Carly Schnur, the designer of my book cover, wanted me to knit her a pair of fingerless gloves in exchange for her design work. I made these fantastic creatures and named them Humanimal Fingerless Mitts, after Bhanu Kapil’s book Humanimal: a project for future children, which is about Bengali wolf girls and many other things. I had planned to knit them in merino wool but saw some gray alpaca at the store and bought that instead. Episode after episode of the BSG DVDs I borrowed from my dad floated past as I worked on them and when they were finished, they resembled and felt like and moved like living things, hence the name.  

I remembered selling tickets to a certain ballet in San Francisco that counted among its loyal patrons a woman who kept rabbits and knitted their fur. I’m not sure if she processed and spun their fur herself as well, but it doesn’t matter. Once she came into the theater wearing an enormous charcoal gray wrap she’d knitted from her rabbits–it almost covered her and she resembled a rabbit herself. I think that vision changed my life because I’ve written about it in different ways, thought about it always, and now am  knitting human-animal hybrid things for talented strangers. So thank you, magnificent rabbit woman!

Pattern: Spirogyra, by Lynne Vogel

Yarn: 2 skeins Blue Sky Alpacas 100% Alpaca Sport Weight, in color 508

Needles: U.S. 2 and 3 DPNs

I made this flopsy hat for Lindsay’s birthday. This eye-searing blue, which Malabrigo calls Azul Bolita, has forever changed the course of the novel I am writing: it has become foundation for the colors of future weaving!

Pattern: Anemoon, by Lucy Sweetland

Yarn: Malabrigo Worsted, in Azul Bolita

Needles: U.S. 7 and 5 circ

My first baby knit, for young William Blackburn Kinnicutt. These were based around an idea I’d come up with that it would be awesome to knit tweed booties for a baby born in New England. My coworker that has an actual baby (rather than my conceptual baby) suggested this would be ridiculous since tweed would be itchy on infant feet, but I made them anyway and made them resemble eggplants. He can wear them with tiny socks!

Pattern: Fleegle’s Seamless Saartje Booties, by Susan Glinert Stevens

Yarn: Rowan Felted Tweed, in Treacle and Avocado

Needles: U.S. 2 DPNs

Finally, these  Peces Besándose mittens that I knit while in Argentina! I purchased these amazing colors specifically to make the most obnoxious pair of colorwork mittens possible. I am deeply in love with these but they’re much too large, so I’m trying to find the best/easiest way to line them. I was afraid I’d run out of yellow, so I modeled the thumbs after a pair of gloves I bought in Turkey. Every time I wear them I think of long bus rides through the Andes.

Pattern: Kissing Koi Mittens, by Lisa Perusse

Yarn: Koigu Premium Merino (KPM), in colors 1120 and 2335, and Louet Gems Fingering Weight, in Teal

Needles: U.S. 2 DPNs

 

 

My publisher has updated her website!

My novella, City in the River, City in the Forest, went to press about a week and a half ago. The covers were hand-printed on a letterpress (this is not only awesome in itself but also correlates thematically with the story!) in Kentucky and I received two in the mail from Carly Schnur, the designer, this week. They are so, so beautiful: the design and also their tactile quality.

I’m relieved to have finally finished this book because it means I can start writing the new novel I’ve been waiting to begin. But now that process is too freeing, that daunting empty page. Part of the new novel is set in the future, so there’s not even an established world to couch it in. It’s so wild and I’m trying to get back to the place I inhabited when I wrote the crappy NaNoWriMo novel that I redrafted at Artcroft to become the first draft of City in the River. I want to work fast like that again and I’m not even certain that’s the best process for me, since what I produced via NaNoWriMo was so deplorable that I eventually realized I had to rewrite it. I liked the way ideas came to me over that month, really ridiculous things I adopted without fear, bending and shaping the plot intuitively. I thought about it all day and got really excited and really frustrated and then came home and wrote for three hours. Nearly every single day. I’m a perfectionist and revising City in the River as painstakingly as possible for as long as possible has addled me–I’ve lost the momentum of writing outlandish things, but I’ll keep looking for it since there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing.

This year’s great new discoveries: strange Argentine lit! Selah Saterstrom! Amanda showing me what I am missing from not regularly reading fantasy books! Humanimal, which helped me find a form for the novel I’ve had in my head for three years. Books coming alive in an almost literal way: Ice, when I walked a glacier in Patagonia and thought how I will write a short story based somewhat on this book and that glacier, possibly involving Anna Kavan herself; Shadow Country, when I read great a swath then the next day visited the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia with my family and saw things mentioned by scenes in the book in glass cases. I’ve also had a bizarre series of dreams about Ghosts. Not included here are my repeated close readings of several chapters of the Texas Transportation Code and its corresponding confused dreams, a result of what my seasoned coworkers called the worst / busiest / most convoluted legislative session since the 73rd (also the reason why I didn’t read more this year).

