endowed

I have three projects on the needles right now.  I do not usually spread myself so thin on knitting, but they are so different from each other, they each have their own production space.  At the top is a capelet for me, knitted in the round with Manos, for which I took direction from Mari on the color changes and am now having regret.  On the left, a sock -- from the Interweave Favorite Sock [or whatever] book -- knitted in a really soft worsted merino from Malabrigo, but which I have recently begun disparaging as my "miniature project," because it is so small and fiddly and I also keep misplacing the 4th needle, plus also have trouble keeping all 56 stitches on the needles when it is in storage.  I know, I know, those stopper thingies.

On the right is a tea cozy, for a stranger who gallantly rescued Fillette and me from a terrible NYC story.  It is knit in Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino, from a pattern in Joelle Hoverson's Last-Minute Knitted Gifts.  I think my gauge is off, but ask me if I care.  It is hard to go back and forth with it because its knit stitches are through the back loop and so anyhow.  I should buckle down and finish it this weekend, if I have time.

I start school tomorrow.  I have been trying to stay quiet about it because it is a little weird, but finally, Mommy gets to go to art school.  It is a joke in our house whenever I get a little fixed on a craft or a costume or a party.  We say that the themes to all of the children's last four parties have been: Mommy never got to go to art school.  It is just the sheer number of exciting!, over-the-top!, fussy, little appointments that are featured.  Like the up-all-night cupcakes from last year's Hallowe'en party or the time that for the birthday party goody bags, I folded 200 origami paper stars and 30 tiny cranes, plus made a raft of little cut-paper flowers.  There is something about me that is not -- how to say? -- properly-exercised.  Maybe exorcised is the better word.

There are a number of reasons I wanted to take a visual arts class.  1. Garçon / Fillette are asking me how to do technical things beyond my scope; 2. I have not been in a creative environment for months and months.  Consequently, that part of my brain has been turned off and I am finding it not only difficult to remember how to write poetry, but am somewhat confused by the fact that I ever have;  3.  The next step -- were I to remember how it worked -- in the writing of poetry would be to forget the workshops and go for the residency, but I can't get 3 to 6 weeks away from the children at this moment, consequently, see nos. 2 and 4.  I have to get out of here, sometimes, god. 

Anyhow over the summer I cast around and decided on a little beginning drawing class that would be challenging but not demoralizing.  I received a classical secondary education that was a little heavy on the arts and so left high school knowing the techniques of basic draftmanship, lines, composition, chiaroscuro & the color wheel, plus my way around a photographic darkroom.  The rest is art history, which I thought was so dull & dry I might have died circa 1988, but ever since, I have been glad to have learned it.  Last month, I settled on a little offering from a nearby school of which everyone has heard, that deals with ink, charcoal and graphite, the figure and still-life. 

I felt silly about it, like Carmela Soprano looking for something to do, but whatever.  Then the packet came from the school and I was a little surprised plus uneasy to realize that I wasn't just taking a little class, but that I had unwittingly matriculated at a post-secondary institution of the visual arts.  I feel too old & boring for this.  Also, not old enough.  One of the things that happens when I go out into the world to receive instruction -- whether it is recreational or academic -- is that I am the only woman my age there.  The other women are usually younger, unmarried & childless.  The rest of the women are much older than me, their eldest children my age, everyone out of the house, the husbands either capable of heating his own meals after 40 years of marriage or dead.   The men in the group will span all the ages, but at my age, they admit to having 3 or 4 children in the house (with their wife), and everyone -- when they find out I have two children and how young they are -- gasps aloud and asks where the little tykes have been stowed.  I say, "With my husband, you know, their father."  And everyone acts as if this is some novel idea, some trailblazing solution. 

It makes me tired and a little bit sad, plus I never fail to feel like a big, spoiled baby, who just can't suck it up and love being with her children, her man, and her house ALL THE GODDAMN TIME like everyone else.  Anyhow, that whole internal affair starts afresh this week and this time I will be wielding a charcoal vine, too.   

Comments

[santos.]

congratulations on your new adventure....stopper thingies? you have polymer clay

[lala]

hello, santos, thank you! I have homework, which makes me feel productive.

you know, I have stopper guys somewhere in the house which fit such small needles, but I don't know where they are. I wonder if a smidge of kneaded eraser might work in a pinch. I could also just be more careful.

[santos.]

i say you make petit four shaped stopper thingies :)