The Independent Stitch

A gem of a new PieceWork magazine, plus miscellany

I've been trying to get this posted for about two weeks but life has intervened. If you are a knitter and haven't seen the new issue of PieceWork magazine (January/February 2008), you might want to grab a copy. It's a fine gem. (That's the cotton chenille sweater behind it; this post has taken long enough to complete that the body, shown below, is now finished and I'm doing the sleeves for the second time.)

Although slim, this publication is packed with terrific articles by fantastic people.

For one thing, it's got the first published information about the mittens of Rovaniemi. This is the technique that I took a workshop on last fall at the Nordic knitting conference in Seattle. (The whole trip was Stephanie's fault.)

For another, there's an article on poetry mittens by Jane Fournier (one of the best spinners and generally most knowledgeable textile people I've ever had the pleasure of spending time with) and Veronica Patterson (poet and former editor of PieceWork, which is now edited by the wonderful Jeane Hutchins, who has put together this magical issue, along with many others). So . . . poetry mittens by a textile genius + an astonishing poet.

Here's the coolest thing. Veronica wrote about the history of poetry mittens. Jane designed some mittens . . . using a poem of Veronica's!

There's an article about Maxine Tyler, who knits stuff from bear hair.

There's an Estonian lace scarf designed by Nancy Bush.

There's an article on Lithuanian knitting, with a pattern for baby mittens, by Donna Druchunas, who has been following her own heritage and writing about it (more to come in her fall 2008 book, Ethnic Knitting Exploration).

There's an elegant cabled cardigan designed by Ann Budd, combined with a history of the kimono by Vicki Square (Ann's sweater has a kimono-inspired front opening, along with fitted sleeve-and-shoulder sections, a fine integration of ideas from disparate sources).

And Lita Rosing-Schow offers a detailed examination of two pairs of Danish knitted gloves, and a pattern for making a set of reproduction gloves.

Sometimes it seems that prices are going up for all sorts of publications (they are, for all sorts of reasons) and that I can read through a new magazine (even, alas, too many books) in fifteen minutes or less and catch everything that interests me. It's not that I'm uninterested in things. It's just that after a certain number of years, there's less stuff that strikes me as magical . . . although there are always new and wonderful things to learn about knitting, spinning, weaving . . . ! The trick becomes finding those things . . . which is why I continue to publish and write about textiles. I spend my time putting together information that I either want to know about now or that I wish I'd known about in my past fiber-exploration stages.

This issue of PieceWork strikes me as an absolute bargain, and as a library addition to treasure for anyone who has even a slight interest in historical knitting, or in making history with his or her own knitting.

I could cast on for several new projects right now that would be inspired by this issue. I'm exercising some discipline and intending to finish some of what's in progress (the blue socks are almost done, and I've nearly completed the chenille sweater's sleeves, although they are in a knitting bag that I have misplaced somewhere . . . in the house . . . as long as the bag's in the house, I'm okay; it's been a multiple-deadline week, which is how these misplacements happen . . . ). Nonetheless, I am happy any time my cupboard of knitting daydreams has been restocked.

___

Breaking in the new car

Sometimes breaking in a new car means working in the engine for the first 500 to 1000 miles.

For me it means filling it with the types of music it may expect to experience while I'm driving. On a trip to Denver—the first extended trip, and therefore the first real music opportunity—here's what got played:

• Dixie Chicks, Home
• Norumbega Harmony, Sing and Joyful Be
• Anonymous 4, Gloryland--thanks to Knitterguy's recommendation for this and for American Angels,  one of my favorite CDs . . . so much a favorite that I picked up Gloryland at Twist and Shout on this trip and listened to it on the drive back; I also found a used copy of Love's Illusion, but the drive today wasn't long enough so I haven't listened to it yet

I haven't had a CD player in a car I owned before. CDs are easier to manage while driving than tapes are!

And now I've established one of the car's set of vibes.

____

My extremely intrepid, creative, and talented niece made me a wonderful Christmas present, although the process sounds like it was traumatic. She got an exceptionally fine blog post out of her efforts, though. (Here's an account of some of her projects that went more smoothly.)

2.5 days' singing: The red book and a woven riddle

This past weekend the 18th Annual Rocky Mountain Sacred Harp Convention took place at the Wild Sage Common House (Wild Sage Cohousing) in Boulder, Colorado.

Sacred harp singing, also known as shape note or fasola, is a 200-year-old form of a cappella four-part harmony. If you saw the movie Cold Mountain, you heard two shape-note tunes in the soundtrack: "Idumea" and "I'm Going Home." The PBS special Amazing Grace, one of Bill Moyers' documentaries, includes a shape-note version of that old song. I've just learned that there's a new documentary on the tradition called Awake My Soul.

