Tea and Waiting

Waiting for the pot to boil.
It's quite a bit faster than the waiting for work right now. In fact, I've been finding it so distracting, this waiting, I've nearly been unable to knit. So NOT in the moment I am these days. Trying to scheme and plan and figure alternating with worry and anxiety. Small noises annoy the hell out of me, like never before. I do know I have to breathe, though and so I keep trying to go back to my center in the midst of this "monkey mind."

The mindless Mitlit knitting is all I can do when I do knit. In my fantasies, it's a beautiful lace shawl or complicated cable sweater that I'm working on. But, alas, that's just too much for my brain right now. I even have a jacket cut out to sew. It sits waiting for me and has for over a week so that the cats have taken it up as a new bed.

Now I'm just sitting here with a blank page, unable to write. I used to write a lot, but it's something that comes in fits and starts. It's like a different part of my brain...well, I'm sure it is. I remember a time, pre-computer age when I used to beg Cherie to type my resume for me. I remember taking typing tests and failing miserably. Twenty years later and my fingers know their way by heart. You just never know, do you?

Understatement of a lifetime. Everything has been such a suprise. No, not as it comes up and over the horizon, but looking back. Gives me hope for the future when I let it. That is, that I cannot not even begin to know what the future holds.

The Wall of Yarn! 

Me and Brahms 

Palm trees outside my door at sunset, San Diego

Max's Sweater 

Pre-Holiday, Not Quite panicked Slam Forward

This morning at 7am I woke with the sound of driving rain and thunder. This is a first for me here...Such BIG weather. I went into the livingroom to look outside, only to see the palm trees bending dangerously in the wind, and various pieces of lawn furniture inside my complex being threatened. There's one big tree (I don't know what it's called) but it's huge and was just recently hacked to bits by well meaning pruners. At the time I was aghast, but in retrospect, this morning as I saw the great giant bending and waving in the wind, I was thankful for my landlord's foresight.

This week I've had a nasty flue like thing and most times have felt just to sick to knit. Or drink tea. That's when you know it's pretty bad. But, yesterday I came back to both my passions for just the right amount of comfort as I lay in bed watching a movie. Interesting movie for those interested. It's called reckoning and it's about a troupe of medieval actors and a morality play. Riveting Paul Bettany stars.

For the first time ever, I actually starting knitting in the late summer for the holidays. It felt especially bizarre here in So. CA, but when your plate's pretty empty, what the heck.

I've gone throughout different phases so far. I started with baby and toddler sweaters, moved on to capelettes, then to scarves, a brief foray into my ongoing obsession with sock and now to a brand new obsession. I suppose might call them fingerless gloves, But without any of the finger parts. Alex has coined them Mitlits. Not to be mistaken for Mitlettes. I'm using up all sorts of interesting leftover sock yarns. They take less yarn, so especially if I mix them together, I get some pretty unique texture and colors.

Kyra's Sweater

Jackson's Sweater

What is now?

For the past 6 months I have not been working and have taken some time off. What that's ended up looking like is well represented by the title of this bog, Tea and Knitting. As if I need an exuse for either.

But, now I find myself ready, or rather forced to go back to work. you'd think I would have started this blog sometime earlier in this 6 month period. What I sort of think about this is that I often need time to see the landscape of my life. The boat needs to drift for a while. I now think and feel that I don't want to let this time go unexamined and unexpressed. It's been rich in many ways and has taught me great lessons.

It's now that I also realize that I've been very out of touch with people in my life and that this might be an interesting way to create a commitment to connect. Oh, I'll write about more than just knitting and tea. For instance, a favorite book of mine talks about "taking tea by the fire." The fire in this case representing our difficulties, our "hell", our struggle. Just that is plenty of fodder for writing as far as I'm concerned. Another favorite quote from this book, Steven Levine's "Healing into Life and Death" is "I make a cup of tea and stop the war." I think that when we are truly knitting or making a cup of tea, we cannot make war. We are in the moment and there is no room for anything else. Come to think of it though, there can be an awful lof of knocking on the door of that room.

So, are you getting the feeling that Zen figures in here somewhere? Yes, and in quite a big way.

So, those of you who know me well, are hearing my voice right now. And, those of you who do not know me so well are perhaps hearing my voice for the first time....

I begin to Blog

Sometime this past year, I heard about blogs. I ran across a person's online profile with a link to their blog. I thougth it was so curious that this guy would reveal so much personal stuff to the general public that I wrote to him. I asked him why. He thought my question was somehow suspicious and told me I must be a journalist and refused to answer any questions. I thought his blog of inner thoughts made him look like a prick.

Since then, I've come across blogs that really inpressed me in their beauty, insight and practical knowledge. That's the direction I'm going in with this. Well, not to impress anyone. I guess I just want a way to share my daily creative life with others.

I'm not great at keeping up correspondance, so I figure this might be like one of those long family newsletters that you get at Christmas. Only better. And, I suspect it will rarely be about my family. But, you get the idea.