Interview Time

I need to steer away from storm reportage for a while and get back to knitting.

I have received by personal e-mail the following unsolicited questions from one Kelly Rice of New York who informs me that cross-interviewing is popular amongst those who blog.

Having never been interviewed about my blog before, I'll give it a whirl.

[tapping microhone]

"mic check .. test one, test one..."

[cough]

Hi Kelly, thanks for interviewing me.

Why do you blog?

Because I have knitworthy things to say and I don't have time to chase publishers.

Also, so I don't have to stay on topic, an activity contrary to my nature, and because I can say anything I damn well please without someone else editing it.

If I did manage to find a publisher who was willing to print my ramblings, the book would either be entirely unclassifiable in the Library of Congress, or else it would have to be cross-referenced under: knitting, animal sheltering, yarn, herpetology, politics, spinning, animal behaviorism, fiber, meteorology, Star trek, drop spindles, animal husbandry, rock and blues music, nautical knots, fleece preparation, ghost legends, weaving, herbal remedies, natural dyes, sheep, alpaca, things you can do with a Swiss Army knife and duct tape, how to use objects for purposes other than their intended use, and 10,849 Reasons to Spay or Neuter Your Pet. .

That not being possible, I blog.

How big is your yarn stash?

Bigger than a breadbox.

Actually, much bigger than a breadbox.

But not all that big compared to some legendary stashes of which I am aware, and if I blew a whistle and ordered it all to assemble in one place it would probably fill an average closet.

Well, maybe a very large closet.... if I subdued it by compressing it into those clear-plastic vaccuum-bag things, a process which reminds me of 1960s moms squishing themselves into girdles. What seems beyond comprehension can be done with force of will.

Seriously, though, my stash remains considerably smaller than stashes of legend, even smaller than the stashes of a few friends.

However, the relatively small size of my yarn stash is more due to the small-ish size of our house than it is due to lack of covetousness for more yarn, and also due to the fact that every other cubic inch of available storage space in our house is occupied by my husband's impressive collection of Vintage Computer and Stereo Components.

Some even work.

What is the strangest object you have ever knitted?

Hmmmm. I have knitted a lot of strange objects, including a tea cozy that looked like a Tribble, a hat-scarf (a harf?) resembling a boa constrictor -- the hat-end was the mouth, which engulfed the wearer's head, and the scarf-part wrapped around the neck in a very fetching manner.

There was also a curled-up-snake pillow I knitted for my former veterinarian as a retirement gift, a toilet tissue cozy resembling R2D2 for a friend enamored with Star Wars, and a one-armed sweater for a three-legged dog. Those are just a few oddities off the top of my head, but I am afraid they were all gifts and I no longer have visual documentation.

But, I shall not disappoint you.

Currently in my possession is a hat I made that looks like an armadillo. I will update this post with a photo of said hat over the weekend.

Oh! And I also have knitted a case for my blowgun -- probably not too many hand-knit blowgun cases going around -- but I don't have a picture handy. Coming soon.

Why do you knit?

Because there is yarn.

What are your non-knitting interests?

There are non-knitting interests?

No, seriously.

See my answer to Question Number One.

I always ask knitters if they knit in public, and if they do, when they started. How about you?

I knit everywhere. I keep a sock project in my purse/tote at all times, a mindless car project (usually pet cozies), and a five-gallon plastic kitty litter bucket under my desk at the animal shelter containing a mini-stash of needles and scrap yarn for pet cozies and cat toys. This way I can knit on my lunch breaks, that is, when I actually get a lunch break, and I can be certain that if I am trapped somewhere away from home, I will not be devoid of knitting.

When I was a teenager, I thought of knitting and crochet mostly as sedentary activities, so I mostly knitted at home, although I sometimes popped a project into my backpack when I bicycled to the park on fine days.

In college, I often carried a small project in my backpack to knit between classes. I often ventured into the common room of our dorm with my knitting to watch TV or study, where I met a dorm-floor-mate who knitted, and we began to take our knitting with us to a college pub to watch Star Trek re-runs (the Captain Kirk Generation) after the evening news and drink 50-cent mugs of draft beer.

To be a member of the Star Fleet Beer Academy, you had to stand up facing the pub TV when the show began, raise your mug high in the air, intone the introduction ("Space, the final frontier...") and sing (or, more correctly, "ooooh") the entire wordless Star-Trek tune, you know:

"woo-OOH-woo-ooh-hooh-OOH-hoo...."

Then you would sit down, drink your beer and watch Star Trek. This was not an initiation ritual. All members were required to do this each and every time an episode began.

At the top of their lungs.

After that, I figured I could knit in public just about anywhere.

What inspires your creative process?

I like structure and texture. I see the structure of things in nature, architecture, sculpture, ceramic tile, bones, leaves, spiderwebs, animals, plants, bricks, stained glass windows, and especially American Indian and African art ... also ancient graphic patterns, like the borders on Greek urns ... and I want to copy or mimic these things.

One of the reasons that winter is my favorite time of year is that I can see the architecture of the trees and the true depth of the woods, not just the exterior wall of biomass we see in the summer. Trees and leaves are endlessly inspiring for lace.

I feel the texture of bark, soft moss, a birds nest, twisting vines, and I want to duplicate them.

I like both subtle and brilliant variations of color and I like to mimic the color patterns of snakes, birds, sunsets and geological color patterns. I especially like to play with colors to get camouflage-like variations in hue and tone -- think Koigu yarn or Noro here. I am a huge fan of space-dyed yarn.

I also like to use contrasting or complimentary space-dyed yarns to do Fair Isle or other colorwork. It always looks so much more complex than it really is.

Math and geometry are inspiring. I like to play with Fibonacci numbers and proportions, and number sequences for striping.

Also inspiring, mathematically, is the actual three-dimensionality of knitting. Working out a complicated shape is very inspiring to me.

And sometimes, I have a couple of glasses of wine and suddenly, urgently decide that I really, really need a purple mohair-and-eyelash scarf, or a hat that looks like an armadillo.

Do you have any knitting fantasies?

Many. I dream of taking a knitting cruise to Alaska or Patagonia. I dream of winning the Koigu Lottery. I dream of taking a knitting, camping and walking tour of Ireland, England and Scotland and all the wee British Isles which have inspired so much knitting. One day, I would like to make an Orenberg lace shawl.

Making an Orenberg shawl would require a considerable amount of Uninterrupted Sitting-Down Time, another fantasy of mine.

And ... I have a much more humble dream of simply having two weeks off work to visit Luisa Gelenter at her shop, LaLana Wools, in Taos and do absolutely nothing but knit and soak up the scenery. I would also like to visit my Knit Bud Lisa Louie in Hawaii, sit on the beach, knit, and drink large, pink rum drinks with purple paper umbrellas sticking out of them, and enough fruit in them to make Carmen Miranda a hat. There are many other people on KnitU I would like to visit and LYS owners I would like to meet as well.

I admit that I have also visited the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina and seriously wondered how much yarn I could fit in there if somebody would let me live there for awhile.

Have you ever considered opening your own LYS?

I have fantasized about it .. and consider it best left as a fantasy.

My mother spent her working life in retail and is very, very good at managing all that orderly stuff like inventory and payroll and taxes and quarterly statements. She was able to say "no" to salespeople trying to fob off inventory of questionable marketability, and she also has had the steel spine and cast-iron strength of will not to bring every single thing in her shop home with her.

I am not in my mother's league and will not pretend to be. It's bad enough that I go into a shop looking for a 60-inch, size 5, Addi Turbo needle for a poncho, and come out with the needle, six skeins of Koigu for a shawl and enough Inca Alpaca for a sweater.

