Turtlefat Collection Goes Retail and I Can Write Again

The only thing that could keep me from blogging for almost two months is the need to keep a secret. Finally I can reveal what made me keep silent! Only a couple of people knew that my handknits were being considered for retail sale in a lovely Minneapolis boutique. Last week, Larues officially gave me my first order! I am thrilled beyond belief. I never thought my hats and gloves would find their way to a sweet, fashionable, modern store like Larues! My baby sister lives in Minneapolis and shops there, and she thought we'd be a good match, so she asked me to send her some samples to take in. Thanks, Dot!

Meanwhile, I had to get back into the swing of the Chattanooga Market, so I've had three days of great sales and fun there. With a limited display I can do setup and breakdown alone. I will have to endure whatever weather we have for the next few weeks, but this year the Market will have two weekends of preChristmas sales at an indoor venue! I'm going to be at Warehouse Row on the 10th and 11th of December, and again on the 17th and 18th. Hurray for working warm.

I hate to mention health right now. I am really feeling my weight. My knees hurt terribly with any walking or standing, and even sometimes when there's no weight on them. My fracture is healed by x-ray, but I still have a good bit of work to get my full motion and strength back in the right arm. I am having digestive problems and hoping it doesn't herald another episode of colitis. I've been free of it for years, and it has only occurred rarely, so I can't remember if indigestion and stomach pain preceded it before. I just remember having bloody bowel movements. I'm not anxious to have another colonoscopy but if it recurs I certainly will.

I've been looking into surgical weight loss procedures. I think I've exhausted my alternatives. I can't make my body handle the prednisone any better. I'm not making headway using a very sensible, reduced calorie diet. My exercise options have shrunk drastically. I'm ready to start seeing surgeons. (The time is now...did the Walrus say that because she had a big belly, too?)

The good good news is that I am inundated with design ideas. They are in my head multiplying all the time. I'm excited by color and texture to a ridiculous degree - a gorgeous hank of hand-dyed yarn can make me tear up. I showed some of my recent favorites. The hot pink with navy accents is Colinette Jitterbug sock yarn. The flowers are crochet. The blue/gray/tan beret is knit with Noro Silk Garden, one of my all-time favorite yarns. The combination of silk, mohair and a touch of wool always feels great to me, and I admire Noro for his perpetual production of organic yarns using innovative, ecofriendly processes. The tan scarf with the ruffled edge is organic cotton. I've had enough people tell me they don't tolerate animal fibers to convince me that it is worth making some winter hats and scarves from the bulkier, thick organic cottons like this Blue Sky undyed. The scarf pin is a hand-dyed polished wood from one of my favorite Etsy stores, South 4th. I've used a number of his beautiful pins and buttons. Just running my fingers over them is soothing.

Enough! I am running over with conversation because of my long absence. I can write more later.
Peace.

Abstract Me

Today I was crocheting a water bottle holder and it turned into a cosmetic/jewelry pouch. A circle done in crochet can easily get out of control. One or two extra rounds and you have the base of a purse. Another couple of rounds and it's a placemat. Keep going, it's a bedside rug. It doesn't take long to knit a house cover when you're going round and round in crochet. That is one of the things I like about using that crochet hook. You can pick a stitch, use it mindlessly, and just keep going. When you are finished, you cut the yarn, pull it through one stitch, and voila! it's a whatever-you-want-thinga-ma-bobby. It is very easy for me to make three-dimensional shapes with crochet, making rows turn and take off in other directions, connecting parts to form cones and rings and knobs, or satisfying my desire for caffeinated, off-the-charts asymmetry. I know that there will come a time when I stop worrying about the sale-ability of my crochet pieces, and turn them into the abstracts that they long to be.

Sometimes I think I was meant to be an abstract. I am older, with the softened jawline and fuzzy dumpling shape of a 52-year-old who has lived on prednisone for almost two decades. As parts get saggier, lumpier, more affected by gravity and medicines and lupus, they show their asymmetry more. Seen in the dark, or as a shadow on the wall, I can imagine myself a mysterious, amorphous creature that is the sculpture made by a mad scientist-artist like...myself. Oddly enough, I appreciate this, or at least I do not run from it. I can look in the mirror and see interesting shapes and evolution without crying for that past body. I know that my slim, crisp, muscular shape, the 35 year-old body just before lupus, was healthier and more conventionally attractive, but this is the body that holds me now. Now I am older, wiser, experienced, more compassionate, much more patient. Now I let my creativity reign, enjoy my own humor, and listen to my feelings. In its own way, the body works well. It is hearty, flexible, endures pain well and expresses pleasure luxuriously. It is not a shell to be discarded.

I think about this when I meet new men. Can they appreciate the miracle of health and life hard-won, the number of treatments this body has endured to be functioning so well in the present? Or do they just see the asymmetry and lumpiness and "lack of self control" that modern morons see as the basis for all bodies that blossom with obesity? Unlike the stereotypical woman polled, I do not prefer death or stupidity (a kind of death) to obesity. I'll take what I've got and live in it.

In elementary school, my daughter would say, "Mommy, you are soft." She never asked if something was wrong, or why I wasn't thinner or harder like other moms. Now 21, she draws and paints abstracts.

Peace.