Square 82: Form

I like taking a simple form and exploring variations upon it. That's one of the appeals of this blanket blog that inspire me onward. As you get to know a form you can experiment within its constraints. Something that seems simple and repetitive may contain infinite variety.

Structure is one of the things that draws us into music, for example. Most popular songs include several verses (V), a chorus (C) in a different but related theme, and often a bridge section (B) introducing a third related theme. These might follow the sequence V-C-V-C-B-C. Songwriters return to this basic structure again and again because it provides listeners with a reference point. Even a new song can be predictable. The combination of predictability and novelty entertains us, and gives us cues to the rhythm and pace of the song.

Classical music commonly uses several musical forms. One of them, the rondo, follows a structure similar to contemporary song structure: A-B-A-C-A-B-A. Each section presents a distinct theme. There may be additional ones (D, E, F), but ultimately the music always returns to the beginning theme.

I have experimented with a particular form in some of these squares, treating each yarn as an individual theme. Sometimes I have tried returning to the same themes symmetrically as in a rondo, but these mitred squares seem more interesting if they culminate in different colours from which they started. The apex of the square focuses the attention, and the colours there, even though they consist of fewer stitches, draw as much attention as the long outside rows, which form a kind of foundation.

So I have invented an original form. I think the first time I used it was in Square 48. I was establishing a colour rhythm, ripples of light and dark moving across the square the way moonlight draws your eye across the layers of a night landscape.

Since then, I have tried variations on that form. This time I used the square to illustrate it. I chose five solid coloured yarns (dark green, grey, vermilion, purple, and apple green) and five variegated yarns in colours closely related to the first five.

I followed a few simple rules in establishing this form. Each colour is used exactly twice, and each never appears next to any other colour more than once. The first three rows establish the first three colours; after that each new colour is followed by an old colour and vice versa, until the last three rows wrap up the last three colours.. I like how it establishes rhythm and harmony among contrasting colours. This square is odd, but it illustrates the pattern well.

A-B-C-A-D-B-E-C-F-D-G-E-H-F-I-G-J-H-I-J.

Square 81: 42

Coming to Toronto for Danny's birthday weekend, I brought along a bunch of yarns that would appeal to him and asked him to select six to nine to use in this square. This presented an interesting challenge for him, and also for me, because the colours were not ones I would have thought to use together. But as he told me while I began to knit, these yarns represent different aspects of himself, and although it is not the whole him, the square presents an interesting portrait of this dear man.

Starting from the outside row, the first and second yarns are from two of his favourite companies, Wellington Fibres and Noro, respectively. The pearly lilac from Wellington is left over from some gloves I knitted for Brenna several years ago, and it is a sleek mohair-wool blend.

The teal green Noro Silk Garden yarn reappears as the peacock blue row, and again closer to the centre as bright lilac. Danny says blue and green were practically the only colours he used in knitting, for many years. They also represent the calm, easy-going personality he presents to the world. The third row is forest green from Cascade, one of the unifying colours in this blanket, and also one of his favourite colours.

The next three yarns represent his creative endeavours.

The grey with hints of celadon green is some yarn he dyed with elderberries. It is a cool, calm colour, but with hints of a stormy side within. The sandy gold came from beech leaves, which was a project Danny and I worked on together. It was my first experiment with natural dyes, so this thread also represents our bond.

Third in this section is a handspun yarn Danny made from a "kitchen sink" batt he acquired from a classmate in his spinning course. It contains a variety of colours—yellow, reddish-brown, even some glitter—and ties into lessons and challenges he described for us in Square 58.

Continuing inward, the last two yarns represent change, and parts of Danny's personality that tend to be hidden. The ember red is Berroco Ultra Alpaca and the variegated fiery red is Manos del Uruguay. After breaking from the blue-green pattern, Danny says, he only knit with orange and red for a long time. Lately his projects have integrated warm and cool colours, which takes us to the heart of the square.

Why 42? 42 is an abundant number. Have a happy, abundant year, my Love.

Square 80: Commuting

From 1991 to 1995 I commuted to work in Mississauga, a satellite city to Toronto. Throughout those years, the intervening stretch of Highway 401 was under expansion from four lanes to six. Every workday I spent 75 minutes each way pressing bumper to bumper with thousands of other frustrated commuters through narrow construction lanes past industrial parks, which metastasized across the landscape. In the course of one year, commuting added to more than 25 days of what felt like wasted life. After it ended, I swore I would never do it again.