I justify this by deciding that the shawl is for my mother and my total purchase costs less than one hour with a decent psychiatrist.

I work at an animal shelter and we have 15 pets, okay? So I can only imagine how soundproofed and well-insulated our house would be if I owned a yarn store. Hmm, think of what I could save on utilities....

--Mambocat

We Is Po'

If I had a spacecraft with a transport beam, and I zipped around the United States and the rest of the world, abducting random individuals for a few minutes out of their daily lives to survey them on their ideas of what life is like in the city of New Orleans, and I took all of those images and created a composite city, it would be assembled from banana trees, riverboats, live oaks, horse-drawn carriages, trolleys and ancient brick buildings festooned with flowering tropical vines.

It would be populated with jazz saxophonists, voodoo queens, gourmet chefs, Southern belles, artists and sultry Creole mamas, all sprawled out on a giant, fern-encrusted wrought-iron balcony, drinking exotic beverages, and tossing leftover jambalaya to the pet alligators on the patio. Those not feeding the alligators would be dancing, carousing, and throwing Mardi Gras beads to inebriated people in the street below.

But the truth is, the daily life of the average New Orleanian is not resplendent with gourmet food, zydeco music, and spontaneous street festivals. It is filled with the daily grind, and we ain't talking Starbucks.

If I abducted those aforementioned people, and also surveyed them regarding what images come to their mind when they think of poverty in America, no doubt they would name rural Mississippi, Appalachia, the Cabrini Green projects in Chicago, or the Pine Ridge Sioux reservation.

But, with the American psyche so flash-blinded by New Orleans' reputation for food and fun, I suspect that none of those people surveyed would mention New Orleans when I asked them, "What place in America comes to mind first, when you think of poverty?"

But I have news for them.

New Orleans, my friends, is po'.

Exactly what, you may ask -- and rightly so, if you are not from the South -- is "po'?"

Well...okay...I'll take a stab at that.

"Po'" is like "poor," only with less money.

New Orleans struggles with a highly skewed economy based on trade and tourism -- a fair representation of wealthy and upper-middle-class citizens, a surprisingly small middle class, countless minimum-wage workers, a vast number of senior citizens surviving off their pensions, and, overall, considering that we are in the United States of America, a teeming sea of incredibly impoverished humanity.

New Orleans is a city of commerce, shipping and international trade, of dazzling hotels, stunning mansions, spectacular restaurants, and tourist attractions ranging from fun and funky to downright scandalous. Each of these industries employs a variety of human beings, ranging from CEOs and stockbrokers to cabdrivers, bartenders, cooks, hotel maids, musicians, clerks, waiters, barristas, dishwashers, and more waiters.

There are a whole lot more waiters, hotel maids, cabbies and clerks than there are millionaire restaurateurs and shipping magnates.

And there are just as many unemployed and unemployable as there are minimum-wage workers.

In New Orleans, a great many people wait for busses to go to work. Unlike the residents of some other large cities, where taking the bus is sometimes an option for the environmentally conscious and for those who do not wish to pay exorbitant parking fees, most New Orleanians who wait for the bus find themselves wanting for wheels, not by choice, but by lack of sufficient employment even to have the option of independent transportation.

These people do not live in the mansions strung out along St. Charles Avenue for the tourists to admire from their seats on the gently swaying trolleys. They live outside the peripheral vision of the tourist, in shabby shotgun houses, bleak Section 8 apartments, and dilapidated public housing dating to the Great Depression.

Unlike the images portrayed on the news about Hurricane Katrina in the first few days of horror, New Orleans is not overrun with criminals. Like any other large city, New Orleans has its share of crime and gangs, a small but lawless percentage of the city's population. Just as in the Los Angeles riots, when disaster happens, it is the gangs and criminals, not the humble citizens, who take over the streets, shoot at the cops and set cars on fire.

It's true that while the police department tries to maintain a thin blue line around the perimeter of the French Quarter, senior citizens and single moms cringe behind their doors at night a few blocks away, in fear of the gangs who rule the neighborhoods within walking distance of Bourbon Street.

But there are far more senior citizens and single moms than there are gangbangers.

In a clever marketing burlesque, the Grayline tour busses and the deliriously cheerful walking-tour guides carefully display those parts of New Orleans they wish the tourists to see, while discreetly drawing a veil of silence over the undesirable bits, much in the same manner that a girl with spectacular breasts and a formidable fanny might show off her cleavage while wearing a slimming black skirt.

Point a neon sign at the good stuff, and hope nobody looks at the rest.

Hurricane Katrina has ripped that veil of illusion right off the city of New Orleans, showing all the world the sad, stark truth which truly makes New Orleans the City that Care Forgot.

Evacuation was ordered, but no coherent plan was in place for the enormous chunk of New Orleanians who exist without their own means of transportation: the underclass, the elderly, the disabled, the sick, and the animals all suffered together in one vast, steaming toilet, waiting and hoping for the busses to come.

Saddest of all, the law-abiding po' folks of New Orleans suffered from the actions of the same criminals they have always feared. And it is the majority of New Orleans' poor -- not the gangs -- which give New Orleans its color, its flavor, and its indominateable spirit.

Out of poverty came the jazz, blues and mambo music for which the city is famous. Out of poverty came Mardi Gras, an opportunity for everyone, regardless of class and wealth, to be king or queen for a day. And out of poverty came New Orleans' famous food. Gumbo is not a rich man's meal. It is humble food prepared with the spice of life.

Baton Rouge, where I have spent most of my adult life, is where many native New Orleanians choose to land in their flight from the warped economy of New Orleans and the glue trap of Southern decadence. Long-time New Orleans expatriates who live in Baton Rouge are often either the black sheep of the upper class or the more ambitious offspring of the non-wealthy, who can find an affordable college education at LSU or Southern University and who can seek refuge in Baton Rouge's somewhat lower cost of living and its broader economy. Baton Rouge is only 90 miles from home, so family is accessible, but it's far enough away to have a life of your own.

And now my adopted home is rapidly filling with the expatriated residents of my home town: black and white, rich and poor, and the animals that were lucky enough to get out. Most came in on busses. Many will go out on busses.

But for now, we all live together. Most Baton Rougeans have opened their hearts, homes and wallets to those displaced by Katrina.

A few harbor the groundless fear of an insurgence of crime and lawlessness. In fact, since the storm, crime has not increased in Baton Rouge, but traffic accidents have skyrocketed, so almost everyone gripes about the population doubling overnight and causing hellacious traffic problems.

But for the most part, the citizens of my adopted home have been gracious hosts to the citizens of my hometown. And the citizens of my hometown, I hope, will infect Baton Rouge with the unsinkable, defiant and jubilant spirit that defines New Orleans -- the spirit that makes music to defy poverty, the spirit that motivates people to rebuild homes and businesses in spite of meteorological temper tantrums.

New Orleanians have always believed in miracles, in luck, and in the impossible.

New Orleanians believe that, one day, the Saints will win the Superbowl.

Perhaps that is why so many fled to the Superdome when they had no way out of the city.

The Superdome is much more than a mere football stadium. To New Orleanians, it is the cathedral of optimism. The poor of New Orleans fled to the Dome to escape the wrath of Katrina just as the poor of medieval times fled to the cathedrals of Europe when Nature or invading barbarians threatened life and limb. When death is at the door, you don't just run to safety. You want a miracle.

At the emergency anmal shelter the other day, I ran into a young African-American woman who had escaped from New Orleans with her dog, her purse and some water and personal belongings in a backpack. She tried to get on one bus, then another, but she couldn't bring the dog. So she started walking.

She walked through New Orleans, meandered through the suburban cities of Metairie and Kenner, and picked her way along the elevated highway to LaPlace.

