Naruda's Socks

My husband is a HUGE Naruda fan...and I am a big fan of knitting. In this poem, which (though it appears in knit-blogs across the web) bears repeating, our interests are united:


"Ode to My Socks"
by Pablo Neruda (translated by Robert Bly)

Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder's hands,
two socks as soft as rabbits.
I slipped my feet into them
as if they were two cases
knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,
Violent socks,
my feet were two fish made of wool,
two long sharks
sea blue, shot through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons,
my feet were honored in this way
by these heavenly socks.
They were so handsome for the first time
my feet seemed to me unacceptable
like two decrepit firemen,
firemen unworthy of that woven fire,
of those glowing socks.

Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere as schoolboys
keep fireflies,
as learned men collect
sacred texts,
I resisted the mad impulse to put them
in a golden cage and each day give them
birdseed and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers in the jungle
who hand over the very rare green deer
to the spit and eat it with remorse,
I stretched out my feet and pulled on
the magnificent socks and then my shoes.

The moral of my ode is this:
beauty is twice beauty
and what is good is doubly good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool in winter.

Happy Easter, Knitters with Kids...or Knitters who are kids at heart!

Ah, February...the coldest and bleakest month of the year here in New England. Last year, in the midst of a deep seasonal affective moment I wandered into a LYS which had a sale on all their previous summer yarns. In an impulsive move, I purchased an orange ribbon yarn flecked with gold with which to make a macrame-esque tank to wear in my fantasy of approaching warm weather. I have never worn the tank. This year, in a surprisingly sane-for-February way, I purchased a bunch of my new favorite frivolous yarn...AURA (Trendsetter). I had heard rumors of it being DISCONTINUED (NOOOOOOO!!!!), and so quickly purchased an entire crayola spectrum of colors...among them this brilliant sparkling Pink. Now, I have 3 sons, and before that I had 3 brothers. I, myself, was a tomboy and went on to be a physician. I have never owned anything pink, and certainly have never KNIT anything pink. Suddenly, in the shadowy chill of February, I HAD to knit something...ANYTHING...pink.

Then the conundrum...what to make? My sons won't wear pink. All their friends are boys, who also won't wear pink. My husband, brothers, etc, won't wear pink. Even I won't wear pink! I hugged the little pink sparkly ball like a Tribble...I let my love for it flow through my fingers in an attempt to channel ANYTHING pink from my childhood memories...and then it came to me: PEEPS. Remember those ubiquitous classic American Easter candies, small rows of yellow chicks and pink bunnies lined up and closely packed in loving marshmallow rows?!? I recalled how the pink sugary coating sparkled in the Easter sunlight, giving them a magical quality...as though they had been sprinkled with fairy dust and might actually have found their way to my Easter basket on their own, bouncing on their springy marshmallow tails.

Scanning the web, I managed to find a bulky wool suitable for felting in a similarly saccharine shade of pink (Crystal Palace Yarns, ICELAND in Strawberry Pink). Holding a strand of each yarn together, I was off. I rapidly designed a giant pink PEEP. So that you might delight the little ones in your life...or maybe just find your "way back" inner child in the dark of February, I have shared my pattern HERE.

HAPPY EASTER!!!

Mardi Gras Hall of Shame Part 3: 2010

This year I have fewer yarn producers to slam...maybe because I have covered so many previous offenders already. I am hoping it is because people are beginning to understand that there is an official color code for Mardi Gras...as there is for Christmas. For those new to the field...the official colors of Mardi Gras are: PURPLE (and for some a particular "K&B" Purple) which stands for Justice, GREEN which stands for Faith, and GOLD which stands for Power. Legend has it that these colors were chosen for LSU (which chose Purple and Gold) and Tulane (which chimed in with the Green). Regardless of the origins, we ALL can agree that this year the Purple, Green, and Gold go well with the Black and Gold of our Saints...as we know that it is a combination of Justice, Faith, and Power which brought us all a Superbowl Victory.

So on with our business of the yearly Yarn Hall of Shame:

1) ROWAN yarn: Silky Tweed in Colorway 759, "Mardi Gras"...WTF...are you kidding me! They're English, they don't get it, cut them a break, but ...This is MUD!

2) Mardi Gras, by Lisa Souza. OK, I actually LOVE her yarn. Her "Pansy" colorway is PERFECT for Mardi Gras, but CMON! Somebody tell her, PLEASE. We LIKE her, she's a friend. Friends tell eachother things like, "You've got a poppy seed in your teeth," and "your Mardi Gras Yarn isn't PGG," OK?!?!

3) Paton's Cici in Mardi Gras. This wouldn't be SO offensive (as it is a HUGE and out-of-touch company) except that they named their yarn after my dear friend, Armand's, baby girl, "Cici." SHE would take offense, so I'm taking offense...