1. Hopscotch, Julio Cortázar. Trans. Gregory Rabassa. (reread)
2. The Meat and Spirit Plan, Selah Saterstrom.
3. Don’t Cry: Stories, Mary Gaitskill.
4. 2666, Roberto Bolaño. Trans. Natasha Wimmer.
5. Ice, Anna Kavan.
6. The Last Summer of Reason, Tahar Djaout. Trans. Marjolijn de Jager.
7. Family Ties, Clarice Lispector. Trans. Giovanni Pontiero.
8. Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline, Lisa Margonelli.
9. The Grass is Singing, Doris Lessing.
10. Humanimal, a Project for Future Children, Bhanu Kapil.
11. An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, César Aira. Trans. Chris Andrews.
12. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, Philip Gourevitch.
13. The Pink Institution, Selah Saterstrom.
14. A Friend of the Earth, T. C. Boyle.
15. The Invention of Morel, Adolfo Bioy Casares. Trans. Ruth L. C. Simms.
16. I Go to Some Hollow, Amina Cain.
17. The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje.
18. Ghosts, César Aira. Trans. Chris Andrews.
19. Austerlitz, W. G. Sebald. Trans. Anthea Bell.
20. A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore.
21. The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood.
22. The Drowning City, Amanda Downum.
23. The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris, Edmund White.
24. The Lizard’s Tail, Luisa Valenzuela. Trans. Gregory Rabassa.
25. Shadow Country, Peter Mattheissen.

We spent part of Christmas this year in Charleston and the barrier islands. I’m reading Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen so as we drove across South Carolina to get there, those parts of the book flared up alive. Also, we went to the State Museum in Colombia, where I found historical bits mentioned in the book in glass cases. The caning of Charles Sumner, including a thank-you cane sent to Rep. Brooks!

My family had secretly agreed to have some diamonds from my grandma’s wedding ring set into a necklace for me, so now I gleam with that hard fire and walk around sentimental all the time.

Pattern: Cheadle by Marie Wallin, from Rowan 46.

Yarn: 8 skeins of Rowan Cocoon in Tundra.

Needles: U.S. 10 and 10-1/2.

I love this sweater even though I'm making a weird face.

My love affair with this sweater began simply enough, when I saw it in an advertisement for the Fall 2009 Rowan magazine. Over the days that followed, its image began to consume me, and I started looking at the ad a couple times a day. My yarn store didn’t have the magazine in stock but offered to order it; a week went by and then I ended up ordering it online with my yarn for the project because I figured that way I’d get everything a little sooner. That was rather shameful but I think the yarn store women could at least understand the grade of obsession I was working from (and I assume they’d ordered several to sell). So there was a great ecstasy to finally casting on for this project, but that was back in September when I had three self-imposed writing deadlines and could only work on it for an hour a day. Again: like love. In October I decided I wanted to finish it in time to wear my sweater to Argentina, so spent several days knitting up the big 22-cm. cowl neck, and then I ran out of yarn since I’d made the bottom ribbing longer than in the pattern. Bought more yarn from someone on Ravelry. Went to Argentina and most often was thankful I hadn’t finished my gigantic bulky sweater since the weather was so warm and my backpack was full. I thought of it waiting at home in my closet. Soon after returning home, I finished it.

I spend a lot of time looking at fashion magazines and am coming from that when I say I love this sweater’s shape and find it absolutely modern. I pretty much stuck to the pattern besides lengthening the sweater to 20.5 cm. This is my first Rowan magazine though I remember them from working with Renee in San Francisco, who used to knit from them all the time. Renee learned how to knit in school when she was seven; she’s a tall Irish woman with white hair who wears layers of diaphanous clothes and bright lipstick and once left to go trekking in Nepal for a couple weeks (she was in her late fifties or early sixties).  She was my first (and only) knitting mentor and would come to work with thisgs like a whole side of a sweater coat she’d knitted up the past night. But the thing about Rowan magazines is that they take beautiful photos that are not particularly helpful in seeing how the garments are finished. Crucial details are concealed in artsy shadows. The photo below is what sparked my obsession with this sweater, but gives no indication of how the big plait in the center is finished–if you braid it the way it’s braided here, the weight of the sweater causes the three strips to gap and hang open in some places. I decided to solve this by sewing a couple stitches where necessary to close the gaps instead of seaming them all the way so that I could retain as much texture in that area as I could. I also lightly blocked the strips before plaiting them. I left the sleeves a little more open because I like how that looks in the photo. Were I to make this over again, I’d lengthen the bottom even more (I had half or a third of my eighth skein left) and would braid the plait one or two more times to make it hold together more tightly and thus have less need to sew the gaps.   