Somewhere along the way, she found a family on their way to Baton Rouge. They gladly took her, and her dog, the rest of the way.

Tired, filthy, and hungry, she checked her dog into the emergency animal shelter before she checked herself into a Red Cross shelter.

I asked her what kept her going. She said, "You just have to believe you're gonna survive."

She told me she lived in downtown New Orleans, was a prep worker in a kitchen at a major downtown New Orleans hotel, and doesn't have a car because she had been saving her money to go to cooking school so she could have a shot at being a chef.

She earned a little over eight dollars an hour and lived in a tough neighborhood, where she feared the gangs and tried to look out for the old folks in nearby apartments.

She loves her dog. She is now looking for a hotel job in Baton Rouge, an apartment where she can have her dog, and is hoping that she can put her life back together here.

Tears rolled down her face when she told me she feared she would never return to her home in New Orleans. But she said, "You just gotta believe."

People in other parts of America, in other places in the world, ask, "why? Why would she want to go back?"

Perhaps, simply, because it is home.

And that's all that really matters.

--Mambocat

A Bit of Cheer Amidst the Drear

So.

I'm up to my eyeballs in hurricane-refugee animals, and one day I get to my office and find a large box awaiting me. Upon opening said box, what do I find but a large selection of soft, warm cage cozies destined for those very same displaced pets.

Even though I had not yet requested cozies, considering the fact that the refugee animals are cooled only by fans and it is still hot enough here in South Louisiana to bake oatmeal cookies in your car, I was still extremely cheered to open this box full of bright, warm, snuggly things.

And, serendipitously, these arrived in time to be put to use right away as some of the hurricane animals go home with their owners as they find new places to live, so they will have their very own warm, snuggly thing to curl up on and a spot to call their own.

Here is "Blue," an elderly Siamese cat, test-snuggling the cage cozies before they are distributed to animals in need. Yes, he is dimensionally challenged, and he does resemble a harbor seal, but I promise you he is really a blue-point Siamese.

Being a homeless cat himself, Blue heartily endorses these cozies to go home with the refugee animals from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

With me being a helpless sucker for old-geezer gatos, Blue had the run of my office until he was adopted the day after this picture was taken.

A million thanks, purrs and tail-wags to Jean Anderson of New Jersey, the maker of all these cozy objects, who had planned to donate them to her local shelter when winter arrived, but decided instead that the hurricane refugee animals needed them more.

Which brings me back to something approaching normal -- the subject of knitting.

It's about time for those cage cozies you kind knitters offered to send, for the animals as their owner reclaim them. People are starting to find jobs and apartments, and many people are reclaiming their sheltered pets. Some lost pets are being reunited wit their families. And there are many who will remain unclaimed when the shelters close, and who will welcome warm, snuggly cozies as they move along to their new, adoptive homes.

If you would like to send cozies you have already made, it's time to pack them up. If you would like to make a cozy, there is still time. Cozies must be machine washable and dryable, so use superwash wool, cotton or acrylic. Knit at a denser, firmer gauge than you would to get nice drape in a sweater. Cozies are supposed to feel like a pad. Plain old garter stitch is fast to knit and makes a nice, thick pad -- or you can practice your double knitting.

This is a great way to use up scrap yarn oddments, or the yarn bestowed on you by friends and relatives who, with your very best interests at heart, thoughtfully pounce upon 55-gallon bags of weird-colored 1970s yarn for 25 cents at garage sales. Animals don't care if the colors are ugly (at least none have ever complained to me personally), provided they are warm and soft.

Sizes: about 18" square (half a meter) for cats and small dogs; about 3 feet square (one meter) for bigger dogs.

Send completed cozies by October 15 to me, and I will distribute them as needed:

Dez Crawford

c/o Animal Control Center

2680 Progress Road

Baton Rouge, LA 70807

Each and every cozy will be paired up with an animal in need. Thanks again to everyone who has offered to send cozies for the animals. They will provide a welcome bit of comfort for confused animals in the midst of chaos.

The relief efforts go on. Tomorrow, some New Orleans residents will be allowed back into specific areas which are safe to re-enter. I'm bracing myself for the day when I can take Mom back to see the house. Supposedly her part of town didn't take much water, and her house is an old house up off the ground, so we are keeping our fingers crossed.

Off to bed. Tomorrow is another day.

Mambocat

The Calm Before the Perfect Storm

This picture was taken in New Orleans the Friday night before Katrina hit. The blue lights are strung along the twisting curves of the ancient live oak trees lining the street just outside the Botanical Gardens in New Orleans' City Park. The silver lanterns, each about eight to ten feet tall, are suspended from the branches. Compared to the huge trees, they look like Christmas baubles. For a size reference, you can just barely see the front bumper of a white sedan parked next to the base of a tree at lower left. The tree's trunk is a bit wider than the car; the root base is much wider.

My niece got married that night and her wedding reception was held inside the Botanical Gardens. As we got out of our car and admired the lighted trees, my husband said:

"I really have the creeps about this Katrina storm. I'm having a premonition. This thing will hit Category Five. It will hit New Orleans. These trees will all be underwater next week."

I started to say, "Dave, it's only a Category Two today. It shouldn't be disastrous." But the hair prickled on the back of my neck. Dave doesn't announce his premonitions lightly.

Hurricanes always make New Orleanians nervous. This edginess is usually kept at bay with lame jokes. But this time, we didn't jest about it.

Katrina was rapidly strengthening, with a one-way ticket to wherever the hell she wanted to go.

"We're not staying for all the after-wedding stuff tomorrow morning," I announced. "We're going to get Mom early, and have her pack her important stuff, and we're taking her up to Baton Rouge."

Dave nodded, and we entered the reception.

People drank, people ate, people danced. My niece, Laura, was lovely in her mother's wedding gown and veil. Her mother, Susan, died from breast cancer several years ago, but I know she was in attendance anyway, and so proud.

People spoke in low, nervous, tones about the hurricane. There were no half-hearted jokes about stocking up on beer and barbeque supplies. Instead, people were making plans to evacuate their families and pets, move their boats or find a hotel in Baton Rouge or Houston. This time, when the smokers stepped outside, they sipped their wine and glanced around anxiously, as though a mugger might be lurking in the meticulously groomed bushes nearby.

People debated whether or not this storm would wrap up to a full Category Five. They wondered if it was worth the effort to board up their hunting camps in Mississippi and decided that would be a waste of time in the face of a Category Four or Five storm. In the face of a monster, the camps surely would be destroyed, boarded-up windows and all.

Some folks wanted to move their valuables upstairs before they evacuated their homes. Others left the reception long before the refreshments were gone, so they could start packing. A few decided that loading up the RV was a good idea, so they could salvage a larger supply of belongings, have comfortable traveling accommodations for family and pets, and have a place to stay in the event of hotel shortages.

These were sensible people. But they were also the lucky people -- people fortunate enough to have jobs and cars, credit cards and cell phones, and the materials and resources they needed to get out of town.

These people were not among the 100,000 New Orleanians with no job, no car, and no way out.

The next morning, we got up early, helped Mom pack, and headed out of town . As we drove toward Baton Rouge along the suspended highway over the swamps surrounding New Orleans, my mother worried aloud about the car-less citizens of the city she has always called home.

