Done.

Well, almost.  I am still looking for a good tenant to rent my mother's house in New Orleans, but aside from that, in the past two months the following things have been accomplished:

Mom was discharged from the physical therapy hospital, decided to move to Baton Rouge to be closer to us, and went back to her home for a few weeks to begin packing.  Dave and I went to Memphis for a follow-up visit with his oncologist, and he came away with a very optimistic report.  We returned to Baton Rouge, and I began the process of packing my mother's things, taking Mom apartment hunting in Baton Rouge, signing leases, renting a moving-and-storage unit, boarding Mom's two cats at her vet's until after the move was complete, arranging to move the fully packed storage unit to Baton Rouge, getting Mom unpacked, and moving the kitties into their new home.  There was also a whole separate trip with a friend who owns a truck with a utility trailer to get all of Mom's potted plants. Then, finally, Mom got to meet her new neighbors in the little retirement community she chose to move into.  

All this was followed by getting Mom's house in "rentable" condition.  The major part of this last was easy, as the house had been updated, repaired and repainted after Hurricane Katrina.  

The more difficult part of getting a house into "rentable" condition is depersonalizing it.   Should we leave the white curtains in the spare bedroom or not?  They go with the room nicely, and there's no place for them in Mom's one-bedroom apartment.  Will the new tenants want the organizer shelf and the coathanger rack in the utility room?  Will they think it's as clever and useful as we did, or would they prefer that space to be empty?  Should we repaint the bedrooms to a more neutral color?  Will they use the toiletry shelves on the bathroom wall, or will they think of it as clutter?  Should I replace the functional and quaint (but slightly tricky) antique doorknobs in the bedrooms?  Are they charming or annoying?

Mom's house has never been rented out before.  It was built almost 100 years ago and three generations of our family have lived there.  It has always been full of people, pets, furniture, books, granny's china, and Heaven knows what, all in a flurry of the usual family clutter and treasures.  It hasn't been completely empty in almost a century.  Even during the post-Katrina repairs, we only moved most of Mom's belongings into the storage unit parked in the front yard, and shuffled the essential furniture around as needed to allow for rewiring, plaster repair, painting, and so forth.

Right now, the house is completely empty, sparkling clean everywhere, waxed and polished.  All of the little holes where Mom's pictures were hung have been puttied and touched up with paint, and all the little nicks  and scratches that seem quaint to a family have been smoothed, sanded and painted: the corner of a closet door where a long-ago puppy decided to teethe when no one was looking ... the worn spot on the bathroom doorframe where the door, which was slightly out of true, rubbed against the frame ... the tiny notches in the kitchen doorframe to keep track of how much I'd grown between school years.  All of those things had to be covered, painted, and polished out of existence.

It looks strange, and kind of sad, all empty and shiny like that, with the sun streaming in through the windows.  It looks much bigger than it really is, and my feet echo when I walk across the wooden floors.  

I realize that the house is waiting: waiting for new people to place their beds and couches in the rooms, for new dogs to run in the yard, for new people to hang pictures and cook meals, for a new cat to snooze on the front porch.  

I hope one of them is a knitter.

 

Thanks!   Really.

To Lisa Louie for keeping y'all posted during these last few crazy months.

and

To my customers for your ongoing patience with my erratic hours while I got my mother's belongings downsized, packed, and moved to Baton Rouge.

I hope to resume normal hours effective Friday, November 27 -- the day after Thanksgiving.

In the meantime, I will be open from 10am - 6pm Thursday through Saturday.

On Thursday, November 12 (today) the shop will be closed at 3pm so I can go to a doctor's appointment.  My student worker's school schedule doesn't allow for her to staff the shop today, so I apologize for any inconvenience.

New Stuff!

Lots of new Opal Sock Yarn, including self-striping colorways in LSU purple and gold and Southern University blue and gold

New yarns from Tahki including Ceylon Silk, Natur, and Palma Organic Cotton!

New rovings in Blue-Faced Leicester and new sock yarn from Morandia.

New scarves and other garments hand-knit by Lisa Louie in Maui.

New hand-dyed sock yarn by me!

More Malabrigo coming soon!

And more.  Please keep an eye on the blog while I try to catch up with myself.

Keep your fingers crossed that it's not an on-coming train...


Aloha again. This is Lisa, with a quick update. Dez has almost got her mom moved in and settled, there's just one last load of odds n ends to go. Clare is busy unpacking and meeting her new neighbors. Dez will hopefully be back to post soon. The light at the end of the tunnel seems to be a completed move, and many fewer hassles for the moment. We just hope the trouble train isn't showing up again.

In the meantime, she's asked me to remind you that donations of hats, scarves and similar warm items are being accepted and very welcomed as part of Warm Up New Orleans. Yes, people are still living in draft trailers and unrepaired houses after Hurricane Katrina. Covenant House, which helps homeless teens will be the primary recipient of these items.

Dez will provide specifics soon, but this post goes out as a reminder and request for your ongoing help.