I won't describe the music itself further in this post, because I've already done that in an essay I wrote called "On moving into the hollow square." [10/1/07: I thought I'd linked to the essay, but it doesn't seem to have worked. I think it will now be available from the "Additional writing" part of the sidebar. Knock on wood.] The piece was originally published in a literary magazine called Many Mountains Moving in its Literature of Spirituality Special Edition, edited by Cathy Capozzoli.

Local singings are held in many communities throughout the year. A convention is a big singing that happens annually. There are lots of conventions. People travel long distances (and short) to attend conventions, which end up linking shape note singers from different regions together. Lots of people travel to as many conventions as they can, although I haven't been to any other than the Rocky Mountain convention, and then only when it's been in Colorado (alternate years are in New Mexico) and I haven't had a conflicting work commitment during its scheduled weekend (often SOAR, when I worked at Interweave Press). This year's convention was either the first or second full convention I've participated in, although I first sang shape note thirty years ago (seven shape) and singing regularly for the past twenty years (four shape). It gathered eighty participants from nine states (CO, NM, UT, IL, WA, GA, AL, TX, CA) plus England.

Someone passes a hat (or paper bag) for donations to cover costs. Local singers provide a bountiful potluck mid-day meal for everyone.

On the way to Boulder on Friday, I stopped at Shuttles, Spindles, and Skeins to get two more hanks of Crystal Palace cotton chenille so I can turn a big gauge swatch into a scarf. The actual project for which this swatch is preparation is a sweater for a friend who's allergic to animal fibers.

Friday evening, there was a singing school with Terry Wootten from Alabama, who, along with his wife, Sheila Wootten, joined us for the weekend. Singing schools introduce new singers to the tradition (although simply jumping in is also a normal way to begin) and give more experienced singers new perspectives on the music's history and variations.

On Saturday and Sunday, the convention ran from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., with a break for lunch and socializing each day from noon to 1. On Saturday, we sang 85 different songs. On Sunday, we sang another 80. That was the official part.

Saturday evening, a smaller group gathered to sing a few more. The convention was a "red book" or "Denson book" singing. The evening, unofficial session also sang from the "blue book" (Cooper book) and the "black book" (Norumbega Harmony).

Because my voice gave out, a few songs before everyone else quit for the night I retired to the guest room that I'd been offered the use of, in the lower level of the common house. I ended the day reading Meghan Nuttall Sayres' novel Anahita's Woven Riddle, which I'd discovered and picked up at Shuttles, with the delightful sound of the day's last music coming through the ceiling above me.

When I edited Spin-Off magazine, Meghan wrote several articles that I published. Her novel, which concerns a nomadic Iranian spinner/dyer/weaver, is an excellent read that incorporates, without being encumbered by, a lot of knowledge of Iranian culture and of the textile arts. The narrative structure itself resembles a tapestry. I enjoyed the book as both reader and writer. Although categorized as a young adult novel, it is, like all good books, not age-limited in its appeal.

I got the small rug in the photo above by way of Rubia, which mostly provides an outlet for sales of embroidery by women from Afghanistan. When Rubia's Jennie Wood came to the 2004 Denver Convergence, the biennial handweavers' convention, she brought some lovely rugs with her. . . .

 

Traces of a friend’s life in everyday activities

While responding to an e-mail from someone I'd hoped to see at BookExpo America last week but didn't connect with, I went to the bookshelf to take a quick look at Shirley ("Shirl the Purl") Scott's Canada Knits: Craft and Comfort in a Northern Land.

Nearby on the shelf, face up, was another small book with what I realized with a pang was Deborah Pulliam's handwriting on a yellow sticky note. About four years ago, I'd mentioned to Deb that I was having trouble finding a book I'd heard of—perhaps because it had been published in Australia and was not yet readily available in North America—and she had sent me a copy. So here's It's My Party and I'll Knit if I Want To! by Sharon Aris, with Deb's comment: "It's a good read overall—enjoy!"

Reminders of Deb P keep popping up in my life like single fibers, apparently insignificant on their own but cumulatively powerful.

For example, every day when my daughter and I walk the dogs we use the leashes Deb made from nautical rope and brass fittings and sent to us after she visited, many years ago. Having experienced our walking conditions firsthand, she made the blue leash longer than the red one. It was custom-sized for Heather, our well-behaved Australian shepherd. The shorter leash was red (for "not so calm"), intended for Ariel Miranda, our then-young Border collie cross. Because of their personalized leashes, Ariel had to stay closer to us and Heather could evade puppyish antics.