My mother is a snap at in-your-head arithmetic. She said, "20% of the people in New Orleans don't have a car. That's about 100,000 people. You can only fit 40 or 50 people on a bus, so you'd need...let's see...2000? Maybe 2500 busses? And that's just to get people out of town. You also need more busses, to get them to the busses that would take them out of town. So you'd need twice as many busses --busses going back and forth from the neighborhoods to evacuation centers, and busses leaving town. People would be getting off one bus and getting on another. I don't think we have that many busses in the public transportation system, do you? Maybe if we used the school busses, too? But then who would drive all the busses? You'd have to get the National Guard to do that, because the bus drivers would have to take care of their own families, and you'd also need to have the handicapped busses going around door to door for the elderly, and the handicapped, and sick people who can't walk to the bus stops ..."

As my little silver VW Golf plugged along through the westbound traffic, Mom ticked off logistical considerations on her fingertips and mapped out a sensible evacuation plan for the car-less citizens of New Orleans, all 100,000 of them.

"...and we have all these military bases that are closed. They have houses, gymnasiums, barracks, things like that. Why can't we use those? President Bush could snap his fingers and open up those old Army bases. If they started bussing people out right now, they wouldn't have to worry about people being trapped in the city if the levee breaks like it did in Hurricane Betsy..."

Being a car-less senior citizen herself, my Mom has had a great deal more experience with these issues than FEMA or the Bush administration, and, in fact, was working out a sensible and do-able plan for the evacuation of car-less New Orleanians 48 hours before Katrina hit and three days before the Bush administration even realized that there were, indeed, 100,000 people in one place in the United States of America, the most prosperous nation on Earth, with no car to get out of town, no money or credit to rent a car, no money for a hotel and no way to get themselves and their families to safety.

Mom, of course, was right -- as Moms almost always are. She could have run an efficient evacuation right there in the backseat of my car if FEMA had given her a cell phone and a notepad and the authority to give people the go-ahead. I would nominate Mom for the new head of FEMA, but I know she wouldn't get the job, no matter how much common sense she has. She would be ruled out for being a Democrat.

While Mom planned the human evacuation, I worried about the animal evacuation. I knew that many people were evacuating with their pets. I could see pet carriers in the cars and SUVs headed west, and the occasional horse trailer bouncing along behind a heavily-loaded pickup. But I also knew that a large number of evacuees were treating this like another "hurricane drill," and had left their pets locked in their homes with three or four days' worth of food and water, fully expecting to return home to their homes and their pets, fully expecting that New Orleans would, once again, be spared by a last-minute tease of meteorological capricousness. Many people left their pets in a place they thought would be safe, expecting to return home after a few days, certain they would pat their dog on the head while they barbecued, drank beer and watched the first game of the LSU football season.

I knew there were countless animals with no owners at all, pathetic street dogs and feral cats surviving out of Dumpsters like they do on an ordinary day, with no idea they might soon be struggling for their lives if the storm surge crested the levees -- or broke them.

We drove to Baton Rouge, a four-hour drive which normally takes 90 minutes. Those who evacuated later in the day on Saturday, and those who delayed until Sunday, faced much longer drives to get to safety.

We got Mom settled onto the sofa-bed and got her things unpacked. I scurried around outside, securing things that might blow away in the 70-mph winds we expected as far west as Baton Rouge. I rounded up candles and flashlights and filled the ice chest, and we went about the business of Hunkering Down, parked in front of the Weather Channel and CNN. Mom kept her fingers busy with her rosary, I kept my fingers busy knitting my latest shawl, and Dave kept his fingers busy stroking the cats as we watched Katrina roll in from the Gulf, watched the Mississippi Gulf Coast get wiped off the map and watched the levees break in New Orleans.

It wasn't long before I set the shawl aside. I simply could not knit.

We listened to Katrina roar for the rest of the day, slamming us with winds near hurricane force over 100 miles from the eye of the storm, toppling trees and ripping down power lines. A neighbor's 90-foot water oak fell in the backyard, just missing their house.

New Orleans filled with water.

The ones who could not get out, people and animals, fled to the rooftops and to the Superdome. We watched the horrors, and watched some people get rescued. Then the power went out.

The wind died down to turbulent gusts. We had something to eat, and then ventured over to a friend's house where the power was still on.

Along with Mitch and Jane and their own evacuated relatives, we Hunkered Down in front of the TV and watched New Orleans drown.

Mambocat

The Horror.

I know this is utterly insane but I am starting to feel very weird about my earlier posts this summer. Although every hurricane season invariably provokes rounds of nervous joking amongst Southerners, I feel strangely guilty now.

I remember making a joke about humidity based on Colonel Kurtz's speech in Apocalypse Now, and, of course, now it is haunting me. This time it isn't funny. The real words are:

"Horror. The horror. It is impossible for words to describe what is necessary, to those who do not know what horror means."

Perphaps the horror explains, but does not excuse, the behavior of a small segment of people as they waited, trapped in the wretched, reeking Superdome and stranded on the ghastly and fetid streets.

Some people deal with horror stoically. Others deal with it by creating even more horror. We wll never know what caused that small percentage of people to behave as they did. All we will ever remember is the horror.

I am also angry. Very angry. I am angry that our nation's reaction to 9-11 turned FEMA priorities completely away from natural disaster response, causing FEMA to concentrate exclusively on terrorism. It is my understanding that the only two hurricane scenarios in the current FEMA plan include "what would happen if terrorists took advantage of a major hurricane and attacked while we were distracted by the storm?"

There is not one single FEMA excercise in their current plans dealing with a major hurricane on its own. I am angry about that.

I am also angry that a friend's son and about a dozen plane-loads of young, fresh faces in camouflage can be activated, transported and on the ground in Iraq in 24 hours, but our nation couldn't seem to find the resources to get the National Guard into New Orleans 24 hours after Katrina.

Don't get me wrong. The actual people in the military, the ones doing the real work, are doing a great job now that they are in place. They are rescuing people and animals, knocking themselves out and being real heroes. But the bureaucrats who give these soldiers the orders to go, can't seem to find their own eyeglasses so they can read these hard-working people their marching orders.

FACT: The SPCA was organized enough to be mobilized and waiting to get into New Orleans to rescue animals, before most human rescue efforts were underway.

FACT: When politicians were still holding press conferences on Wednesday morning, an emergency animal shelter was up and running in Baton Rouge to house the pets of evacuees staying in Red Cross shelters. Why are the Louisiana State University School of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Control, LA-SPCA, the Louisiana Veterinary Medical Association and a bunch of volunteers better prepared for an emergency than other agencies? Is it because we are not running for re-election, and are just doing our jobs?

I am extremely angry that George Bush vetoed $71 million dollars in flood control for New Orleans and diverted those funds to the war in Iraq. It probably costs that much just to arm and fly a stealth bomber for couple of bombing missions. We couldn't spare two or three bombing runs to save the City of New Orleans?

Yes, I am angry.

We in the South are entering a new way of keeping track of time: not A.D. or B.C., but B.K. and A.K.

Before Katrina and After Katrina.

Thousands of years from now, archaeologists will find a layer of filth when they excavate New Orleans. The line of demarcation between B.K. and A.K.

July seems like a million years ago, on another planet, in a galaxy far, far away..

Oh, and one more thing no one has dared to say yet:

Hurricane season isn't over yet.

Baton Rouge is overcrowded with evacuees, the shelves are stripped daily at grocery stores and Wal-Mart, helicopters are flying around almost incessantly, there is little gas to be found, phone lines are jammed in Louisiana and Mississippi, and the sound of sirens never stops.

And that's just in Baton Rouge.

As a kid, I was warned that if we didn't fight Communism, we'd be standing in line for hours waiting for bread and milk, just like in Russia.

I did that today on my dinner break. There wasn't a Communist in sight. Only the bone-weary citizens of New Orleans.

Shall we warn the next generation that if we don't fight Stupidity, we'll end up waiting in line for bread and milk?