Aloha,

Lisa Louie
Kahului, Maui, Hawaii

We interrupt Dez's regularly scheduled life....

to get her mom moved safely to Baton Rouge.

Aloha, all. This is Lisa, again posting for Dez. Her mom is recovering well (yeah!!!) from her summer's adventure of broken bones, and she has decided it is time to move closer to Dez and Dave. As you may expect, Dez has joined the "schlepper's union" and is helping her mom pack and begin moving.

For the next several weeks, shop hours at The Knitting Asylum have been changed temporarily so Dez can schlep boxes, furniture and bric-a-brac. Store hours will be: Thursdays- Saturdays only from 10-6:30.

Dez anticipates resuming regular hours by Thanksgiving.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Aloha,

Lisa

Enough Already.


Can who or whatever is in charge of the universe, please make a note? Note is: enough already. Dez has once again been sidelined from the blog by a blast from the proverbial outfield.

Just after her mom was released from the care facility, and temporarily moved in with Dez and Dave, Dez came down with the semi-occasional, fairly virulent and really annoying sinus infection and laryngitis. She has spent several days more or less flat on her back, with tea and Guinness (this is a feline, not a beverage) for company. Pharmaceuticals have been employed to knock out said infection, but recovery will be a few more days.

She will be back as soon as possible. And in the meantime, please tell the universe: Enough already. This year, for Dez and family, is starting to sound like a soap opera plot.

Aloha and mahalo,

Lisa Louie
Kahului, Maui, Hawaii

The Dog Ate My Blog.

Don't believe that?  

Okay ... um ... my little brother flushed the blog down the toilet?

No?  

Okay ... I set the blog on top of the car while I unlocked it, and I was in a big hurry so I forgot it was there, and I drove off with the blog sliding around on top of the car, and now the blog is smashed up on the dotted line somewhere along the Interstate ...?

That last?  It's not too far from the truth.

The further away you get from a thing, the longer it takes to get back.  And the longer you stay away from the blog, the harder it is to start writing again.  It's not for a lack of something to say.  It's the lack of energy to write it down -- that's what does you in.

And that's why I've been away from the blog.  Huge thanks to Lisa Louie for keeping everyone posted on the reason for my absence.  Now I need to get behind the wheel again and fill in the blanks.

At the end of June, my mother's brother, Armand Steger, died after a long battle with prostate cancer, leaving my mother as the last survivor of her siblings.  The maternal side of my family is very close, and Uncle Armand was more of an Emergency Backup Dad than an uncle to me. He was also the father of my cousin Pam, who we lost to lung  cancer last summer, and he left this world almost exactly a year after his daughter.  I know Pam was waiting patiently for her dad -- and probably knitting something spectacular to pass the time.

That in itself -- losing a beloved relative, planning and attending a funeral -- is reason enough to leave anyone too dispirited to blog for a week or two, but the kicker is that as we all turned away from the graveside after the funeral service and headed back toward the cars,  picking our way through the jumbled maze of ancient tombs one finds in a typical New Orleans cemetery ... my mother fell and broke her hip.  

In retrospect, the fall surprised me more than the broken hip.  My mother, although an octogenarian, is anything but frail.  She is spry, active and sure footed.  She walks every day, runs her own errands and tends her garden.  She's also a very careful person, as cautious as a cat  -- she watches her step, holds handrails, and pays attention to trip hazards.   We still don't know exactly how she fell, but down she went, just like that, faster than I could blink.  I simply couldn't turn around fast enough to catch her.  And, in fact, she didn't realize that something was seriously wrong until she tried to stand up.

Fortunately, we have lots of nurses and other first-responder people in my family, so we quickly decided that in light of the fact that the actual temperature that day was a hundred and two and the ambulance attendants would have a piece of work wiggling between the tombs, it would be better for Mom if we stabilized and transported her ourselves, rather than risk shock and heatstroke while she waited in the blaring sun for an ambulance.  Two of my younger cousins are former military medics, so she was expertly whooshed out of there faster than you can say, "go to the hospital."

Fortunately, it turned out that Mom has remarkably good bone density, so her hip didn't shatter.  The break was nice and clean and only required four screws to set it in place.  The doctor also found a hairline fracture on her kneecap, and said that she landed on her knee first, so that probably took some of the force out of the fall and spared her a worse break.

So, Mom spent the end of June and the Fourth of July weekend in the hospital after her hip repair  surgery.   Believe it or not, it was the first time she'd ever had anesthesia, and the only other broken bone she had ever experienced was a broken finger from a teenaged volleyball incident.

Her room, on an upper floor, faced downtown, so she had a wonderful view of the Fourth of July fireworks display.  Physical therapy started 48 hours after surgery, and my mom didn't blink once, setting her jaw to get through it every day, even if she was squeezing out tears.   She was determined to get better, and improved quickly enough to be moved to an inpatient rehab hospital to complete her recovery.  

