Yet another piece of the cards

The Maiden

The Maiden is a developmental archetype.  She is the symbol of the power in potential creativity and sexuality. The power of the Maiden can be seen in her icon in the modern world, Barbie.  The power and attraction of Barbie is purely the maidens power of creativity and sexuality. That’s why she was instantly popular and persists to this day.  All the protesting that goes on about her body and the image it creates in a young girl's mind is useless.  She has the highly identifiable mark of the maiden, a honking huge set of boobs.  Young girls are transfixed at the sight.

  In most girls, their real creative powers begin to show about the time of menarche. Just as their bodies are blooming in the possibilities of being able to create a child, their minds and hearts are blooming with all kinds of other creative possibilities.  They begin to learn to make, they begin to write and draw and make music.  If all goes well with this early bloom time the maiden continues to use her creative impulse to prepare herself for adult life, and a time when her body is ready for the task of motherhood. 

Part of the difficulty of being a maiden or helping one is that the full flush of that sexual power is so strong (and it generally is her first experience with any kind of power at all) that she has no steering wheel and no brakes. She can be entirely unguided and can find herself facing life affecting consequences for her out of control behavior.

Maiden time ends with a pregnancy.  She may become a mother or she may become pregnant with a calling or a creative task. In any case her creative powers are harnessed to something outside herself.

In healthy women the movement from maiden to mother is a natural maturing process that happens over time.  

 The shadowy side to the  Maiden  is the misuse of the maiden's power.  Should the maiden refuse to mature she can linger in her maiden state enamored with her sexuality until time runs out and her attractions fade with age.  If she happens to have children she moves into the role of the Abandoning mother, causing untold misery and setting her children up for a very painful and unhappy life.

 Tired of Husks and Swine

In the story of the prodigal son there comes a point of truth.  He is in a far country living with the pigs he is herding and eating their leftovers, when it finally occurs to him that even the least of his father’s herdsmen are better off than this.

He decides to go back and take a job with his father. He chose to face the humiliation of admitting that he messed up big time rather than enduring starvation, hunger and shame.

We all have moments of truth where we have a profound weariness with our circumstances and want to make a spiritual U turn.  Alcoholics call it kissing concrete or hitting bottom.

“It takes some folks a weary long time to tire of the husks and the swine”

Knitting again.

My parents often wondered why I could lay aside a promising project for months and sometimes years.  Then at a later date I would dig it up and finish it with a flourish.  It took me a long time to understand it myself.  Sometimes I lack the strength and maturity and insight to complete a particular project.  Sometimes it needs time to marinate in my creative brain.  These things take time.  Other times I get bored with the process and need a recess to freshen my perspective.  I am freshening my perspective on the socks that I am temporarily not knitting in favor of test knitting my Hoodlet pattern. 

I can't discard the socks for long, I need to finish them by Sunday. At the same time I am finding that Disraeli was right.  A change of problem and perspective is as good a break as I need.  Besides. The hat is another gift.

A knitting digression

I am working on the last of the Christmas socks.  I am working up the cuffs and getting burnt out with the yarn.
Yarn that is dyed for socks comes in a lot of pre-dyed patterns and possibilities, most of them good.  Somehow I got hold of a skein that entirely belied it's possibilities by looking fairly charming in the skein and being pretty startling in the sock.  It has heathery qualities, and purpleness and pinkish tones, all of which sound rather nice.
However it may be, the combination just doesn't work according to my vision of how this is supposed to look.  It hasn't surpassed the sun bleached Easter egg horror I knit up last spring but in my eye it is running a very close second. 
Part of the reason that I am complaining about it is that I want to get on with test knitting a hood/caplet pattern for the hat  that I made for myself  last year. People have asked me for the pattern. (Pattern? says I, What Pattern?)  So I wrote it up and will be knitting it up.  As soon as I finish with the socks.

Another piece of the cards

The caretaker

The caretakers set up their life so that they are constantly giving, constantly controlling people and constantly out of control.  It is always more than they can handle and they are in constant chaos.  Caretakers always know how to do your life better than you do.  They have strong opinions on everything and boy do they get a bug up their butt if you don’t do as they say. 

The Caretaker can be the shadow piece for the White Knight, The Protecting Mother, or an illness driven evolution of The Good Little Girl. 

The experience of care taking from the receiving end is profoundly dis-empowering.  Whatever help you are given is given with a large dose of contempt because you need the help in the first place.  Humble pie isn’t all that tasty; the slice you have to eat to get the help you need from a Caretaker is nauseating.  “Famine itself sickens of it”

The Caretaker of course, can’t understand why the people they rescue are so mad at them and so ungrateful for the help they give so freely.  They feel very put upon and hurt and taken advantage of.  Make no mistake about it. If you are in the midst of the care taking juggling act, you are being taken advantage of.  It’s a part of the dance.

