Okay-dee. Back to the intimate details of knitting. Today, I worked a bit on a long-term scarf project, simple, straightforward, mostly one color, row after row of identical stitches, hut-two-three-four. A more perfectionist type person might appreciate it for its careful continuum of the original plan with few deviations.

However, today being Tax Day, and other pressures in the works, I made a boo-boo in the middle of a row - not terrible - but an obvious little awkward change, a bulge, a slight opening. It drew the eye. Ooops! error.

So. With the experience earlier this week of 'the same mistake over and over' scarf still in mind, I decided this time I'd stop, back up, repair the problem.

I had to back up several rows to get to the spot, which was easy to fix once I was there. But! it was kind of scary. I pulled the yarn, and the rows quickly unraveled - one steady pull! I could have taken apart five feet of scarf - the whole creation - in a blink.

I mentioned in the earlier post this week that dismantling 'the same mistake over and over' scarf was taking longer than I'd hoped. Well, I never did finish the dismantling. I still have half the scarf. Even though gaping holes were evolving in the thing, it was not easy to dismantle. Its framework is strong, and insistent on survival.

So though it might look scruffy, holy and ratty, it hangs together. It's still here. More integrity than I realized.

I suppose I could come up with some sort of sum-it-up platitude, but I won't. Just finding pleasure in the knitting.

(thank you, Carol....).

first we pay our taxes, and then....

my room tonight is paved with paper.
the classic procrastinator,
i search for my tax info on the next to very last day.
there are hundreds of receipts in duplicate and triplicate,
multiple mailings from banks with special credit card offers,
empty credit checks just begging to be filled out,
catalogs and dogalogs and sample magazines,
flyers tucked in with utility bills;
they're all tossed to the floor,
a visual cacophony.
i swim across a paper pool
in search of sunken documents.
what if this were my very last day?
what a pathetic way to go.

I've hardly begun unraveling the scarf, and lightning has begun to flicker through the blinds. Thunder is fiercely grumbling.

There are so many of them, I sometimes name the scarves I knit. There are the banana tree scarves, and there is the cloud scarf. There is the voodoo scarf, and the mouse scarf. There are several scarves I call 'rugged start', and they tend to come out pretty handsomely. Then, one night, I went all out. I knitted the scarf called 'the same mistake over and over'. Early on, I could tell I'd done something wrong, but decided to see if I could turn the mistake into a triumph. I repeated the mistake, and repeated the mistake. The result was rather beautiful, a good yarn with a pattern of soft little tufts that had been entirely unplanned. However, after I was finished binding off, I soon discovered the scarf lacked integrity. A tug here and there, and a gaping hole appeared, and another.

I tried to find a way to knit onto it, to repair it, but I'm not that advanced in my skills. So finally, tonight, I decided to disassemble the thing, first time ever. It's not taking as long as it took to assemble, but it's taking longer than I hoped. And the thunder continues to be loud and crackling.

Every day, almost, except Sunday when they're closed, I walk to the corner store. It's about half a mile away, say. They don't have everything we need at all times, but they have most everything, and the other stuff, well, it can wait. I dress for the weather and don't worry because I know I'm going to go - no decision to fret about. I carry a tote bag or two, and buy what we want for the day. Yesterday it was bananas, orange sherbet, and V-8.

Those who work there have faces that are familiar. They say, how you doing, and I say I'm alright, how about you, and they say good, good.

It feels very good coming back with the goods in my bag, not a chore, even when it's a little heavy. The dogs along the way have come to know me, and wag their tails, barking just enough for government work and no more. My feet know where the cracks in the sidewalk are, and to cross the street where there's the least traffic. There's the school crosswalk man with his reflective vest. Sometimes, kids are out walking to school, or riding their bikes. They look so unguarded, so real; you can tell the weather by their gait, by their faces, by the pitch of their voices.

'The Frozen Thames' (1677)
by Dutch painter Abraham Hondius (?-1691)
This image is from Wikimedia Commons.

This paragraph and the above image captured my interest today.

'In the 1600s, caravans of oxen carts laden with metal and hides departed from what is now Santa Fe, New Mexico; traveled 330 miles south; and then crossed over the frozen surface of the Rio Grande into what we know today as Mexico. From 1607 to 1814, citizens in England periodically held huge ice fairs on the frozen Thames River. In 1780, it was so cold that people walked from Manhattan to Staten Island over the frozen New York Harbor.'

'When the Sun Takes a Vacation: The effects of an extended leave'
Evelyn Browning Garriss
The Old Farmer's Almanac 2013

i'm sorry
i keep forgetting
it's on the tip of my tongue
my feet are heading
straight for the destination
in their grownup shoes
snap! my mind goes blank.
i take a left
or maybe a right
or turn 180 degrees
and when i remember
(my mind filled with daisies,
or beans simmering on the stove)
if i remember
(the class, the reunion, your birthday)
is so long long past

Been listening to Moody Blues' 1967 album, 'In Search of the Lost Chord' (which I've never listened to before), reading about ribbon, and about Armadillium vulgare (more commonly known as roly-poly bug, pill bug, doodle bug), and knitting soft blonde-gold yarn into a scarf. Today, I watered trees, and made a clover chain. The wind is whirling outside my window. Life's a kind of richness....