In the meantime, of course, I have been flying back and forth like a badminton shuttlecock, bopping back and forth between the yarn shop, our own home, Mom's house and the hospital, so I've had very little time to do anything besides drive, mind the shop, drive some more, visit Mom, drive some more, do household chores, and drive some more.  And when I am in that sort of situation, blogging is unfortunately the first thing to go.

 

But I'm back.  My sincere thanks to everyone who responded to Lisa's posts with thoughts and prayers for my Mom, and thanks also to those of you who sent cards as well.  My mother was quite touched that total strangers who read my knitting ramblings would send such warm wishes to someone they'd never even met, but she wasn't all that surprised.  

You are knitters, after all.  That's what knitters do, and she knows that.

Now that I can catch my breath, I can finally catch up with the blog a bit.  There are new things at the shop, and finished objects to boast about, and as soon as I can get them all in the same room with a camera -- hopefully within the next few days -- I'll upload some photos so you have something to look at for a change.

Thanks for your patience.  I do hope I can blog consistently this fall and beyond, and I fervently hope for a very boring fall and winter. 

One more thing before I sign off:  today is the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's double-whammy landfall in New Orleans and on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Please hold in your thoughts those expatriated New Orleanians scattered far and wide who are still unable to return home, whether it's because their financial circumstances do not allow it yet, or because their insurance companies betrayed them, or because the infrastructure in their neighborhood isn't back yet.  About 40% of the city's residents have yet to come home.  

Hold also in your thoughts the more than 1500 people who died in the storm simply because they didn't have transportation to get out of harm's way.

See you all soon.  Photos and good cheer to follow soon.

Best,

Dez

The Light at the End of the Tunnel....

is hopefully not an on-coming train


Aloha, all.

This is Lisa again stunt-blogging from Maui. Dez has been exceedingly busy trying to 1. make sure her mom is getting everything she needs 2. making sure Dave has everything he needs, including regular on-going wound care after his eye surgery this spring 3. keeping the Knitting Asylum up and thriving 4. driving back and forth between Baton Rouge and New Orleans trying to keep up with numbers 1, 2, and 3. Also, she is trying to do silly things like eat and sleep and take care of herself.

Clare, Dez's mom, is doing much better! She has been moved from the hospital to a skilled nursing facility, where she is expected to spend the next several weeks. Her hip has been surgically repaired and is healing well. Her broken knee is healing on its own, and with a little time and care is likely to heal without surgery. Clare is having much less pain, and feeling all right. Her doctor's prognosis is that she is extremely likely to have a high level of recovery from her injuries, which means that with some time and some rehab she is probably going to be able to function just fine.

Several secret missions (shhh, don't tell her) have been mounted involving a new Ipod type device and some amusements to keep her occupied during convalescence. Should you care to offer support and best wishes, you can leave notes in the comment section. If anyone would like to send cards or letters, they can be sent to the shop. Clare Rabeneck C/O The Knitting Asylum 8231 Summa Avenue #B Baton Rouge, LA 70809.

Dez will be back to post when she can. Her life has been complicated by this and a few other "curveballs" recently, and she has been spending large amounts of time and energy trying to deal with them. In the interim, I hope to have a knitting related blog post for you in the next week or so.

Be well.

Aloha,

Lisa Louie
Kahului, Maui, Hawaii

Good news.

I spoke with Dez earlier this morning, and her mom is out of surgery and doing well. Surgery was simpler and shorter than they thought and her mom had the hip repaired rather than replaced.

Keep your fingers crossed in hopes things continue to go well.

More later as it is available.

Aloha,

Lisa Louie
Kahului, Maui, Hawaii

ANYBODY GOT AN UMBRELLA?

Under the heading of "It never rains, but it pours..."

This is Lisa, stunt blogging from Maui. Dez has not been deliberately neglecting the blog, but again the complications and problems of life have significantly interfered with her ability to get much done besides "put out fires." Unfortunately, the pouring rain does not have seem to have done anything to offset said fires.

Dez has asked that I notify y'all that her mother is hospitalized with a broken hip and injured knee, and will be having surgery presumably tomorrow. Dez's Uncle Armand died this week, and while leaving the cemetery Saturday after the funeral, her mom caught her foot on a step and fell, breaking her hip and injuring her knee. Her hip surgery will be sometime tomorrow, and her knee will be dealt with later. Her hip is broken, not shattered and should be reasonably easy to repair as hip surgeries go. After surgery, she will at some point spend several weeks in an in-patient rehab facility. I will post more as I know more.

Dez also asked me to let Knitting Asylum customers know that the shop will be open as scheduled unless you hear otherwise.

In addition, I'd like to add that Dez's husband, Dave has had several good reports from his doctor in his own recovery from cancer surgery. That's one rainstorm that may be clearing up.

More to follow as it becomes available.

Aloha,

Lisa Louie
Kahului, Maui, Hawaii

Ducks.

Specifically, indoor ducks.  Observe this fine specimen of Duckus touristii attractus:

Aren't I the pretty mallard?