OK, that's IT for this year. Now, get me on a doggon flight (We've been waiting 2 days already thanks to the blizzards in the Northeast this year) so I can get back to my city and my peeps...GEAUX SAINTS, and HAPPY Mardi GRAS, Y'ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wait...there's MORE Superbowl Knits!

This late-breaking news...

My dear friend, Chip, a potter-cum-physician in NOLA, has just knit his FIRST HAT. And what do you think it is...

a SAINTS hat to wear while riding on the float tonight in his parade!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can't think of anything better.

Chip, it's a flippin' work of art...like it's creator! I LOVE IT!

Superbowl Knitting

This is it...the eve of the most meaningful day of my existence over the past 5 years. I, never previously a football fan, am feverish over the Superbowl to be played tomorrow. The New Orleans Saints will be playing the Indianapolis Colts in what promises to be an epic battle. Drew Brees, a quarterback whose accuracy exceeds the marksmen ship of Olympic archers will pit himself and our team against a New Orleans native, Payton Manning - arguably the best quarterback who has ever lived. With all the Catholics in New Orleans, I have said, this will be the largest scale test of the power of prayer in all of history.

What makes this game significant is that, just as the Saints are not just a football team to people in New Orleans, going to the Superbowl is not just a playoff. When the NFL attempted to ban small time T-shirt sellers from making and selling shirts bearing the age-old New Orleans slogan, "Who Dat" (derived from a Vaudeville Jazz routine in the 19th century), they encountered unanticipated resistance. New Orleanians clogged the switchboard and shut down the NFL office lines with their angry calls (mine was among them). Their error was two-fold: 1) they did not appreciate that the symbols chosen to represent the NFL team for New Orleans are symbols which have represented the city of New Orleans long before there was ever a football team (the Fleur-de-lys, a symbol of France which settled New Orleans and gave it it's enduring symbol, and "Who Dat", a slogan with roots more ancient than the NFL. ). 2) they did not understand New Orleanian's loyalty and sense of community (probably stemming from the skill set necessary in a hurricane-prone area...ie "you have a generator?" "great, I have a boat."). The NFL was in uncharted territory. The Saints, their symbols, and their community, you see, are ONE IN THE SAME...they cannot be separated by owners, political organizations...OR even the NFL.

In much the same way as the Saints are more than a football team, the Superbowl is much more than a playoff. New Orleanians have endured so much over the past 5 years... first Hurricane Katrina and the flood it brought (owing, it seems, to the Army Corps of Engineers), then the cowardly fly-over by our insensitive/out-of-touch president at the time (He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named), then the failure of insurance companies and government agencies to help the people who could not afford to return to New Orleans after they had been moved away from their home, and could certainly not afford to rebuild -even if they COULD find someone to do the work, then by the American public who, with its limited memory capacity, promptly forgot about New Orleans when it ceased to be featured on the major news networks. This is a community whose sense of self worth has been on a steady decline since the Mighty Mississippi ceased to be an economic and trade epicenter for our country (did you know that the US Board of Trade was for a short time seated in New Orleans!...I do because I was married in the building on the day of Hurricane Georges). The decline had been gradual, but in the past five years took a precipitous nose dive to being a community "not worth reviving" in the eyes of the entire country. It did not feel good.

Not surprisingly, the Saints had also been a losing team... with a record breaking losing streak over the past few years...it was as though the team had a psychological aversion to winning- like their home community, so convinced of their unworthiness that they couldn't pull off a single win. Somehow, in the period after Hurricane Katrina, the team was restructured and everything changed. Suddenly, the will of the people during the diaspora to return to their beloved city of New Orleans became manifest in their home town football team...and the Saints found their heart.

My son is among them...the New Orleans displaced natives who continue to identify with a place in a way that few people ever have the opportunity to experience. Now 9-years old, my eldest son is an irrationally devout fan of the Saints...bravely standing up to the taunts of the confident and arrogant Patriots fans by whom we were suddenly surrounded when we moved to Boston. This was his year. With every passing victory, their guffaws grew weaker as I watched my son visibly grow stronger.

The most amazing aspect of this experience is that, unlike so many cities...which wait until they see who wins at the game before celebrating...New Orleans began their ecstatic celebration the moment they knew that they made it to the Superbowl. Odd? Not at all. You see, in the words of one of our beloved pediatricians, Dr. Hales, "Perfection, anyway, just doesn’t sit well in New Orleans, a city whose music and food owe much to improvisation and whose approach to most things in life has historically been rather laissez-faire. Perfection... is something Dallas or Atlanta would get worked up about."

So when my son asked me to stop my WIP to craft him a pair of Saints slippers (can't be bought...I checked) (it is a late night game)...I dropped everything to do it. While not my best work ever, they are the favorite thing I have ever knit...if only because of the smile and pride I saw on my son's face when he first put them on his feet.

GEAUX SAINTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!