Announcing…

Lily Carol

Tuesday, November 23, 2009

12:59 pm

8 lbs., 7 ozs.

20.75″ long

Thanksgiving Wishes

My wonderful friend Buffy, who now lives in Lebanon, sent the following Thanksgiving wish which I’d like to share with you.

Capillifolium Baby Bonnet

In the January/February 2009 issue of PieceWork magazine, you’ll find a pattern by designer and artist Alice Starmore. When Alice, who grew up in a Scottish fishing village and who still lives on the Isle of Lewis in the Scottish Hebrides, is asked about sources for her designs she says, “I find inspiration in the most unlikely places; I don’t have a favorite, but my most-often-used resource is the sea.” Her Capillifolium Baby Bonnet to Knit (my version at left, hers below) is a lovely example of her work. Here she combines designs and colors from nature (the botanical name for the sphagnum mosses prevalent on Alice’s Isle of Lewis is Sphagnum capillifolium) into a tiny cap for a precious newborn.

My amazingly thoughtful friend Becky ordered some of Alice’s yarn – all the way from Scotland! – and gave it to me to make a cap for my granddaughter Lily who will be born Monday. The cap will have a little tag inside, a gift from my friend Sandra, that reads: “Made with Love by Grandma.” I hope Lily will receive the blessing of the sea in good health and happiness. I also offer this Scottish blessing:

May the blessing of light be on you, light without and light within. May the blessed sunlight shine on you like a great peat fire, so that stranger and friend may come and find warmth at it. And may light shine out of the two eyes of you, like a candle set in the window of a house, bidding the wanderer come in out of the storm. And may the blessing of the rain be on you, may it beat upon your Spirit and wash it fair and clean, and leave there a shining pool where the blue of Heaven shines, and sometimes a star. And may the blessing of the earth be on you, soft under your feet as you pass along the roads, soft under you as you lie out on it, tired at the end of day; and may it rest easy over you when, at last, you lie out under it. May it rest so lightly over you that your soul may be out from under it quickly; up and off and on its way to God. And now may the Lord bless you, and bless you kindly. Amen.

The next time I write on my blog, I will be a grandmother, and my world will have changed in a small but dramatic way.

How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of heaven.

For more on Alice Starmore: Alice’s bestselling book, Alice Starmore’s Book of Fair Isle Knitting, has just been re-released in paperback by Dover Publications. Her yarns can be seen at Virtual Yarns. Click here to learn more about Alice as artist. And check out this previous post.

Kelmscott

I just found this knitting pattern in the Winter edition of Twist Collective’s online knitting magazine. The pattern is by Carol Sunday of Sunday Knits and features her yarn, Angelic. The Kelmscott is described as a “tribute to William Morris and his era, an artful cardigan with lace panels, collar, and decorative touches at the wrist.” Thanks, Carol, for this beautiful work of art!

For more on William Morris, see previous posts here, here, here, and here.

He’s All Yours, Virginia

The Virginian Pilot reports today that: “Fresh off his landslide victory in the race for Virginia governor, Bob McDonnell is already being forced to confront how he plans to handle his friendship with minister Pat Robertson, a longtime ally but also a controversial figure, once he takes office.” The article goes on to say that Robertson and his family contributed approximately $35,000 to McDonnell’s campaign for governor. They previously contributed more than $60,000 to his campaign four years ago for Attorney General. [As a matter of full disclosure, the article mostly centers around Robertson's anti-Muslim comments in response to the Ft. Hood tragedy which he made this past week on his television show, The 700 Club.]

You out there in the real world might be shocked that Virginians were fooled into electing McDonnell – clearly a person who holds archaic and oppressive social, political, and religious views – in an 18-point landslide.

Well, we weren’t.

Fooled, that is.

We knew full well what we were getting into (see previous blog post here).

On November 3, 2009, the day after the election, Pat Robertson is quoted by his own Christian Broadcasting Network as saying this about McDonnell’s victory: “Our motto at Regent is ‘Christian Leadership to Change the World,’ and this is the way we do it.”

