At precisely midnight, we rang the Swiss cow bell, a 1982 souvenir that sits on our kitchen window sill, to usher out the old year in raucous fashion and toasted the new year with a glass of bubbly. Today, my first bake of 2021 is a cherryly delicious welcome to a new year.
At the beginning of this holiday month, I joined the Ravelry group, A Year of Projects, mid-way through its July – June year. After years of managing an organization with a fiscal year of those same months, work that included lots of grant applications to secure Federal and state funds, I had planned to treat December as just another month and, once again, do the real work in June. But we all know 2020 has been anything but normal and I have been inspired by my fellow writers’ December summaries. Here is an update on that earlier list:
I am deep into swatching and measuring for a new sweater, Fiadh, which the pre-release notes describe as “A textured Irish Aran cardigan with cables, double moss stitch and a shawl collar.” The pattern drops on Monday, January 4 and, unlike earlier projects, my authentic heather gray Donegal Tweed yarn is already in hand. The teases reveal an intricate cable design incorporating four different styles covering the sweater’s front panels, back and sleeves, plus decorative bobbles bordering the ribbed button band. Happy New Year and happy knitting!
Each year we celebrate the Solstice, acknowledging the shortest day, celebrating a holy darkness, and enjoying a special meal. In a year where nothing was as it was supposed to be, it felt even more important last night to gather fresh evergreens, bake a sweet treat and claim tradition.
Needing a recipe that did not require an extra trip to the store since we had already picked up our drive-through, online order, I landed on Easy French Almond Cake from the café sucre farine. Just as promised in the intro, “Incredibly delicious cake and it’s incredibly easy!” I did modify it slightly (a baker’s prerogative) as I replaced the orange glaze and sliced almonds garnish with Cafe Delites’s homemade blueberry sauce. Bon appétit!
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
Christina Rossetti, 1830-1894
I bought the first of our many pottery bowls in an art gallery in Tiburon, California while visiting a friend in San Francisco. Enough time has passed since that 1974 purchase that I have no recollection whether color or shape drew my attention. What I do know is that I have continued to be drawn to hand-thrown pottery, especially bowls. Whether the bowl holds dough rising or serves as a catch all for knitting notions, each bowl is blend of art and functionality.
When looking for a unique gift whether a small token of holiday cheer or a gift for a momentous occasion I usually defer to pottery. I have made purchases while traveling – Portland, Saint Petersburg, San Diego (carefully hand carrying my new treasure home) – but my favorite potter is David Caradori. David grew up across the street from my house in Eau Claire. His brother was in my grade school class and our Moms shared a church card club. But regardless of our childhood connections, I buy from David because he is simply an amazing artist.
His years of study with Japanese masters are visible in his glaze designs and the wood firings take days to transform thrown clay with flames and ash. A short (4 minute) YouTube video reveals the result of the 2020 Autumn Firing from the Suskenei Kiln which produced approximately 650 finished pieces including the nine small bowls I requested in May for Christmas presents. Each small bowl is approximately 4 inches in diameter and perfect for holding a pinch of herbs to flavor a sauce or to keep stitch markers corralled or just to enjoy.
Throughout my library career I advocated for the Minnesota Center for the Book and the Minnesota Book Awards. I’ve booktalked Book Award nominated titles and represented Greater Minnesota on the Book Award Advisory Committee, as well as attended receptions at the Library of Congress to celebrate the work of Centers for the Book around the United States.
So I was excited to learn about a new book club – One Book / One Minnesota. Launched in the spring of 2020 as Minnesota went into Covid quarantine and libraries closed their doors to walk-in patrons, One Book encouraged Minnesotans to read together. The three titles selected thus far feature award winning Minnesota authors:
A blending of reading good books by Minnesota authors and retirement life came together last night as I led an online book discussion of A Good Time for the Truth. This anthology contains 16 extremely well written chapters, each by a different Minnesota author, each a Person of Color living and working in our state. Artfully edited by Sun Yung Shin. The first lines of her introduction read:
“You hold in your hand a book of visions. Memories. True stories. Shock. Grief. Dreams. Activism. Recognition. A call for us to listen and learn about one another’s real lives in Minnesota.“
While the setting and many of the references are Minnesota specific, the stories are real whether they occur in Minneapolis or Minocqua, Rochester or Rockford or any city, USA. Stories which reveal how those who look like me – white, middle-aged, educated, financially comfortable, that is to say privileged – take for granted our place in this white patriarchy. Or, conversely as Sun Yung Shin states:
“Most people of color in the United States have to think about race every day, multiple times a day. We are constantly negotiating our bodies, our selves, our identities, in a racialized society.“
These stories are so well written and revealing that I could only read one at a time before setting down the book and taking time and space to reflect, sometimes to cry, about the injustices and inequities to which I was blind. This same sentiment was expressed by several participating in our church’s Common Read book discussion.
