scifiknitter

Over the winter, the National Gallery of Canada hosted a major exhibition of the work of M. C. Escher. It turns out that they have one of the largest collections of Escher’s work in the world, because Escher’s son George lived in Nova Scotia and gave a large number of prints to the museum. I was fortunate to go to Ottawa before the exhibit closed to spend some leisurely, up-close, and high-quality time with 54 of Escher’s prints. There is an advantage to going to see an art show midweek during the day after it’s been open for a while: you will have the gallery pretty much to yourself, and can take as long as you like looking at each image. The disadvantage was that there wasn’t enough time for me to go back up to see the show a second time. This show would have been well worth a second viewing. Escher began his career as a landscape artist working in Italy. I didn’t know this, and I was stunned by the images he created during this period. Here is Bonifacio, Corsica , a woodblo...

I’ve thought about luck for a long time. For me, luck is what happens in our lives that we cannot control - which is a big chunk of all of our lives. We learn early to judge, so we label the stuff we can’t control “good luck” and “bad luck”. When I look at the luck in my life over the past year, I find myself using those labels often to describe what has happened. I wonder how useful they are. All of my exercises in writing a short biography, which is something you do if you are active on social media sites, as I am, have included the word luck. One of my earliest attempts at summarizing my life included, “Although no one will remember me when I die, I am one of the luckiest people who has ever lived.” Since my lung cancer diagnosis, I’ve decided those words would not be easy for another to understand, whether or not I still believe them, so I’ve rewritten that part of my short biography as, “I’m very content to be one of the little people, whose names aren’t recorded in history books...

When I was diagnosed with stage IV cancer, one of my very first thoughts was that I would never knit another sweater for myself. It’s hard to justify the work if you aren’t going to be around very long to enjoy it, right? However, I have changed my attitude, and have proceeded with my knitting with two precepts in mind: 1) I do not know what the future shall bring. 2) I can knit whatever I want to. A particular group of eight skeins in my stash was calling to me. Beautiful Classic Elite Yarns Inca Alpaca in a rich, complex shade of coral. I bought the yarn as a closeout when a yarn store went out of business, and realized later that while the yarn was a bargain there were also three dye lots included in that bundle of eight skeins. Mixing dye lots is a perilous business, as yarn dying can vary slightly from batch to batch. It’s sad to realize that you have a demarcation line in your work where the color changes, and once you see that, you cannot unsee it. I finally decided on a project...

The material below is adapted from a piece I have submitted to the smartpatients.com patient support website. The phone call took me by surprise. Jon M., a man I’ve known and respected for many years, called me on behalf of the Worship Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Canton, New York. He told me that it was hard for him to call me, because he was asking me to give a sermon at the church on my experiences and thoughts as a stage IV lung cancer patient. My response surprised me even more. I said yes. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but even more than whatever good such a sermon could do for others, I knew that doing this work - writing and delivering a sermon on my discovery that I am mortal - would be good for me, and it would be consistent with how I live my life. I also could not think of a more supportive audience for what I might have to say. I agreed to give the sermon on March 1, 6 weeks from the date of the call. My gut told me not to wait too long. My gut was corr...

So much has happened since I last published a blog entry, it’s difficult to start writing again- where do I start? I have been writing, but in other venues. I wrote a sermon, and I wrote a piece for a patient support web site. More on that in subsequent posts. Right now, I want to write about our daughter Ana. When I think of her, I think of what Kahlil Gibran wrote about children in The Prophet : Your children are not your children.   They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.   They come through you but not from you,   And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.   You may give them your love but not your thoughts.   For they have their own thoughts.   You may house their bodies but not their souls,   For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.   You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.   For life goes no...

I think that I have spent my entire life resisting the particular structure known as a schedule. Ask my homeroom teachers about how often I was late to school. Ask all of my bosses about whether I struggled to get to work on time. Ask my poor, hungry husband about my ability to put supper on the table at a consistent and reasonable hour. Ask my daughter about my ability to get her to college on time the year that we commuted together. (My daughter has chosen to rebel against her upbringing by becoming a time-conscious, prompt, and on-schedule person. Good choice!) Knowing this, you can predict what an amorphous shape my days have taken since retirement. I have a list of daily goals and I do a pretty good job of meeting them, but when things will happen is not defined, and each day becomes increasingly busy with activity as I run out of waking hours to accomplish my goals. The one constant defining point of my day’s structure is taking my Tarceva, which I do first thing in the morning. ...

Through the twists and turns of a life-changing year, I kept on knitting. One project knit during the turmoil of spring and summer did not get recorded in pictures or on Ravelry, but I have a stand-in at the ready to represent it. A toque for Ana. The pattern is by Anna Zilboorg from her book 45 Fine and Fanciful Hats to Knit , a favorite of mine. Very pretty, but someone stole this out of Ana’s mailbox in Montreal and she never got to wear it. That’s OK - to tell the truth, the yarn was kind of scratchy and this was probably not going to be a successful hat in the wearing. So, onward to a replacement toque: Better colors to match her winter jacket, and much more satisfactory yarn. There is quite a bit of cashmere in that white yarn - mmmmm, soft. Two pairs of fingerless gloves. The pair on the left was for Ana, the pair on the right was for me. The pattern: Hexagon Mitts by Sybil R. This is a fun project that starts with the thumb, grows outward, and then down. The orange yarn in my p...