Ten years ago the notion that I would voluntarily spend hours gardening would have amused me and everyone who knew me. But this year, given a largely unpainted canvas of dirt and a willing partner, the gardener within me decided to emerge. There have been many days since May when I dig and weed and plant for hours at a time. At day’s end I take off my gloves, put away my tools, and come inside tired but satisfied.

I am rewarded for my efforts every time I go outside. I walk along the paths and take in an amazing variety of plant life. I notice everything about them– new growth, signs of stress, scent and blooms. The stands of iris and spiderwort around the pond; the calla lilies and Lilies of the Nile, the freesias and hosta, lobelia, rock roses, lilacs, and countless other plants: each have their own particular sort of beauty. I am humbled by my lack of knowledge about the world of gardening, but I am learning a little more every day.

It is a joke between us that my trips to the nursery are worse than the stereotypical man’s trip to the hardware store. Often I come home with more than can be planted before the day’s end. Yet there are still spaces to be filled, and the work will extend into the years ahead. The atypical beauty of this Seattle summer has been a catalyst for my sudden passion. I am grateful that for once the temperatures have been above normal and that unlike most years, this summer began well ahead of the fourth of July holiday.

It is not suprising, then, that my devotion to gardening has taken considerable time and interest away from fiber arts. But my loom, my glorious Glimakra, does not go ignored and there is a shawl on the knitting needles that gets enough attention every couple of days to grow by a few rows.

In April we lost our Whiskers to advanced kidney disease, poor old thing. We do miss him, but he had lived a long and happy life. We buried him in the back yard beside the koi that preceded him by two years; we like to think he gets a good laugh out of that.

Not too long ago we went in search of a feline replacement, for a home is incomplete without a cat.

“Let’s get a female this time,” I said.
“Let’s get a kitten, or at least one that is six months old or younger,” we said.

Thus it was agreed that we would look for a female kitten. And some days later, we brought home our new addition: two male cats, just over a year old. We thought we went to choose a cat, but it turned out (as it so often does) that we were the chosen ones.

The two who adopted us had always been together. They had been living with a bachelor who acquired a girlfriend who claimed to be allergic to cats, so he dumped them unceremoniously into an already crowded cat rescue house. The bachelor had given them the names Goose and Maverick, but this was all wrong. We knew right away that these two were Loki and Thor. Loki has proven many times that he is indeed like that mischief-maker of Norse mythology. For example, sitting atop the kitchen counter, he stages an object at its very edge and patiently waits for Claire (the lab mix) to pass by. He then pushes it ever so gently off the counter so that it will land on her head. He also thinks he can help me weave, though keeping his balance on top of the beater bar defies even his cat powers.

Thor is much more serious. A silvery Siamese mix, he sits gazing over all of us with icy blue eyes, surveying his new kingdom with satisfaction. He prefers to be affectionate on his own terms. He is a literary cat and will most often sit on my lap when I am reading.

I’ve hung up my knitting needles for a while, but have not at all ignored the material girl within.  Instead, after a bit of work to get my sewing room established, I have been enamored of making the quilt tops, both hand and machine pieced.  The actual quilting part is a long way away.

I investigated the national quilt registry, looking for quilts that were similar to those of my childhood visits to relatives, and came across a very old seven sisters pattern.  I was so entranced with that worn and stained rag that I have begun a seven sisters quilt, using the technique of English paper piecing and employing a variety of civil war reproduction fabrics.  It has only taken me two weeks to create only one half of one block; it may be a while before a whole quilt top appears.

Meanwhile, I look forward to warmer days when I will finally get to see our new tree (planted in November) bud for the first time.  Her name is Annie Oakleaf; she is a tall slender beauty, about 15 feet high.  She was our answer to the brutal murder of the neighbor trees, though it will take many years before she provides the same grandeur and shade as the old walnut.

The economical news has been so depressing that I have taken the ostrich approach, reverting to my former tactics of not listening to the radio or reading the newspaper.  It still leaks out, though, the depressing news of foreclosures and bankruptcies and bailouts.  It permeates the workplace and is visited upon me in the form of friends and relatives being laid off; it shows itself in the lighter commuter traffic and the number of shops I visit only to find closed.

A co-worker returned from a three week visit to Ireland this week, and when I asked him had he visited Waterford (the factory) he informed me that it had closed.  Apparently our young people are not continuing the tradition of using real crystal, and the whole industry is in decline.  The artistry and knowledge that went into a legendary product will no doubt be gone in a few years, replaced by plastics and gauche glass masquerading as elegant tableware.

