by Kat | 1 day ago | General, Poetry
Welcome to Week Three of National Poetry Month! This week our theme is Color… and I was so excited about that!
When I think of color and poetry, one beloved poet comes to my mind, Derek Walcott. I know of no other poet who has the thread of color weaving through so many of his poems and I have immersed myself deeply in his works… I don’t ever need an excuse to read any of his poetry, but a deep dive into his expansive works is always treat!
The poem I have selected today is from Walcott’s White Egrets, a book which contains a plethora of color-infused poems. The vivid picture he draws me into in this one is one I’d like to linger in. You will find more about Derek Walcott here.
53.
by Derek Walcott
The hulls of white yachts riding the orange water
of the marina at dusk, and, under their bowsprits, the chuckle
of the chain in the stained sea; try to get there
before a green light winks from the mast, the fo’c’s’le
blazes with glare, while dusk hangs in suspension
with crosstrees and ropes and lilac-livid sky,
with its beer stein of cloud-froth touched by the sun,
as stars come out to watch the evening die.
In this orange hour the light reads like Dante,
three lines at a time, their symmetrical tension,
quiet bars rippling from the Paradiso
as a dingy writes lines made by the scanty
metro of its oar strokes, and we, so
mesmerized, can barely talk. Happier
than any man now is the one who sits drinking
wine with his lifelong companion under the winking
stars and the steady arc lap at the end of the pier.
White Egrets, 53. Copyright © 2010 by Derek Walcott.
Make sure you stop and see what color Kym, Bonny, and Sarah have to infuse your day with!
Photo by Maria Kamitsi
by Kat | 2 days ago | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings Dear Unravelers and Happy Wednesday!
I have finishes this week! A completed pair of socks and one finished Gnome!
First, the socks! Pattern is Hermoine’s Everyday Socks with an afterthought heel and toes done in a contrasting yarn. They fit well and I think these will go into the sock drawer for me!
Now, a bit of mood music for the next finish…
Valkyrie Gnova, ready to ride!
Up next, that Gnome Valkyrie! Meet Gnova who is eagerly entering Valhalla to ride with the other Valkyries as she guides Gnomes (and perhaps, Knitters of Gnomes!!) to Odin’s Hall! I love her “leather” Hauberk! It took a bit of figuring on how best to accomplish the vision in my mind’s eye… a few tries later and voilá… one well fitting Hauberk! I was a bit less creative than this for her sword and shield, but I am happy with my rudimentary weapons! The best part… if you are very quiet, you might hear her singing out from Valhalla!
I saw this on IG and thought… hmm, Feather and Fan socks might be a fun knit! And, as luck would have it (or better yet, just a very good library!) my library had a copy of the Socks, Socks, Socks book. I cast on and knit a few inches, but my gauge is so tight! I need to rip it out and go up a needle size. Stay tuned!
Yay for well-stocked libraries!!
I also cast on a Honey Cowl that I am hoping to finish before we leave for Erie later this month! This is that crazy skein of yarn I spun from Wound Up Fiber Arts Scrappy Sock Bundle.
From this…
To this!!!
On the super secret knitting front… I have been miraculously selected to “pre-knit” Ailbíona McLochlainn’s soon-to-be-released cardigan sweater. I just got the pattern yesterday, so swatching is on my list today.
I have stitching as well, but that will have to wait until next week!
The reading this week… ahhh! So, so delightful! I finished The Seed Keeper… and LOVED it! I also finished a book of Michael Ondaatje’s poetry: A Year of Last Things. I have been reading, re-reading, and re-reading some more since January. It is good… so good! It is out now and might be just the thing you need for your Poetry Bookshelf for National Poetry Month… just saying!
The current listen in my ears is Raynor Winn’s The Salt Path (narrated by the divine Anne Reid!!) I am about a quarter of the way in and enjoying the journey with Raynor and her husband Moth, as they walk the South West Coast Path.
At night I am meandering though Forgotten on Sunday… Valérie Perrin’s soon-to-be-published book! I am enjoying it very much.
Now for the brief, but so very spectacular, appointment with my audiologist… Can I just say that technology rocks? The hearing aids of today are NOT your grandmother’s hearing aid! It has been a process to get here, but imagine my wonder and surprise when the audiologist took the results from my hearing test and input them into the “test” hearing aids and put them in my ears! I could not contain the tears… it was as if my ears had been packed with cotton wool and someone removed it… as in instant hearing of things I had long forgotten. Anyways, hearing aids have been ordered… now I am really eagerly awaiting their arrival! I go May 14 to get them! Really… after the brief soundstravaganza I had this afternoon, I can barely wait! I will share more about them, the costs, the process, and the fittings for a later post. But, this is a life changing thing… for the freaking better!
There is my week… what about you? What are you working on this week?
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
by Kat | 4 days ago | General, In This Moment
Hello everyone… I hope your Monday is starting easy!
Mine started with a bit of an explanation point! Yes, just after midnight, I was awoken by the sound of an explosion of hail stones being hurled at the house. It was so loud and the winds were so wild!
That exclamation point was soon followed by more flood warnings as some areas near us were evacuated. April sure as heck has been rainy and we added another almost 3 inches to those totals last night! All this rain has upset my “sweater washing” apple cart… that task might have to move to May!
But… I do have a tulip or four to share with you!
Please ignore the jaggerbush at the top, I did not have a glove handy to pull it out! But it will soon be gone… never fear!