Baton Rouge has opened its arms to provide food, water, shelter and housing to the evacuees. The amazing wamth and generosity of my fellow citizens gives a glimmer of hope.

Break over... Animals to care for... Back to work.

Mambocat

My hometown. Gone. I have stared at the television in horror. New Orleans has drowned. I have wept. I am numb. And there is no time for emotional "coping" because the real job has started, the job of physically dealing with the aftermath of Katrina. . This is my first break in days. Here in Baton Rouge, in the midst of our own little mess of downed trees and power outages -- a mere trifle compared to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, but a mess nonetheless -- we are setting up and operating long-term emergency animal shelters and veterinary M*A*S*H units for the pets of refugees from the New Orleans area. I have spoken in the past few days to people who escaped the rising waters after Katrina with only the clothes on their backs and their dog or cat in their arms. One woman snatched up her chihuahua in one hand and an axe in the other, climbed into her attic and chopped a hole in the roof to escape the rising water. Another couple turned in a pair of Lab puppies they found alongside the Interstate as they fled the storm. One girl stuffed her ferret into her purse and ran as the waters rose behind her. There was a young couple in tears who had managed to save a few of their cats, swimming in and out of their house as the waters rose, but they could not save them all. People sat on rooftops, clinging to their dog or cat while human bodies floated past. The stories are horrific, unimaginable. And they are real. There simply are no words to describe how I feel. I will have very little time to blog. The past five days have all blurred together into one long day with a couple of insufficient naps. But I will not complain. I am fortunate beyond measure to have our dry safe home inland, and to have my mother alive and with us. We got her out of New Orleans on Saturday. At the shelter, we are putting our best efforts into helping the animals and comforting their owners. We have set up facilities for livestock and horses. We are waiting for the caravan of carriage-mules from the French Quarter to arrive; we are waiting for a busload of animal patients from a large vet clinic to arrive; we are waiting for 30 cats from a pet adoption center to arrive. Dogs, horses, cats, ferrets, parrots, pythons, rabbits, chinchillas, you name it. Even a kid with a hamster. We are waiting and working. Best to you all. Mambocat

Shawl Thoughts This summer started, and is coming to an end, with shawls. The summer started happily. Dad had a new pacemaker and was doing well, I had a conference and thus a rare chance to travel, and I was working on a bold, red shawl of my own design in lace. Sumer is closing sadly. Dad is gone, and I am working on a simple triangular shawl in garter stitch. It is a shawl I cast on only a few days before he died. Although the colorful yarn clashes with my mood, the rythmn of plain knitting soothes the soul and allows for an empty mind. The act of knitting invokes something inside me that I call "kinetic memory," as though knitting is a way of physically recording my life events with sticks and string. Grief, happiness, anxiety, love and exuberation each have their own secret way of encoding themselves into yarn and stitch patterns. I look at certain item and not only do I recall exactly what was happening in my life when I was working on it, but my feelings from that point in time are summoned as well: that is the bag I was working on when Simon died. Those are the socks I knitted when Dave was in the hospital. That is the afghan that got me through the days after 9-11. This is the hat I made on our vacation to Portland. And this is the shawl I had just started when Dad died. This is the shawl that is helping to make things bearable right now. This particular shawl is going to be hard to have around. I am sure I will store it away when it is done. And maybe one day it will not bring me down every time I look at it. Maybe, one day, it will stop reminding me of the deep sadness of this August and, instead, remind me of the solace one can find in yarn and needles. Maybe, one day, the colorful ribbon yarn will feel cheerful again. So before I go to bed tonight, I will knit for a little while on this simple project, let the softness of the yarn comfort me, and wonder when I will be have the heart to wear the resulting shawl. When this is done, I need to work on something besides shawls for awhile, I think. Mambocat

Garter Stitch Is Good for You

Garter stitch never ceases to amaze me with its humble beauty, its balance, and its soothing, meditative, and even healing qualities. This is a good thing, because after the last few weeks, garter stitch is about as much as I can wrap my brain around. So I have picked up some needles and some ribbon yarn, and I am making an Idiot Shawl.

I might make several.

Mom and I are in the process of pulling things together after Dad's funeral. I have been calling her daily, and somehow the house sounds empty in the background. But Mom is a trooper. She is finding her way through her grief by keeping busy, spending time in prayer, and getting ready to move into an apartment close to us.

I am finding my way through my grief with my job, which distracts me from it, and with sticks and string, which guide me through it.

Garter stitch is hand yoga.

I knit, the nearest cat purrs loudly in her sleep, my brain shifts into neutral, and images float through my mind slowly, one at a time, like floats in a parade.

I am thinking of better times with Dad. Mostly simple things: listening to Cubs games on the radio on summer nights, going to the zoo, catching tadpoles, drinking Cokes out of little green bottles, and riding with my arm sticking out the window of his old two-tone 1950s Chevy.

These thoughts make me puzzle over one of life's greatest mysteries: why it is that some of our most profound and vivid memories are of the most ordinary things imaginable, and why we often can't remember the details of events that were, usually with great pains and extensive planning, intended to be remembered. I have no idea what happened at my sixth birthday party, for example, though I have no doubt that Mom decorated the house and invited my playmates, that presents were received, and that cake and ice cream were consumed.

But last night I spotted some fireflies. When I was a kid they were everywhere, even in the heart of the city, anyplace there was a backyard or a small park.
Today they are much less common, so it was a real treat to see a small group of them blinking away in the bushes. I watched them blink silently in the darkness, and...

suddenly I am six years old, running around in our small back yard in New Orleans, capturing fireflies in my cupped hands and putting them in a pickle jar. I can see the fireflies, feel the humid air against my skin, and even smell the freshly cut grass and the faintly pickle-ish scent lingering in the jar where the baffled fireflies flit and blink.

And I can see my Dad standing on the other side of the yard. He is wearing a white undershirt and a pair of dark pants. One hand is occupied by a cold bottle of Jax beer, and the other glows like a lantern, blinking, as he walks toward me and puts another firefly in the jar.

Then he walks across the yard to sit on the steps. He is young and tall.

He takes a cold sip of beer, and watches me catch magic in a jar.

Mambocat

On Standby

The Knitting Asylum is temporarily on standby.

My father, Adam Rabeneck, died last Saturday at the age of 88. He was a disabled veteran of World War Two, worked as an accountant, and was a lifelong resident of New Orleans. He loved baseball and football, especially the New Orleans Saints. He loved animals, and, above all, dearly loved his family.

He died of sudden cardiac arrest after a long history of heart disease.

His mother was the first person to teach me how to knit, crochet and sew.

Dad had a lovely funeral with an Army honor guard, and went to meet his Maker in a pair of hand-knit socks.

I'll post again as soon as we have some things settled down.

If your folks are still alive, call them today.

Regards,

Mambocat

Rx For Summertime Blues -- New Baton Rouge LYS

"Sometimes I wonder what I'm a-gonna do, but there ain't no cure for the summertime blues..."
--The Who

Knitter's Magazine 's online forum, KnitU, lately has been overflowing with posts from knitters who have hit a summertime knitting slump. For folks without air conditioning, no matter where you live, it's too hot even to touch yarn this summer. If you live in a climate where air-conditioning is not optional, it may be cool enough indoors to handle yarn and knit, but the very idea of summer mugginess is so depressing as to be utterly un-inspiring, even if you have a yarn stash the size of a national park.

For the really hard cases, those of us who actually get summertime seasonal affective disorder because we rarely venture outside, whose air conditioners are set to "liquid nitrogen," and whose houses stay dark due to the drapes being tightly drawn because it's too hot to even look outside, the summertime blues hit hard.

Here's what I like to do to rally up some knitting enthusiasm during the hottest weeks of summer:

--download screen savers with snow scenes from Alaska, Colorado, the Andes, Tibet, and Antarctic research stations...

