Monday, June 21, 2010

Greetings from Tropical In Cincinnati

It is monsoon season in Cincinnati. I have a hard time believing it myself until I venture outside and my brain boils inside my skull while my lungs protest that they have not yet devolved into gills. I quit knitting on a baby blanket for a friend of mine and a shawl because even with the a/c they were too hot. There are plenty of smaller projects to occupy my hands. Besides it is never too early to start the Christmas socks.

I have also been reading quite a bit lately. Usually, I keep two to three books going at once in a couple of different genres to keep the brain working. I finished Sweater Quest by Adrienne Martini a couple of days ago.

Sweater Quest is the account of one knitter's Everest project. I won't generalize and say that all knitters have that one impossible project that calls to them like no other. Signora Maritini's Everest project was an Alice Starmore design called Mary Tudor.

For those who don't know about Alice Starmore designs, here is a brief over view. Alice Starmore is a knitter and designer from the Hebrides. She is best known for her Fair Isle knitting designs. Madame Starmore created Fair Isle designs of heartbreaking beauty because Madame Starmore has a genius for color. With only two colors in any given row, Alice Starmore creates sweaters with such intricate motifs and combinations that at first it seems impossible. This alone would be a credit to knitting genius, but Madame Starmore did not stop there. She went on to design Ganseys and Aran sweaters that were just as intricate as her colorwork. I have several of her books in my collection and read them often.

To knit an Alice Starmore design is to put your expertise to the test in such a way that other knitter's know you have been to the dojo of knitting and caught the fly with the chopsticks.

For a year, Adrienne Martini lives with her project. I can sympathize with her obsession with a knitting Everest. For me it is a Shetland shawl. I have the kit. I look at it at least once a month. I think about winding the yarn at least once a month. I don't doubt my knitting mojo or my knitting chops. Yet, the yarn and pattern languish in their plastic bag taunting me.

Several years ago, I went to see the IMAX movie Everest. Let's just say that any match flame of an idea I had that I might one day climb the real Everest were blown out in the first five minutes. When I saw the crazy people with oxygen tanks using telescoping painting ladders to cross crevasses so deep you weren't quite sure you wouldn't fall to the center of the earth, I got a little sick. Let's face it, insanity, oxygen deprivation and severe illegal drug intoxication are the only combination that would even allow me to entertain the possibility of putting a foot on the ladder.

My Shetland shawl is nothing so terrorizing or deleterious to my life expectancy. I knit lace all the time. I knit shawls all the time. A Shetland shawl is nothing but the combination of the two. So, why don't I do it.

I think part of the answer lies in the fact that once you have climbed Mt. Everest, how do you beat that? Seriously? Is there another, higher peak? Is there another way you can show your badassness to the climbing community? No. You just climb the same mountain in stupider ways, like with no oxygen, or faster, or naked. Are you going to be just as interested in climbing Mt Hood or Mt Kilamanjaro? Will you just hang up your climbing gear and think bleh when someone talks about an expedition to climb in the Alps?

Knitting can be a bit like that. Knitting can also be like the trail to California during the Western Expansion of the United States. It is said, and I believe it, that the ruts where the wagons traveled along the trail got so deep from use, that later expeditions traveled in ruts as deep as the hub of the wagon wheels. While ruts help you know where the trail is and guide you on the way. When they are deep, you cannot turn, and you cannot get off a trail that is going over a cliff.

For a while now I have been in a knitting holding pattern. It has been something soothing that I have turned to during a big move, months of grief and a sense missing people I love who live so far away. In the space of not having to think about how I am working the needles, my mind has had the chance to process and to reach a point of acceptance and health.

Although it is hot. Although it is steamy. Although all Shetland shawls are knit with wool, perhaps now is the time. If is too terrible, I can always set it on fire, bury the ashes and claim that the yarn was homesick for the Shetland Islands so it caught a flight and moved in with a family of sheep who claim to know its parents.

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