I have never, ever seen such short-stemmed tulips, but I guess in their Tulip Minds, they thought that with the lack of leaves to protect their blossoms, closer to ground might be better…But they BLOOMED!
Tomorrow is a big day for me… and I am more than a bit nervous about it. I go to meet with the audiologist to figure out hearing aids. So if you could send me all your calming juju, I’d be so grateful!
Happy Monday everyone! See you all back here on Wednesday with something FUN!
by Kat | Apr 11, 2024 | General, Poetry
Welcome to week two of Our Great Poetry Exploration! This week our focus is on the incredibly delightful work of Ross Gay. Yes Kym, Bonny, Sarah, (and me!) are all sharing a Ross Gay poem with you today!
I distinctly remember the first time I read any Ross Gay and before I even finished the book, I knew I needed to read more of his writing! He has an incredible way with words… phrases… line breaks… and the way he makes the simple so very profound.
The poem I am sharing today is from the catalog of unabashed gratitude (a very good place to start on your journey with Ross Gay!)
ode to buttoning and unbuttoning my shirt
by Ross Gay
No one knew or at least
I didn’t know
they knew
what the thin disks
threaded here
on my shirt
might give me
in terms of joy
this is not something to be taken lightly
the gift
of buttoning one’s shirt
slowly
top to bottom
or bottom
to top or sometimes
the buttons
will be on the other
side and
I am a woman
that morning
slipping the glass
through its slow
I tread
differently that day
or some of it
anyway
my conversations
are different
and the car bomb slicing the air
and the people in it
for a quarter mile
and the honeybee’s
legs furred with pollen
mean another
thing to me
than on the other days
which too have
been drizzled in this
simplest of joys
in this world
of spaceships and subatomic
this and that
two maybe three
times a day
some days
I have the distinct pleasure
of slowly untethering
the one side
from the other
which is like unbuckling
a stack of vertebrae
with delicacy
for I must only use
the tips
of my fingers
with which I will
one day close
my mother’s eyes
this is as delicate
as we can be
in this life
practicing
like this
giving the raft of our hands
to the clumsy spider
and blowing soft until she
lifts her damp heft and
crawls off
we practice like this
pushing the seed into the earth
like this first
in the morning
we practice
sliding the bones home.
ode to buttoning and unbuttoning my shirt by Ross Gay © 2015, the catalog of unabashed gratitude. Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.
You can find more about Ross Gay here or at his website here. And you can listen to Ross read this poem here!
by Kat | Apr 10, 2024 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings Unravelers and Happy Wednesday!
I am happy to say that the clouds thinned themselves down enough for there to be quite an amazing show here in the south hills of Pittsburgh on Monday! We were not a total eclipse, but at 97%, it was close enough! I paced my timing to pop out to see the progression between sourdough coil folds and chicken fajita dinner prep and by the time that sourdough loaf was tucked away in the refrigerator for its overnight rest, dinner was well underway the show was over. The sourdough bread making process is an excellent reminder that slow making is not a bad thing…
Which is a very good thing because this has been a very slow making week here. I am inching along on Sock #2 and I have had a few “starts” for my Valkyrie… a few starts followed by an equal number of ripping out what I started. Ideas don’t always work out… but all those failures sometimes reveal the path to success! Yes, I think I have found what will work and plan to try again this afternoon!
It’s a good thing that the stitching is not having failures! I finished page sixteen… The Selvage Library. Yes, this page includes almost all the selvage’s from the fabrics I used in the book… a sort of bibliography! Haha!
I have been watching with great interest Nell’s progress on a new skirt! I am intrigued and oh my… that color!
It has been an incredible reading week though! I have finished four books and I have even more good things queued up next! My finishes were the soon to be published Vera Stanhope book, The Dark Wives (coming August 27th), The Berry Picker’s, James, and another soon to be published book by Peter Nichols – Granite Harbor (publishing April 30th) which was a fast-paced, edge of your seat, can’t stop until it’s done, one sitting book!
This week I am listening to The Seed Keeper and reading an advanced copy of Valérie Perrin’s soon to be published Forgotten On Sunday (coming June 4tth). It is too early to make any judgements about the books, but they are each off to a good start!
There you have my making this week! See you all back here tomorrow with some poetry!
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
by Kat | Apr 7, 2024 | General, In This Moment
An eclipse is one phenomenon that is actually more impressive from the ground. — Leroy Chiao
There has been so much Eclipse Hype on everything… the local news especially, here in the South Hills of Pittsburgh but I am not sure they counted for grey, cloudy skies… very cloudy skies and rain!
But today, as we creep up to the eclipse, I will be making Mourning Dove silhouette’s to sit on the lines from my backyard. These doves will grace the seventeenth page giving a bit of me to my daughter’s book. I love the doves that sit on those lines morning and evening… they are a constant in my day with their meditative calls and gentle nature. They bring calm to my day… for it is impossible to be angry or stressed with these sweet birds.
Ready for the birds!
I have some bits of fabric that I will use to create the doves from to “perch” on my stitched lines. I don’t know how many I will be able to do in my timeframe… but maybe I can get 6 or 8 of them cut out in 15 minutes today! (And no, I am not counting the drawing time in the equation!!) But this will be a very peaceful way to begin my week! Even a rainy, cloudy, likely to ruin an eclipse kind of day! But I am not going to worry about a potentially obscured eclipse, instead I will keep myself grounded in this Monday… with Mourning Doves and slow stitching!
Happy Monday everyone!
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