All my love and thanks for all the places we've been, crises we've survived, children and grandchildren we've loved...
...and your great patience in teaching me too many things to list...what I've learned from your pleasure in sharing with everyone who comes within your range.
All of us look forward to many more June tenths with you--
most especially yours truly ...
Alternative title for this post: It Takes a Village To Make a Sweater, or Can This Marriage Be Saved? This colorful cardigan for Eliana, our most recent grandchild, became a joint project by chance. I was having difficulty using size eleven needles to make Elizabeth Zimmerman's famous "Baby Surprise." At the height of the past year's shoulder discomfort, I could not manage 100+ stitches on a circular needle.
Why not encourage Ron, happily knitting hat after hat, to try an easier sweater pattern with the same yarn, a product of his own spinning. He was cautiously agreeable; pattern-reading has not been his thing. But I would help! Here's Eliana in a sweater I made for her mother forty years ago.
An added complication was that the blue and red yarns were spun very early in his learning this craft. That is, they are not too amenable to being knit. We got some great help from Betty Balcomb at Knitty City (wearing one of her own glorious productions). A bit of input from Close Knit in Portland when we were there this winter. But the project kept slowing down. Would we ever complete it in time for use before summer?
Biggest problem was the awful instructions for this medium-complex, cuff-to-cuff cardigan. I guess to keep the cost down, it was printed on both sides of one page--sort of a run-on style. Also, the designer is British and, though we speak the same language... knitters know what I mean. Finally, I had to give up certain knit niceties to accommodate Ron's distinctive style, although he was ready to rip and redo at several junctures.
With many stops and starts, we finally finished, sewed in our respective labels, and mailed it to Portland this week.
Handmade wood buttons down the front are from Russia via Peace Fleece. Even if you're not a yarn person, it's an inspiration to read about Peter Haggerty's successful experiment, started in 1985, to bridge cultures through commerce. From his farm in Maine where he and his wife raise sheep, he travels to connect and partner with shepherds in Russia, central Asia, and the Middle East.
The little yellow buttons at the collar points come from a trip to Toronto some years ago and are actually made in Canada. Rachel, Eliana's Mom, says there's still a chill in Portland, so our funky production should get a bit of use this season.
The brightly colored red, yellow, blue yarn that Ron's knits here was all spun on his wheel. He's making a simple pattern that I talked him into trying for our youngest grandchild, Elianna. He prefers producing more hats but agreed this time. Because the sweater I tried to make, Elizabeth Zimmerman's famous "Baby Surprise," proved too painful to my right arm. It required many, many stitches on a #11 circular needle.
Meanwhile I'm trying to finish a pink and black version of the little hen sweater knit for Roxie, our local grandchild last year. This one is for Zoe in Portland, the three year old.
I've completed all the pieces.
It's a little odd since I decided to carry the pink yarn across the back of the sweater rather than use a separate ball on each side as I did on Roxie's.
This has produced a puffy surface on the front. You can see how the pink knitting around the black hen has been stretched out. I'm not sure how cross-stitching a feather design on the front will work out on a not-flat surface. I'm trying to decide if each piece should be blocked before putting it all together. Time to visit Knitty City for more input from Aryn on the next step.
In the food department, we've focused over the past year on eating at home. Mostly this is about liking our own cooking better--except for two Vietnamese restaurants--one in the neighborhood, the other in Greenwich Village. Oh yes, and weight control is an excellent "excuse" for eating in our own space.
A very long time ago, I bought this packaged soup. Later realized it required coconut milk. Turned out quite well. Spring for Ron is about buying a box or two of Matzohs; this is a new one from Israel. Nothing religious here; we do not observe Passover. He has explained that this is when they are freshest. Matzohs went well with the coconut ginger soup. Definitely but would have tasted really good with the addition of real coconut from Hattie's Web in Hilo, Hawaii. A long trip.
Sunday we connected with our local greenmarket for the first time since returning from Portland. I do hope that the Columbia and Barnard and Manhattan School of Music students understand how lucky we are to have this small representative of New York City's Greenmarket program .
This first stand had just what we needed for a damp, sometimes snowy afternoon: hot cider at this stand where this woman is dressed less intensively than the last time we saw her in December. Wholewheat sugar donuts--too good--consumed before I could take their picture. This is also the stand with my favorite pear cider.