I write some fiction involving textiles and something I keep coming back to is an idea of fusing fibers with skin and people with animals. In industrial textile production you’re a part of the machine you’re operating. Knitting and weaving by hand is a deeply physical process where your materials are right against your skin and your tools are an extension of your body. Sometimes your hands hurt, or your eyes dry out. Your skin might chap where yarn passes over and over. One could say this about any art or craft process but textiles especially resonate with me because I mainly use animal fibers. Working with Cocoon, which is 80% merino wool and 20% kid mohair, I felt this more than ever. Cocoon has this subtle animal smell that I hope never goes away. It’s expensive (I got a bulk discount from Webs online, but still!) but I felt like a little animal with it between my fingers and I can attest that it wears really well since I’ve been wearing this sweater about three times a week–no pilling or spontaneous felting.

My favorite things at MALBA were the odd water and mechanical moving pieces from the late 1960s, which I already knew a little about from the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin. I liked Six cercles en contorsion by Julio Le Parc (1967); originally I saw it from far away and thought it was a series of giant bubbles, but it’s actually thin strips of metal in six circles being gently rotated by their stick moorings. The middles circles shared sticks so each had two moving in opposite directions, ensuring unpredictable shapes and movements. There were other pieces that could be activated by switches as well. A box in layered grids where different layers lit up at different times. A tiny room I entered that contained half a sphere filled with amber light and groups of strings emanating geometrically from points of red and blue light, and on the other side a screen lit amber with soft blobs of undulating color. A Brazilian artist had crafted a 3-D plastic receptacle shaped like a drop of water, filled with blue water, silvery bubbles. I also saw my first Remedios Varo painting in person!  

Unfortunately the temporary exhibit was Andy Warhol, but since I was in a foreign land I looked at all of it (I thought I disliked Bellmer before I saw a huge retrospective of his work at the Centre Pompidou and realized what a limited range I’d based my assessment on). A gridded-off room filled with inflated silver foil rectangles clinging to the ceiling in clumps then falling slowly to the floor flooded me with despair for some reason. I had seen this installation in movies and had never given it any thought, but in person it evoked my gut feeling about Warhol’s work and scene and very literally made my heart heavy with woe. Probably then, his most successful piece?

It started to rain. We walked a very long way back through the parklands, lost for a great deal of it, and saw capybaras roaming the zoo. Green parrots perched in the trees on a grassy median strip. One of them gripped a flower in its claw and slowly ate it in little foot-raising bites.

The dogs wander the streets foraging for food and attention but the cats are smarter and congregate in the botanical garden. We missed our kitties so much we decided to spend the afternoon finding and petting them. We walked the paths among plants of different regions, cats skittering among them, and a sensory garden full of plants of different textures and smells, and soon found a big square of red-orange concrete where the cat colony spends much of its time.

The pavement was warm from the sun and contained a narrow grate the cats walked across in a funny lurching way. They slept on the warm concrete or surrounding grass. One scampered up and down a tree. One was sick and coughing; one was missing an eye. There were kittens and cats who seemed old. Gloriously, this area was often visited by women and little girls who distributed food to the cats. Dry food and also chunks of hamburger flung out with a fork.   

Back in lovely and dirty Buenos Aires. Did a good amount of wandering. Some Argentine gossip girls sat next to us at dinner and ordered Pepsis and didn’t finish their raviolis. Then we went to a rockabilly bar and stayed out til 4!! At that hour the streets are still thick with people, birds begin to come out, and music plays and people shout along.

A big group of black raptors–falcons or condors–converged on the steppe and I watched them through the window of the bus back to El Calafate. Black with traces of white on wing and neck, the slow swoop and circle of flight. The weather stayed clear from yesterday evening, so I finally saw Cerro Torre and the jagged peaks surrounding it, brown in the early light, slipping in and out of clouds.

Around six that evening we decided to find Laguna Nimez bird sanctuary on the north side of El Calafate. We walked past crumbly houses and also nice ones with curtains, open dusty neighborhoods and those more contained. Street dogs, guys working on trucks, little boys doing ridiculous kid things. At the cemetery we veered right, as a man S had asked for directions had instructed, and followed the squeaks of flying birds we saw. Eventually we realized we’d entered the dump and that most of the beckoning birds were a great circle of seagulls, though there were some pretty long-beaked birds as well. The dump was situated near the bank of Lago Argentina and generated a mild yet horrible smell. Nearby, the actual bird sanctuary is supposedly private and charges an admission fee, but the tiny shack at its edge was deserted so everyone just walked out there.

The ground was thick, grassy, muddy muck, swampy with a broad, shallow pond that attracted a big group of flamingos with dark orange-pink wings, and smaller swaths of water. There were geese and ducks of color combinations I’d never before seen, a coot with neon yellow bisecting its face, those birds with the startling cry and bright orange beaks (maybe I am conflating two birds though?), and birds with long, thin, curved-down beaks. The sun glowed gold and dipped low in the sky. At night I dreamed I was required to eat the earth we walked on at the bird sanctuary.