Now Ariel, age 12 1/2, uses the blue leash and we clip the red one to Tussah's collar. The knots Deb tied have held firm under all conditions. She was right: there's no better leash to be had. Last night, my daughter said, "I don't know what we'll do if they ever wear out."

On Thursday while the memorial service was taking place in Castine, Maine, I thought of Deb as I was in New York at a wonderful all-day gathering of independent publishers. I wish Nomad Press was going to be able to publish the book she had in progress.

I thought of Deb even more frequently than usual on Saturday, which would have been her fifty-fifth birthday. On that day, another friend and I attended a performance of a new Broadway musical called The Pirate Queen.

The musical is loosely based on a novel called Grania: She King of the Irish Seas, by Morgan Llewellyn, which is in turn loosely based on the life of Grace O'Malley (also called Granuaile and Grania, among other names), who was an Irish contemporary of England's Queen Elizabeth I, who was then expending a lot of effort to include Ireland in her realm.

The creators of the musical adjusted the particulars of what is known about Grace O'Malley's life (by adjusted I mean "simplified radically" and "altered in many important ways") to produce an entertaining theatrical production that becomes an artistic statement on its own terms. It especially examines some ideas about strong women in cultures that have specific role expectations that some individual women refuse to accept as boundaries. It's fiction that uses history as a launching point for its own purposes.

I have a particular interest in historiography (which I take to mean the idea that what happened in the past is always perceived through a lens, and the study of various lenses is part of the study of history) and in the integrity of artistic vision. That sentence can lead down rabbit holes into a vast wonderland of inquiry. This was one of the subsurface threads in a lot of the conversations Deb P and I engaged in. There's no end to it. We had come nowhere near completing any of our discussions.

I also have a more focused interest in the history and story associated with the life of Grace O'Malley, sparked by an astounding play called A Most Notorious Woman, written and acted by Molly Lyons.

My close friends know that I don't ordinarily like to repeat experiences. I do re-read books, but not often. I'll see a movie a second time . . . if I can bring my knitting.

Over a couple of years, I saw A Most Notorious Woman several times, all at Bas Bleu Theatre. I saw it twice during the sold-out world premiere in 2000 and once (or was it twice again?) in 2001 when the play returned to that theater for another sold-out series of performances. This is not at all normal for me. The play kept drawing me back.

Molly based her play on Granuaile: Ireland's Pirate Queen, 1530-1603, by Anne Chambers, which is not a novel. I know a lot about O'Malley's life from Molly's play that may have given me a deeper appreciation—both historical and artistic—for the large-scale musical. Molly herself is both an incredible actor who portrays Grace O'Malley from girlhood to crone and a gifted playwright who can weave what is known about O'Malley's life into an effective drama without simplifying the content. Her play is one of the finest artistic creations I have ever experienced.

After I saw A Most Notorious Woman a couple of times, I special-ordered a copy of Chambers' book from a specialist in Irish publications (the work is more readily available now). It's not a fast read, but gave me a good overview of what is and isn't known about O'Malley's life and the context within which she lived, so I could become acquainted with the soil from which Molly Lyons grew her play.

I haven't had additional time to really learn more about Grace O'Malley. But related topics have, obviously, intrigued me for a number of years. For example, when I couldn't locate my copy of Chambers for the photo I just grabbed another book that happened to be handy: The Pirate Queen: In Search of Grace O'Malley and Other Legendary Women of the Sea, by Barbara Sjoholm.

As I work on bringing books to the world as an independent micro-publisher in a world of mega-publishers, these stories from the past help me keep my focus and courage up. What I'm doing is relatively easy, by comparison!

This discussion connects more than casually to Deborah Pulliam's and my conversations over the years, because about this time in many previous springs she would have been preparing for a trip to the United Kingdom to look at knitting in museums and to visit the northern islands where there are sheep and wool and wonderful knitting traditions—and where the stories of some especially headstrong and capable women like Grace O'Malley originated. I've never been to these places. Each year, I looked forward to having Deb tell me about what she'd found.

A pair of gloves handknitted from North Ronaldsay wool hangs from the peg rack in my living room. Deb brought them to me from the Orkneys. Not only are they made from wool grown by a rare breed of sheep (one perfectly acclimated to living in the tidal area of an island), they have been worked in an unusual manner, with seed-stitch background and a two-color Celtic knot on the back of each hand.

One of these days I will stumble across a note from Deb—probably on a postcard—with the name of the maker, which I can almost but not quite recall. Jane . . . ?