(preen preen preen)

More about me later.

The need to write is a powerful thing, an overwhelming urge which is sometimes like the passion you feel for a lover, sometimes like an addiction, and sometimes, lest we take ourselves far too seriously, like the need to find a restroom -- it is urgent and intense and it needs to be addressed, done and over with.  Out with it, and it's over -- it's either put down on paper or preserved in a mishmash of zeroes and ones in a computer program.

I don't think of writing as a talent -- not on my own resume.  For me, it is simply a need. 

 Writing well is a talent.   Oh my, yes.   And I deeply admire those who manage to do so.

But writing in general, good or bad, is mostly an itch that needs to be scratched, an either you have that itch or you don't.  You may scratch that itch with divine elegance, or with the clumsiness of a rhinocerous in high heels, but no one who writes anything on a more or less regular basis can deny the complete, obsessive and overwhelming quality of that need.

Writing also requires inspiration, and when inspiration is not readily forthcoming, neither is the written word, and the lack of both is depressing for the writer, causing further ennui, and helping one spiral down into that black hole known as "writer's block."  Writer's block is what happens when the urge to write is beating on the door, but the muse is hiding under the bed. 

Sometimes, writing is like trying to do gymnastics on Jupiter.

Very often life's demands get in the way: sometimes fatigue, and sometimes it's other things, but sooner or later, we must all sit down at the keyboard and attempt to entertain our faithful readers once again.

Lately, I've honestly been too damn tired to blog.  Oh, I've whipped off my share of comments on Ravelry and on other blogs in the past several weeks, but reading other blogs takes little energy and posting a comment is merely a two-minute word emission.  Not much real energy goes into it -- I think of comment strings as casual conversation.  Pub chat, if you will.  If I'm tired and a Ravelry post is not well crafted, I don't lose much sleep over it.

However, I do think that my good, patient and faithful blog readers deserve much better than a hurried puddle of verbiage, even though that means that sometimes many weeks pass in between posts here at the Asylum.  

So here I am.  Back on the job.

This winter has brought a new complication into our home life.  Dave was diagnosed with squamous cell cancer invasion in his right eyelid, conjunctiva, and the surrounding tissue, and he  went through two surgeries -- one in December, a radical attempt to remove the cancer while still saving the eye, followed by unhappy biopsy results which necessitated a second surgery in January to completely eviscerate the eye socket.  Both surgeries took place in Memphis, at the Hamilton Eye Institute.

Last week, we returned to Memphis for a post-op exam and a follow-up biopsy.  The surgeon wanted to be sure that no cancerous tissue had re-invaded -- when everything is removed from the eye socket, Nature, over a period of time, provides the bone with a covering of skin, and Dr. Wilson wants to be sure the new skin growth is healthy.

This time, instead of staying at the hospital's cancer center or the Holiday Inn Express, we thought we would treat ourselves to Memphis' famous Peabody Hotel, home to the Peabody Ducks.  

Indoor ducks?  I'm on it.

Seriously, the Peabody is a stunning old building, still infused with the aura of a grand old hotel.  The lobby is spectacular, with an amazing ceiling sporting intricate woodwork and painted glass panels from around 1930.

Each time you turn a corner, you see a bellman in an old-fashioned uniform.  In the lobby, you half-expect to see a flapper in a beaded dress rise from a couch or emerge from behind a column.

And, in fact, you do get flappers.  Maybe without the bathtub gin, rolled stockings or beaded dresses, but in fine attire of their own:

The Peabody Ducks.

Here's the story: back in the 1930s, one of the hotel's owners came home from a duck-hunting trip ... and maybe he'd had a bit too much of the moonshine, hm?  

(note to self: define "enough moonshine")

At the time, it was still legal to use ducks with clipped wingfeathers as decoys, so the gentleman thought it would be a grand joke to plonk his live decoys into the lobby's elegant marble fountain.

And that's where they have remained ever since.  Generation after generation of ducks have learned to march, every morning, from their roost on the Peabody roof down to their day job of entertaining the tourists in the hotel lobby.  In the evening, the ducks are led back up to the roof by the hotel's Duckmaster.  

Gotta love that job title.  

And yes, the ducks take the elevator. 

The Peabody, of course, makes a show of the daily commute, while the tourists (including myself) line up to take the appropriate photographs during the duck's daily march to and from their fountain duties.

We spent a good bit of time enjoying the lobby and the ducks.  Dave brought his book down from our 1930s-style room and sank into a posh, cozy chair, and I deployed myself on the adjacent couch with my travel project: beaded lace.

Beaded lace for a travel project?  Am I insane?

Well....

For the airplane-riding part?  For the galloping-around-the-Dallas-airport part?  For the hours-in-Starbucks, delayed-connecting-flight part?

Yes, I am certifiably insane, although I must admit to a certain amount of gloating when I devised a turbulence-resistant method for managing beads, cable needles and crochet hooks in the confinements of a steerage-class seat.

