Today is our fifth wedding anniversary, and a little over twelve years since Scott and I decided we were, well, us.  I generally try to quell the sap.  But I can’t for a  single second hide the fact that I think I am one of the luckiest people in the world.  I met Scott when I was 16, we both ended up going to Tech and becoming really good friends there, and then risking our friendship for something even better.  Best bet I’ve ever made, that.

A lot of our friends have anniversaries near ours, because they also thought Beltaine was a great time for a wedding.  It makes this time of year really celebratory.  Last weekend, we got to celebrate Aes and Phalen’s 16th anniversary with May Wine and a May Pole.  This weekend, fun with sheep!  I’ve also been listening to Kristin Andreassen’s (of Uncle Earl and Footworks) Crayola a bit too much, because I think it’s the right kind of love song.  And also a kid’s song.  And also a winner in the annual John Lennon Songwriting contest.  Wanna hear it?  You can download a free, legal copy here: http://www.jlsc.com/winners/2006b/lennon_awards.php (Kristin is in the top left box).  Makes you want to play paddy cake, doesn’t it?

Beltaine is the Irish word both for the month of May and for the festival that commemorates the height of spring.  Literally translated, it means “bright fire.”  I could talk about what Beltaine is all about, but I’ll just show you instead.

First, Rowan, Etaine and I crossed the Potomac at White’s Ferry:

And then we went to see sheep at Kiparoo:

And calves:

And chooks:

And then came planting, with Kayo’s help:

And then things got really fun.  We went to John the Farrier’s, where our pals had already raised the roof on the long-hall.  It’s wonderful, but you have to just trust me on that.  The camera only comes out every so often in Celt-land.

We got a visit from Connal and Fionnula, who is chock-full of baby:

And we raised a Maypole:

If you have kids, take them to dance a Maypole.  Please.  It’s astounding how much they like it.  Once it was wrapped, we got to the tough part.  I’m guessing most of you haven’t tried to ring a maypole, but it makes slam dunks seem sooooooo easy.

Sometimes, people try hard.

And sometimes, people try to try (language starts to get a bit adult about this point).

And sometimes, climbing becomes necessary.

Thank you all for being so kind to the greater Hokie community and to the friends and families of the victims.  I know my worry and sorrow was minuscule compared to what those who saw the shootings or lost loved ones experienced.  We can’t undo what happened on Monday, but we can try to comfort and care for those who were harmed, and we can better prepare ourselves to intercede if we come across someone on the brink of collapse.   

I was reminded this week, again and again, how wonderful my friends are.  I regularly wonder how I ended up knowing people who are so kind and dedicated to peace and community . . . I hope I deserve you all. 

Purlewe sent me more blanket food.  I think I got this package on Tuesday or Wednesday, and it was wonderful to focus on something bright and soft and warm.  Making the blanket has been particularly fun because my friends have been so generous with their sock-yarn leftovers. I’m playing with yarns and colors my own stash never hands over.  My own love of mud and loam forgets all about the blossoms I’m trying to nurture. 

It’s all daffodils and tulips and croci, with one strong steel trowel to tend them. 

And then I got another package yesterday afternoon, this time from Rachel.  I had an inkling this was coming, but I was gobsmacked.  When I opened it I found blanket food and . . . .

Fantastically beautiful lace socks.

Sooooo prettttttyyyyyyyyy.  No one has ever made me socks before, of course.  I turned insta-sappy, because it’s in my contract.  And then I rushed to change clothes and try them on.  They fit very nicely.  And they match, well, everything in our house.   

Wearing these is like having a dear friend’s arm around my shoulder.  But for my feet.  I keep taking them off, going outside to garden, and then coming in and scrubbing my feet so I can put the socks back on.  I think that may be the recipe for a perfect spring weekend.

Have I mentioned that secrets are not my forte?  Yeah, they’re not.  When I buy Scott a cool present, I immediately come home and say "I bought you the coolest present" over and over again until he flees the room.  I am impatient, and I put my impatience on other people’s shoulders.  This time, though, I managed to wait out my impatience until the gift got where it was going.

I made this for my mother-in-law Karen.  It’s the Wave and Shell Shawl  (clicky for free pattern) made in Mountain Colors Mountain Goat, in the colorway Thunderhead.  I used US size nine needles and just shy of two skeins of yarn. 

