from Bali to Iberia

I saw a fan - a butterfly, a glimmer - flutter around a poised dancer whose arms slowly moved to define sacred space around her body and whose legs moved within a long train of a dress to maneuver its placement in her path. The butterfly alit on her hand, then slowly fluttered near the head of an approaching dancer who held out her hand, received the butterfly, snapped it shut, then snapped it open again with a different life.  It fluttered with a stronger pulse as the dancer's arms crisply announced their presence and her legs directed and flipped the dark heavy train of her dress so that it swirled and carved her path.

A View

It's raining tonight.  Unusual for this time of year.  The Tour de California bike race starts in the Sierras today or tomorrow and snow is forecast.  Downhill at 50mph on "fat" one-inch racing tires?  Nein danke.

I tended the small garden plot, performed the annual irrigation check (giving rise to tonight's rain, no doubt), made a few repairs, and planted a few tomatoes, alyssums, and marigolds.  A month ago I pulled the offspring of the summer wild ones, and I haven't seen too many since, which was a relief until I wondered if there was another less desireable reason why the ground is more barren than usual.  It was confirmed that the land had been sprayed with herbicide.  My heart sank with dismay.  Time to extract the skeletal carcasses, heal the land with compost, replant, and post "no poison" signs.  Bah.

Been awhile since I've traveled.  So I go vicariously, over oceans through the sky.  14g of merino were spun on the Kundert perpetual motion spindle before and after gardening.  7g of cobalt-blue merino were spun woolen and andean-plied.  Similarly, 7g total of the cobalt-blue and turquoise (equal amounts of each color) were produced.  These are calm oceans and clear skies viewed on a sunny day.

Mapping through Immersion

I read everything, without selection..I borrowed from the public library...I read very fast, uncritically, and without retention, seeking only to escape from my own life through the imaginative plunge into another. Safe in my room...I disappeared into inner space. The real world dissolved and I was free to drift in fantasy, living a thousand lives, each one more powerful, more accessible, and more real than my own.

-- Frank Conroy

Caliz for Spring

A week and two days later I am wearing this, AVFKW's Proverbial number 3, designed by Rosemary Hill. How appropriate that I've finished in time for "Monday's Musing", which I always look forward to reading.






Caliz - modelled by AVFKW

Caliz - modelled by AVFKW

"The smell of moss, the sight of earth" in 70/30 silk/camel is AVFKW's Spring Proverbial yarn. I love this description. The subtly mottled spring-green silk/camel weighs very little and provides instant warmth.

I learned the knitted cast-on, stretchy bind-off, and how to see yarn-overs more clearly (there was a bit of ripping and re-doing while learning all this), and there are spring "bunnies" embedded in this work which make it uniquely mine. [...great euphemism...]


Make

My fingers Emit sparks of fire with Expectation of my future labours.

--William Blake

High Road with Handspun

High Road - Handspun
modelled by AVFKW

Last weekend, two weeks after casting on, I finished my second High Road with handspun yarn. I tweaked the pattern just a little: cast on a few more stitches on the main piece, extended the number of rows in the main piece before creating the center corner, adjusted the corner short rows, adjusted the center infill piece and ruffle cast-ons for the larger main piece, and added a few more rows to the ruffle.

Hoooo I really like this one!
Thanks Kristine and Mary-Heather.

Postscript about spinning the yarn: I tried to spin the fiber color combinations so that they would be somewhat random and appear to be "without purpose", but I found that the amount of thought and effort I was putting into the randomness was very deliberate. Intuitive spinning - I need to work on it more - how ironic. Or maybe not - could be a lesson (so many of those these days) in letting go.

First Project with Handspun

Got some fiber from Lisa Souza. 50/50 fine-merino/bombyx-silk in Sourball, Winter Pansy and Leafpile. Started with 8 to 15g of each, split in half, then each half split 3 or 4 times and attentuated, with approximately equal yet randomly chosen amounts of each colorway in each single, which was spun long-draw and somewhat relaxed, and then plied moderately hard. Barberpoling could be a good thing.

So I have a few balls of yarn, spun at different times and temperaments during this month of March: 167g, 473y, predominantly fingering weight.

With this handspun I started another High Road yesterday, with a few minor modifications. We'll see how it goes.

A Week Later

Eliminate one sense and the others become heightened.

Walk in the dark after days and days of heavy rain and you cannot see much. Pay just enough attention to the ground so that you don't trip or slip and hurt yourself - you are not immortal anymore and an injury would be painful and very inconvenient. The moon is gone and the clouds overhead keep the warmth in the evening air so that it does not bite your nose or lungs as it did a few weeks ago. You realize that the air does not smell like cars or people or animals. It is fragrant, though. There is the heavy sweetness of mock orange, and high tones of early blooming bulbs like narcissus and hyacinth, possibly cherry blossoms. Although you cannot see these things in the dark, you imagine they are nearby. The scents that cannot be identified get parsed in the mind for future reference. Is that the sharp and pungent oil of native California sage? How can that be if the only other time you've identified it was on a dry warm day? Maybe you smell the fresh green of dandelions and grass and tender flowers.

It has been raining, very heavily at times, for over two weeks. But the earth is warming up, and it is no longer cold and sleeping. Time to take more blind walks.

Primal

Skins, metal, wood: percussion is made of these things.

Skins stretched over a framework, metal shells sheets and rods that ring, and wood blocks that are smooth or ribbed. Percussion is the beating of the body or stick onto these materials, and the beating transmits the rhythm and force of the body through the space of sound. We've been communicating this way for thousands of years. We dance, we sway, we shout with these instruments which are a direct extension of our bodies.

Les Percussions de Strasbourg performed recently, and each work was distinctive and from the 20th century. The tones, textures, timbres from skins, metal and wood were varied, complex and engaging. Although this modern music does not have "pitch" per se, it has tones that includes the growl of huge drums, tingling harmonics of metal triangles, and drones that are generated from drumming wood and skins in an acoustically live space.  I heard sounds I have never heard before. I don't know how much the pieces were intended to be "intellectual", or of the mind only. I don't know if this is even a consideration in the composers' mind. For me the pieces had dance, sway, and expression in them.

The last piece, Hierophonie V (1974), by Yoshihisa Taira, began with shouts and rhythmic taiko-type drumming, followed by a quieter section, and ended with the shouts and drumming again. Suddenly the earthquake, tsunami, and on-going nuclear disaster in Japan all came rushing forward in a huge wave that paralyzed me, and this piece became the voice of humanity.

Have mercy on us.

Farm

Recent quotes or posts that have stuck with me:

_Are you a jumper or wader?
_Every day should be a good day to die.
_“Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace.” - Buddha