But.

For the sitting-in-the-hotel-lobby part of this trip?  

Beaded lace was delightful.

Very soon on this blog:  Dave's surgery resulted in an outpouring of knitterly support, both intangible and in the form of knitted objects.  Just as soon as I can get these items properly photographed, they will be appropriately gushed over.  Stay tuned.

  

Of Course, 

I Didn't Have a Camera.

I usually remember to bring my Real Camera to the Arts Market, looking for a good photo opportunity.   But this month, I forgot.

When I do think in advance  about taking pictures, I try to remember to bring the Real Camera, the one with the Real Camera Company name on it -- the one made for the sole and exclusive purpose of photography.  

Because I rode my dinosaur to school, I have never purposely obtained a cell phone with an embedded camera.  My current cell phone does have a camera function, but only because a camera-free option was not available when last I was forced to "upgrade,"  which is the current euphemism for "mandatory replacement of your existing phone (only four years old), which works just fine."

I am such a fossil, and so entrenched in the perfectly reasonable notion that Phones Do Not Take Pictures, that I actually forgot I had a camera right there in the phone in my pocket, so I missed the Spinning Photo of The Year.

Which was:

Five little girls and one little boy, all about eight to ten years old, dressed in sweaters on a sunny late winter morning, sitting snugly in a row like birds on a wire, making yarn with twigs and handfuls of wool.   

So y'all will just have to use your imaginations and pretend that photo is in this spot:

:: ADORABLE PHOTO ::

Anyway.

Every month, artists, craftspeople, and farmers displaying their goods at the Arts and Farmer's Market arrive at the crack of dawn and often bring their school-age kids with them to help out at their market stalls.  The farmers do this every Saturday, and once a month the Arts Market happens in conjunction with the Farmer's Market   As the day goes on, the younger kids tend to wander the market, going from stall to stall to chat with the sculptors and woodworkers, and, more often than not, because I do spinning demonstration during the market, I end up with a small but enthusiastic audience of little people who are intensely interested in the magic of a wheel and spindle.

This time, I attracted a gaggle of six.  One of them said, "I want to learn!" and the others chimed in that they'd also like to try.  Of course, I couldn't properly give each child a turn at the actual wheel while helping customers and simultaneously teaching six children how to draft wool, but there was something else I could do.  "I want each of you to go find a twig," I said.  " A smooth, sturdy twig, about as big as a pencil.  Not too thin and not too thick."  And off they went.

While they were gone, I measured off a fat handful of roving for each of them, and  when they returned, I explained to them the nature of drafting, and how ancient people made yarn with a wad of wool and just a stick and a lump of clay for a whorl.  Of course, there was no clay to be had at that particular moment, so instead of teaching them to drop-spindle, I took out my pocketknife, made a little notch in each twig, and taught them how to draft: how to draw out the wool and wind it onto a simple twig spindle.  I showed them how to draft and twist the first few inches with their fingers, and how to make a half-hitch to attach that to the stick, and then how to roll the twigs down their thighs while gently tugging at the handful of fluff, just a little at a time.

And do you know that half an hour later -- only half an hour -- in between waiting on my yarn customers and answering questions, no fewer than four of the six kids were producing lumpy but perfectly useful single ply yarn?  And the oldest girl had pulled off about five yards of a smooth, bulky weight single ply like she'd been doing it all her life. 

Smiles all around.  One of the little girls belongs to an organic dairy an hour's drive outside the city, where they graze, herd and milk their own dairy cattle.  If you live in the Baton Rouge area and you haven't tried the milk or butter from Smith's Creamery, you're missing out -- get to the store and buy some right away.  

When her mother came to round her up, she was pleasantly astonished that her child had made yarn, and had made it with a stick.  That's the other picture I didn't get to take:  her mother scrutinizing the makeshift spindle and saying, "You made this?  With a stick?"  

When the noon bell rang at St. Joseph's, signalling the official closing time for the market, I had a chorus of "more lessons next time, please?"  And I watched as the kids scattered, running back to their parents' respective market stalls, beaming with pride, holding aloft their little sticks full of yarn.  

"Look!  Real yarn!  Made from sheep!"  

Even the two kids who didn't quite get the hang of it asked to try again at the next market.

I might just have to bring some crayon-bright roving and some beginner spindles next month, hm?

Coming home from that delightful experience made me wonder: wouldn't it be fantastic if every little kid knew how to spin, and knit, and make things with yarn?  I tried to imagine a world full of kids being actively creative with their spare time instead of rotting their brains in front of televisions and video games.  

I dearly love the Arts Market and the Farmer's Market.  I love them for what they do for the community.   On a fine day you can sit in your stall and ply your trade side by side with dozens of other people who also honor the work of their hands and the fruits of the land.  

It's exceptionally rare to see someone in a hurry at the open-air market.  Even the mayor takes time to chat for a few minutes with each of the vendors he encounters.

