Crazy Lanea

Upcoming Tethera performance at PA Celtic Fling

Our trio Tethera will be performing at the Pennsylvania Celtic Fling on June 28 and 29, and we'd love to see you there.  The festival is on the grounds of the Pennsylvania Renn Fest, outside of Lancaster, PA.  That makes it an easy day trip from DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Delaware--you get the point.  There are great bands playing all weekend long, dancers, crafters and vendors, sheep trials, falconry, and good food and drink.  If you're interested in coming out, please let me know so I can be on the lookout for  you.  If it looks like a lot of knitters and spinners are going to show up, we can even circle up and play with fiber. 

Whirlwind

So much to say in so little time . . .

Most importantly, our bardic trio Tethera performed at the Potomac Celtic Festival on Saturday and had a great time.  I don't know if I can explain how great it feels to have people appreciate our work.  We were lucky enough to have some dear friends come to the show, including my former PCF co-conspirator and our great emcee Dana Henry, Mike and Tara,  Jinann, Mary and Máiréad (who then demanded we visit their booth and do an encore--I love them), Lynn . . . I'm sure I'm forgetting someone . . .  some of whom had never seen us sing or tell, so that was doubly great.  If you want to come out and see us when next we perform, come to the Pennsylvania Celtic Fling on June 28th and 29th.   We spent the rest of the day doing living history demos and talks with our tribe, watching great bands and dancers, and oogling our friends' merchant booths.  But I had to stay frugal because on Sunday we . . .

Bought a used 2005 Toyota Sienna, and got a great deal on it.  I can't tell you how excited I am about it.  My truck was really starting to wear on me, and Kayo's advancing age made his jumps in and out of it increasingly dicey, and my crunchy knees and oft unstable hip were rebelling against the clutch in the very bad DC traffic, so it was time.  The van is really swanky and in great shape, so I hope to have it for at least the next decade.  It's making me think bad things about looms and upright basses, but things like that will need to wait a while.  It will absolutely make camping and road trips much easier, and that's going to be fantastic. 

Other than that, I've been reclaiming my studio from the remodel (almost done), plotting some new historical garments for Scott and our friend Morag, knitting socks, planning sock bag color combos, reading, and watching John Adams.  

I is for Ireland

I've been studying Ireland in particular and the Celtic world in general--from Paleolithic to Present--for almost as long as I remember.  I'm sure I've dedicated more hours to my subject than the average medical or law student has to theirs.  And yet I can't really explain why.  I'm often asked to.  There aren't many people immersed in the sort of cultural studies I undertake, particularly when said studies pay less than a penny on the hour, all told, and when they've been misrepresented and cheated so often by American pop culture.  To many people, Ireland is no more than green beer and fake accents in bad commercials.  They put it on like a bad Halloween costume, and discard it again as carelessly. 

There are the answers I give people at cocktail parties--I fell in love with the mythology, and then the music, and then the literature and language and history and archeology, and haven't looked back since.  Which is all true, but far from the whole truth. 

When I'm being honest--which I think most of us are trying to at least play at with our blogs--I say that studying Ireland, at least at first, felt like some sort of replacement for the side of the family that abandoned us.  I can't have and really don't want a relationship with my actual father.  But I want some connection to that missing half of my family, and I guess it feels safer to build a bridge to a long dead ancestor than to an aunt or uncle who just never bothered to try to hold on.  Some strange sense of pride or betrayal made my paternal grandfather try to take our name from my brother and me when my Mom left my father, and I've clung tightly to that surname and some birthright I thought it entailed.  Later, that grandfather tried to reconnect with us once he realized how destructive his eldest son was and how right my Mother was to leave him, for us.   But theirs will never be my family reunions.  I see my name attached to some genetic relative now and again--all of the people in the US with my name are direct relatives--and just once had the chance to talk to a distant cousin who had no knowledge of my personal family's sundering.  It was strange and exciting, and it happened because my name was in a program at a Celtic Festival where I was performing.

