Bar Mitzvah : a milestone achieved

This weekend was my son's Bar Mitzvah. 

Not only was this a milestone in his young life, as well as his mother's, it was symbolic on another level.  Only one month before, my little guy was in the hospital recovering from surgery.  It has been a very emotional couple of months for our family.  One of great lows and massive highs.  I wrote the following explanation of his knitted prayer shawl bag months ago.  But its meaning has even more resonance now:

 

On one side of the bag is my son's name in Hebrew with the U.S. southwestern hamsa equivalent known as the healing hand, and on the other, is the Tree of Life: Eitz Chaim עֵץ הַֽחַיִּים.  You will notice that there are no leaves on this tree. Why is that? My son’s favorite month is winter.  As any Canadian will tell you, most trees lose their leaves during the autumn.  But is the tree dead?   No.  It is very much alive during those winter months. The Tree of Life, combined with the remark
אַל־תִּירָ֣א אַבְרָ֗ם  the Lord’s covenant with Abram “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield your very great reward” combine the ideas that although there are many obstacles that are put in our way each day, one must trust in the Tree of Life – the tree of knowledge.  Even when there appears little obvious signs of G-d’s presence, existence is there, beneath the temporal.  Knowledge and conviction of faith will be a sentinel, a shield, and can guide an individual through the dilemmas with which they are faced, all the days of their life.  This is especially important as we attempt to maintain our sense of security in a world filled with political volatility and tragedies. Escalating troubles may slowly plant seeds of doubt in our confidence of Hashem’s protection.  How must we, who strive to live with emunah, react? With strength and courage. 

…  Al tira Avrum  …  אַל־תִּירָ֣א אַבְרָ֗ם …

Mazal Tov, my Maverick Knitter!  

You have faced so much with strength and courage and tremendous amounts of dignity. 

I love you forever, Cookie Bear.  

Chazak, chazak, venischazeik. 
Be strong, be strong, and let us be strengthened.

Better than Therapy

That moment when you are 5 metres from finishing a 700 metre beaded shawl and you decide to frog it all down and start again because you realize you should have done the scalloped lace 6 line repeat pattern because it's prettier.... and you're using an extra fine Americo Royal Alpaca/ Cashmere/ Silk blend so... yeah.

Oh well.

There goes two months worth of knitting....

Still Better Than Therapy

It's scary before you frog it down... and wonderful when you start again.  You feel oddly courageous. How strange that knitting projects can be metaphorical mirrors of real life challenges.  If only everything was as easy as unwinding and restarting. 

As long as  you  understand that the learning experience of the first project was not for naught ... both projects do in fact result in a single finished piece. 

The yarn retains a memory of the first knitted item... 

...and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

The Trump Effect: #pussyhatproject.com

There's no nice way to say this: The Donald winning the US election felt like a kick to my lady parts.

#pussyhatproject.com

Personally, I had wanted to go on a media news fast on Election Day, but my kids are political news junkies (at ages 12 and 17!) ... and I had a feeling they would need an emotional chaperone through that evening; serves me right for raising social justice peaceniks.

When things started to tank around 10:45pm / 11pm Toronto-time I made them turn off the TV.  The next morning, I woke up and checked my device for the results and felt the world drop from beneath me.

1st thought: expletive expletive expletive. 

2nd thought : what am I going to tell my children? 

#pussyhatproject.com

I wanted to curl up and scream... but d*mn it. .. I am a parent and had to 'get my adult on' and be calm, collective and reassuring.

Parenting sucks.

My 17 year old daughter woke up before I got upstairs. I didn't have to tell her. I heard her weeping.  She let me hug her... and she never lets me hug her these days. I didn't end up telling my 12 year old son.  The daughter pushed past me and crawled into bed with him. She broke the news.

Like I said, we are Canadian.

This should matter less to us.
 
But it doesn't.  American friends: we are your neighbours.  We care about you. We care about the world.

One friend suggested I pick up my yarn and sticks and embark on a knit campaign much like I did back in the day of Rob Ford.  True, Ford was my 'muse' (see my blog posts from December 2011 - 2013), but the upcoming Trump Era feels darker... far more sinister and menacing.

Then I read about The Women's March on Washington https://www.womensmarch.com and The Pussyhat Project https://www.pussyhatproject.com and then beautiful serendipity struck.  I discovered that a gym friend is a member of Democrats Abroad and is heading to D.C. soon for the January 21st March on Washington.  Lovely Julie was thrilled that I offered to make her a hat.  What she does not know yet is I made two.  One for her friend as well.

