and then just drive it over to their storage unit on the other side of the lot. Maybe they don't even have to drive it, maybe the Big Box stores just deliver it directly.

It was all downhill from there. We pulled into Los Angeles Union Station. A glorious piece of architecture, built in the mid-1930s, despite the Depression, now being restored.

The denizens populating it were straight out of the worst of now: a young man with filthy clothes and no socks massaging his bleeding feet and mumbling, looking around fearfully, crazy-eyed. Working girls in very short skirts and wigs and bared arms, shivering and sad eyed under all their makeup. A confused, tottering, very elderly man, muttering and abandoned. A young German couple, high-end backpacks bulging with belongings, arguing loudly. A family with little kids on their way to Disneyland, looking shocked and dismayed at the prospect of spending an hour here, when they had been promised the clean controlled plasticity of Planet Mickey.

The Pacific Surfliner, arrived on time, but is polar opposite from the Coast Starlight. It seems to function as a beach town commuter train, stopping every few minutes, with nothing but plastic benches, harsh lighting, overflowing trash bins, filthy bathrooms. A noisy group of women reeking of alcohol and cigarettes piled into the section of seats in front of me. For the next hour I endured loud details of their life that made me feel sick at heart. The daughter in her 20s, her mother, and the grandmother. They took turns going downstairs to buy more alcohol from the snack bar and reinforce the feud with the rest of their family unit, which had schismed earlier in the day during their beach outing. The train was packed, there was no place for any of us to move, we were all forced to be audience at some hellish version of Jerry Springer, complete with yelled cursing, sobbing, shoving and hysterics. They finally staggered off as a group, cigarettes and lighters poised, tongues sharpened, planning to continue their evening of bile. They were replaced by two man-boyz armed with skateboards, with which they managed to whack passengers as they slung themselves into their seats. One of the pair pointed out that the other one's clothes were really filthy, and that he stunk, and he ought to wash his clothes and himself occasionally. His buddy responded "Yeah, I ought to. But I won't!" At one stop a heavy-set girl moved down the aisle to get off, and Compost Boy stuck his foot out, tripping her, and laughed.

I was almost the last person off. It was 1 a.m. After almost 14 hours I felt myself unravelling around the edges. The doors slid open, and I was spat out into the dark. The platform was deserted, totally silent, dense and damp with heavy fog. I had several blocks to walk in unfamiliar territory. I called the hotel to make sure of my directions, expecting to hear the usual impersonal, unintelligible and unhappy night staff, but the desk clerk's voice was warm, maternal, concerned; she admonished me to wait right where I was. Within moments the young security guard drove up in the fog, scooped me up, and delivered me to warmth and light and human kindness.
All my life I have felt that I was not from this planet, I jokingly say maybe I got on the wrong bus; I imagine everyone occasionally feels they are a stranger in a strange land. It's always been baffling and dismaying, how on the grand scale, humans seem to choose not only to inflict misery, but to live in suffering and meanness and poverty of spirit themselves. There is no cure or magical change coming to bring a Golden Age for us all. But once in a while, there's a glimmering moment.

Chasing my tail

2008-03-23T16:35:00.000-07:00

And it seems the hurrier I go, the behinder I get. However, for a quick fix of almost immediate gratification, I recommend these. Brigid Socks, done in Socks that Rock Heavyweight. I've been wanting to cast on for these for a long time, I love cables on anything. I didn't have any unicolor sport weight on hand, so I surrendered to the lust and used this busy colorway, Saratoga. Finished in 2 days. I added an extra repeat to the cable chart, next time I'll do it with an even longer cuff, and continue the cable further down the instep. They are really cozy warm, and I love the purl bump stimulation on my feet. I used to wear these every summer, and after the first week every spring of "ow ow ow" I have worn out several pairs. I do love me some foot reflexology. Nowadays I rarely go without socks, so purl bumps will have to do.

I'm also trudging along on the Tesserae Socks for #1 son in Austermann Step.

I have turned the heels, and hope to get almost to toe decrease area on the train to San Diego tomorrow. Eleven hours of knitting ought to do it. Then I can try them on his feet in person, and finish them off before the end of the week.
In some fit of insanity I decided to knit another pair same pattern for Sean, in Fleece Artist Somoko. The yarn is luscious, but handles and knits very differently. I've done about 3 inches on the cuff, and I am still not sure it's going to be stretchy enough to suit Sean. He keeps feeling it and reassuring me, but we'll see. And if that wasn't crazy-making enough, a friend from the knit group gave me two already wound balls of ArtYarns merino; I love pooling, she hates it and claims she couldn't get this yarn to stop pooling. I cast on for some toe up socks, WendyKnits' Double Eyelet Rib Socks.
No pictures of these projects yet, you'll have to trust me.
I'm also still working on Imogen, but it is sadly neglected. Maybe I'll get all these odds and ends of socks finished and can be devotedly monogamous to her. Hah!

We've also been working on taxes. Please tell me why a major tax software company would have the wisdom to produce 47 versions of their software in both Mac and Windows varieties except the Business Partnership kind? This genius decision means that every year we have to fiddle with installing some kind of Windoze emulation on our Macs, then the Windoze version of the tax software itself. Sounds easy, but after 17 days and hundreds of hours and the help of a professional Windoze IT person, we gave up and resorted to borrowing a, shudder, Dell laptop. This involves trickery, bribery and brute force in connecting the beast to the internets for all the security and virus and other Windoze updates, which seem to occur every few seconds. But finally, that part is done. We can discontinue the IV Prozac, and go back to our sweet macs and do our personal taxes. Mine took about 45 minutes, and it was pretty complex. Sean's takes all of 10 minutes. The cats' personal tax returns take no time at all. They are content to lay on the deck, eat tuna and watch the sunset.