And then, studying Celtic cultures is something I can share with my step-father, he who regularly insists that I picked the wrong country to focus on.  He is the child of a Scottish immigrant, and he introduced us to the festival scene that ended up entangling me so fully.  We picked different eras to study, and my obsession with music isn't something he can truly share, but bridies and bagpipes would be glue enough to connect us as friends even without our shared love for our family.

On some level, I've always felt like a traitor for focusing so much of my energy on the culture I wasn't exposed to by my Mother's family, whom I have always  known and loved as my own and only.  Why isn't "I" for Italy in my mind?  Why didn't German culture appeal?  It don't think the stain of WWII stopped me from focusing more on either, because my Mom's family was all here at the beginning of the 20th century and railed against the the modern countries that wrought that horrifying war.   Maybe it's a Jungian response--a desperate grab at some collective unconscious I've been sequestered from.  I do worry sometimes that I'll outgrow it, and then feel a fool when someone asks me what my MA is in . . . many many people already react to my resume as if it says "BA in artsy-fartsy with a side of teaching, MA in cliches and boredom."  But no--my obsession carries on.

Because, whyever and however I fell for Eireann, I fell hard, and my love abides.  The tunes and language and literature feel like home as they rattle around in my skull.  The history--even after all these years of study--enthralls me, and appalls me, and sends me from worried insomnia to ecstatic reverie as I study it. I own it.  I need it.  I lived there, and swam in those waters, and ate food from Ireland's soil, and hope to do so again and again.  I toy with the  idea of seeking dual citizenship, despite the fact that doing so would bar me from a fairly large percentage of the jobs that are available to me here in my current home.

In short, Is leor don dreoilín a nead, agus Níl aon sceal eile orm.

Scanty evidence, finished objects, and questions of gauge and color

A couple of weekends ago, a bunch of us wandered out for the woods for a very relaxed camping trip smack dab between the Equinox and April Fool's Day.  Normally, I would carry back photographic evidence.  This time, I bring only this. 

It was really cold, and throwing an event is a fair amount of work.  But this bug sure is green!  I hope you can settle for it.

While we were freezing, I finished the butterfly moebius.  It ended up being a really great thing to wear while camping.  No dangling ends to be  a danger while tending a fire; soft enough to wear while sleeping; versatile enough to wear as a scarf, doubled up around my neck for extra warmth, wrapped around my neck and head--it's a great  garment.   I definitely want to use Seasilk again, and to repeat this knit.

I also finished the first of the horseshoe socks, and I really like it.  I need to give serious thought to my sock gauge, though.  I knew I was progressively knitting my socks tighter and tighter, but these served as a great touchstone when compared to  . . .

the kilthose I finally finished.

The hosen are knit on 2.25 mm needles, and they felt like tree trunks compared to the needles I'm using for the horseshoe socks.  I certainly want to continue to make socks that last a long time, but I think I'm risking injury and wasting yarn by knitting at this crazy gauge.  Must.  Stop.  Knitting.  So.  Tightly.  I had to use a contrasting heel and toe and still used 45 grams of the teal yarn for the body of the lace sock.   That's madness. 

Though, I will say that I felt like I flew through the last 3/4 of that second in the kilt hose pair, working on bigger needles in such a plain pattern. 

In case you haven't caught onto the repetitive color scheme working here, look at the skirt I'm almost done with. 

It's a very simple four-gore skirt in a lovely rayon batik.  I forget how much I hate to work with rayon until I, you know, work with rayon again.  And then I lament it, and whine, and cuss, and throw tantrums.  I'm toying with the idea of paying someone to hem this thing, because of the rayon,  the fact that I still haven't gotten myself a dress form, and my desire to wear this to a dance weekend in a few days.   I did set in the zipper with no complaints, so that was nice. 

Now--evidence that I occasionally work with colors that are not blue. Look--it's something mostly green and neutral . . .

The outside of the felt tote is entirely pieced now, so I just have to plot pockets, pick a fabric for the lining, sew that, and add the straps.  I'm loving that the two faces of the bag are relatively plain and the sides and bottom are brighter.