--re-organize yarn stash, with the pleasant side benefit of discovering forgotten cat toys, books, chairs, and major appliances...

--go though archtitecture, nature and art books for inspiration ... look at tile and mosaic patterns, and...

--go hang out at the nearest yarn store.

"Knits by Nana" opened in Baton Rouge in the spring of 2005 and is already off to a successful start with a selection of beautiful yarns, regular classes, books, needles, notions and gifts.

Overall atmosphere: The owner and staff definitely took their Southern Hospitality lessons -- they are all warm, personable and welcoming the moment you walk in the store, located in a renovated two-bedroom cottage with with beautiful wood floors and cream-colored walls. The first thing you see when you walk in the vestibule is a display of easy-to-knit, sampler scarves and shawls in luxury yarns. The store is light, airy, well-organized and super clean. Display of goods is accomplished in a charming, home-like array of baskets, bookcases, china cabinets, and armoires which have been modified for retail display.

Sit-down space for classes and Stitch-n-Bitch is available in three of the store's four merchandise rooms. Location is excellent, in the central city, and easy to find, just off Government Street, one of the main thoroughfares in Baton Rouge, so this shop will be a breeze for out-of-towners to find from the Interstate.

Yarn: lots and lots of eyelash, ribbon, frizzy and ladder yarn. Cascade, Berocco, Lang Sock Yarn, Trendsetter yarns, and many others, which I will update later with a more detailed list.

Books: they are starting off with a well-chosen, if not exhaustive, selection of books, both contemporary and classic. I am told the book selection will grow.

Needle selection: lots of circs, bamboos and Addi Turbos, also Lantern Moon needles and Denise interchangeable sets.

Responsiveness to customers: Owner has been very responsive to customer input and suggestions regarding the selection of yarn and other products and she just got back from the International Needleworks Market in Colombus, Ohio. New yarns coming soon: Fiesta, Kollage, Blue Herring, Tahki Charles, Brown Sheep, and Opal, among others. "Nana's" soon will be adding leather yarn bags, poncho kits, shawl kits and other goodies.

Things to crow about: this is eyelash and ribbon yarn heaven. Lots of fancy fluff. Also delicious baby mohairs and other luxury fibers. Lots of finished scarves, shawls, bags, throws, socks and other items to truly inspire the knitter, instead of mere little 4" X 4" swatches. Good choice of self-patterning sock yarns, thanks to Sockmaster Joan's input. Nice bags and "gifty things," too. Genuinely helpful and friendly staff, light and airy store, pleasant atmosphere and decor. Monthly Stitch and Bitch on Thursday night from 6-9pm -- exactly which Thursday is announced month-by-month, as far as I understand.

Disappointments: No Noro, no Koigu, no Inca Alpaca -- this makes Mambocat pout, but mind that those are just my own favorite yarns. Limited space for chairs and tables, but the cozy and welcoming feeling of the store makes up for that. Not much modestly priced yarn, but they do have Lang sock yarn, and Brown Sheep is soon coming to help fill the price gap. Hours are great for those with free time on weekdays, but are a little inconvenient for those who work 8-5.

Navigation note: Shop sign is kinda small, so slow down when you turn onto Capital Heights, lest you drive past it.


LYS Dossier:

Knits By Nana
5055 Capital Heights, Suite A
Baton Rouge, LA 70806 USA

225-216-9460

Hours: Mon.-Fri 10:00am till 4:00pm
Saturday 10:00am-2:00pm

Owner: Missy McCoy Waguespack

Regular Free Classes:

--Merrelyn teaches beginner knitters every Wednesday from 1:00 till 3:00

--Joan Richardson teaches sock knitting every Thursday from 10:00am till noon.

Summer Classes: Little Black Bag, Vertical Scarf, Belt Blast, Kids'Fun, Childrens' Scarf, Knitting in the Round. Most classes have no fee but supplies must be purchased from the shop, $20 for kids' classes with materials supplied as a kit.

Website: Knits by Nana does not yet have a website , but they are working on it. In the meantime, contact them at their email address below and they will let you know when the website is up.

email: knitsbynana@bellsouth.net

Hardcopy newsletter: Quarterly update, send your snail-mail address to their email above.

Special Features: Want to have a yarn party? Knits by Nana offers their back classroom for customers to celebrate a special event, like a learn-to-knit birthday party for kids or a private knit-together for grownups. Phone the store for more information or to schedule an event.

Crochet instructors are available for those who are interested.

Want to teach a class? It can be arranged through the owner. They seem to be branching away from their initial focus on Newbie Knitters and may soon welcome instructors in advanced techniques.

Overall Rating: four socks out of a possible five.

Magpie Rating (for glitzy things): five socks

Mrs. Weasley Rating (for modestly priced good wool): two socks

After so many years without a yarn shop in the Baton Rouge area (Mambocat remembers when there were four), "Knits by Nana" is a welcome addition to the community, and allows some folks to make new and creative excuses to buy more yarn ... "I would have spent more than that just on the gas to get to an LYS in New Orleans, so I am actually saving the environment and reducing the need to fight wars over oil by purchasing expensive yarn locally..."

Get on over to Nana's and have a look. Spend some money, too.

--Mambocat

Knit One, Patella Two

It has been a long time since I had two good-looking young men eyeing my legs so intently.

Obviously, if your legs looked as good as this, the same two young men (or very similar ones, depending on where you live) would be looking at your legs, too. And calling their friends over to have a gander as well.

Apparently, I am a Loose Woman.





















Or at least my kneecaps are loose. This is my right kneecap, and, apparently, I have inflicted some damage upon the suspension system. The sock helps it feel better. The big navy-blue ugly thing strangles my knee and is supposed to make it better at some point in the future.

I really wish I could say that I was wrassling a 15-foot alligator, or wrangling cattle, or at very least capturing a snarling junkyard dog, when I tore my tendon. It would be nice to have an adventurous work-related story to accompany this.
But I shall not tell a lie.

Somehow, I managed to inflict a relatively minor tendon tear upon myself while I was ... uh ... ahem ... getting up off the floor of my office, where I was sorting out some old adoption files because there was no room on top of my desk.

But wait ... they were highly venomous and dangerous files, okay? Yes, that's it. Venomous Australian files that even Steve Erwin is afraid to touch. Rare ... endangered ... deadly Australian venomous files.

There. Now I feel better.

Back to the young men who were admiring my legs. Apparently, attractive young men in the medical profession these days use smooth pick-up lines like this when they find a woman with loose patellas:

"Relax your leg a bit, and I'm going to manipulate your patella just a little. Let me know if it hurts..."

(wiggle wiggle ouch ouch)

"Hm. Wow. It's going all over the place. Excuse me..."

(sticking head of of exam room door)

"Hey, Jim, come have a look at these patellas!"

At this point I am feeling just a little uneasy, as I had not planned on a menage a trois. I had not even planned on a menage a un. Besides, I am wearing my plain blue Hanes Her Way underwear.

"Whoa! We don't see patellas like that too often!"

And, before I knew it, I found myself set up with a large number of physical therapy dates with these two young men, who are either S&M fetishists or who were trained by the Spanish Inquisition. I can tell you that by the time they were through with our first date, I was ready to confess to witchcraft, or at least to worshipping the Knitting Goddess and the Yarn Fairy.

On the bright side, they did admire my variegated socks (see foot in above picture), and I was able to knit a bit on my current green sock (below) on the ten-minute breaks between torture sessions:






















This is a cotton-wool sock in a forest-green ragg yarn from Socka which has been marinating in my stash for ages. Don't get too excited. It is just a plain ribbed crew sock, but it is good company and it follows me around agreeably wherever I go and waits politely when I have to put it away for awhile.