Sherlock was disturbed to hear this news.  He always enjoys the use of fine crystal.

I wandered over to Ravelry a few moments ago to delete my account… only I found that there is no way to do such a thing.  Let’s see, I believe you can delete your profile on almost every other “social” network, so why not on Ravelry? 

I gave it over a year.  I’ve checked on my friends’ activity, read their blog posts when notified through the friends’ pages, and conducted fruitless searches for patterns that were exceptional.  In short:  I’ve wasted enough time.  And my feeling is, that if you can’t support a thing you shouldn’t be part of it.  I don’t want to be a part of it any more, but apparently all I can do is send an email and be patient until some unknown person deletes my account, but of course, that person is preoccupied with other things, and my account is their lowest priority.  Honestly, you can’t’ tell me that someone who can program an entire social site (good or bad) can’t figure out how to allow users to delete their own accounts.  It would be to their advantage, after all, to rid the database of extraneous data that consumes space and bogs down performance.  Perhaps it’s the bragging rights that are at stake here… it’s much more impressive to your geek friends if you “own” a few terabytes of data rather than just a few gigs.  But that doesn’t compute when you run a “free” website.  Maybe advertisers bank on x number of accounts being present, and therefore the accounts should persist even though they are inactive?

The thing is, things never change.  Knitters are still knitting essentially the same things, over and over and over and over.  Would I wait breathlessly for the reviews of the very same books over and over again, even though I’d already read the ones which sparked an interest?  I think not.

If you really want my opinion (too late!), Ravelry was a handy excuse for a cowboy programmer to create his own social site.  I could be wrong here:  this programmer could have had thousands of destitute knitters begging him to create the site.  And admittedly,  thousands of knitters, like sheep, came to graze in his grass.  Millions of forum posts attest to the fact that people just don’t have a rich enough life in the real world; they must augment it with forays into the imaginary worlds of other people. Not only that, but they must crown the King and Queen (unlike real social networking sites) and their little dog, too.  [yes, I detest Boston Terriers, even though I have a sister who breeds them].  I don’t know these people, and can truthfully state that I have no opinion as to their goodness or badness; I can only form opinions based on their output.

So, sounds like I have a mouth full of sour grapes, does it?  Actually, I haven’t been happier in my entire life.  It’s a situation that highlights things like Ravelry, for which I have no need and which stand in the way (if used frequently) of doing the things I really enjoy, like spending time with my husband and children.

So, if you find yourself sitting in front of the computer glancing with glazed eyes over all the Ravelry …. um… content, just ask yourself if there’s something that people you love might want to be doing with you right now.  Because if the answer is yes, even just once, you should turn off the computer and be with real people.

There’s a lot of stuff going through my head right now as I’m playing Mah Jong Titans on Windows vista (64-bit, because I need all that extra processing power to play a solitaire game, you know).

I’m thinking of the MLK observance that was held at my company this morning; how I wasn’t going to go because I had a lot of work to do and a meeting was scheduled right in the middle of it anyway, but then I heard the singing… the sound of a powerful black gospel voice. I went out to the atrium and lurked near the elevators pretending I was just on my way to somewhere else while I was really watching and listening to the singer (who turned out to be just one of a whole little choir) and I found that she was actually white, not black, and there were only three or four other singers in the little choir who were actually black, well, then…. what was I to think? What did the African-Americans think? I sneaked back to my desk, successfully avoiding all the cookies and cupcakes and bagels, and listened to them from there.

Then I was thinking that the reason I really don’t know what to write about in this blog much any more is probably because I don’t focus so much on material making like I used to, and since Happy Holler became Stormy Squalor and I moved away a couple of years ago, I don’t feel so much like exposing my secret world to the universe, even though it is wonderful and shiny and adorable in all its facets. I thought of a few funny things I’d heard recently and might pass along to my readers, but then realized that I mostly read them on other knitters’ blogs, and so maybe it would sound a lot more like plagiarism than actual amusing content.

Then I considered all the terrible flooding that has occurred in Washington in the last week or so, and the fact that more flood warnings are in effect through Friday night. Last year I was talking to a co-worker at a different company after the time when Chehalis had so much flooding that even the cows drowned. I told him I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose everything you own in a flood, only then I realized that actually I could imagine it, since it had happened to me as a child. Every time I think of May  1968, the picture that sticks in my head is my stepmother’s underwear, of a substantial size and former white-ness, strewn among the trees and bushes after the floodwaters had receded. And the fact that our beautiful little piano, brand new, was gone, as was our brand new black and white television set. But we survived.  In the present,  I lost my game of Mah Jong Titans and started a new one.