The very nature of the event forces people to slow down, to linger over mustard greens, rice, yarn, and cheese.  They savor fresh butter, run their fingers along the handles of carved wooden spoons, and buy  a paper bag full of new potatoes.  While they admire turquoise jewelry, pottery, and blueberry jam, they talk to strangers about the weather, and whether or not they should plant their tomatoes and marigolds just yet, because we probably haven't had our last frost.  They purchase handwoven shawls, artichokes, and scores of other items made or grown with pride by the very same people smiling at them from behind displays of yard eggs, green beans, mayhaw jelly, fresh bread and smokehouse sausage.  They ask the vendors how the shawl was woven, and what sort of chickens laid the eggs.  

The most glaring evidence of the modern world is mostly absent at the downtown market.   Signs are handmade, goods are laid out on colorful cloths draped on folding tables, and the vendor's change is kept in belt bags or cigar boxes.  There are no electrical connections, so there are no glaring lighted signs, and while radios or portable boom boxes are not allowed, there is almost always some music provided by an acoustic band or perhaps a wandering street musician.  The only keen evidence of the twenty-first century is the occasional jingle of a cell phone, or a savvy young vendor unfolding her wireless laptop so a tourist can pay for her hand-beaded necklace using Paypal.  As though by unspoken agreement, the laptop is always discreetly tucked away immediately after such a transaction.

You don't see sullen teenagers, resentful husbands and harried-looking women at the market, although you'd see plenty of that if you went to the mall.  Instead, you see relaxed, happy people delighting in the opportunity to buy something from the person who made it -- but there is more to the happiness than that.  

There is a tangible sense of community.  Perhaps there is something in our genes, something ancient and good, wanting to remind us of the way that we are truly designed to live:  in  not-so-big groups, trading goods and skills with one another in a casual setting, buying, haggling or horse-trading for fresh food right off the farm and skillfully made goods directly from the maker.  

What we have, for a little while on Saturday mornings, is a proper hamlet.  Just the right amount of human beings gathered in one place in such a way as to bring out the best in everyone.  

It's a timeless feeling, really.  It is easy to imagine that, perhaps, in another life, I sat with my wares laid out for sale much as I do today, with only a few inconsequential details being different: I was shaded from the sun by a linen cloth instead of a nylon beach umbrella; I wore a tunic and rough boots instead of jeans and Birkenstocks; I plied a hand spindle instead of a modern Ashford wheel.   The other details could be from anyplace, anytime: a bright cloth laid out on the ground, an array of baskets filled with colorful yarns, a bag of coins to make change, and the earliest spring wind in my hair while I spin sheep hair into something useful.

I feel the same about my neighbors:  it is so easy to imagine the Pickle Lady behind her table full of mason jars, wearing a different dress in the shadow of a different tree ... to envision the beekeeper's tupelo honey in clay pots instead of glass jars ... to picture the vendor's children dressed in simple shifts as they chase one another between adults in the crowd. 

It makes me wonder: is our current economic crisis really a crisis after all?  Or just a harsh correction, a reminder that we got in this situation by wanting too much, carrying too large of a load, and buying things we simply do not need with money we haven't even earned yet?   Is it a crisis, or an opportunity to save ourselves?  Is the current crash simply a warning from Fate to simplify our lives?

In speaking to the other market vendors, I find it enlightening that most of us produce some, if not all, of our own food, clothing, and entertainment.  Most of us are self-employed.  Most of us are self-sufficient to a much greater extent than average, and most of us are multi-skilled.  So most of us aren't grievously worried about being completely destroyed by an economic meltdown because most of us do not depend entirely upon the ready-made, and most of us have no desire to accrue debt for mass-produced consumer goods -- while it's bad enough that you need to make a loan to buy something substantial like a home or farm, it's financially suicidal to dig yourself a hole to buy a closetful of fancy shoes and a three-thousand-dollar designer purse (and a tacky purse at that).  If you lose your job, you just might be able to renegotiate your home loan with your bank, because the home has value.  The same thing won't happen with your credit card company when you can't pay for a houseful of consumer goods. 

It intrigues me to think that the parents of kids who can amuse themselves with wool and sticks don't feel compelled to put themselves in precarious financial circumstances to buy video games and supersized televisions.   Yes, of course, they are worried about the economy, because it will affect the volume of their sales and it will affect their home and business loans, but they are not worried about losing their job and being unable to pay the debt on tens of thousands of dollars worth of plastic and electronic junk ... simply because they didn't buy it in the first place.  

Unfortunately, a great many other people did dive deeply into debt for many, many things besides necessities like a home or business loan, college tuition or reliable transportation, so they have much more at stake when rumours of layoffs arise at their workplace.  

Readers ... please share your own thoughts.  Do you think that wanting less, wasting less and being more self sufficient can help the economy in the long run?  Or at least help you personally during tough times?

Knit Happens.