Healing thoughts

My friend Scott Hull has been waiting for a liver transplant for what seems like forever.  As is often the case, one thing after another got in the way over the months, and he made it to the top of Maryland's liver transplant list as his health got worse, and infection set in, and his first transplant failed, and on and on.  Things got even crazier when his transplant surgeon was mysteriously put on administrative leave a week or so ago, and Scott and his wonderful wife Martha were sent to Memphis, Tennessee to try to get a transplant there.

Martha got the wonderful, frightening, much-needed news this morning.   There is a liver available for Scott, and if all goes as planned his transplant will take place very soon.  If you're the type to pray or hope or wish for good things, please send some positive thoughts to Scott and Martha Hull, and to the supremely generous donor and his or her family.   Someone I can never meet is about to save my friend's life, and for that I am very grateful. 

If you're not a registered organ donor, please consider becoming one.  My knitting friend Trish died unexpectedly a couple of weeks ago, and the only thing that lessened the blow was knowing that in death she helped many, many people who needed donated tissue and organs.  If you'd like to learn more about organ donation, go here. 

C is for Contra, and Clogging

C is for Contra dance, and Clogging--two long-standing passions of mine (and two things that are downright tough to photograph).   

 

I haven't talked about either enough here on the blog, because I've been dealing with a few  chronic injuries over the last several years, and it's been keeping me off the dance floor more than I would like.  But I should talk about dance.  When someone asks me about myself, "folk dancer" is one of the first descriptors I blurt out.  I dance in my dreams.  I was in a clogging troupe in college, and it changed so much about my life I barely have words to describe it.  Teaching other people to dance is an avocation for me--so many of the dance forms I love can only be transmitted from dancer to dancer over years of interaction, and I hate to think any of the steps would fall out of the communal repertoire  So when I got the go-ahead from my physical therapist, I  checked out the Glen Echo dance schedule so I could start getting back on the floor and also take some photos for you crazy kids.

 

And that's when I saw that my friend Morna was in town from Montana to call the Friday night dance, with the open band as her musicians.  Talk about serendipity. 

The dance community at Glen Echo has been hoofing for decades, hosting two weekly contras and scads of other social dances year-round.  I started dancing there when I was 16 or 17--I can't count the number of hours of fun I've had, or the steps and dances I've learned, or the fantastic bands and callers I've heard.

And as if getting to dance while one of my good friends is calling wasn't good enough, Brooke and the kids were there too, as were my friends Joni and Adrian, and several other dancers I haven't seen in far too long. 

When I Contra dance, I clog.  When I first started hitting percussive licks on the floor of the Spanish Ballroom, I can't say it was generally well-received.  Back in the day, clogging was seen as anathema to the soft, whooshing sound of feet gliding over the dance floor during a contra.  I was too loud for many of the dancers--my feet were loud, and my hair was unnaturally bright, and my clothes were just plain too strange.  Times have changed.  Lots of folks clog during the contras these days, and some guys wear skirts, and I no longer look like the punk rocker I still am at heart. 

 
(Morna took pictures of my feet, and I took pictures of hers--it's like yarn-porn, but with worn old dancing shoes)

In the spirit of me dancing more, and teaching other folks to clog (while also reducing allergens and improving the resale value of our house) we're gearing up to remove all of the carpeting in our house and replace it with 1,400 square feet of bamboo.  Hot dog, I can't wait.  Come for lessons, friends.  You just have to know how to walk and how to count to eight.

Imbolc

I spent last weekend with the other Preachainees, celebrating Imbolc the best way we know how--with forges.  Imbolc is Brigid's holiday, and Brigid is all about creation and transformation, poetry and smithcraft.  We keep Imbolc really casual, because it's generally very cold outside, which makes planning a camping event tough.  We converge on someone's house, make way too much food, try to share some valuable skills, and have a good time without fretting about keeping everything historically accurate.   John the Farrier brought a couple of coal forges over to Sig and Macha's farm and we got to work on some iron and hang out with horses, dogs, and friends.