Innocent when we sleep

2008-03-10T16:51:00.001-07:00

Brigid would like everyone to think so, anyway. She has been very sweet to Brutus, who continues to look and act like he feels a little better every day. Feeling enough better to put up a tiny bit of a fight when it's time for his medicine.

Also, some finished objects. The Annetrelac socks, done in luscious Wollmeise Sockenwolle, Salamander colorway. I managed to obtain this yarn with ease directly from Claudia many months ago, before her yarn became the object of lust from all woolpigs.

I also finished the Curly-toed Elf Slippers, from Weekend Knitting, which I began optimistically for my granddaughter Chloe about 2 1/2 years ago, before I knew how to do more than cast on, knit, purl, and could barely knit in a circle with DPNs. I got to the short row heels and gave up. Amazing what the passage of time can accomplish. (It also helps to keep trying the things you can't do, I guess) I'm glad I have stuck with it. Good thing I picked the child's large size to do; these will probably just fit her 3 year-old elvish feet.

The Dude, subdued

2008-03-08T15:25:00.000-08:00

but he is home. Brutus came through his surgery okay. The vet is an angel, she has called twice to see how her "big guy" is doing, and thrilled to hear he's eating with such good appetite. She fell in love with him right away, though she laughingly related that he hissed at her and said "bad cat words" to her constantly. He had a massive abscess in his jaw, and what she called "old man teeth." He was in surgery a long time, with more lab tests and an ultrasound on his belly. She kept samples of jaw bone and tissue she removed, just in case; she can't yet rule out cancer. He is eating, still a little wonky with walking, but definitely more comfortable. Sleeping a lot, nothing new there. There are still some unexplained symptoms, but we shall just have to wait and see.

While he was gone, the girls were pretty subdued too. At one point Zoe was very interested in what I was doing on the computer.

She has watched cat videos with me on my Mac before, so perhaps she was wondering how Brutus had gotten inside, since he wasn't at home.

Spring

2008-03-03T19:31:00.000-08:00

I wanted to share some beautiful views of the last few days. After all the rains, everything is green, sprinkled with riots of wildflowers and daffodils gone feral.

Even the ocean seems to be blooming with variations on the blues.

Sorry this is a short post, the pictures can speak for themselves. My heart's not really in it. Our sweet old man-cat, Brutus, is sick. The vet has sent off the labwork, so we shall see.

"Mother stands for comfort..." (Kate Bush)

2008-02-27T19:57:00.001-08:00

This is a tough one for me. Today is my mother's birthday. She would have been 89. I knew I wanted to write about her and post some pictures; but when I was thinking about it I realized I didn't have any pictures of her as a child. And then with a shock I realized I had never even seen any pictures of her as a child. The earliest photo of her is this one, which she told me was taken in her teens, when she did some work as a model for a clothing store.
She was always telling me that she worked all through school and had to give her parents the money, and that she had to make her own clothes. She had two dresses in high school, and would change the style and re-sew them to make them seem new. Among other jobs, she worked in a malt shop, and in those days they made milkshakes by cutting up the hard ice cream with a butter knife by hand until it was soft. My mother did not have a good or happy childhood. Her father apparently was a terrible womanizer and not cut out for family life, though I remember him as a funny grandpa with a big mustache and a British accent who taught me to play cribbage. At 16 he had run away from his own abusive father in London to join the British army during WWI, and ended up being gassed in the trenches. While recuperating, he met my grandmother and they came to America. She was very young, and birthed four baby girls in less than four years, one of whom died of diptheria. My mother remembers that before she was ten, she was sent away to live for awhile with her maternal grandparents in Canada. She often told me it was the only time she ever received any affection or felt part of a family.

This picture is from my Mother's wedding day. No white gown and veil.
It was May 19, 1943. My father was home briefly on leave; he left again only two weeks later. She didn't see him again until after the war; he was shot down and spent more than a year in POW camp. My father adored my mother, and took many photos of her, I have trunks full of them. But for me, it's like my mother never existed as a child. I cannot even imagine her as a little girl.

My mother and I had a dreadful relationship. I imagine this is true for many people. I suspect the tender scenes between mothers and daughters that we see in movies or read in books are mostly fiction, or wishful thinking. There is nothing easy about being a mother, or a parent. And being a child is no easier. I spent years trying to placate and please someone who would not be pleased, trying to avoid the storms of unpredictable rage, and struggling to understand how and why I was to blame. When she was 66 years old she told me, with great bitterness, that her father had sexually abused her. She had never told anyone, not her sisters, not her husband, not a friend, not her own mother. I realize that the pain and grief and fear and helplessness she had buried inside for all those years was responsible at least in part for how she was. I know in my head that she had done the best she could as a parent, but the child in my heart still feels unloved and unlovable.

I didn't learn to cook or sew from her, though she was an extraordinary seamstress, a perfectionist and true artist. She also designed and made incredibly beautiful hats. She was a gracious and charming hostess, executing elegant parties as part of her social responsibilities as an officer's wife. I know she got occasional migraines, and she told me that her grandmother had terrible sick headaches. This matrilineal line of migraines, which sadly I have passed on to two of my own children, came down through this great-grandmother of mine, Emma Muckleston:

These threads of family and experience are woven deep, clear down into our mitochondria and our neurons; I am still learning myself how to be a mother, as well as dealing with this, my own mothering, whatever it was. We can't undo these rows of knitting, nor pick up the dropped stitches. There was no happy ending or reconciliation between us at the end. When my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 1999, she told the doctor "Well, guess I get my wish now," and predicted she would not live to see her birthday. She died two days before her 81st birthday. I hope she is free at last.