On to a dozen brown eggs. These farmers also produce their own pasta.
We got adventurous and tried the goat cheese made by Judith Mae and her spouse (seen here). They farm in
northeastern Pennsylvania--21 goats in a natural environment where sustainable practices are valued. Like composting the goat bedding, recycling grey water. Judith also produces goat milk soap which we'll try another time.
We stopped to check out greenhouse-grown spinach and ended up with (after trying a peppery leaf) buying this delicious salad mix. Next time I'll be more organized and write down the names of all the leaves.
Apples, apples, (sharp photo by another blogger) from the far end. Stannard Farm, South Cambridge, N.Y. has so very many choices of apples butfortunately only one kind of
Pure Honey--the elixir that's Ron's habit.
Carole Foster of Foster Sheep Farm is usually here with yarn spun from her flock of sheep. But it's lambing time right now, so I wont be seeing her for at least a month maybe. Back in November 2008 she spiced up the Greenmarket's first Knit/Spin event right there on Broadway at 115th Street. (The impressive gates to Columbia University are up the street.)
You are viewing Carole's demo of how to spin with a drop spindle. A very special and ancient art. I'm working on Carole's own pattern for a Multidirectional Hat that she was wearing when I saw her in December just before we left for Portland. I'm using worsted yarn she dyed and spun-- purple and two shades of gray.
It has always been important to our family to support small farmers where we've lived. They were closer to us geographically in northern Ohio and Baltimore, so we take great pleasure from the Greenmarkets bringing them closer to us here in the City.
An email came today from the Farmland Trust, hanging out in the left column here all the time; last Fall I joined their Action Center. Here's a letter you can sign to the new administration to thank them for their recent efforts. Their latest campaign, "No Farms, No Food," would benefit from your support whether you live in an urban, rural, or suburban place. We all need to eat!
We first noticed it earlier in the week...new guy named by Obama administration. A mention on the Yahoo news. "Who Is Ron Bloom?" the Wall Street Journal's blog queried on Monday.
Time magazine called him "Obama's Car Non-Czar." You see, this one is 20 years younger than mine, not from Brooklyn. Similarities? Both dress casually for meetings but my Ron Bloom likes to knit during his.
Yesterday there was more inside the front section of the ever-thinner New York Times.
I've always told him to be more formal about his name, really, it's Ronald.
People in academe would ask if he was the creator of "Bloom's Taxonomy" Not even close.
These are pictures of my Ron Bloom. Top photo, ten years ago in Mexico--the other two as he appeared recently, grandfathering in Portland, Oregon.
The knitter/weaver/spinner--formerly Chair of Home Economics (a very different sort of economy than the one in the news) at Morgan State University And my feminist spouse.
He is not, I repeat, the one who has been appointed to save the nation from its car sickness. He has been driving Toyotas for 20 years.
UPDATE: Thanks, Hattie, links now working.
Days here can begin with rain and cold... end milder, with blue sky and moon. It has to be a downpour for Zoe to use an umbrella.
Ron and I are getting into a more Northwest attitude, often only putting up a jacket hood, "Oh, it's just drizzling."
Finally finished the doll I started knitting for her last year. Think I loosened up on this one. Used sock yarn I had around for everything except the body. Hair nicely funky, added green earrings. Overcame fear of embroidering faces. Zoe's happy with it.
Contrast between my satisfying personal life here in Portland and the political raging around me have made blogging more of a challenge. Sometimes I'd like to shed my feminist sweater, shut out all but what is very close to me.
You are not seeing things. The last time Ron Bloom's hat production was pictured here, the assortment was different. He is, by his own acknowledgment, a knitting fool--or crazed hat-maker. He loves to give them away to family, friends, neighbors. New Jersey family...includes our dentist...
There are 1,000 apartments in our Morningside Gardens where we live...so there are endless possible recipients...
Vincent, head of Security, Marian, ceramic artist, Mary, Legal Aid lawyer.
Pearl Chin of Knitty City was about
to go outside when called upon to
turn a skein into a ball for knitting and ended up hatted
indoors.
Molly from Vermont has been selling trees for twenty Decembers at Broadway and 111th Street. Her dad did it before her. She was on my blog last year. When we saw her this year, the night was very cold. "She could use a hat!" I announced. The next day, on our way to the Columbia Greenmarket, we carried three hats. Molly to choose one.
