I’ve been studying Ireland in particular and the Celtic world in general–from Paleolithic to Present–for almost as long as I remember.  I’m sure I’ve dedicated more hours to my subject than the average medical or law student has to theirs.  And yet I can’t really explain why.  I’m often asked to.  There aren’t many people immersed in the sort of cultural studies I undertake, particularly when said studies pay less than a penny on the hour, all told, and when they’ve been misrepresented and cheated so often by American pop culture.  To many people, Ireland is no more than green beer and fake accents in bad commercials.  They put it on like a bad Halloween costume, and discard it again as carelessly.

There are the answers I give people at cocktail parties–I fell in love with the mythology, and then the music, and then the literature and language and history and archeology, and haven’t looked back since.  Which is all true, but far from the whole truth.

When I’m being honest–which I think most of us are trying to at least play at with our blogs–I say that studying Ireland, at least at first, felt like some sort of replacement for the side of the family that abandoned us.  I can’t have and really don’t want a relationship with my actual father.  But I want some connection to that missing half of my family, and I guess it feels safer to build a bridge to a long dead ancestor than to an aunt or uncle who just never bothered to try to hold on.  Some strange sense of pride or betrayal made my paternal grandfather try to take our name from my brother and me when my Mom left my father, and I’ve clung tightly to that surname and some birthright I thought it entailed.  Later, that grandfather tried to reconnect with us once he realized how destructive his eldest son was and how right my Mother was to leave him, for us.   But theirs will never be my family reunions.  I see my name attached to some genetic relative now and again–all of the people in the US with my name are direct relatives–and just once had the chance to talk to a distant cousin who had no knowledge of my personal family’s sundering.  It was strange and exciting, and it happened because my name was in a program at a Celtic Festival where I was performing.

And then, studying Celtic cultures is something I can share with my step-father, he who regularly insists that I picked the wrong country to focus on.  He is the child of a Scottish immigrant, and he introduced us to the festival scene that ended up entangling me so fully.  We picked different eras to study, and my obsession with music isn’t something he can truly share, but bridies and bagpipes would be glue enough to connect us as friends even without our shared love for our family.

On some level, I’ve always felt like a traitor for focusing so much of my energy on the culture I wasn’t exposed to by my Mother’s family, whom I have always  known and loved as my own and only.  Why isn’t “I” for Italy in my mind?  Why didn’t German culture appeal?  It don’t think the stain of WWII stopped me from focusing more on either, because my Mom’s family was all here at the beginning of the 20th century and railed against the the modern countries that wrought that horrifying war.   Maybe it’s a Jungian response–a desperate grab at some collective unconscious I’ve been sequestered from.  I do worry sometimes that I’ll outgrow it, and then feel a fool when someone asks me what my MA is in . . . many many people already react to my resume as if it says “BA in artsy-fartsy with a side of teaching, MA in cliches and boredom.”  But no–my obsession carries on.

Because, whyever and however I fell for Eireann, I fell hard, and my love abides.  The tunes and language and literature feel like home as they rattle around in my skull.  The history–even after all these years of study–enthralls me, and appalls me, and sends me from worried insomnia to ecstatic reverie as I study it. I own it.  I need it.  I lived there, and swam in those waters, and ate food from Ireland’s soil, and hope to do so again and again.  I toy with the  idea of seeking dual citizenship, despite the fact that doing so would bar me from a fairly large percentage of the jobs that are available to me here in my current home.

In short, Is leor don dreoilín a nead, agus Níl aon sceal eile orm.

I say house, because it doesn’t ever really feel like home when you’re in the midst of a remodel.  We bought our house in 2000, not long after we got engaged and decided that buying a house was far more important than throwing a wedding right away. It’s a 1,500 square foot Cape Cod-ish (no fireplace = not really a Cape Cod) house, built in 1970.  The 1970 really showed, so we knew all along that this was a fixer upper.  We started working on the kitchen a year or two after we bought the place, and it took forever because we did most of the work with the help of family and without  much professional help.  This time around, we decided to hire some good friends to replace most of the floors and give the downstairs bath a major face lift while Scott and I handle simple stuff like repainting most of the rooms and shuffling our stuff from room to room so the guys can work.  Scheduling, of course, is tough. 

I’ll skip the before photos–the old carpets were beige and nasty.  The old bathroom had an odd pink tub and 1″x1″ pink and white glittery tiles, but the glitter had tarnished, and there were some obvious problems with the wall behind the shower tiles and tub. I had put a pretty cool mosaic on the old bathroom counter, but then the sink got a bad crack in it during  a party, and there was no way to replace the sink without destroying the counter.  That’s
when I started lobbying really loudly to gut the bathroom. 

