19 Comments
User's avatar
just mud by Ron's avatar

"Because the result

is sure to keep someone warm"

This had alot of great analogies. It takes a bit to reravel(?!) lines, but maybe can be like knitting! (keeping someone warm!) Enjoying your post!

26thAvenuePoet (Elizabeth)'s avatar

Thanks so much, jm. I love the idea of a poem helping to keep someone warm!

Ann Collins's avatar

I’m not surprised you love to knit!

Every knitter I know has a resolve to create something beautiful no matter how long it takes. Just like your wonderful poems--sometimes years.

Knitting requires a love for the process that non-knitters don’t always understand. I was once “frogging” a piece (rip it! rip it! rip it!) to the horror of my husband. “What are you DOING??” he wailed, as I wound the yarn back into a ball again. “All that work!!!”

I assured him that it was fine, and that now I had the pleasure of knitting it again. Correctly. He just looked at me like I was insane.

26thAvenuePoet (Elizabeth)'s avatar

THAT's why people call it frogging! Oh, that delights me. As do your words about loving process; it's a capacity that stands knitters, poets, and pilgrims through the microseasons in good stead.

Love to you and yours, Ann. Thank you for coming by to read and comment.

David Gibbs's avatar

I enjoy your commentaries as much as your poems, I think because they help me catch what I have missed. They also make so clear your deep humility and wonderful humor! It seems your two creative passions reinforce each other because of their differences. Mine, I am afraid, are too similar: stained glass and mortared rock work. In both cases I try to find something beautiful, subtly shape it to add beauty, and then try to herd a bunch of them together in a pleasing way. I guess I will rationalize it as synergy! Love, Cousin Dave

26thAvenuePoet (Elizabeth)'s avatar

I'm so taken with the materials that your creativity draws you to, Dave -- stone and glass, the unyielding and the fragile! Such different techniques to shape and group your materials in each medium ... and I love your insight into what's similar about the creative processes. Synergy indeed!

So glad to have you for a reader and a relative, Cousin. Love to the family.

Rose Scarff's avatar

Thanks for sharing about the connection between scrambled eggs, knitting and writing poems! Well said! I guess picking up needlepoint after a 20 year break has actually helped my writing in that it gives me time to think. Plotting story, figuring out why a character does something, always takes time in solitude but I have a hard time just sitting and doing nothing (even when practicing at Tassajara!). Needlepoint is the perfect way for me to meditate on things, though I wish I could knit and make something more useful than I do.

26thAvenuePoet (Elizabeth)'s avatar

Hand-crafts are such a blessing -- and needlepoint is exquisite, which makes it useful in wonderful ways. Thanks as ever for reading, Rose!

Brian Funke's avatar

These are both great. The first one certainly feels like some days of writing!

26thAvenuePoet (Elizabeth)'s avatar

Doesn't it?? Thank you, Brian -- so glad you enjoyed them.

Barbara Webb's avatar

Now I want a plate of scrambled eggs. You've knitted several things for me - vests, scarf. and I love them all. But my favorite is the scarf, one of your first tries and I was blessed to receive it.

Barbara

26thAvenuePoet (Elizabeth)'s avatar

Breakfast soon, Barb, cooked by our friends you-know-where!

I love seeing you wear that beautiful droopy scarf.🧶

shari young's avatar

I don’t eat scrambled eggs or knit and am grateful for these poems….

26thAvenuePoet (Elizabeth)'s avatar

Grateful to you for reading them, Shari!

Weston Parker's avatar

" instead of tense lines

rubbed thin, frayed to tangles.." ------------Thanks for this, what a pleasure and a laugh.

"you have a tug with ----------------- I altered your original line a tad here, hope that's okay.

a lapful of soft resilience"

26thAvenuePoet (Elizabeth)'s avatar

Not sure what the extra "with" is doing there, Weston, but I'm glad you enjoyed some of the lines.

Weston Parker's avatar

whoops, that was my mistake.

Sulima Malzin's avatar

No knitting for me, but I happen to love both cooking and poetry (actually wrote a book combining the two) and I LOVE YOUR SCRAMBLED EGGS POEM!

26thAvenuePoet (Elizabeth)'s avatar

I'm so glad you do, Sulima! And I'm glad you love to cook!