I am not thrilled about inauguration day but I feel empowered about the day after!

Sending love (and a couple of hats) from North of the Border

#pussyhatproject.com

#pussyhatproject.com

Rebel Knitter x ♡ o ♡ x

#PumpkinCarving4KnitGeeks

Every year I feel enormous pressure to carve a cool pumpkin. 

I live in a neighbourhood bursting with creative types... and we have an annual Pumpkin Festival on November 1st each year.  So, yeah... a few triangles and a candle just don't cut it in my hood.  Yup. 36 years after graduating from high school... I am still succumbing to peer pressure. 

It's kind of ironic that I didn't carve a jack-o-lantern until I was in my 40s -- and not my early 40s at that.  My mishpocheh did not do pumpkin carvings. No pumpkin pie. Not even pumpkin kugel. Nada... and today I keep saying I'm Jewish, not Druish but my hood doesn't care.  So it's game on.

This year's carving is knit-inspired (hence the blog entry) and dedicated to all my Wooly Mamas and knit geek friends out there in virtual knit land...

Cool Panoramic - yeah, offspring #2 showed me how to do this

Hope the #^*%! squirrels don't eat it before Tuesday evening's festival....

As a dot dot dot ... here's a quick look at some of the pumpkins of Halloweens past... 

2015: Hamsa

2013: SkulLOL

2011: Skull Haunted House & OY VEI (in hebrew lettering)

 

2012: Owl & Che ... cuz... yeah.

2014: pressured to do two.. Dracula & The iPumpkin

It's not about blocking the haters... it's about hating to block...

Honestly.  I know I will need to block the bejeezers out of these puppies for them to end up measuring the exact same size... 

There's the lesson right there: same yarn, same knitter, same number of stitches and rows... different amounts of stress when knitting the Hamsa side and the Tree of Life side. 

And so I become Rosie the knitting Riveter ...

We Can Block it... Yes, We Can!

...and so it begins again.

Ideas are taking form.
The yarn was purchased long ago.
Let the Bar Mitzvah knitting commence.

Saying Goodbye; Creative Comfort

It had to happen eventually.

I knew it would. 

The time has come for our family to leave the elementary school whose community we have been a part of for the past dozen years.  

It's where both my children learned to read and write (in three languages).  

It is where friendships were kindled.

It is where the Friday afternoon knitting club had met (since 2004).

It is where the Lorax Project took root.
(See http://knittishisms.blogspot.ca/2010/06/double-mitzvah.html)

And so when the reality of our departure was imminent, I knew I could not leave this lovely group of people without one last knitting project.  With the Lorax Project in mind, I decided to spin the concept with a slightly different weft. The Lorax Project was a blanket, of sorts.  We sent our departing Principal into retirement with it. This new project was to be a redux, a revisioning.  But a project I would embark on alone.  Sometimes the toughest journeys are the ones we have to travel alone. I thought about what this school has meant to me (and my children) and from there, I came up with the concept that is

CREATIVE COMFORT:

Made from Eco Sock Yarn remnants, Creative Comfort incorporates a HAMSA, a TREE OF LIFE, the CHAI (Life Symbol) and the STAR OF DAVID.

Hamsa / The Healing, Protective Hand. Rebel Knitter c.2016

Magen David - To Shield and Protect through Cultural Knowledge.
Rebel Knitter c.2016

Chai / Life / 18 (the age of the school).
Rebel Knitter c.2016

The Tree of Life (based on an element from the Tree of Life Afghan)
Rebel Knitter c.2016

Anyone who knows me understands, in my mind sock-knitting is the ultimate form of cherished knitting. Consequently, to knit this piece with my favourite yarn was a natural choice.

But what does it mean?

Aside from the obvious symbolism of the iconography chosen, the overall idea was most relevant. It is a piece that looks like it belongs as part of a larger woolly fabric... that is intentional.

As any parent will tell you, when you have a toddler who loves their security blanket so much that you need to train them off of it, because quite simply, they are too old to be shlepping their threadbare, shabby, old 'banky' all over town.... one of the most common methods is to cut a corner off the tattered comfort piece and slowly wean the child by decreasing it's size daily or weekly.  I flipped this idea on its head a wee bit.  I created that 'corner' to leave behind at the school.  I, on the other hand, get to keep the lion's share of the fabric that is far from bedraggled: the intellectual fabric that are my children; these wonderful educators and the staff of this school helped weave their sense of social justice, they succeeded in inspiring curiosity, nurturing and honouring diversity as well as in creating a safe and warm community in which to grow and learn.

Thank you PPDJDS.

We will miss you.