 And as I played the new game I remembered the NPR article this morning on the radio about autistic kids and how they have to be coached to have normal conversational responses, and I wondered whether autism can be selective, because there are some people with whom it is impossible for me to have a conversation. They say something, and I simply cannot come up with anything to say in return. Then a completely different person will come up and say something and suddenly I am loquacious, witty and verbose. I feel like there must be some element in the first person’s aura that blocks conversational synapses in my system. And then I lost again.

Third time is a charm, they say, and I began once again to match the silly little tiles to each other, unblocking others so that they can be matched and removed from the stack that is called the “turtle”. This reminded me of the turtles in the parking garage, though I mostly refer to them as speed bumps. They are not so nice but I do appreciate them when I am the pedestrian and not the automobile driver. Also, someone has painted pictures of windows, some stained glass, some with a fanciful view, at various intervals along the dull gray concrete walls of the parking garage, and these always make me smile. I don’t often park there since I walk most of the time, but when I do I appreciate the fact that the parking is free and that the spaces are wide enough to accommodate more than just a Smart car or Mini Cooper and allow you to open your door all the way. And then I won my game.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry I can’t think of anything to say. Maybe tomorrow I will be able to picture that person who doesn’t inspire speaker’s block in me, the one to whom I respond with something approaching interesting conversation, and I will be able to spill forth onto the screen something wonderful and worth reading. Maybe.

After all my enthusiasm for the book, Jacquard’s Web was ultimately a disappointment. 

Though the truth that modern computers (unlike their human ancestors) descended from textile technology is fascinating, the narrative  in this book is sophomoric and unengaging.  I would much rather read a dry and boring, yet accurate and unembellished textbook than to suffer the attempts of an author who, firstly, fails to write in an engaging literary fashion; secondly, is obviously unable to comprehend the subject about which he writes and thirdly, shows an appalling lack of knowledge regarding the history of the age in which his story is set.  To illustrate the last point, he tells us of how Spitalfields in London became a center for English silk weavers just like its French counterpart in Lyon.  What he doesn’t understand, or at least failed to acknowledge, is that these silk weavers were actually French refugees.  They were Huguenots who settled near London after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had previously granted them the right to worship as Protestants without fear of persecution.

After giving up on the book, I consulted other sources with regard to Charles Babbage (he who used Jacquard’s idea of punch cards to evolve his own idea of an analytical engine, one of which was never built in his own lifetime).  Babbage seems to have been the first stereotype of a computer nerd, with no apparent gift of personality but with infinite obsessive qualities which caused him to, among other things, complain incessantly about organ grinder music in the streets.  This led the London Times to write in his obituary:

“He died at his residence in Dorset-street, Marylebone, at the close of last week, at an age, [in] spite of organ-grinding persecutors, little short of 80 years.” 

The obituary goes on with dripping sarcasm and ill-hidden innuendo, to describe the man’s long life and near-achievements.

Many of my technical colleagues have expressed their belief that the programming language Ada was somehow connected with Babbage, but few have realized that Ada Lovelace, though indeed a friend of Babbage,  was in fact the daughter of Lord Byron, that poet of  tragic young death and, incidentally, perpetrator of an incestual relationship with his younger half-sister, for whom Ada was named.  Scandalous!

But I digress.  In France, Jacquard was compelled by his own poverty to create a way for a handloom to produce more than an inch of intricate silk brocade per day.  Silk brocade was coveted and paid for by royalty, and Jacquard, as a supporter of the elite,  was on the wrong side of the revolution. When he realized which side was winning he conveniently changed his allegiance.  Luckily, this little fact was not discovered and later, when the famous loom had been invented,  Napoleon (a lover of fine rich silken clothing) paraded him about as a model citizen.  My cynical self wonders if Jacquard would have been as happy about “donating” his invention to France if he had not been somewhat fearful about being found to have fought on the “wrong” side earlier.

Babbage, by contrast, was born with the proverbial silver spoon lodged firmly between his gums; his motivation for producing his steam-powered cogwheel-laden “Difference Engine” and later the “Analytical Engine” was sheerly for fun, entertainment, egotism and perhaps the possibility of future fame.  Of the two, I vastly prefer Jacquard.

Meanwhile, back in the present, I am knitting away on the Curve of Pursuit. In this, the good honest Irish yarn from  Blackwater Abbey  in colors “navy” and “haw” seem to follow each other around a descending spiral, an effect achieved by short rows in miles and miles of garter stitch.  Luckily there is a new book in the background, The Voyage of A Summer Sun.  And it is good.