And this is what happens for Covenant House in New Orleans when it does.  Here, deployed on the floor of my shop, are the dozens of hats, scarves and gloves donated for Covenant House in memory of Gail McHugh.  Sincere and heartfelt thanks go out to the many knitters who made this possible, and please give yourselves a round of applause:

I didn't have enough unoccupied space on the floor of my little shop to spread everything out so the items could be viewed individually, but do know that each and every item was deeply appreciated by Covenant House and that dozens of homeless teens will be warmed and cheered during our erratic winter months.  The Asylum plans to do this Christmas garment drive again next year, but remember that I accept donations for Covenant House year-round.  

I am so amazed and humbled by the exquisite detail that went into so many hats -- so many were true works of art -- and I am overwhelmed at the generosity of certain individuals who made about two dozen hats each.  Again, thank you.

Remember, every time you bring in a handknit garment for community knitting, you get 20% off that day's purchase (except for spinning wheels and looms, as the manufacturers won't let me do that).

Here's a peek at a few things around the shop.  In the entry room, we have hand-dyed sock yarns from Morandia, Wool In the Woods, and St. Paul's Catholic School, as well as Sockotta, needle sets, feathery "Birdman" yarn on closeout and consignment items, including Christmas stockings from Knitivity, and a shrug from Jules LeBlanc:

The shop is tiny, so I'm taking advantage of doors for needle display and I am hanging hanks of hemp yarn from chain suspended from the ceiling:

In the main wool room, we have yarn and patterns from Lily Chin, Mission Falls 1824 wool and cotton, and more needles on that door, as well as some miscelaneous designer closeouts in baskets...

Also featured are hand-dyed mohair yarn from the Knitting Asylum, smashing rovings from Creatively Dyed Yarns, and bin after bin of rovings, locks and batts, both in natural sheep colors and in a spectrum of distinctly non-sheepish colors, some hand-dyed right here at the Knitting Asylum and some dyed by other artists:

In between the yarns and rovings are spinning wheels and small looms, of course. That's an Ashford Tabby Loom and an Ashford Traveler tucked among the bins and shelves (I am still working on the Louet dealership process).  There are alpaca yarns and rovings directly from the source in South America, and a selection of knitting and spinning tools and accessories, from dye and niddy-noddies to ball winders and drop spindles:

Space is tight, so even the floor earns its keep holding baskets of ready-to-spin English Leicester, Corriedale, merino, Romney and alpaca roving...

That's an Ashford Joy in the center of the photo ... I do love that wheel.

The day I took these photos, it was dark and relentlessly rainy, so the lighting wasn't good enough to show off  my fantastic yarns from Knitivity, and stitch markers and sock yarns from local artists, but tomorrow promises to be sunny, clear and cold, so we'll have another photo shoot for a close-up look at the wonderful yarns from Knitivity, Darn Pretty Needles, and some other special items around the shop.  

Proof...

... that we really can (and do) use wool in South Louisiana.  Granted, most of the time we only make it to "near snow" conditions, meaning temperatures above freezing accompanied by rain, sometimes sleet, and snow flurries on occasion, which is still good enough reason to dig out the woolies.   If we do get any accumulation, it is usually less than an inch,  falls during the night, and melts as the day goes by and the temperature rises into the high 30s or 40s.

But a couple of weeks before  Christmas, we got four inches of clean, wet snow, and by nightfall there was still plenty of unmelted snow on the north side of many rooftops and in the north corners of many yards and alleys.

Records were set everywhere in this part of Louisiana for measurable snow early in December, and New Orleans got an inch.  Amite, in Tangipahoa Parish, whose most famous daughter is Britney Speirs, got a whole eight inches of snow, and that is more inches of snow than the length of Ms. Speirs longest skirt, so I hope she wasn't home yet to visit her mama for Christmas, because she would have frozen her tookas off. 

Anyway, any accumulation of snow is uncommon enough here that it warrants photography, and the construction of snowmen, and the kids get a snow day off from school because ... well, because it's likely to be the only snow day this year, and also because snow is sufficiently unusual that the city doesn't even have any sort of road salt trucks -- I don't think we even have any road salt at all -- so keeping the kids home from school helps reduce weather-related traffic problems to some extent. 

Hurricane debris was beautified by the white stuff (that's the trunk and root ball of a massive, fallen water oak in the background in this photo of our back yard):

Here, a mom and her kiddo build a little snowman at the apartments near the Knitting Asylum.  It was starting to snow pretty hard when I took this shot. I love the umbrella:

And, thanks to the college kids who rent the house next door to ours, this big boy showed up in the field across the street from our house.  At over six feet tall, he represents the accumulated work of several snowman engineers (I understand that beer was involved in the construction process):

The snow doubly surprised me, because Dave and I had just driven home from Memphis the night before, working our way through a cold front featuring hammering rain, spectacular lightning, and tornado-spawning conditions serious enough to cause me to abort my plan to drive straight through from Memphis to Baton Rouge. Ordinarily that's a manageable drive in one day, and it takes a lot for me to get off the road.  Just ask my family: I have been known to drive in hail, thick fog and tropical storms. Oh, and also snow and ice. But I draw the line at driving in a tornado.    