True to our globally-warming climate it was a mild afternoon. The vendor
serving hot cid
er at Columbia Greenmarket a week ago was coatless this week. (When we return to the City in February, she'll be another candidate for a hat of handspun wool.)
You can't tell but in this picture of my latest by Ron, it's so balmy, I'm unusually gloveless.
Each hat has a button at the top and a label. About a year into his knitting hats, Ron decided to line each one with jersey fabric so the wool would be less "itchy."
December One demands my attention every year. World AIDS Day began in 1988...twenty years and where are we? The statistics do not seem to impress the public any longer. Even though women are the growing group with HIV, they have no advocacy groups like those for breast cancer. Because they are women of color?
The other day, I took a picture of my latest knit sweater for Roxie. For the white background needed, I moved a framed picture. It was a Xractal I made titled "Loving What's Left." At its center is a neckpiece I made in 1993 with shells and a key, dedicated to a hope that a cure would be found soon for AIDS. My focus has shifted since then.
Prevention is what I speak to with Condom Amulets. Treatment is important. But not enough for the future of my granddaughter who will wear this little blue sweater. Her generation needs us to make Safe Sex as powerful a public health issue as smoking has become--in the United States. So many are more comfortable with focusing on HIV/AIDS in Africa--so far away, so different from us here.
The most depressing movie I saw at the recent Margaret Meade Film Festival was "Today the Hawk Takes One Chick." Gogos, the grandmothers in Swaziland, are left to care for their HIV-positive grandchildren. Their parents are dying in great numbers. Health resources are sparse. I was overwhelmed. The entire country seems doomed.
Taking a break from writing this, I walked into the other room. Ron was trying to find something to watch while he spins wool. By chance, he found "All of Us," a documentary on cable. Turned out to be a strong film-- sad and hopeful. It followed Mahret Handefro, an American residen (from an Ethiopian family) at Montefiore Hospital in the South Bronx. Her goal was to develop a program that would move women of color to take more control of their sexual interactions with men. In 90 minutes much territory is covered here and briefly in Ethiopia where she speaks with women who feel powerless in dealing with men's sexual demands. In the Bronx she works with two HIV-positive patients, with peers, and with her own issues around men.
Mahret develops what she names a "truth circle." She educates with hard factson the impact of unprotected sex on black women's lives--blacks who are only 12 % of the U.S. population but 68% of the HIV/AIDS population. Consciousness raising sessions bring it all together. All the women struggle with the question, "When do you bring it [safe sex] up with a man?" One of Mahret's patients acknowledges that she's realized too late that "men were a drug for me."
Mahret is open about her own problem with setting limits in relationships during a group meeting with her peers. As she points out, this is "true primary prevention." What's missing and more elusive is work with men. Women can change; men have to also. I hope you see the film, perhaps rent it to share with others.
Last summer the New York City Health Department began "The Bronx Knows," an ambitious program to reach the 250,000 people in that borough who have never had an HIV test. Health professionals know that HIV testing carries less of a stigma when it is a routine part of health care. Dr. Donna Futterman, co-chair of the program, looks forward to the Bronx becoming "the first community in the nation where everyone knows their status.” It is impressive that it began in June HIV testing has increased 20% in the Bronx.
Lately I've been thinking more about the category on my blog, "Grandmotherhood Now." Maybe this came about when I learned that Michelle Obama's mother, Marian Robinson, will move to the White House with the new President's family and Joe Biden's mother is going with him and his wife to D.C. Will we hear more about elder concerns?
I'm always on the lookout for ways grandmothers--and grandfathers--can encourage ideas important to the future of young people. Besides what I've described in the South Bronx, there's Making Proud Choices for teens at Planned Parenthood in Portland, Oregon. If you know of others, please leave a comment here along with thoughts you have about input elders might offer. Of course, financial support is always crucial.
Walking beside Riverside Church, New York City, November 6, 2008, I saw bag-pipers as they prepared for the funeral of Sgt. Deon Taylor. He was 30 years old, an undercover NYPD police officer, killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan on October 22.
Further along Riverside Drive, a car struggled for attention.
Lisa Anne Auerbach has been making art that matters for a
long time.
We are happy and restless as we wait for January 20, 2009.
Recent Comments