When I began building pipe organs in 2006, I had to drive 25 minutes in the opposite direction to Fergus, a small town deeper into rural Ontario. Highway 6 winds through rolling farmland dotted with woods, and if I don't mind taking an extra five minutes I can follow even quieter country roads.

One misty morning last week I spotted an old-fashioned, rusty windmill spinning in a field of golden corn stubble. The colours of that landscape inspired this square.

I do not begrudge one minute of these driving times. I look forward to them. Each morning the countryside enfolds me like a lover, and carries me to blissful heights of distraction. I try to put everything else out of my head and concentrate entirely on the rhythm of this pilgrimage. It is a twice-daily meditation.

Square 79: Gift season

My posts to The Yarn have slowed down for one simple reason: gift-giving season. Besides the obvious, my daughters both have fall birthdays. Much of my free knitting time has been taken up making things for them. I didn't knit gifts last year, but Brenna specifically requested a new hat, and by the time it was complete I had decided to knit something for Marian, too. She turns eighteen in a few more weeks, and her gift will be quite different from anything I have made before.

Mom loved this time of year. One Christmas morning about 10 years ago she told me, with surprise, that she had slept through the night, the first time she could ever remember doing so on Christmas Eve. Mom slept easily and frequently, but not then. She was a generous gift-giver, who took at least as much genuine pleasure in giving as receiving.

I picked it up from her. As a teenager I made a lot of my gifts, especially boxes of jams and preserves for my older brothers and their wives. One year I decorated a row of cans (coffee or Pringles size) as soldiers in colourful, historical uniforms and placed them along the mantle, one for each family member. They contained cookies and other goodies homemade by me and Mom.

I celebrated Christmas in style until well into adulthood, but a few years ago became disenchanted. I can't explain why; it was more an emotional departure than a rational one. We might be better off without the consumerism, materialism and rich food, but we should still celebrate family time with or without those things, and my mother's excitement was essentially all about family.

My definition of family has expanded to include friends close to me, and for most of them this is an important season, whether it be Christmas, Hannukah, Solstice, the Festival of Lights or just good old no-name celebration.

I suppose part of my enthusiasm for Christmas was lost when Mom departed from us. This time of year will never be the same without her. But as I told the loved ones who gathered to remember her, Mom's battle with cancer taught her to appreciate every single day as a gift, so we should try to honour her wisdom by living that way, not getting lost in grief and regret.

That lesson was one of the best gifts Mom ever gave, and it inspires me to refresh my own spirit of giving this year.

Square 78: November daughter

16 years ago today my baby was born by Caesarian section. I don't have much of a stomach for blood and so on, but when the moment came I wanted to be fully present, stepped up to the cloth partition, and looked over to see her lifted from the incision in her mother's belly. She had been relatively peaceful throughout the pregnancy, and in the same way she entered this wide new room full of strange people. She was healthy and alert but the only sound she made was a gentle squawk. No crying, not then.

As a little girl, Brenna had an unusually sunny disposition. One of my worst regrets is that I missed bonding with her during a crucial part of her childhood. Her mother and I separated just after she turned two, and it was not an amicable transition. For a few months I had trouble even getting to see my daughters, and when our times together finally resumed, I had missed Brenna's progression from baby talk to speaking in short sentences.

When she was three I lived for a while with a man named Dan who had two children close in age to my two. It was a one-bedroom apartment so weekends were crazy. We were a melancholy, cantankerous crew except for Brenna, the youngest, whose smiles and laughter cheered many a gloomy Saturday. She loved Dan to swing her in the air, but couldn't pronounce Ls, and kept asking him to fnip her. So Dan called her Fnip, but I used to call her The Bean.

She has always liked movies. Her ability to remember her favourite scripts, even after one or two viewings, is staggering. She is also a great storyteller, and I used to think she could be a great stand-up comic. Unfortunately she is intimidated, as I am, by the scrutiny of strangers. She has grown into a thoughtful, reticent young woman, but still with a keen sense of humour about the absurdity of human behaviour.

It might have seemed to her that I had more in common, or an easier rapport, with her older sister. Marian is more outgoing, and shy people usually envy extroverts.

I know, because I am an introvert, too, but have learned to value quiet company as much as easy conversation. Nowadays we can talk at length, and with greater trust and insight. I hope that growth will continue forever.

Ah Bren, you and I are alike in so many ways: how we gravitate to the outskirts of activity, our greater comfort with written than spoken communication, our longing for trust, our romantic attraction to diffident, tender people.

Many other things I admire. A steady and patient hand allow Brenna to make small, detailed things and draw eloquently. She has a great eye for colour. She loves the woods and is an expert beachcomber, with the ability to find the most remarkable things.