This is a really fun pattern.  It’s a variation of feather and fan, as you can tell, and a section of the repeat is done in modified stockinette, to form those shells and show off the coloration in handpainted yarns.  Loverly.

The blanket is also a lot bigger now, as you can tell. 

And felting is happening, in preparation for Maryland Sheep and Wool and Tuatha’s demands for felt.  Rather inventive felting.  With spirals.  And free dog-hair accents.

Into the West directed by Mike Newell and written by Jim Sheridan

This is the movie about travellers I do recommend.  It’s a kids’ film, in theory, but it’s a well-written, evocative, entertaining film.  Few American kids’ movies will go to the lengths it does, with a drunken widowed father, impoverished, uppity kids, and a grandfather who encourages nomadism over settled life.  The cast is great, the kids in the lead rolls do very well, and the Irish heavyweight actors do what they do.  Watch it.  It will cheer you up.

Unless by Carol Shields

Shields is one of my favorite authors, and a rather influential Austen scholar as well.  Originally from from Oak Park, IL (like some of my favorite people), she chose Canada for her home after spending some time in Scotland.  I was burning through Shields’ novels a while back, but decided to slow down after she died.  I want to savor her writing, rather than gulping it down.

Unless was her last novel, and it tracks the mysterious breakdown of a young woman who suddenly leaves university, abandons her boyfriend and home, breaks ties with her family, and chooses to sit on a Toronto corner with a sign around her neck that says "Goodness."  The novel comes to us in the voice of the girl’s mother, who is bewildered by her daughter’s disassociation. 

I don’t want to say much more about the plot of the book, except that things do eventually turn out ok, that the plot of the book is timely, and that Shields was incredibly talented, sensitive, insightful writer.  I really wish she had been able to give us another few books.

Quite literally: a clue.

There’s the end of the yarn from the secret knitting. 

Also, this has been happening:

Kilt hose in the offing.  I’m using Trekking XXL in a blue and teal colorway, which isn’t showing well in the gloom today.  I’ve just designed the pattern as I work.  It tapers to hug the ankle and then expands out again for the heel–my hope is that these will be great for winter hikes–long, warm, and well-fitted to cut down on blisters and such.  They’d better be–I could make three pairs of socks in the amount of time this is taking.

House of Mirth by Edith Wharton and House of Mirth directed by Terence Davies

This is where I normally explain that there was some hole in my education, through which some of the great masters slipped.  You know what?  Forget that.  Dear reader, I openly admit that I haven’t read everything yet.  Hence, you know, the still reading. 

Anyway, the novel follows Lily Bart, a New York socialite who is increasingly distressed because she’s unmarried and has limited financial resources.  Lily is essentially bratty and conniving at the opening of the novel, but witty and resourceful as well.  As the story progresses, Lily sabotages a few of her better marriage prospects because she has unintentionally fallen for a man who has to work as a lawyer, and thus lacks the means to support her in the style to which she has become accustomed.  She makes some bad choices, loses the support of her wealthy benefactress aunt, spirals into the working class, and dies.  Of course she does.  Wharton knew what a tough spot a poor gentlewoman of her era was stuck in.    The book is well-written, engaging, heart-breaking, and intensely modern.  Not that many novelists in the period were writing lead women who were, in many ways, unlikeable.

The film lost some of the bite of the novel.  I like Gillian Anderson too much to buy her as the real Lily.  In the same way that the Fanny Price in the recent film adaptation of Mansfield Park was too strong and funny to be the same character in the novel, this Lily is too good to be the Lily from the novel.  The screenwriter did Lily some favors, which allowed Anderson to do Lily some more favors, and the main character in the film actually gets to be more of a heroine.  The film is also a bit too slow–many period films revel in the hard work done by set dressers and costumers a bit too much, sacrificing pacing for good, clear pans through the beauty.  There’s a bit too much of that in the film.  And Anderson’s Lily is a bit too indiscreet–the Lily of the novel, for all of her naughtiness, was not making out with guys on benches outside parties.  She mad mistakes, but she didn’t knowingly sink her reputation in that particular way.