We are living the great American democratic experiment. But for it to be truly successful, all the voices need to be heard. Those Indigenous People with whom our government has repeatedly broken trust. Those whose ancestors were brought here against their will chained in the holds of slave ships. Those who came to this “land of opportunity” for a myriad of reasons and every day enrich the whole of our existence but whose contributions are minimized because they are different. I encourage you to pick up a copy of A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota. Read with an open heart the beauty of the language on the page and hear the stories of fellow Americans. After, give me a call or an email or a text so we can chat as we grow and learn together.
P.S. If you want to hear some of the authors in their own voices, check out this One Book / One Minnesota YouTube video with Sun Young Shin and six of the anthology’s authors.
Each morning a smidge of peace arrives in my mailbox; just a click away from a longer meditation. From December 1-21, in addition to a wonderful knit-a-long pattern, Christina Campbell shares daily reflections on her 2020 theme “peace in place”. Her creative writing, landscape photographs, and peace building challenges are inspirational. I am writing more and reflecting on her definition of peace “…cultivating right relationships with self, others, and the Earth”.
While Phoenix is not our stay-in-place place in these Covid times, I remember a quiet walk through the Desert Botanical Garden. The trails wend through flora exotic to my Midwest field and forest eye. The garden offers brilliant pops of color against the subdued desert backdrop, as well as sculpture placed so artfully so as to merge with the landscape. Certainly what Chihuly intended with his Glass Towers. In another era we might have asked: Is it live or is it Memorex?
Join me on this peace filled journey at the Healthy Knitter. Knitting not required.
I consider myself a fastidious Ravelry user. I have taken pictures and recorded new yarn in my motel room within hours of visiting a yarn store and project pages are a must. Maybe there is a secret cataloger lurking in me that desires to keep an orderly record or it could be that with 154 projects (to date) my memory can get a bit fuzzy about what I have knit when and with what yarn.
Not surprising with over 13,000 Ravelry groups some so small they only include 2-4 people and others with memberships well into five figures there is a discussion forum for bloggers. A Year of Projects blog-a-long offers a framework to keep track of what can be a chaotic mix of actual works-in-progress (WIP) and those that are only dreams; while encouraging writers to write all with the added bonus of a built in audience among the participating bloggers.
Having just re-joined the blogging sphere in May, I have yet to suffer from prolonged writer’s block and who knows if Knit+ Librarian will continue beyond this pandemic sequester but A Year of Projects could be useful as an online writers’ group. As I am joining the group mid-year, my list of projects yet to be tackled (with or without an accompanying blog post) includes:
During the hazy days of August, The Directors – a library loving, book reading, wine drinking group of retired friends, discussed the practicality (or lack thereof) of fingerless mittens. And, eureka – a winter gift idea was born. Just as autumn arrived, I cast on the first of five pairs of mitts with colors and fibers selected for each recipient from my stash. The Mitty pattern includes three repetitive rib rows so I propped up my iPad with enlarged font and read Elizabeth Hunter’s Elemental Mysteries while knitting. Although I did have to pay close attention on the fourth mock cable row. With today’s official arrival of meteorological Winter, each friend has a pair with which to experiment or re-gift.
Stay warm. Drink hot chocolate or lots of wine.
While my Ravelry project page certainly records sweaters, specifically nine before 2020, sweaters were not my go-to knitting project. The amount of work and time required coupled with horror tales of projects gone wrong with elephantine results kept me working on lots of shawls and scarves. Items where gauge and size were less crucial. Then I found Marie Greene and her 4-day sweater challenge. Admittedly, my Foxtrot took over two months to complete but I was so pleased with the results that I selected another of Marie’s patterns, Houghton, to knit a sweater for Mom using a lush English merino-mohair blend. Then, thinking ahead to fall travels (in pre-Covid times) I knit the same cardigan for myself using the same yarn in the same color and even the same buttons. This became the first of my 2020 sweaters. Soundtrack, another 4-day challenge completed in 22-days, was sweater #2.
Now, just off the needles and the blocking squares is Happy Hour. Designed around the pre-Covid memory of outings with friends for happy hour, the sweater includes a colorwork yoke with a 3 PM, 4 PM or 5 PM pattern repeat, as well as a fanciful repeat on each sleeve. I opted for three pattern repeat with a nod to an early toast at the end of the work day.
In this very strange year when daily wear is almost exclusively comfy casual clothes with only an infrequent ZOOM meeting to show off three new sweaters I have transformed 4,397 yards into three sweaters all within 41 weeks. My far flung Knit Camp buddies have offered encouragement and instruction making it all happen, as well as another 18 smaller projects for family, friends, and fundraising service auctions. Happy knitting!
Only three-plus years in the making but I finally knit a Lego Blue replacement hat for John Lac. He had graciously donated his hat to be re-purposed as a toe cozy for his Mom (2017) which I cropped and added elastic to snub it up tight since a Wisconsin winter is a bit chilly for open toes, even if her fuchsia cast was very fashionable.
Knit+ Librarian 