A Birdy Day: 100 Days (15)

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Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 15:

Today was jam-packed. I left church early to get to a vision board workshop, and arrived late at the Singing Resistance Training because it started at the same time the workshop ended. This is a hard schedule for someone who usually tries to plan no more than one thing a day. But all the things were great things.

One the way to Lancaster this morning, I passed beneath six or seven skeins of snow geese, saw a vulture stretching its wings to the sun on a snag, and drove beneath a raven. A birdy morning.

Last night, I kept hearing the geese calling in the night as I was going to sleep. My friend Sarah calls this an ancient flyway. Yes. What an honor to live here. I can’t remember the air being so filled with geese and swans for years!

With all the busyness of the day, I only finished eight hearts and flowers. I arranged them around the Community card from the Between Worlds Oracle, because community was the name of my game today.

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Small Thoughts on Media: 100 Days (14)

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Day 14:

Thoughts on Media in an age of Fascist Media Takeover:

1. I’m already extricated from many of the main compromised sources. I haven’t been watching news on CNN or CBS or the others for years. I prefer NPR and The Guardian.

2. It’s almost impossible to completely extricate ourselves from the fascist billionaire bros—here I am using IG and FB for my own writing and connection.

3. There are some excellent voices to listen to, alternative media sources: Heather Cox Richardson, The Contrarian, The Bulwark, The Intercept, Brian Tyler Cohen (some of these are still pretty white male sources). I read folks on Substack, like Lissa Rankin, Lisa Gonzalez, HCR, and Robert Reich (one white male I trust).

4. If they’re easily distracted by the “newest” outrage and cannot keep reporting on the Epstein files and the abuses of ICE and CBP, I am less likely to trust a news source. Yes, they should be reporting on Iran, too, and the ballroom, and definitely the abuse of the planet. And someone should be keeping regular tabs on the president’s declining cognitive and physical health.

Today’s Project: I knitted on the way to and from West Chester to pick up the college kid for Spring Break (I wasn’t driving, of course). I started just above the pink line, and knitted about 5-6”. We stopped at Labadie Looms in Smoketown on the way home to buy some yellow roving to spin.

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Trust Your Instincts: 100 Days (13)

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Day 13:

Some takeaways from recent revelations:
1. Trust your instincts and intuition. If a man skeeves you out, even a bit, keep your distance. This applies to spiritual teachers as well as acquaintances.

2. Research. If you’re going to a workshop or conference with powerful teachers, do some internet searching first to see what they’ve been up to.

3. Center the voices of women and girls, trans and gay folks, people of color, and poor people. If you are not in one (perhaps several) of those categories, sit back and listen.

4. Find teachers who are not white, male, rich, powerful, heteronormative. Be your own best teacher and guide. Seek community.

5. If that spiritual growth conference or panel is made up primarily of men, or of white people, or of straight people, be suspicious.

6. Scour your social media and to unfollow Deepak Chopra and others who had relationships with the abusers. Maybe while you’re at it, unfollow the influencers who have kept silent about their colleagues’ collusion with the pedophiles. Or write to them and ask them why they are not speaking out.

Today’s project: More rows on The Alone Together Poncho-Thing

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#The100DayProject: Day 12

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Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 12:

Tassel on the hat. Most successful hat tassel I’ve ever done. And the hat is really big. I followed the pattern I found on the internet, but didn’t have size 5 needles, so I used size 6, and that seems to have been the problem. Sigh. I will still wear it. Might make another.   (Hmmm. But that would be started ANOTHER project rather than finishing one already begun. . .)

And I taught some folks to knit tonight! I’ve never been really good at explaining knitting, but these were quick learners, and they were patient with me.

I am making steady progress with The Alone Together Poncho-thing. Tomorrow is my last day of Break, so my progress on all projects will slow down. Some people go traveling for spring break. Some people clean house. I knitted.

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Nisselue: #The100DayProject (11)

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Day 11:

My brain: One day, it’s full of squirrels chasing each other and generally making a mess of things. The next day, I get so hyper-focused on one single task that the whole day is gone before I realize it.

Today was one of those latter days. I started working on the Nisselue, the red Norwegian knitted cap that represented resistance to the fascist empire of the Nazis. Before I knew it, I had finished the hat, and the day was nearly done. I’ve blocked it and it’s drying now. Tomorrow, I will add the tassel. (Oh, and I cast on and knitted the first couple rows of another attempt at the front of The Alone Together Sweater, round three.)

Let’s be so single-minded in our work for justice and an end to violence, shall we? What roles shall we take up?