I am not going around looking for these Deborah Pulliam-contributed fibers in the strand that is my life. The bits are just here, reminders of years during which our paths ran parallel in ways that allowed us to hash out ideas or add new perspective or egg each other on with projects or questions.

To the many people who have been sending me notes about their own connections with Deb P, those who knew her in person and those who knew her through her publications: Thank you.

While these notes highlight the loss and bring tears to my eyes, that's a good thing because I'm having trouble mourning because I don't want to believe Deb and I are not going to have another Saturday-evening phone chat either this week or next. Your notes also offer me hope and new connections that honor the memory of the friend we share who is still, and always will be, an active and inseparable part of our lives.

Sing to me of home

Last night I went to a concert by my favorite band on earth. I'm picky about music, and sometimes I know and sometimes I don't know why a particular musician or group of musicians transports me. Part of the magic comes from skill, part from the selected music, part from passion, part from je ne sais quoi. I don't go to many concerts. I'd attend more if I could, but I need to limit my outings to a few special occasions a year.

When I woke up yesterday morning, I didn't even know Grand Dérangement was in the area. They're from Baie Sainte Marie (Saint Mary's Bay) in Nova Scotia. Four years ago, they played at a restored theater eleven miles down the road. When I opened yesterday's paper, I discovered the band was scheduled to play at the same location that very evening.

Full stop on other plans.

I am on the theater's mailing list and I read its schedules regularly for the exact reason that I don't want to miss any appearance that Grand Dérangement, or a couple of other performers or groups, might make. I don't know how the advance information slipped past me. I'm just relieved I found out before the concert took place.

Online ticket sales aren't an option on the day of an event. At 12:30, when the box office opened, I called from the room where I was in a meeting with sympathetic folks.

Answering machine. Left a message.

The Rialto is a small theater, only 450 seats, the result of major community effort. When I moved to this area almost twenty-one years ago, the building was an empty, boarded-up shell not far from where I worked.

I remember K., one of my co-workers, and her husband W., who were part of a small group of people that had a huge idea and the ability to wield hammers. This group spent years bringing the space back to life. I remember the problems with the chairs, the question of how to insulate the building inexpensively in a way that would meet code so long after its original construction, and the sanding of the floor. I remember the company picnic where W. took me and my small daughter for a ride in his open jeep in the foothills west of town. We went to see a waterfall not far from the group picnic site. I remember the sunshine of that day, and K.'s loss not long after, when W. died suddenly, too young, of a heart attack. I remember seeing K. a few weeks ago; I don't see her often enough any more, because we don't work at the same place any more.

A nice person whose name I think is Ginger called me back from the Rialto an hour later: “We're being slammed, and the computer's down. Yes, we'll have a ticket here for you. It will probably be in the balcony.”

“Tuck me in anywhere you can. I love their music. I've got to be there.”

I'm not a groupie. I'm more of a roadie. I've played in a band. I've uncoiled and coiled the mic cords, packed the back of the Suburban, hauled the amplifiers at 2 and 3 in the morning, been the one who could stay awake on the drive home over dark and nearly deserted roads, especially careful when I began to have double vision, a sign of serious fatigue.

I'm not much for autographed items any more than I'm a groupie.

But from the 2003 Grand Dérangement concert at the Rialto, I have a poster signed by all the band members. It hangs by the front door in my house. I think of it as an exception that proves a rule.

The drive down the highway last night reminded me of heading to or from winter gigs in New England: blowing snow across the windshield and slick pavement under the tires. It brought back memories of wrecks (of which I was fortunately never a part) and the sudden need for a "new," cheap, large-capacity car.

Ahead of me on this trip, the bright blue and yellow lights of a line of snowplows flashed against the black sky, moving steadily south. The wind from the west whipped snow across the road, forming drifts in the southbound lanes and occasionally producing near white-out conditions. The speed limit's 55 m.p.h. on this road and traffic usually runs at 60. Last night, even the hotshots in high-powered pickups were cooling their heels at 30.

After pulling my car into an on-street parking spot, I made my way through intermittent gusts of snow-packed wind to the theater and opened the wood-and-glass doors to the warmth of the outer lobby.

My friend D. reconstructed the building's facade. That was a long time ago, too, before the inside was ready for people. As soon as the front looked like the historic theater made new, all the visionaries suddenly began to see that all their work and faith would pay off some day.

The woman at the will-call booth handed me an envelope with my name on it. I pulled out the ticket, preparing to turn right after the entrance and head for the balcony. I read the black print on the purple-and-white ticket twice because I had a hard time trusting my eyes: MAIN D 3.

