knitting a life

Swim meet

December 21, 2009 by knitting a life

Sunday afternoon (after I had my first (great!) experience with a spinning class) my brother and I took my niece to her swim club swim meet at the local community college pool.

Not having been a swimmer growing up, this was a new experience for me. My niece, however, is already an old hand (as is her father).

The afternoon started with a vigorous warm-up. Since there were several clubs competing there were a lot of kids in each lane of the pool. Luckily I saw very few collisions.

After about thirty minutes of practice the meet started.

My niece, A, competed in five events: the 100 yard individual medley, the 50 yard freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke, and the monstrous 200 yard freestyle.

I was incredibly impressed with A’s stamina, poise and good spirits as the meet progressed. Even though she had been up (too) late the night before, she finished every event and came in a very close second in the breaststroke for her age group.

The final event was the 200 yard freestyle; a truly grueling race that I knew A was not looking forward to swimming. In the end, she decided to go for it

and swam every lap.

Bursting with pride is too mild a description for how I felt at the end of the day.

Posted in St. Louis, family | 1 Comment »

Trimming the tree

December 18, 2009 by knitting a life

The children have been eager to decorate the tree ever since we picked it out at the Boy Scout lot down the street the other day. We put them off until tonight.

After a hearty vegetarian chili dinner, we pull the boxes of decorations from the basement and set to work.

There are the usual challenges: untangling the lights, finding the hooks,

unpacking the glass balls

and other ornaments.

Remarkably, only one ball is broken.

There are also stockings to unfold

and a star to be placed on the top of the tree. Twice.

By the end, the tree is practically dripping with ornaments

and we are all remembering other trees, in this house and others, with these people and with others, as we climb the stairs to sleep.

Posted in family | 1 Comment »

Walking to school

December 17, 2009 by knitting a life

One of the things I most look forward to when I am visiting my family is walking my nephew to school in the morning.

It’s not a long walk, but there is something peaceful about being out with all of the other parents and kids and dogs converging on the neighborhood school in the frosty morning air.

The other thing that I like about this particular walk is how familiar it feels. Not only because I have done it many times before, but because of the uniquely St. Louis flavor of the sights along the way.

The limestone wall outside my nephew’s school is just like the one that surrounded the playground of my own elementary school

and the sweetgum balls that we kick aside remind me of the neighborhood where I grew up, just a few miles from here.

Posted in St. Louis, family, recollections | 4 Comments »

Food memories

December 14, 2009 by knitting a life

I am not sure why, but recently I have been craving stuffed cabbage. It’s one of the dishes my mother used to make and I remember it as hearty and filling and flavorful; a wonderful one-dish Sunday supper.

If I cooked with meat it would be easier to recreate my mother’s recipe (which used ground beef and rice in the stuffing), but since I don’t I had to find a meatless alternative. The recipe I finally settled on used Middle Eastern spices instead of the Eastern European flavors that I remember growing up.

Like my mother’s version, this recipe begins with rice; in this case, flavored with turmeric.

Instead of meat, I used lentils,

cooked on top of the stove and then mixed with the turmeric-scented rice, sauteed onions and garlic, toasted almonds and golden raisins.

I carefully unfurled the cabbage leaves and stuffed them with the rice and lentil mixture

(a little surprised that the recipe did not suggest that I steam the cabbage first) and laid the rolls gently in a baking dish. I drizzled them with the simple, cinnamon-spiked tomato sauce and baked the casserole for about 40 minutes.

The result? A hearty, spicy and filling winter meal.

Posted in cooking, family, food, recollections | 5 Comments »

Learning to knit

December 12, 2009 by knitting a life

Last week one of the commenters on my blog asked me about when and how I learned to knit and I decided to respond here. It’s not a long story but it comes with pictures.

My mother was not a knitter. Maybe in reaction to her own mother, who was a high school art and home ec. teacher, she didn’t sew or knit, though she had an eye for design and color that I envied.

One of my prized possessions, however, is this pair of socks, knitted by my mother for my father.

My mother’s sense of humor is clearly evident in the bell she sewed on the pointed toe of one of the pair; the socks’ lack of symmetry (and lack of similarity to the shape of a human foot) meant they were never worn and probably accounts for the fact that I still have them more than 50 years after they were made.

All of this means that I did not learn to knit from my mother. Instead, I was taught by a dear friend when I was first in graduate school in Ann Arbor, MI in 1983, otherwise learning to be a geologist. Knitting was something that I could do when I wasn’t studying that felt productive and didn’t make me feel guilty for avoiding school work.

Since that time, knitting has come and gone in my life. Sometimes I knit every day, other times I don’t knit for months on end. A return to graduate school (this time to earn a PhD in education) resulted in another period of intense knitting. This sweater was knitted during my first month in Madison, WI as I waited for classes to begin.

Living in Maine brought on another knitting phase. I made a lot of things during that time, including this hat (knitted from a pattern designed by the wonderful knitters at the Green Mountain Spinnery in Putney, VT)

and this scarf that I dreamed up all on my own.

While in Maine I also took up sculptural knitting, enrolling in no fewer than three classes on the subject and creating all kinds of things including fruit

and eggs.

As regular readers of this blog know, I have been knitting a lot since moving to Portland. One of my favorite recent projects is a collaboration with the grandson of a good friend. Last spring I received the following detailed drawing in the mail