Um, Pat…I’m just one person, and a girl at that, but I think Jesus said we should change the world by feeding the poor and healing the sick. The $100,000 you gave to McDonnell in campaign money could’ve made a difference in a lot of lives.

Nick Nolte, in the movie version of Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides (more here), sums up my feelings when his character says at a New York dinner party, “That’s what I like about the South.” And in case you don’t know the movie, Nolte gives the line exactly the same amount of acidic sarcasm that I would if I were saying it.

More Nor’easter Photos

These photos were taken by my artist friend Carolyn Rhoads at her home in York County. In the first photo, you can see the dock is nearly under water. In the last photo, swans swim down the river in the aftermath of the storm. Read more about Carolyn here and here.

Alexander’s on the Bay

Cena Shafiee steadies his father Ali Shafiee as he tries to retrive an item from the debris in his restaurant, Alexander’s on the Bay. Alexander’s on the Bay, in the Chic’s Beach section of Virginia Beach, has stood here for more than two decades and has withstood many storms. (Vicki Cronis-Nohe | The Virginian-Pilot)

More photos here.

Two Poems

My friend Michal Mahgerefteh, author of In My Bustan (cover at right) and other books of poetry as well as founder, Publisher, and Poetry Editor of Poetica Magazine: Reflections of Jewish Thought, says she’s taking a short break from poetry to paint. With profound apologies to Michal, I’ve decided to write a little poetry to take a break from, er, whatever it is I do. (Be sure and read more about Michal in an earlier blog post here.)

Iambic Haiku

Iambic pentameter

is a rhyme scheme that

makes you want to grind your teeth.

* * * * *

Design

Where to

place the words

on the page

so that

they’re

more

readable?

laughable?

likeable?

is

a

m          y          s          t          e          r          y.

Is that the sound of “peace on earth, good will to all” I’m hearing?

2-4-6-8
Tis’ the time to liberate!
Go Christmas! Go Hanukkah! Go Kwanzaa! Go Solstice!
Go classic tree! Go plastic tree! Go plant a tree! Go without a tree!
You 86 the Rules!
You do what just feels right!
Happy do whatever you wanukkah,
And to all, a cheery night!

This is Gap’s holiday commerical, and I had thought I would write about it.

I was going to write about it because it made me think. It made me think about how what’s most important during the holiday season is our friends and families and those special traditions that mean so much to us year after year… and how the economy is making all of us a little more thankful for the simple things in life. And about how the mention of “solstice” reminded me that winter is about settling in, drawing close to the hearth, and reflecting on the year gone past and the year to come.

I wanted to write about how the commercial entertained me. The dancing and rhyming are energizing, and the whole thing is colorful. I love the gal who tries to surf on the guy sliding across the floor, and the snowflake is fabulous.

I wanted to write about how the commercial says something about our society, something I can’t fully articulate but I think is about organized religion – all organized religion – and how those organizations have failed us in our spiritual journeys, especially when our organized religions have excluded and prejudged. How they’ve failed us to the point where we feel the best hope is just to “do whatever we wanukkah.”

But not realizing that I could go on Gap’s website and watch the commercial, I made the mistake of Googling the commercial so I could find the lyrics to copy them here for you so you could think about them too. And that’s when I ran into the the fact that this commercial has become incredibly controversial, a battlefield for conservatives vs. liberals, and another feather in the cap of those “don’t take Christ out of Christmas” people who always scare me when they scowl at me and yell, “Merry CHRISTmas!”

So why bother. There might have been the small sound of “peace on earth, good will to all” in there somewhere, but it got drowned out by rhetoric and politics, and suddenly I’m feeling very, very tired…far too tired to write about it.

So I’ll just be cynical like the rest of the world and point out the obvious:

Just in time for the Christmas-Hanukkah-Kwanzaa-Solstice Shopping Season, Gap has found an amazing way to get everyone talking about them. Imagine that.

Waiting for Lily

Once upon a time

a November Nor’easter

got tangled up with the remnants of Hurricane Ida

and it rained so much in Virginia Beach

that the ground

squish-squoshed.

 

The wind howled,

and even the ducks ran for cover.

 

And I sat in my rocking chair and knitted you a sweater

because

soon…     soon…