Spring Evendoon

This is possibly an odd post for the end of May, but I wanted to show my completed Spring Evendoon before the weather makes it completely ridiculous to write about a wool sweater.  I finished it on May 13 and blocked it and photographed it the next day, when it was still chilly enough in the morning to get away with it.  The temps are supposed to drop to the 50s over the weekend (hooray!) so I might even get to wear it.  (Although my Cypress sweater is on the block now, so I might wear that instead!)

So, the Evendoon.  I cast this on immediately after finishing the Lilias Day in part because I was so disappointed that the Lilias wasn't going to work for me and I loved the palette so much.  (The friend I sent the sweater to is delighted with it).  This is a basic raglan knit, but the striping pattern keeps you on your toes, particularly during the raglan increases, as you have to keep track of two things at once.  It was also a LOT of ends to weave in as I knitted the sleeves flat and seamed (which I'm never doing again as I finally figured out a way of knitting small in the round that doesn't make me want to claw my eyes out).

 

I decided to stick to the same (stashed) palette and go for a striped version using Kate Davies Evendoon pattern.  (Her palette on the multi-stripe version is very similiar to mine)  This was another case of a sweater pattern I didn't notice when it came out but found very pleasing in a different colorway.  I originally combined the same two Jamieson and Smith yarns for the aqua stripe as I did on the Lilias Day, but it was coming out closer to worsted gauge, so I decided better too light than too heavy and tinked back to use a single strand of the J&S which does bloom nicely with wet blocking.  I like the bright palette very much!

 

 

I again went with the 3rd size, even though I usually make a 2 in Kate's sizing, because I wanted slightly more ease and was concerned about the fit.  The fit is spot on!  I did have to change the bottom slightly from the sample, as the extra two stripes made the body too long for my short torso, and I didn't like how the Jamieson and Smith knitted up in the ribbing on the bottom or neckline (I was also playing yarn chicken with the J&S, and wanted to be able to get the sleeves out).  I like how the cuffs, hem, and neckband all match and keep the stripe pattern. 

In book news, I've been reading Matthieu Pageau's book called The Language of Creation and having my mind generally blown about all the symbolism and fractal connections in the stories of the Bible.  More than that, it is a framework for interpreting and understanding the world.  (Jonathan Pageau said that when he was editing the book for his brother, every time he read the manuscript, he would get to about page 100 and start having seizures about the amazing insights and connections.  Page 100 nothing; I was having seizures on about page five.  Needless to say, it is not a book to rush through, but rather should be taken in small bites.) 

It all goes back to the garden, or as Paul Kingsnorth memorably put it: "we are all still trying to eat the apple."  (He's been killing it on his substack this month--it is well worth the subscription!  "Blanched Sun, Blinded Man" is a great introductory essay about the enchantment of the Machine we all find ourselves in.  I'm eager to read the rest of this series as it comes out).  Around the same time that I started Matthieu's book, I watched the largely panned film Noah, and found it to be much better than the critics said.  It fits well with the symbolic structure that the Pageau brothers talk about, and pulls from lots of traditional sources including the Apocrypha for additional details not included in the Pentateuch.

This week, I started reading a book I got for my birthday last summer called 1983: Reagan, Andropov, and a World on the Brink.  It is a book about how close we came to nuclear annihilation in 1983 because of a number of factors that collided that year.  I'm completely fascinated.  What I like about the author's approach is that he is clear-eyed about both sides of the story, painting neither a flattering nor unflattering picture of either Reagan or Andropov, and giving equal time to the concerns of both sides.  

I think it is easy for people of my generation or a bit older to lionize Reagan because of the perception of stability that he fostered--or at least a kind of clean polarity--but with time and distance comes some wisdom about the ways in which Reagan actually contributed rather heavily to the sort of political discourse in which we now find ourselves, and the instability of international relations more generally.  One wonders if a president with a longer attention span and better impulse control would have been a better choice at that time in history. 

A quirky documentary called The Man Who Saved the World came my way this week as well, and I highly recommend it.  It is about a little-known incident in the USSR where a Soviet colonel averted a major nuclear war in the late summer of 1983.  

(Incidentally, the film glosses over the disaster of the Korean airliner at the beginning of the film, with lots of heart-breaking footage of the aftermath, but the 1983 book gives a great deal more context and information about what happened, and while it was a terrible tragedy, there are a great many questionable things on the part of the captain and crew that led to that point.  Moral of the story: stay in the captain's seat and man your radio).

In between seizures over great stuff from Jonathan Pageau and his brother Matthieu, I am also rewatching The Americans, which is set in the early 1980s, and am drawn in anew, with different eyes to see this time.  

My brain is cookin'.  Hold on to your hats!

The Fabric of Reality

Yesterday, I mentioned Jonathan Pageau's work in examining symbols and patterns in creation, and seeking to understand the mystic in the fabric of reality.  (If that sounds a little "woo-ey" hold on to your hats).  I've listened to a bunch of his talks this Lent, and have had much to ponder, but yesterday, I listened to a conversation with Glen Scrivener and Pageau that just about blew my mind.  

It was paradigm-shifting. Imagine for a moment that the fabric of the world--of reality--really is enchanted.  That pattern and referential symbol are part of this fabric of reality and that inhabited behaviors are part of affirming and living out that reality.  I'm explaining it poorly, but I highly recommend listening to the talk--it is an hour, but well worth the time.  I took copious notes while listening, and had to stop the video several times to write down and keep up with what he was saying.  

Today is Holy Friday, and I'm meditating on the Cross, and the fractals that Pageau draws from the particular details about Jesus' death on the cross are really important things to meditate on.  How the Place of the Skull (Golgotha) is the place of Adam's skull, and that Christ's blood flows down into the skull to fill it up with resurrection.  That paradise is a mountain upon which the Tree of Life stood, and that when the curtain of the Temple was torn in two at the moment of Christ's death, it was because He had ascended into the High Place.  By His death, Christ revealed to us the purpose of death: transform that death back into the glory that was in the Garden.  So die on purpose in the sense of self-sacrifice.

Cosmos by Jonathan Pageau; there is a lot to unpack in this image

Self-sacrifice is hard work.  It means setting aside resentment and pride and need for the good of others, both as an action and an attitude.  I find I can set aside myself as an action, but often lack a humble or cheerful attitude about it.  More weeds to dig out of my garden.  It strikes me that this is what Kingsnorth was getting at in the bit I excerpted yesterday.  It isn't fun or exciting to put yourself aside or to consistently practice the embodied habits that enforce our belief.  It goes against our instinct of self-preservation.  But it is the radical task before us, and we are given rituals and sacraments to help us on our way back to God and the garden.