Outdoors she has an endearing habit of finding a perfect secluded place to sit—perhaps a low place under shelter of a bough, or a rock like a stool in the forest—and spending a long time there, peaceful and practically invisible, as if she could create her own veil of air and light. I hope through the many challenges and trials of life she will never lose the ability to find solace.

This yarn is a remnant from a gift I made her. She hasn't seen it yet, but it is nothing like this square really. These are the colours that were left over, and they will stay with me, part of my story.

Happy sweet sixteen, my dear. I wish you rich experiences and kind companions in the year to come.

Square 77: Tosca

When I was a university student my friend, Peter Satterly, treated me to a dress rehearsal performance of Tosca with the Canadian opera company. Now with the benefit of hindsight, I know this work to be a treasure of the repertoire; powerful and timeless plot, strong characters, memorable melodies, and Giacomo Puccini's lush orchestration make Tosca one everyone should consider seeing. I was a newbie in the 1980s. Tosca won my heart, and I have grown as an opera buff ever since.

The character of Floria Tosca is appealing, very human with strengths and flaws. She is a stage singer, devoted, jealous, fierce, effervescent and kind. She does not realize (at first) her boyfriend, Mario, is a revolutionary. He runs afoul of the merciless and lascivious chief of police, Scarpia, who draws the two lovers into dreadful trouble. Yes, this is a tragedy, grand opera style, but not just about the tragedy of love; it's the challenge we all face as human beings to make difficult choices, to be actors and not just passive observers in life.

One of the musical climaxes is Tosca's second-act aria, Visi d'arte, in which she prays—not the common operatic pining of infatuation and lust, but longing for innocence, freedom and a simple life.

I lived for art, I lived for love.
I never did harm to a living soul!
With a secret hand
I relieved as many misfortunes as I knew of....
In the hour of grief
Why, why, Lord
Ah, why do you reward me thus?

A pretty actress who never thought of being a real heroine, she finds herself caught in the battle between good and evil, called to enact terrible justice. She proves herself to be a woman of action, regardless of consequences. Myself, as an artist far more interested in creativity than politics, I can relate to her dilemma.

Last week I saw this opera performed for the second time, live in high definition from the Metropolitan Opera, with Danny. It was his first time, and it pleased me to see him as captivated as I was by the music and characters. I will never forget the powerful performance by Finnish soprano, Karita Mattila.

This knitted square refers to the exquisite red coat she wore, and the character's beauty, commemmorated in Rufus Wainwright's song, "Damned Ladies":

Desdemona, do not go to sleep.
Brown-eyed Tosca, don't believe the creep.

This new production by Luc Bondy of a popular work has drawn harsh criticism and public disapproval, which I don't understand. The sets are stark, dark and realistic, true to the potent spirit of the tale, as meaningful as ever today, when political power has been widely abused and the rights of many—to live and love free of oppression—are curtailed.

Square 76: Boo!

I haven't done much special for Halloween the past few years. Next year should be the year to change that.

I used to enjoy it to the max. My favourite costume ever was the Viking outfit my parents helped me put together in grade nine. Dad cut a round shield out of plywood and we stained it brown. The sword and ax head were also cut from wood, but he beveled the edges and painted them silver for greater authenticity. I used cardboard and aluminum foil to make a peaked helmet complete with nose guard. Under my shoes I wore bulky wool socks criss-crossed with rawhide laces. A bulky sweater resembled chain mail, and I cut a cloak out of green cloth. The best thing about that costume was it provided months of enjoyment as props for fantasy games in the woods with my neighbours.

On a more gruesome note, the November issue of National Geographic contains a riveting article about animal mummies from ancient Egypt. The culture venerated some animals as gods and gave them elaborate burials. They alos prepared pets to accompany their masters in the afterlife. For the journey, the dead were also provided with food—essentially mummified jerky.

An entire economy revolved around providing worshipers with votive mummies. When you entered a temple, it was safest to go equipped with a specimen of the god's favourite animal to offer as an intercessor. Many thousands of cats, ibises and other animals were dispatched, embalmed and wrapped in cloth for this purpose. It was a lucrative business, and bred corruption. Modern scans reveal some of the most lavish mummies contain no real animals at all, just mud or perhaps a few bones.

This ancient culture seemed to have more reverence for death than live. It is both fascinating and morbid to consider, a delightful little yarn to inspire your Halloween dreams. I tried to make a square out of the most ghoulish colours possible, but it turned out eerily lovely. Happy Halloween.