Another 30

Diagnosis: bronchitis and probably mild pneumonia. But I've been on antibiotics for three days now and am starting to feel like I"m going to survive. I still have horrendous coughing fits, but if I'm sitting still I actually don't feel too bad. When I move around or talk, though, it goes downhill fast. Nevertheless, I managed to finish my 9th round of 30 poems in 30 days yesterday. Here are the latest titles:

1. Wheel of Time
2. Sonnenizio on a Line from Berrigan
3. Ashes and Blood Make a Bitter Rouge
4. Gold
5. Sonnenizio on a Line from Bruner
6. under the rough bark (haiku)
7. The Prince
8. Blue
9. The Fishwives Have Swallowed their Pride
10. Kawaii
11. shadows merge into (tanka)
12. Sonnenizio on a Line from Frost
13. Mozart's Bones
14. The Way it is with Wool
15. She Has Run Out of His Reach
16. The Fetishist
17. Elton John Licks his Rhinestone-Covered Boots
18. Spike and Buffy Fight on their Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary
19. Supplication
20. At Chernobyl they Monitor the Devil
21. Kermit the Frog Joins the Revolution
22. orange trees blooming (haiku)
23. Leaning on the Velvet Rope over the San Andreas Fault
24. off the Sidewalk
25. A Visit with the Anasazi
26. You are as Far as Invention, and I am as Far as Memory (cento)
27. Meleagris gallopavo
28. this is bregma
29. Seventeen Steps
30. see that dark hump of (tanka)

Socks and Spring Break

My March socks for the Sock a Month Knitalong.

Yarn: Lorna's Laces in Lorikeet.
Pattern: Garter stitch rib from Sensational Knitted Socks.
Needles: US size 1

I knit these for my daughter Emma and she loves them. Everytime she wears them she dances around saying 'happy feet, happy feet'. Next up are a pair of Jaywalkers for me and a pair of waffle rib knit with Koigu for Kate - so far I have one of each pair done.

Spring Break is here and I'm sick. Really sick. Sick for way too long. We had to cancel our trip to Idaho for this week, so it's me and two really rambunctious girls cooped up in the house for the next six days. I'm going to the doctor tomorrow. We'll see what she says. Hopefully she can do something about this vicious cough and the gunk that keeps surging up from my chest. In the meantime, I'm sticking to very small, very simple knitting projects (dishcloths, experimental blanket swatches, etc.) and trying desperately to make it through the final four days of my 30 poems in 30 days.

When Worlds Collide

Hello blog readers!

Let me ask you a question -- do you come here for the knitting or the writing?

Now you can have both!

Check out my story This is Just Another Yarn in the current issue of SmokeLong Quarterly and see what happens when two of my obsessions come together in one place.

This is one of my personal favorites; I hope you enjoy it as well. As always, it's published under my pen-name Ann Walters.

Meet Mapleton

Mapleton is an adorable puppy I got from Build-a-Bear Workshop after my daughters gave me a gift card there for Christmas.

She's wearing the Train Coat that I knit for her from Knitting for Teddies.

Looks cozy, doesn't she?

poem

Shall We Throw Away the Key?

To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven.

Homes made with broken pieces of wood,
old gasoline cans to get water.
Is this a problem of technical know-how?

This is the gold. The belief of the ancients.
The world is a spinning ball
and we turn like a spit in front of a great fire.

The imagination of nature is far, far greater
than the imagination of man and all the time
we have been too proud.

This piece of dirt waits, nothing more exciting
than the truth, as the girl dances up and down.
Perhaps she smiles.

The newspapers have a standard line for every discovery.
They cannot explain subtle trickery,
beautiful tightropes of logic.

Two apparently different things
were different aspects of the same thing.
How to work the power is clear; how to control it is not.

The same key opens the gates of hell

Found poem from “The Meaning of It All” by Richard P. Feynman.

Teatime

Fiesta Tea Set pattern by Annie Modesitt. Knit as a Valentine present for Emma and Kate.