Have Knits, Will Travel

I recently gave my sister a ride to a pre-natal appointment and then spent a lot of time in stop-n-go traffic, trying to get back to work. How do people do it? Why would they rather drive, when they could be sitting on a bus or light rail train, reading or catching a few more precious minutes of sleep, or in my case, knitting. While sitting in my Zipcar, waiting to move a few feet forward, I longed to knit, read, anything but sit in traffic unable to do... anything.

So, I have come to the realization that riding the bus supports my knitting habit. So does watching TV. After all, if I'm knitting, I'm not wasting time. I'm being very productive with my time. I'm catching up on the shows or movies I enjoy, I'm relaxing and I'm making something useful as well.

And knitting protects me on the bus. If I'm using double pointed needles, I find that people are a little afraid to ask what I'm doing. After all, those thin pointy sticks might fly across the aisle and hit them. If I'm working on lace or anything with a pattern really, after an initial questions as to what I'm making, most people leave me alone after I make an elaborate show of concentrating on the pattern.

What they don't know is that knitting can be mindless for me, in the best way. I may look like my entire life's outcome is wrapped up in the next stitch but really, my mind is wandering to what I will make for dinner tonight to ideas for what I'll knit next while my fingers fly and I usually arrive home, feeling a bit more rested than when I left work and ready to maybe, just maybe, clean my house. For a few hours at least, until my favorite show comes on.

Con te partiro...(Time to Say Goodbye)

Yesterday was a wonderful, amazing, historical day. All of the TVs at work were tuned in and the break room at work was full during the oath and speech. To see all the people gathered and to here the stories of crowds, TVs in McDonalds, cars pulled over with the radios cranked up so that everyone could hear. It’s hard to describe.

I will freely admit, I was much more interested in the ushering in of our new president than the leaving of the old. After all, there was more history involved with Obama being sworn in. I didn’t particularly care to watch Bush get into his helicopter and leave. I was over it, done, fini. I wanted to watch the parade.

But then, last night, I was flipping channels on my TV and caught the tail end of a video essay for the News Hour with Jim Lehrer. An essay about the transfer of power, curtain calls, and the importance of saying good bye and it made me think. It made me think about things I don’t always want to think about.

You see, I don’t like saying goodbye. I spent my fifth grade year afraid to make friends because I knew I would have to say goodbye before the year was done. Don’t make friends, don’t say goodbye, don’t get hurt.

Goodbyes can hurt, yet they are so important. I didn’t want to say goodbye to my dad’s parents. I wanted my last memory of them to be one where they still knew who I was. But my parents, in their wisdom, insisted and I went and it was hard. It was hard seeing my grandmother so frail, hard seeing my grandfather talk to the air. I cried and wished I was elsewhere. Less than two weeks later, Grandmother died. Grandfather followed a couple months later. I felt relief but I had been missing them for a couple of years already. Going to see them only confirmed that the frail shells sitting in front of me were not my grandparents. They were ready to go, ready to say goodbye. And it was saying goodbye that released me, that allowed me to grieve honestly, with little regret.

Goodbyes are the natural conclusion of things. But they can also be the beginning of something new. The important thing is knowing when to say them.

Now you see it...now you don't

My office has a secret Santa gift exchange every year and this year, I drew one of the partners' names. Now, this is a man who, if he wants or needs something, he just goes out and buys it. In other words, almost impossible to shop for.

I have a secret weapon though. I know he is a huge fan of the UofO Ducks and I can knit. So, I had this brilliant idea. I would knit him a scarf in the school colors. But that by itself is too boring so I'll try something I've never done before. Illusion knitting.

Illusion knitting is a technique using a combination of knit and purl stitches to create a hidden pattern. When you look at it straight on, all you see is stripes. But look at it from the side, and you'll see something different. Usually, that something different is a geometric shape but I decided to try an actual message. "Go Ducks"

The designing of the pattern was simple but time-consuming. It involved staring at an Excel spreadsheet for a several hours as I laboriously spelled out Oregon and Go Ducks, using a cross-stitch alphabet pattern. Then separating the rows and offsetting it so that the purl stitches of each row would offset the other rows. Finally, that was completed and the pattern printed.

Then on the the easy part, I thought. I knit up a gauge swatch so I could figure out how many stitches to cast on(~330) and then cast-on using a backwards loop. I knit every green row and use Stockinette for the yellow, switching every other row. But then came the words.

Oh, the process itself isn't hard but it does require a lot of concentration. I thought I was doing great, the stripes were working beautifully and the words were slowly appearing in the scarf. I was several rows into the words when I realized...the words were backwards! I had been reading the pattern right to left and I should have been reading left to right.

I did my best to keep a smile on my face as the words I had worked on so painstakingly for hours disappeared in the few minutes it took to frog all the way back to the row before the pattern began. Oh, the knit-manity!

I see the moon and the moon sees me...

I can't see the man in the moon. I never have been able to see him. Sometimes, if I squint my eyes, I think I can but the harder I look, the more I see the rabbit in the moon. Now, I always assumed that it must be because I grew up in a country that has a rabbit in the moon, not a man. And, when I looked it up, sure enough, the rabbit in the moon is most common in East Asian folklore. In China, the rabbit is the companion to Chang'e, making the elixir of life for her. The story I was always told, which is common in Japan and Korea, is that the rabbit is pounding mochi.

Now, here's the interesting thing. The rabbit also shows up, all the way on the other side of the Pacific, in Aztec mythology. Tecciztecatl, the Aztex lunar deity, could have been the sun god, but was afraid of the sun's fire. He refused and, in the form of a rabbit, was thrown into the moon. How's that for a punishment?

Personally, I find the rabbit in the moon much more interesting than the man in the moon, so I'm not terribly disappointed to see the rabbit. And, it provides a link to childhood, one of the few I can revisit easily and often. Well, as often as the Northwest sky allows.