I know I’ve mentioned the bardic thing before, however obliquely.  If you missed the previous allusions, um, I’m a bard.  I translate mythology from Old-Irish and Middle Welsh, and I study history and archeology, and sometimes my Muse wakes me up in the middle of the night with a maelstrom of notes and phrases and I race to record everything she mutters to me before she runs off and/or my head bursts open.  Sometimes I suffer over a piece for ages.  Sometimes it comes whole-cloth.  Either can be gut-wrenching.  The resulting poems and songs and stories, even if and when I can accept that they’re worth sharing, have a very small target audience.  Most people don’t get it, and I am generally ok with that.  Though I do, obviously, have an urge to reach out to people and share what I think and know (hence blogging, and teaching clogging, and the general not-shutting-up).

My friends Etaine and Anubh are also bards.  And while each of us researches, writes, and performs differently, our aims are similar, and we play to the same audiences.  And, of course, we’re quite literally members of the same tribe, we three.  So, a few years ago, with some very gracious needling from Anubh (who said something spot-on like "Um Lanea, don’t you run big parts of this festival?  Why don’t you get us stage time, silly." like she does) the three of us ginned up an act, with a set list and everything, and went on stage.  A bunch of times.  At our lovely local festival.  It was certainly different from performing at living history events, because–woah–friends of mine from work showed up.  And a distant relative.  And some immediate family.  And there were strangers there, sitting between our friends and relatives, listening to us and wondering why so many people in the audience knew the words to these unusual, unpublished stories and songs.  Those folks only heard the most accessible of pieces, of course, but even so seemed surprised by the rawness of the source material.    Many people expect storytellers in funny clothes to kids’ performers.  We’re not so much with the kid-friendly, because the ancient world didn’t worry about age-appropriate art.  Blah blah blather blah. 

Up until now, it’s all been so relaxed and unofficial.  And while I know that there are people who really love what we do, we have a short reach, you know?  No recordings, and no books, and no press kit, and just the half-assed managing I’ve had to do to book us at a festival I’ve had the run of in the past. 

Yesterday, there was a contract in my in-box for me to sign.  We’ve been booked to perform at the Celtic Fling in PA in June.  And I have nothing to do with the running of that festival, so my brain registers it as huge and new and a different sort of accomplishment.  It’s an official GIG.   They’re paying us to get up in front of strangers and do this thing we do.   I’ve known about the gig for a while, but the contract makes it real.   

I think I’m going to pass out now.  The only thing that is keeping the blood in my head is the knowledge that at least one friend will be in the audience (yay, thank you!).  I thought I had become immune to performance anxiety.  Apparently, I just don’t get nervous when I perform at home.  Pennsylvania, however, is all the way up there.  Are there tigers?  I bet there are tigers.  And mean critics, with sticks.  And hecklers.  And no one will know the choruses, or the stories.  And they will, quite possibly, sacrifice me to some weird Pennsylvanian God of, um, amplification.  Have I mentioned I hate microphones?  Yeah–not so good for anyone with an interest in performing music.  They always squawk and the wind-cover sock-thingies smell bad.  Guh.

We’re going camping this weekend with the Celts.  I’m going to sing with my people and not think about the strangers.  And the Contract.  And the tigers.

I’m soaking up as much spring as I can, and still either knitting in secret or knitting things that aren’t all that exciting yet, like the blanket.  The last few days have been all about soil and old friends.  Some sad things recently happened to a couple of people I know, and it’s nice to focus on simple pleasures.  I priced small floor looms, spent time with my folks and my husband, and puttered.

A passel of us went to roller derby, of course.  Here are about half of the crazy kids.

In the snack-bar at the Roller Derby venue.  I didn’t get any good photos of the bouts themselves–too much fun for steady camera work.  We had a blast at the bout though, and there was some serious discussion about season tickets (likely) and possible roller-derby names (less likely).

I’ve spent the rest of the last few days either outside or wishing I was outside.  The garden needs a lot of tidying up.  But the work is more enjoyable with so many early blooms.

I particularly these hybrid daffodils.

And the hellebores

And these sweeties–I’ve blanked on their names, and searching the web for them is just making me want to buy lots and lots of plants.

The cats were supremely jealous of how much time Kayo and I were spending outside, and took turns watching the feeders out front and those out back.  Speedwell just stared and stared:

Yarrow bargained for assistance with the pesky door.

I’m so glad they don’t have thumbs.  And they’re not any larger.  Or smarter.  I hope the birds in our neighborhood appreciate the cats’ seclusion as much as they appreciate the seed we give them.