So, when I contacted the friends who were feeding our cats while we were away and asked them to take care of the kitties for an extra night, I could relax enough to get off the road to seek shelter, and that's what we did.  We found a Super 8 motel in Grenada, Mississippi, dried off, and fell into bed.

It rained hard and thundered all night, and the following morning it was grey and much colder. After a hot shower and a waffle breakfast at the motel, we resumed our trip home.  And if any of you are ever unexpectedly stuck overnight in Grenada, Mississippi for any reason whatsoever?  Stay at the Super 8.  It's very reasonable and super clean, the night manager is ridiculously nice, and they have a killer waffle breakfast, which is helpful on a frosty morning.  

The state of Mississippi is obviously named for the mighty river that runs along most of its western border. "Mississippi" comes from (if I remember correctly) either the Choctaw or Tunica Indian word "meseschabe"  (pronounced "mess - uh - sha - bee) and minor variations on that set of syllables, depending on which tribe you hail from at what point along the river's entire length, but all of them mean "Father of Waters," "Great Water" or "Big Water" in many American Indian languages.

 

Also, "Interstate 55" is Choctaw (or maybe Chickasaw) for "The white man's endless path through the pine trees." I am absolutely certain of that.

The Interstate highway through Mississippi is hundreds of miles long, and passing through the city of Jackson is a major milestone for the traveller.  Jackson is roughly the halfway point in the state, and Jackson is a good-sized city.   You can see buildings, traffic signals, and a large number of cars as actual proof that you have arrived in a new location, and that you are not simply driving on a treadmill set between two rows of pines where someone occasionally changes the signs when you aren't paying attention .

Aside from Jackson, nearly all of the rest of Mississippi is a long, Zen drive through rolling hills and millions upon millions of pine trees.  You see signs urging you to turn left or right toward Duck Hill, Enid, Yazoo City, Itta Bena, Pearl, Calling Panther, Love, Sweatman, or Coffeeville (and coffee would not be a bad idea at all by the time you get that far), but you see no actual proof that there really is such a town nearby. There is only a green sign, and a swath of black asphalt curving off into the trees.  

You pass exits for the birthplaces of Eudora Welty and Elvis Presley, and eventually, as you get closer to Memphis, you cross the Tallahatchie River that Billy Joe McAllister jumped off a bridge into, except I don't think it was the Interstate he jumped off ... because first, it's not all that high above the river at that point and second, I'm not sure that particular stretch of interstate highway was actually finished when Bobbie Gentry wrote the song.  Likely he dove off a bridge closer to the Alabama border.

Once in a while, you pass a roadside rest station.  On this point, I have to chalk up a few points for the people in charge of Mississippi: they have charming, hotel-like welcome stations offering free coffee when you cross the state line.  The other rest station bathrooms along the way are super-clean. Considering how long Mississippi is, and how much coffee is involved in getting through it, that is a critical detail.  

Everything in Mississippi seems to be named after an Indian tribe, a long-dead President, or something (or someone) in the Bible.  You simply cannot drive the entire length of Mississippi without the Bible sneaking into your conversation at some point, even if you aren't particularly religious.  There are so many Biblical place names on the road signs -- Mount Zion, etc. -- that you end up playing Bible Trivia with your road companion, even if you had no intention of doing such a thing.

This was the conversation Dave and I had as we passed the exit for the town of Ebenezer:

"Besides Scrooge ... Ebenezer is a Biblical name, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"Who was Ebenezer, anyway?  A priest ... a judge?"

"Um ... I think it's a whole book in the Bible."

"You're thinking of Ezekiel.  Or maybe Ezra."

"Well ... there's Better than Ezra, and Ezra Pound."

"Ezra Pound wasn't even from Mississippi."

"Eudora Welty was.  There's an exit for her house."

"Oh, wait ... wasn't Ebenezer a Philistine ... or a Hittite?  Or maybe he smote somebody, or begat somebody?"

We looked it up when we got home.  

Just so you know:  Ebenezer is a rock.

The drive through Mississippi generated a lot of similar conversations, and they served as a welcome distraction.   We were making a road trip to Memphis so Dave could visit an oncologist specializing in cancers of the eye.  Dave was recently diagnosed with squamous cell sarcoma, and that's what has kept me away from the blog.  

Our road trip the day before it snowed was followed by a plane hop to Memphis for surgery on December 30th, and we must make yet another trip later this month for a final surgery.  David, most unfortunately, will lose an eye, but that will provide a near guarantee that the cancer will not spread into his brain.  I am still at the point where I am angry at the Universe that my husband has had to suffer so much with his health when so many hateful, evil and criminal people strut around in peak health, but at the same time I am also deeply grateful for everyone who is sending their prayers and good wishes Dave's way.

Next post: Tomorrow, hopefully -- photos from the shop.