September

Dear Alice,

I wrote this in my 'Morning Pages' (see Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way) in 1993 when I had committed to morning pages work. Last night, at the AAFG meeting, Kathy Zasuwa talked of the many, many books out there for artists who are "Clearing a Path: Making a Creative Commitment", the lecture she presented last night. I had not read this entry in years...but remembered the colors I saw, the change in the atmosphere, and my yearly September commitment to new goals. So here it is:

"1 September 1993. The signs are there—the movement more and more often of the honking geese, the erratic, drunken, slow movement of first one, then another Monarch Butterfly. Pricks of brilliant red now and again in the green of the Shining Sumac making it look like early warning signs of...yes, Christmas. Somber, heavy heads of sunflowers bowing their heads in prayer. And fields gone wild claim their triumph with an unabashed display of regal gold...no other plant can compete...Goldenrod has won! Patches here and there this morning attest to the chill that settled in overnight, fog on little cat feet. And the moon. The moon shone so BRILLIANTLY that I was wakened by it at 2, or 3. What a sight! The Blue moon, it was, last night. Not another until 1996 they say, though I have noted so many now that that seems hard to believe. And this morning it directed my way as I headed westward 'til the sun glazed everything with a brilliant, shining orange. The grasses in the nursery I passed looked like angel hair because of the mists caught there. Such a delicate, lovely sight!"

Alice, there is a sweater that has been waiting to make its debut every Autumn since then. Really. Since 1993. That was the Autumn that Suzy and I took the Spinning and Natural Dyeing class from Beth Pennington. (I can only remember that it was 1993 because that was the address on here mailbox! Silly, but true.) Suzy was in 8th grade, and it would be the perfect science project for the Science Fair, so we did it, together.

Ahhh, the sweater. I should say THE SWEATER. It is Kaffe Fassett's zigzag design. After getting started with this sweater, I found that the little 5 yard samples that I had dyed were no where near enough, and so I embarked on another summer of dyeing after that initial Fall, and I can share the result of that adventure in another epistle. For now, let me just say that I learned after knitting Kaffe Fassett's 'House' vest for DH, and working at this sweater for, well, now the effort is 16 years old, I vowed somewhere along the way to never knit another of his patterns unless they indicated only 2 (two), let me repeat TWO colors, in one row of knitting.

This Autumn, Alice, I endeavor to finish it. I would like to become part of, to be lost in those brilliant colors that we experience in September in Michigan. You be the judge. There are so many ends to weave in, and I am getting really close. And, methinks, too, that I shall leave the little tags inside. Suzy's initials are on them, mine too. Maybe someday she will want the sweater from—let's just say—the sweater from Michigan.

Love to you, and we miss you,
Nancy