Queen Victoria’s Chair,

I once heard that queen Victoria never ever once looked behind her in her life when she sat in a chair.  The reason is, that someone would always push one under her as she sat.  Always.  On the one hand how nice to trust so absolutely that you will be cared for.  On the other hand think of the chair and the person that placed it there.  Someone was constantly watching, anticipating and rushing in to save the royal hiny from a rude landing. 

For Victoria, that was her normal way of being.  I am sure that it never occurred to her that life could be any different.  She sat, a chair was there.  I have a few people and places in my life where I feel like whomever it was that was always rushing in with that damn chair.  It's pretty exhausting and demoralizing as well.  

I find that the rude landing has a very good result.  You don't pull that kind of stupid stuff if you know that the rude landing is sure to happen.  If Victoria ever once had the experience of sitting and landing on her behind, She like the rest of us would look first before she sat.  

Stitch Dictionary; thats S_T_ well shit.

The last thing I need at present is another project to go along with all the other projects that rotate in and out of my working mind.
So what do I come up with as something that the world needs but this:
A sock oriented stitch dictionary.  Lord knows I have been knitting socks for more than ten years now and I am actually really good at it.  There are a lot of textures and cables and lace patterns that work very well in making a pair.  If you buy a sock book you get the basics of a plain sock and then about twelve full blown patterns.  Nice, especially if you like someone to do the math, but how about those of us that want more stitch patterns than that?
I boosted the idea onto a message board and was greeted with puzzlement.  There are so many books out that give you sock patterns they say.
Oh but this is different.
Imagine a sock book set up like the handy sweater pattern book.  With all the different heels in one section and toes in another.  With 4 stitch patterns and lace and cables, with textures, fillers, big lace set up so that you can go in and pick out a stitch you like, and have the numbers so that you know how many repeats are in a round for a given stitch count and pick your top down or toe up toe or heel and set off to make your own set.
There is some interest but I am getting a general collective Hunh?  Barbara Walker, did you meet this attitude too?

Noble sacrafice, and toasted mouse.

I am expecting a visit from my brother today.  he will be taking my gifts to him and his dear sweet wife home.

I knitted them both socks.  I took them to Tuesday night knit, and Jill took the picture.  The lace pattern is Print o the wave, and I am going to have to make at least one more pair with that pattern.  Those are my feet in them.  After I put them on I nearly cried, I wanted them myself.  I must make another pair later.

Toasted Mouse.
we had/have a mouse that moved in in the fall.  Michael no longer is a mouse deterrent.  It has been living behind the sink and building a cache of dried cat food up somewhere in there.  It was smart enough to avoid the traps set for it but I guess that it has come to a grisly end.
I got a call From the Footless Man while I was out at the knitters tea.  He asked me about the smell of burning wool.  Burning wool?  Not that I knew about.  Hmmmp.
When I got home I walked in the door and got hit with a really nasty burning protean smell.  So far as I can tell the mouse fell down the furnace vent and incinerated down there.  Every time the burner lights the smell floats throughout the house.  It's going to be a cold few days around here until I figure out how to extract the remains or it burns up.  I don't know which option I like less.  I think we will be using the wood stove a lot more around here.

Some of what has been occupying my time and attention

I have been working on this project for fifteen fears.  It is a tool made up as a set of handmade cards plus commentary.  I am beginning to post them and work on them here as a next step.

Here is the first one.

 

Divine tests

Once there was a man who needed a mule. Someone down the street told him that there was one for sale nearby.  He went over to inspect the mule and the prospector that was selling him was enthusiastic.

“He’s a good Mule” the old guy said, “He never balks and does what you ask every time.”

This sounded good to the man and he bought the mule, which followed him home, just fine.

The next morning the man loaded the mule and was going to head out to the gold fields.  He gave a pull on the lead rope.  The mule didn’t move. He pulled again.  No moving.  He pulled harder and began yanking and pulling and swearing. The mule didn’t move.  The man was tired out and went to the old prospector who had sold him the mule and told him that the mule wasn’t moving and he thought he had been cheated.

The prospector shook his head and went to inspect the mule.   He looked at it for a moment, and said “Ahhhh” Then he picked up an axe handle and, Wham!!!Hit the mule a bash between the eyes.  “Now He’ll go” he said.

The new owner looked at the mule and at the old man and said,” I thought that you told me he didn’t need to be beaten to work.”

The old man said, “He doesn’t.”

“Well what do you call belting him between the eyes?”

“I call that ‘getting his attention’.”

Most of the time the things we are experiencing, could be described as “Getting our attention.”  If it is a test from God, It will be unexpected, it will be nothing you could have imagined, and a lot of times it is much less awful than it could be the first time.  The second time (If you are stupid and need a second time) look out.