If Seattle were Florence

As I walked into my apartment today, an Italian man on the street said to me, “I like your tattoo. I like your green sandals. I like your sexy feet. I like it all.” I rolled my eyes, said “Grazie” and gave a nonchalant wave. –blog, July 9, 2011

The streets smelt of Italy today. I could sense it in the breeze and the crooked alleys with cobblestones and the drinking fountains. I could breathe it in the humidity and the sun. Florence.

But it’s just Seattle. We had a fun ladies’ afternoon: out for lunch after church, then adventures at the Goodwill Outlet. Are you ready for this? Pay per pound of items. They just have giant bins and you dig through and take what you want, weigh it, and you’re good to go with an armful of gems and only a slightly lighter pocketbook. I managed to get 3 tops, a pair of shorts, a dress for work, a sweatshirt with a cow on it (which I will turn into a pillow), a faux-leather hipster backpack, and a wine rack for $9. No joke.

Regardless, my gems were much harder to find. The ladies I went with are all small and beautiful and thin. They fit into everything and made even the crazy sweaters look like a piece of art, whereas on me, it would look like a lump. I sat and watched after I tried on my few, watching them sort through the dresses and pants. (I go crazy when people get upset because something is too big, but I tried to smile through it.) Regardless, I supported them in their cute fashions, and we were on our way.

When we got home, I took Pickle out for a walk. Fresh air. We walked along the bridge. Right at the peak, a man was walking towards us on the “wrong side” of the bridge. I started crossing to the left (wasn’t up for a game of chicken; maybe it had something to do with the fact that this guy was carrying a bicycle on his shoulders).

The man was shirtless. His pants hung along his low, manly hipbones, exposing those diagonal abdomen lines that men (whose haven’t been gobbled up by beer bellies) apparently love to taunt. I tried not to look and focused on Pickle.

Just as we began to pass him, he said in a very thick accent, “Dat iz a coot dog!” I smiled thank you and kept walking, but just as our backs were towards each other, he quickly added over his shoulder, “Andyourebeautifulaswell,” his accent much less apparent.

Sometimes, when you’re feeling bad about yourself but reminiscing about a place you miss and feeling like if you closed your eyes and took a deep breath you’d be there, just sometimes, the right moment happens, and you get transported back for half a second, just long enough to remember green sandals and sexy feet and just how much some stranger in the world (make that two) “likes it all.” 

art-un-rav-eled

Go around back to take a knit.
Come front to purl.
Go around back to take a knit.
Come front to purl.

This pattern has echoed through my past two evenings. I am ribbing. I am meditating: a lesson in patience.

This is my first time making a whole project with double-pointed needles. This is my first go at the rib stitch. This is my first time using 2.75mm needles and 3oz. yarn. I feel like I am making miniatures, when really, they're only mittens.

I tell myself that I need to be dedicated to finish my projects in time for Christmas. Every year I do this; I wait until after Thanksgiving to start holiday gifts. If I start any sooner, it just feels too rushed and unreal. I don't even look forward to Christmas. I just like to knit. Because it is December: month of late nights curled in a chair with a blanket and needles and yarnyarnyarn.

Go around back to take a knit.
Come front to purl.
Go around back to take a knit.
Come front to purl.

I started this mitten last night. I was lying on my  bedroom floor, trying to hold the thin needles without breaking them or poking out one of my eyes: I was close, trying to see each thread of each stitch pass through. The tips of my fingers began to turn purple--words of wisdom: lying down offers poor circulation when knitting. But I couldn't move; if I moved, I might drop a stitch or break a needle or lose my pattern. Thus far, starting on double-pointed needles is the hardest part, keeping the first row intact despite the obvious stretch between needles.

Then it kept going. The rows got easier as the thread got tighter between the needles, and the four main ones formed a square which birthed a circular cuff tailing behind: now I'm getting somewhere. I was able to sit up, even to hold the needles off my lap because I had figured out to adjust each so that the stitches would stay.

I noticed a lapse in the pattern within the first three or four rows. I was about 3cm in and so exhausted from starting that I wasn't about to turn back. Let's see how it looks later; maybe it won't be so obvious. Sometimes you really do have to just see how things work out: maybe you can trust yourself to write in pen, but sometimes, it sure is handy to have an eraser.

I kept knitting until I had a full 7cm cuff. Tomorrow's objective: beginning the stockinette stitching.

Go around back to take a knit.
Come front to purl.
Go around back to take a knit.
Come front to purl.

You guessed it: I haven't started the stockinette stitch yet.

This morning, I looked again at my work; I was proud that the ribbing looked so nice and was adequately stretchy. As I turned the piece in my hands, I got to those jumbled few stitches in the first rows. Not too noticeable... I turned it again and again. The splotch of mistake more apparent each turn: the imperfection on someone's face--a zit, a crumb, a stray hair-- that you can't help but look at as you talk to them. It just won't do. 

I resolved that tonight when I got home from work, I must start over, putting me one precious day behind.

Go around back to take a knit.
Come front to purl.
Go around back to take a knit.
Come front to purl.

Sometimes, when I'm focusing really hard or concentrating so much that I start to feel stressed, I will grit my teeth and clench my hands and feel my chest tighten--all reminders of how I lack patience, like how I always look to see how many pages are left in a chapter or seconds in a song and how the countdown is excruciating: by the end, my jaw sore, my fingertips white.

For this project, I am determined to push the "deadlines" aside and just let it become a relaxing rhythm.