Witness
Mutual Aid
Advocacy
Speaking Out
Vigils
Making Connections

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Fail Better: #The100DayProject (10)

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Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 10:
Here’s the thing: I made some adjustments to the pattern thinking it wouldn’t affect the outcome much. It’s been two years, so Bagger no longer has the free pattern on her IG page, so I couldn’t use it even if I tried. My idea to create two panels with slight decreases at the top simply didn’t work. I put it all together this morning, and I hated the shape of it. I’ve never made a sweater before, and I have been hoping that I could just make a lovely messy thing that I would love to wear.

So I unraveled again today. I’m a little frustrated, but also determined to make the final sweater something I WANT to wear. Maybe I’ll make a poncho? I’m going to set it aside for a while and work on this hat, and some of my other projects.

So it has been a bit of a Samuel Beckett project so far. “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

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Sleeves: #The100DayProject (9)

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Day 9:
Second sleeve is finished! I’ll begin to put it all together tomorrow. Ugh. I’m nervous that it just won’t look right.

I tried beginning the Norwegian Resistance Tassel Cap today. Got about five rows in and lost track of where I was in the ribbing. Ripped it out. Tried again, got confused again. Unraveled. Cast on. Unraveled. Cast on, unraveled. I think the lesson is not to try watching a show while I am trying to begin a knitting project. 

And sometimes life is like that. I think I have learned a lesson. Grown. Become. Then find myself back at the beginning again, reworking stitches I thought I had  mastered. Unraveling bits in order to find a more suitable rhythm, less mess, less chaos.  And then it comes, and you get it, and you can’t remember why the beginning was so hard.

Focus. I think this hat needs to be a magickal hat, needs me to focus on my intentions as I knit. Tomorrow I will ground myself and breathe before I cast on those stitches. Casting on sounds satisfyingly like witchcraft.

Also. Witch hazel blossoms bloom in the winter. I took a photo of these at my friend Sarah’s house today. I think I am ready to bloom, too.

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No War: #The100DayProject Day 8

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Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 8:
How do we resist the forces of Empire and White Supremacy and Patriarchy and Christian Nationalism, which are—really—one and the same? We make the world we envision, the matrisphere (as Perdita Finn calls it), the communities of nurture and sustenance and protection, and we grow these communities as we watch the towers fall.

Their world is beginning to tip and tilt and fall apart, and rich white men are going to start trying to save their own selves. In the process, they’re going to start turning on each other, eating each other, pushing each other down so that they can try to stay afloat. The people will be there to push them out of the way, because we have a bigger thing to do. We have circles of community to preserve and to build. We have children to protect. We have nurturing and sustaining to do. We don’t have time for their hate and their lies. They’re going to take each other down, and when they do we will be there with our soup and our hope and our bandages and our knitting and our spinning and we will create a new world. Let it be so.

Project work today: About twelve rows on knitting on the second sleeve, Another 10 or so hearts and flowers for Pride, a No War sign on the coffee table, and participation in Deborah Oak Cooper’s Wave Goodbye to the Patriarchy Spell.

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#The100DayProject: Day 7

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Day 6:
My heart is heavy today with the reports of US and Israeli attacks on Iran. 

This morning my Book Group talked about this book, The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife, about a case of mistaken identity that brings redemption and healing to a series of tragic and painful stories. The primary issue of mistaken identity revolves around the idea that so often people don’t really see elders. And the main character, through his own terrible grief, is able to truly and deeply see the people he encounters.

How can I be a better Seer of others? How can I not let anyone go unnoticed or ignored? 

I crocheted hearts and flowers as we talked.  Each little heart, each little flower, is a prayer for peace.  Later, I finished the first sleeve of The Alone Together Sweater and began the second. I’m feeling anxious about whether it will be a cohesive garment when I finish.

The golden winter aconite were alive with the electric hum of the Little Sisters, and the barn overhang was swarming with the coming and goings from the wild hive.

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#The100DayProject Day 6

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Day 6:
“The best reason for a knitter to marry is that you can’t teach the cat to be impressed when you finish a lace scarf.” ― Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, At Knit’s End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much

Actually, my biggest knitting fan is my cat, and I think he can’t wait until I am finished with The Alone Together Sweater, so I can wear it and he can sit on me.

Today is another day of Parent Teacher Conferences. I’ve never taught at a school that brings me such joy during PTConferences. We do team meetings, and we sit around and talk about how the student has grown, strategizing ways to make learning easier and more effective. The high schoolers attend their own conferences, and they participate in the strategy sessions. Today at the end of a session a student gave an impromptu speech about how much Janus has supported their personal and academic growth, and their parent had everybody getting teary talking about how proud they are of their student’s persistence and kindness and creativity.

Today I got to the ribbing at the wrist of the sleeve, and made nine little hearts for Pride, holding onto that beautiful and loving energy of my students and their parents and my colleagues. May we all See each other with such gracious eyes.

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