I came home from Chicago a couple of weeks ago to find that our friends and contractors Mike and Ben had started demo on the bath. Now, we’re down to the finish work.  That tile on the floor is fantastic.  I love it like I love cake.  The pictures do not do it justice.  Scott and I still have some touch-up painting to do in there, and we need to add the blinds and towel bars and all those touches.

With the bathroom close to completion, the guys moved on to the rest of the floors.  We’re installing bamboo floors in all but the bathrooms, kitchen, and laundry.  I am absolutely enamored of the bamboo. 

And it looks great with our kitchen floor, even before the transition piece is in.

Now we have a lot of a paint colors to choose, and a lot of stuff to move from room to room to room as the work progresses.   It’s hard work, and I may have just broken a toe in a tragic run-in with a step stool.   Kayo and the cats disapprove of all of the work, of course.  Kayo expressed his disapproval on Thursday by running away, in fact, so we’re making cookies for the charming woman who took care of him until she could get in touch with us. 

So, back to working on our house.

I may have a problem.

When I was visiting Juno a few months ago, I bought some gorgeous hand-dyed Lobster Pot Cashmere yarn in a soft green.  I held off as long as I could, but decided to bring the yarn with me to work on when I went to Chicago last weekend.  And then I gorged on it.  I would have swallowed the skeins whole if I didn’t think someone would call me on it.

This is Branching Out.   You can’t see from these dark photos how pretty the subtle color changes are in the yarn, but I think this is a great pattern for the yarn.  It allowed me to use as much yarn as possible, to make something really wearable, and to wear it where my skin will truly benefit from its warmth and softness.  Ahhhhhh.

When last I wrote, I was talking about that lovely trip to Chicago I took last weekend.  On Sunday, Meg and I went to a great quilt show.  I was overwhelmed both by the marketplace (they were preying on my weakness for batik and Asian textiles, those sneaks!) and by the quilts on display.  I was astounded by the talent of the quilters showing.  I was paying a lot of attention to the use of black, to scale, and to the downright mania-inducing tiny patchwork some of these artisans engage in.  I’d never been to a quilt show before, and it was mind-blowing.  Photos of quilts never do them justice, and the people showing were brilliant technicians and great artists.  I hope I can come within a mile of their skills one day.

A  quick note–all of the quilts I photographed were open for photography.  At this quilt show, there were very clear signs displayed on a number of  quilts requesting that they not be photographed.  This is just a small percentage of the fantastic work that was on display.

There was a segment of the show dedicated to architecture in quilting, and another on photo-realistic florals.

This chicken quilt greeted us on the way it–it won the day.  And this fantastic embroidery?  Yeah, that’s the back of a quilt.

I fell in love with this crow quilt.  Of course I did.  The purples and blues in the birds themselves, and the branches.  Wow.

And the crazy-making patchwork . . . some people have so much more patience and dedication than I do . . .

And, well, frogs play cards.  This was from a competition where quilters were challenged to use a specific line of fabrics as inspiration.  Gold star, I say.  Though black fabric mixed with batik and hand-dyed fabric was my obsession of the day.  Look at how those colors pop.

And then there were the reds.

It was just all so good.  I’m afraid I’ve already crushed your browsers with photos, so I’ll stop.

After the quilt show,  Meg was off to staff a show at the Old Town School of Folk Music and Jonathan and I went to a pub where he was playing in an Irish session.  And the wonderful Rachel came to hang out and listen to tunes and chat.  We’ve been online pen pals for years now, and last weekend was the first time we got to actually sit together and talk.  What a blast!  Listening to a friend play great tunes while talking about other great music with another far-flung friend . . . that’s a good way to spend a Sunday night.

Monday morning, Meg and I got to go to Rachel’s bookstore and see the spot it’s moving to sometime soon, and then all three of us had a nice lunch.  It was tough to get on that plane back to Dulles.  Can one of you come up with a cheap teleportation method now, please?  It would make this friends-all-over-the-place thing much easier to handle.

Right–back to the remodel.  We have a new tub and most of the tiling is done.  Now we’re moving furniture so the floors can go it and vacillating over paint chips.  I have to face packing up all of the books and my studio, and figure out what I can knit in the meantime.

Last weekend, I went out west to visit with Two Sock Knitters, and another Sock Knitter, and a whole passel of contra dancers.  The University of Chicago hosted a fantastic dance weekend, complete with the fantastic bands Cosmic Otters and Nightingale, and the amazing callers Adina Gordon and George Marshall.  We went to tons of yarn shops, a quilt show, three of the four contra dances the weekend provided, restaurants, Irish sessions–I haven’t caught my breath yet. 