After supper, I sat in my chair and looked at the cuff that was done so far. But it's so nice; there's only a tiny glitch. Maybe I could set it aside just to remember how pretty my first ribbing was. Maybe no one will notice if I keep going. But I knew that I would notice, and the farther I knitted, the harder it would be to accept the error.

There was no sense in wasting time thinking about it. I began to unravel the cuff in quick, bumpy rows.

This is one of the most challenging yet beautiful aspects of creation, of art: letting go. You make something beautiful, and you let it go. Sometimes it is by giving it away--the gift, as Lewis Hyde reminds. Sometimes it is by destroying it--as in pottery when you find an air bubble in the clay such that if you were to fire it, the explosion would destroy the pieces around it too, and you have to just flatten whatever beautiful object it was even though you worked hard on it.

And yet the beauty reciprocates. Sure, you sold a painting or a pot; you smashed the clay; you unraveled the yarn, but now, you get to start over. You get a blank canvas; you get a clean wheel; you get a full skein.

Go around back to take a knit.
Come front to purl.
Go around back to take a knit.
Come front to purl.

I am about 2cm in on my do-over mitten. I feel good about my decision to start again. Not only does it give me a chance to fix my mistakes, but it offers me yet another lesson in patience: casting on those double-pointed needles again.




I remember my Ceramics professor in Italy, Isabella Fazzo. I can see her: a thin tank top to cover her curved shoulders and tall physique, horn-rimmed glasses in bright purple, soft wrinkles still new to the corners of her eyes. She said she woke up one day, after years of being a chef, and decided that she was going to be a potter. "It was a time in my life when..." she would begin her stories, the ends of her words in sharp staccato from her accent. She ended each sentence with an inhaled laugh, just shy of a snort and with those back of the throat gasps--the kind of laugh that makes you smile at its unique charm, the kind where once you've heard it, you can recognize that person anywhere.

She told us about how, one year, she left her portfolio of all of the ceramic pieces she had ever done (photos, of course; they were all sold by then) on a bus, where it was picked up by a stranger and never returned to her hands. Instead of mourning it, she accepted the loss as a sign, "That time of my life was now over. I began a new style, different from everything I had ever made."

While difficult to achieve, acceptance is beautiful. Learning to start over, learning to see the opportunity in a missed stitch, in a new city, in an open future where you can wake up and decide what you want to be that day or any day: this is what makes us artists.

Signs

I was nervous--driving into a city that I had never been to, where I would live full-time for the next year at least. When we first arrived, it was chaotic. I was anxious to arrive but was a bit disappointed with what I found. For some reason, I expected Seattle to be as familiar to me as Arizona--enough that I could get where I wanted to go, yet still with much left to explore. Since "settling in," I've realized that I don't know a damn thing about this place.

When we entered the city and saw the freeways and streets, I had the feeling of home that I get when I first arrive in Phoenix. It took me all day to remember that I was four states north and would remain so.

After getting the "tour" of the house that I was to share with seven? eight? (I'll never get it right...) other girls this year, I panicked. Let's be real here--the place looked like it hadn't been lived in for years: mold, flies, scum. I can't even begin to describe it. Taking lots of deep breaths, my mom, aunt, and I went for a drive. For fresh air? Maybe, but for some reason, I thought that I could just find a new place and be done. Be okay.

Attempting to be stoic, we reached the end of my street. We saw it---across the road was a sign, huge, reading "222". My grandma's number. My mom always said that whenever that number shows up, Grandma is with us because that was her lottery number that she always played: it identified her and kept her with us in that way.

"Something good is going to happen," my aunt said.

Even though I have fervently felt a connection with that number my whole life, this time, all that I could think was, "Grandma's not going to show up and make everything better this time. She's not in the material." I was right, and I was very wrong.

We returned to the house and unpacked my things. It's just a house was my mantra for the next 24 hours. The next day, we deep-cleaned the major areas of the house--the kitchen, living room, bathroom, and my room. It's just a house. It's just a house, I repeated as I scrubbed lines of black mold from the bathroom tiles. Light echoed past the pink orchid that previously sat in the kitchen sink housing flies; it now smiled into the sun from the windowsill. I looked at the room and took a more final deep breath. Home.

Chores done, we went exploring the next day. My aunt's number one site to see in Seattle was the Space Needle, so we went there first. From over 600 feet in the air, we viewed the cloudy city. Nothing looked familiar, but I thought about how well I would come to know these streets in the next year, just as it took some time to get to know Pittsburgh when I first started going into town. I also thought about Italy and how I climbed the Duomo; I pointed out my apartment and the many streets that I had ventured in that short month. Maybe at the end of my Seattle adventures I can do the same. But now, I couldn't even point out the direction where my house was or even where the bus had dropped us off in-town.

Next to the Space Needle, there was a new exhibit--Chihuly glass & gardens. I knew that my mom and aunt would love it because they always commented on the Chihuly pieces installed at Phipps Conservatory. We bought a dual ticket for the Needle and the gardens and smoothly transitioned from one to the next.

Bright pieces of ornately twisted and connected glass reflected off the floor, each other, and the spectators' eyes and glasses in colorful array. Outside, orchids and maples blended with glass shine and organic form.

I could breathe easy, and I was growing to like the city--a place that intimidates me at every thought. I knew that my house was going to work out, even though we hadn't found a different one. I knew that I would be okay here.

As we walked from room to room in the exhibit, I happened to glance behind me at the door: Room occupancy, max capacity: 222.

I believe in signs.