Ever notice that "sock" rhymes with "Doc?" I have a strong association with socks and doctors. Maybe it's just because I always happen to have a sock-in-progress in my bag, but chances are, if I am waiting for a medical appointment or sitting at a hospital bedside, I have a sock going. My elderly Dad's cardiologist has to be reminded that you can knit things other than socks, and that sock-making is not my actual career. Once, when he was delayed by an emergency surgery, he apologized for being late (he is a very poliite doctor), and asked me how long we'd been waiting. I held up the sock I was working on that day and said, "Oh, about half a cuff."

I truly do not understand people who fail to bring a sock, or at very least a book or magazine of their own, along to doctor's appointments. They know they are going to have to wait, and wait some more, but most people sit there either staring into space or flipping through old copies of magazines like "Forbes" and "Golf Illustrated," which just serve as annoying reminders that the doctor makes a helluva lot more money than you do.

And I completely fail to comprehend the occasional person in the waiting room who stares at my knitting for several minutes and then proclaims, "I wish I had the time to do stuff like that."

To which I always say, "Well, you do. You're sitting here, aren't you?"

So it was a pleasure today to see a woman in the waiting room with an Amish knitting loom fully deployed across her lap, cranking away at a full-sized striped afghan and doing quite a nice job of it.

I pulled out my sock and said, "That's a beautiful afghan ... been waiting long?"

She held up the loom and spread her thumb and index finger against the fabic.

"Oh, about an inch and a half," she said.

--Mambocat

London Calling...

The phone call goes like this:

one ringy-dingy....two-ringy dingy...three ringy-dingy...

"Hello, America? We Brits are much too polite to ask this ourselves, so we found this weird woman in Louisiana who will inquire on our behalf.

Ahem... so... we were wondering ...

Where is the moral support from our American friends? You do remember, on 9/11, that we played the American National Anthem at the Changing of the Guard? And gave our tangible support in other ways as well? Granted, our loss of life and landmarks was not nearly as vast as that awful day in your country, but could we please see just a bit more support and moral outrage from you Yanks? Thank you ever so much. It appears that we have another terrorist mess to clean up today, so we really must be going now."

-- England

God save the Queen, and all of our British friends.

--Mambocat

"Beam me up, God."

-- Mr. Scotty

He lived long, he prospered, and now he is off to the final frontier.

I am too sad to knit today.

Instead, I place my Star Trek pin upon a favorite shawl, in honor of James Doohan.


















James Doohan died yesterday at the age of 85. Is there anyone alive who didn't love Mr. Scotty? Mr. Scotty embodied every human being's fantasy of having someone to magically sweep them up and out of life's unpleasantries. The very idea of a Mr. Scotty is comforting -- a warm, fatherly figure who comes to the rescue just when things seem to be at their absolute worst.

We can all learn a lot from Mr. Scotty:

Charm, warmth and a good sense of humor go a long way in this world, and any other.

Perserverance, loyalty and reliability are valuable character traits, especially in times of crisis.

And when the going gets tough, the tough unfailingly "give 'er all she's got" even when doom seems imminent and all hope seems to be lost.

James Doohan, it's time to boldly go where you have never gone before.

Rest in peace.

Mambocat

I bet you think this is a birthday present:

















But it's not a birthday present.

Reason number one: I am Capricorn, and this is July, so it can't be a birthday present -- at least not for me.

Reason number two: it is one of my Mom's Christmas presents in its pre-knitted state.

The reason it looks like a birthday present: it is a package of yarn purchased at the Quarter Stitch in New Orleans. This is how they gift-wrap a regular purchase, on any ordinary day, so you actually do feel like it's your birthday when you leave the store. Considering that a visit to the Quarter Stitch means a considerable splurge, this excess of packaging seems justified. A splurge, yes, but it is for Mom, so nobody can argue with that. Besides, they have a cool shop dog.

This is what was inside of the bag:

















Eight skeins of Inca Alpaca yarn in the prettiest shade of mauve I have ever laid eyes on, and mind you, I am a completely anti-pink person ... outright allergic to pink, even ... a person who cannot even take pink antibiotics without projectile vomiting ... I don't even like strawberry ice cream ... a person who rarely ventures near anything in the Pink Family (except for Pink Floyd and pink flamingos) unless I am knitting for someone else. Not only do I dislike pink on general principles, but if I wear pink myself, I tend to look rather jaundiced. Having said that, you can rest assured that, if I look at yarn in any shade of pink and say,

"My, that's lovely..."

then it is a noteworthy color indeed.

My mother, on the other hand, looks smashing in any conceivable shade of pink ... baby pink, hot pink, magenta, mauve, Chanel pink, Pepto-Bismol pink, bubble-gum pink, carnation pink, poodle pink, flamingo pink, Elvis'-momma's-Cadillac-pink ... you name it ... soooo ...

By Christmas, this clutch of lovely yarn ... lovely even though it is sort of pink ... will have morphed into a lace-and-cable vest.

Mom is also getting an easy-care hot-cocoa colored cabled sweater in Lion Brand Kool Wool. That one is already in progress.

And, speaking of hot cocoa, and therefore chocolate ... I have just been informed that the remake of "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" sports a considerable number of handknit objects both in wardrobe and in set dressing. I'm feeling a little woozy .... uh ... I need to sit down. I have crappy knees anyway. I don't think they can hold me up long enough to contemplate Johnny Depp, chocolate and knitting all in the same movie.

Mambocat

Hunkering Down

The summer of 2005 finds us Southerners getting an early start on hurricane season, and my most sincere compassion lies with the people directly affected by Hurricane Dennis, both in America and in Cuba. It's only July, but we're already on our fourth named storm and it's a major hurricane. Enough, already.

For those of you west of Galveston and/or above the Mason-Dixon Line (the official boundaries of Mother Nature's Bowling Alley), you need to understand that any time a named storm enters the Gulf of Mexico, it's like having a rattlesnake running loose in your living room. It is almost impossible to think about anything else.

The appearance of the first major storm also reminds every Southerner to review their Hunkering Down skills.
















Here we see all 22 pounds of Bella the Sumo Cat, Hunkering Down
on the Big Shawl For Me. Prior to being rearranged by Bella, the
shawl was deployed tip-to-tip along the full span of the six-foot-wide
bookcase. Notice the candles in the background in case
the power goes out.


During hurricane season, Southerners regularly engage in any one of three popular activities:

1. Evacuation: for those unfortunate enough to be in the direct path of a hurricane ranking Category 3 or higher, this means cramming flashlights, prescriptions, radios, blankets, rainwear, pets, pet food, road maps, family photos, bank account and insurance information, toilet paper, and a week's worth of clothes, diapers, food water, soda and chips into the family vehicles and sitting in gridlocked traffic on the Interstate for 19 hours at a stretch in hopes of finding a hotel, a cousin, or an old college roommate somewhere east of Denver so you have a place to stay while your house is washed into the Gulf of Mexico.

2. Hunkering Down: for those of us anywhere within three states of the expected landfall site, this means stocking your house with all of the abovementioned items, filling your gas tanks, and stripping the grocery store shelves of bleach, duct tape, batteries, candles, beer, chips, propane and clean-up supplies. You also are required to fill the garage with patio furniture, bicycles, garbage cans, barbeque grills, potted ficus trees, trampolines, Volkswagens, Mini-Coopers, and anything else that could become airborne.