We get the fun started with a trip to The Fold.  Of course we did–how could we not.  Jonathan got some spinning pointers from Toni, and Meg and I dedicated ourselves to supporting small business in the greater Chicagoland area. 

Toni has a thing or two worth considering on offer, in case you haven’t had a chance to stop by.

As usual, I didn’t take enough photos, and many of the ones I did take aren’t great.  Our surroundings for the dance weekend were beyond compare, though.  The university’s buildings are gorgeously ornate.  Even the locks were gorgeous. 

The stairs were worth the price of admission.

And the dancing and music?  Hot.  Inspirational.  Astoundingly good.   What a dance weekend. 

As if I wasn’t happy enough with all of these things, both bands included footwork in their sound.  Ahhhhhhh.  These are Keith’s feet during Nightingale’s Friday night dance.  I couldn’t take pictures on Saturday night because I had too much dancing to do.

I’ll tell you about the quilt show and my visit with another sock knitter next.  Now, I need to go prepare for the continued remodel here at our home sweet home and count the days till my next chance to dance.  Soon, I’ll be able to dance on my own floors for the first time in years AND I’ll be rid of the biggest source of allergies in my life.  The mere thought is making my eyes well up with tears of joy.   Get on your feet, and tune up your instruments, people, because the floor is going to catch fire under your toes if I have anything to say about it.

G is for gardening. 

I come from a long line of people who like to play in the dirt.  I feel like I never get enough time in the garden, between my crazy commute and my copious hobbies.  But when I do get down into the mud, I love it. 

I love blooms, and berries, and herbs, and vegetables as much as any gardener does.  But I plant and tend for the love the growth itself, and of transition.    Watching  a favorite perennial emerge from the soil is a gift every single time.   Or finding a sport that traveled from a neighbor’s garden or across the yard. 

I love taking part in this annual bargain with my plants–I offer them shelter and care, and they return year in and year out, breaking through the soil to fill whatever niche in our landscape.  I’ve had this Cranesbill since I was 18, and have moved transplant after transplant from one home to another since I first planted it. 

I love the decline and the deliquesce as well–gathering the fallen leaves and composting them, and harvesting compost wriggling with earthworms.  I’m a dyed in the wool tree-hugging, dirt-worshiper.

A couple of weekends ago, a bunch of us wandered out for the woods for a very relaxed camping trip smack dab between the Equinox and April Fool’s Day.  Normally, I would carry back photographic evidence.  This time, I bring only this. 

It was really cold, and throwing an event is a fair amount of work.  But this bug sure is green!  I hope you can settle for it.

While we were freezing, I finished the butterfly moebius.  It ended up being a really great thing to wear while camping.  No dangling ends to be  a danger while tending a fire; soft enough to wear while sleeping; versatile enough to wear as a scarf, doubled up around my neck for extra warmth, wrapped around my neck and head–it’s a great  garment.   I definitely want to use Seasilk again, and to repeat this knit.

I also finished the first of the horseshoe socks, and I really like it.  I need to give serious thought to my sock gauge, though.  I knew I was progressively knitting my socks tighter and tighter, but these served as a great touchstone when compared to  . . .

the kilthose I finally finished.

The hosen are knit on 2.25 mm needles, and they felt like tree trunks compared to the needles I’m using for the horseshoe socks.  I certainly want to continue to make socks that last a long time, but I think I’m risking injury and wasting yarn by knitting at this crazy gauge.  Must.  Stop.  Knitting.  So.  Tightly.  I had to use a contrasting heel and toe and still used 45 grams of the teal yarn for the body of the lace sock.   That’s madness. 

Though, I will say that I felt like I flew through the last 3/4 of that second in the kilt hose pair, working on bigger needles in such a plain pattern. 

In case you haven’t caught onto the repetitive color scheme working here, look at the skirt I’m almost done with. 

It’s a very simple four-gore skirt in a lovely rayon batik.  I forget how much I hate to work with rayon until I, you know, work with rayon again.  And then I lament it, and whine, and cuss, and throw tantrums.  I’m toying with the idea of paying someone to hem this thing, because of the rayon,  the fact that I still haven’t gotten myself a dress form, and my desire to wear this to a dance weekend in a few days.   I did set in the zipper with no complaints, so that was nice. 

Now–evidence that I occasionally work with colors that are not blue. Look–it’s something mostly green and neutral . . .