Our iron workers this time around spanned the generations, from six years old to 80-ish.    I'm now going to just toss pictures into the post, because I can't bear to leave many out.  Metalurgy is magic, and horses are very very cool, and I love these people.

 

 

And, as if that weren't wonderful enough, I came home to find flowers from my husband and beautifully-dyed yarn from a friend. 

I am a  very, very lucky girl, and I know it.

A blogger's (silent) poetry reading

This is one of the best annual traditions in the blogosphere.   I've been thinking of ancient poetry and myth a lot lately, because I need to get to work on some new translations.   Etaine got all smarty-pants on us, like she does, and came up with a great name for our Bardic Trio.  Swag and website to come.  In the meantime--read, well, some of the oldest extant Celtic poetry there is. 

Song of Amergin
    by Amergin, Translated by Robert Graves

I am a stag: of seven tines,

I am a flood: across a plain,

I am a wind: on a deep lake,

I am a tear: the Sun lets fall,

I am a hawk: above the cliff,

I am a thorn: beneath the nail,

I am a wonder: among flowers,

I am a wizard: who but I

Sets the cool head aflame with smoke?

I am a spear: that roars for blood,

I am a salmon: in a pool,

I am a lure: from paradise,

I am a hill: where poets walk,

I am a boar: ruthless and red,

I am a breaker: threatening doom,

I am a tide: that drags to death,

I am an infant: who but I

Peeps from the unhewn dolmen, arch?

I am the womb: of every holt,

I am the blaze: on every hill,

I am the queen: of every hive,

I am the shield: for every head,

I am the tomb: of every hope.

Bookshelves

Sallyjo suggested this great meme, and I was excited to participate: post a photo of a bookshelf that is revealing about your self.   

Well, really, this is pretty darn easy for me.  I apologize for the flash-induced greasiness.  But there are the opening shelves of our library, and the beginning of my Celtic Studies collection.  It takes up, well, a lot more than these shelves.  On top--a bleached buck skull and an antique fiddle I can't play.

First shelf: my songbook (I made it), a drinking horn (Shrew made it as a custom piece for me) and a bunch of mythology and a few large-format books. 

Second shelf: a photo of me standing on top of a dolmen on the grounds of Blarney castle, an antler I picked up from the side of the PA turnpike, a Brigid's Cross I brought home from Brú na Bóinne, a bobcat skull some dear friends us as a wedding present, and one of those fake distance signs.  Behind, more mythology and a bunch of history books.

Third shelf. a photo of me that you can't make out, some travel, history, and poetry books, and the beginnings of my linguistics section.  Those small blue books are all Middle Welsh myths and poems I've translated, and the red ones are Old Irish.  The white book next to them rewired my brain a while back--it's Thurneysen's A grammar of Old Irish.  And it was the key to a language my brain needs like food.

Hurdles

I studiously ignored the sockyarn blanket for weeks (WEEKS!) while working away on gifts.  But now Christmas has past, and I can only spend so much time chained to the sewing machine making sock bags. 

Speaking of sock bags, I'm almost done with a big batch of sock bags.  I'll try to post photos, but there is no sun at my house when I'm here these days, and I feel silly carrying my knitting and sewing to work to photograph them in the city.  But that may be my only option.

Where was I . . .  returning to personal knitting means I just finished round one of the blanket edging.  13,400 edge stitches done, only 13,400 knit stitches and a few scant hundred stitches with a darning needle between me and a finished blanket.  Ahhhhhh.  So close!

Also, I cast the second of the kilt hose back onto the needles and all seems to be going as planned.  Fingers crossed.

And, perhaps coolest of all,  I just signed a contract for Etaine, Anubh and I to perform again at the Pennsylvania Celtic Fling the last weekend of June 2008.  Woot!  We have twice as many sets as last year.  Which may freak me out just a little bit, because we can't really double the amount of material we perform between now and June.  I'm going to go hide under my nearly-finished blanket now--excuse me.