Instead of turning, I went straight ahead through the inner lobby.

MAIN D 3 is the third row on the right side (Row A doesn't exist in that section), the middle seat in a bank of five. The theater's about twenty seats across: five, aisle, ten, aisle, then five more. Sometimes a last-minute single lucks out.

*

Grand Dérangement is a band for which there is no opening act. A theater staffer—clearly a strong asset, but from another generation of the theater's history, too young to have been around for the times of the boarded-up building, of finishing the floor, of finding seats and installing them—welcomes the audience, invites us to attend other programs, and says, “And now, Grand Dérangement!”

And they run out on the stage and Briand Melanson thunders music with his drums and Daniel LeBlanc's fiddle slides and shimmers, and Armand Dionne's fingers wing their way across his keyboard, and Christiane Theriault and Erin Westby turn the whole stage into an instrument with their feet, and Charles Robicheau transforms the texture of the old building's air with his guitar, and Jean-Pascal Comeau on bass keeps the music grounded so the roof doesn't fly off the building as the music swirls and churns, exuberant and mournful and humorous by turns, Acadian spirit and community alive on the stage in front of us, now and in the past and pushing toward the future. Heard but not seen is Michel Thibault, the group's long-time songwriter and composer.

Yes, the CDs are wonderful. The group has been performing for ten years. The musicians known as Grand Dérangement have four CDs now, and I've been listening to their music since they had just one (thanks for the original introduction, Kris). You don't have to have been at a concert or know Acadian French to appreciate the music.

>They had run out of CDs on this tour. It looks like their their distributor will continue to be my primary source for the recorded music.

*

On the drive back, the conga line of six plows was moving south again, coming toward me this time as I drove north. I wonder if the drivers spent the night running north to south, south to north, preventing wrecks on the stretch of snow-swept highway.

As I drove cautiously home, the flash of blue and yellow lights on the plows moved toward and then past me. I wondered why, after more than twenty years in this community, I had recognized only one person in the entire audience. If she'd seen me, she would have recognized me, too. But she didn't, and I wasn't able to catch her eye. And that was it. My daughter had to work. Kris, who introduced me to this music before she moved to this area, tried to get to the concert but her truck got stuck in a snowbank in the mountains. I had the responsibility of enjoying the music for all of us.

*

The music of Grand Dérangement is extraordinary. The band in performance plays older numbers as if they were this moment's discovery, and new numbers that fit the flow at the same time that they carve new channels for the energy. The group remains constantly fresh, reinventing itself within its established spirit.

The core has remained the same: Briand Melanson, Daniel LeBlanc, Michel Thibault, and for most of the time Christiane Theriault. The life of a touring band demands both stamina and flexibility in personnel. These stalwarts have been joined by other compatible souls over the years. Armand was also onstage in 2003, and I think Jacques Comeau was there as well, although he was not with the group tonight. In 2003, Janice Comeau was there and Erin had not yet joined the group. Both she and Richard arrived in 2005.

For me, hearing the group play is like becoming a temporary part of a community that has proud links to the past and strong movement toward the future. Hearing them play is like being in touch with a high-voltage connection between source and vision.

During the concert, I felt like I was at home, even among people I didn't know. Home, even though the musicians sang and played in part about the Acadian diaspora in 1755 and aren't at home a whole lot themselves these days because of their tours through Canada, the United States, and Europe.

Fortunately, the CDs capture enough that I can bring a bit of this to the building and the city that I live in, whenever I need to remember what it's like to feel at home, even if not permanently so, thanks to a group of familiar strangers.

Knitting on Google

I expect others have noticed before I did that Google's holiday logos involve knitting (I have been outside shoveling massive quantities of snow, inside dummying a book, and occasionally taking a break to knit a row on a sweater).

There's at least one more image to come in the series as I post this. The first involved indefinite holiday draping on the letters of the word Google. By the second, two kangaroos arrived to wind the draping (yarn) into a skein.

Today they are both knitting. Good show, kangaroos! Will they be done on time? They look like they're enjoying the knitting, so my guess is that they have it well in hand paw.

I don't know what the copyright concerns would be about posting the images themselves in this situation—possibly free advertising for Google, possibly a transgression. Copyright interpretations can be tricky. So just go check the source for your amusement.

Back to work. I want this book I'm working on to be at a specific stage of development by tomorrow morning so I can do some editing and thinking while I travel a bit. Because I'm doing image work, I can listen to music: Capercaillie, Get Out; Grand Derangement, Tournons La Page; Kathy Mattea, Willow in the Wind; Noirin Ni Riain, Celtic Soul.