The outside of the felt tote is entirely pieced now, so I just have to plot pockets, pick a fabric for the lining, sew that, and add the straps.  I’m loving that the two faces of the bag are relatively plain and the sides and bottom are brighter.

My friend Scott Hull has been waiting for a liver transplant for what seems like forever.  As is often the case, one thing after another got in the way over the months, and he made it to the top of Maryland’s liver transplant list as his health got worse, and infection set in, and his first transplant failed, and on and on.  Things got even crazier when his transplant surgeon was mysteriously put on administrative leave a week or so ago, and Scott and his wonderful wife Martha were sent to Memphis, Tennessee to try to get a transplant there.

Martha got the wonderful, frightening, much-needed news this morning.   There is a liver available for Scott, and if all goes as planned his transplant will take place very soon.  If you’re the type to pray or hope or wish for good things, please send some positive thoughts to Scott and Martha Hull, and to the supremely generous donor and his or her family.   Someone I can never meet is about to save my friend’s life, and for that I am very grateful. 

If you’re not a registered organ donor, please consider becoming one.  My knitting friend Trish died unexpectedly a couple of weeks ago, and the only thing that lessened the blow was knowing that in death she helped many, many people who needed donated tissue and organs.  If you’d like to learn more about organ donation, go here. 

F is for felt.

I’ve been making felt for several years now, using a couple of different methods.  I was first attracted to it for historical reasons, of course–felt was probably the first fabric we humans made, and that warms my Luddite soul to the core.  But as I’ve worked with it, I’ve fallen in love with the way felting affects the color of the wool, and with the strength and water-resistance of good felt.  One of my favorite knitting bags is my Constant Companion, which is both pretty and bullet-proof–a rare combination.

Felting is also one of those forms of frugality that appeals to my recycling, reusing, and reducing heart.  This bag I’m working on is made up of felted scraps from ruined sweaters.  I chopped up a few cigarette-singed beauties I found in thrift stores, but the rest of the felt for this project came from some sweaters Scott and I loved a bit too much.  I started collecting supplies for this a couple of years ago, felting commercial sweaters  that wore through at the elbows.  My stash of felt was too drab, so I just wasn’t excited to start piecing.  Then a couple of weeks ago I went through my mending basket and realized there was no good way to fix a few of my favorites, which are in colors I love of course.    The purple one in the lower corner was theoretically superwash, so I put it in gentle cycle, and it came out unwearable.  Sigh.  The other three–including the spring green Cashmere at the top left–had irreparable holes.  All four felted like mad once I tossed them in a hot wash–see the kitchen shears for a sense of scale.

I chopped the sweaters into 3″ and 2″x3″ blocks, and started piecing them to a thin twill foundation, also made up of scrap fabric.  Each face of the bag has a green nine-patch in the center, and the sides and a bottom are more randomly pieced.

More than half of the felt tiles are affixed.  I’m trying to pick the right lining fabric and plot inside pockets and possible closures.  The greens and blues are much brighter than they seem here, so there is some great contrast playing on the bag.

If that’s a confusing image, from left to right, it’s a side, front above the bottom, side, and then back you’re seeing there, with a big seam allowance for the top hem.

I’ll have plenty left to make at least one more bag this size once this is done.  And then maybe crazy-patched felt when only the small scraps remain.  Ahhh, felt.

I ended up scrambling to affix beads to the points of the Heather Ale sweater on the metro yesterday morning.  I was desperate to wear this thing, and a night’s rest gave every single beadless point the chance to curl right up.  I’m not entirely sure about these purple beads–I have clear ones in the same size and shape I could swap these for.  Waffle waffle . . . What say you?

I’ve also had to come to terms with the fact that the steel circulars are making me a crazy tight knitter.  I like my socks very very sturdy, but this is madness. 

I’ve used slightly more than 50 grams of yarn–that’s more than half of a huge ball of sock yarn–to get about halfway up my foot.  And I only wear a size eight.  I need to frog and either start again on wooden needles or on a much larger size steel needle.  Grumble grumble. 

To soothe my temper, I started these.  Purlewe  gave me this amazing mystery sock yarn at the KR retreat last fall.  I kind of want to eat it.  Or possibly marry it.  In the meantime, I’m making some horseshoe lace socks out of it.  On wooden needles. 

Gas Company  STOP

Understand your work is vital  STOP

Be a bit more ginger while digging STOP

Some friends violently removed and likely killed STOP

Warning to home’s owners about location of digging would be appreciated STOP

Wish to remain in our current homes STOP

Signed Buddleia, Holly, and Daffodils  STOP