3. Advanced Hunkering Down: an activity designed for :

a: complete fools with beachfront property in the path of a real hurricane -- a Category 3, 4 or 5 storm -- who somehow believe that they can ward off the Wind Demon simply by staying home and "riding it out." These people invariably are either heavily-armed native Southerners with two first names who have stopped taking their medications, or badly misguided people from Wisconsin who are spending their very first summer in a beachfront retirement condo.

b: Native Southerners in the direct strike path of a baby hurricane -- a Category 1 or 2 storm -- in which case a voting majority of the household will argue most convincingly that it is far, far better to stay home and be terrified, than to crawl along the Interstate looking for a hotel, a cousin, or an old college roommate. If you decide to engage in Advanced Hunkering Down, in addition to the normal Hunkering Down activities, you also have to nail plywood over your windows, put your furniture up on cinderblocks, kiss your boat goodbye, and sandbag your house. You will also need an up-to-date will locked in a safe deposit box in Montana, funeral insurance, and a generous supply of Scotch and Valium.

If you live anywhere inland, as my husband and I do, most of hurricane season involves normal Hunkering Down.

Inlanders, while Hunkering Down, can expect to be invaded by Evacuating relatives from Florida, Houston or New Orleans. Once you have come home from the grocery and secured everything that might take wing, you can settle down into the major activities of Hunkering Down, namely, parking yourself in front of the Weather Channel, eating microwave popcorn... and knitting.

Knitting is an exceedingly good Hunkering Down activity. You can knit while you watch the soggy weather reporters on the beach at Pensacola leaning into the wind and screaming into the microphone so you can see with your own two eyes that there really is an honest-to-God hurricane out there, and not just an enormous red blob on your TV weather map.

You can knit while you anxiously await the next update on the storm's precise position and wind speed. Non-Southerners cannot begin to comprehend how critical it is to know the exact hourly coordinates of a hurricane. Yes, we know, we can't do anything about it. We are as helpless as a blade of grass in the path of John Deere. Nonetheless, hourly hurricane positioning is an obsessive-compulsive Southern thing. We just need to know, so we can decide whether to Evacuate, buy more beer, or proceed to Advanced Hunkering Down.

You can knit while you engage in highly animated debates about whether this hurricane will be as bad as Hurricane Camille, which was the Mother of All Hurricanes. If you are not old enough to remember Camille, consider yourself lucky, and just try to imagine Hurricane Andrew -- squared.

If you also can't recall Hurricane Andrew, just nod when us older folks get worried, and hope you never, ever see a Category 5 storm, okay?

You can even knit if the power goes out while Hunkering Down, which is an outstanding but sneaky opportunity to teach someone else to knit after you pry the useless TV clicker out of their hands.

Hunkering Down is also the best time to pull out a UFO and get down to it, already. Maybe it's the sense of impending doom, but I always end up working on UFOs during hurricane season. Something in my subconscious, perhaps, whispering into my ear: if this storm klls me, the ghost of that forgotten sweater will follow me into the next life unless I finish it before the storm hits.

So in between hurricane updates I've pulled out my two oldest UFOs -- a suit in perle cotton which I started several years ago and only seem to work on during hurricane season, and the Other Sock of a pair of black-and-gold wool knee socks which are of about the same vintage.
Here they are:

















This is not a vest. This is the torso portion of a Chanel-type suit jacket adapted from a 1960's Pat Trexler pattern. It is done in a vintage, crepe-like perle cotton in a medium shade of cream. Here it lies, grumpy and embarrassed because I have rudely awakened it from hibernation and photographed it all rumpled and tousled, right out of bed. The whole thing is done entirely in heel stitch on #3 needles, so it has a wonderful drape, but it's as heavy as a diving belt and thus I lose interest in it once we are out of immediate danger of being in the direct path of any given hurricane, at which point I put down the suit jacket and pick up the Other Sock while I watch to see what's happening to the folks down in Florida.


















The Other Sock, and its mate, are being inspected by Tessie. Tessie, at 18, is a retired Fiber Content Analyst, who is especially fond of the soft merino wool that these socks are made of. She is also very particular about finishing techniques, and is examining the toe of the Finished Sock to assure that the Kitchener Stitch join is secure and even.

I feel confident that the Other Sock of this wooly pair will be finished this hurricane season and ready for use this winter.

For those of you who remain convinced that Southerners don't need wool, consider this: while our winters are not long and severe, they are rainy, sleety and chilly. And, in addition to keeping you warm even when wet, wool has another virtue which makes it highly valuable in the South.

It floats.

Mambocat

"This is the End...beautiful friend, the End..."

"Humidty. The humidity. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what humidity means..."

--from the recently discovered first draft of Colonel Kurtz's speech in Apocalypse Now
















No, that's not Cambodia. That's our yard. Honest. It's just that I woke up this morning and could have sworn that I was on the set for Apocalypse Now, without benefit of the presence of Martin Sheen.

That is a split-leaf philodendron the size of a Volkswagen bus you are looking at.

I am showing this to my readers so you will know how utterly dedicated I am to providing you with a photograph of a knitted object being blocked in the sunlight. I know, there is no knitted object in this picture You have to wait. This is a movie set, remember?

So dedicated am I, in fact, that, on the Fourth of July holiday weekend in Louisiana, I actually went on a mission outside the protection of the life-support system (known as a "house" to people in other places).

And now, like Willard en route to do a Cuisinart number on Colonel Kurtz, let us clamp a machete between our teeth and venture into this heart of backyard darkness, this 90-percent-humid and mosquito-filled jungle, risking heatstroke, poison ivy, flying roaches, fire ants, fleas, poison oak, wasps and West Nile virus.

Remember to hum, "The End" to yourself as you do this. You can't sing, because you have a machete in your mouth. You have to hum. Venturing deeper into the jungle now, we shall find a patch of bamboo I call the "Lizard Lounge." I like lIzards. I like them a lot. They are cute, alert little critters and they eat bugs.

















And if we hack through the jungle and venture deeply into the center of the bamboo, wielding our machetes gently to avoid harming the abovementioned lizards (remember to hum), we shall find this:

















This is the Big Lace Shawl for Me, made from hand-dyed, handspun wool that was a very generous gift from a very special friend. Generous indeed when you consider that there is about a quarter of a mile of yarn in this thing.

You are looking at my favorite blocking method. The shawl is deployed on a web of fishing line and stretched out between two trees (outside the frame of the photo).

And here is a close-up of the stitchwork:

I'm very pleased at the way the shawl came out -- bouncy drape and good color distribution. It was also very nice to have only a few small color pools in this vast amount of handpainted fabric, color pools which scattered themselves so randomly throughout the shawl as to look like an integral part of the design. I am very happy about that. It is light, airy and warm.

Not that I need warm now, but I will in the fall. This was a delightful, one-of-a-kind, handspun yarn, so if I work this up into a pattern for sale, I will suggest Koigu as a substitute.

Lisa Louie from Hawaii will recognize this as the shawl which was only the size of a bandanna when she passed through town this spring. Big hugs to Lisa for calling to be worried about us, as Hurricane Dennis takes aim down here in Mother Nature's Bowling Alley. And speaking of bowling, Lisa and I were able to meet because she and her husband Paul flew all the way to Baton Rouge to participate in the mother of all bowling tournaments, with over 13,000 bowlers participating, and his team came out 56th in the tourney, an incredibly high rank, the bowling equivalent of getting a perfect score on your SAT. You go, Paul!

When the shawl is finished being blocked I will take a more attractive photograph of it, but my question for now is: I have enough yarn left over for fringe. So ...

To fringe, or not to fringe? Looking at it blocked, it will already be huge, a fingertip-to-fingertip shawl on a long-armed person such as myself, and it will already hang down to thigh level at the back point.

Suggestions? Add fringe, or make a matching beret?

Mambocat