Still winter

In C. S. Lewis's land of Narnia it's always winter and never Christmas. Here in northern Illinois we've already had Easter, but it's still winter.

Is this a weather report? Or a metaphor?

Whichever it is, there's a new, wet layer of it this morning. The evergreens outside my front windows  look like someone has plopped sodden balls of synthetic fluff on every upward-facing surface. The snow is mostly not sticking to streets and sidewalks, but it's covering every bit of anything that has been making an effort to turn green since Easter Sunday. You could call the snow pretty, except that it's April and I'm darn sick of snow. I want to see the daffodils I planted last fall. I want the kind of warm spring sun that makes the early tulips grow two inches from morning to night. I want color in the landscape. I want to sit outside in the backyard after supper.

But it's still winter.

I'm finishing up work on a warm, cabled sweater, the kind that would have been great to wear on St. Patrick's Day a few weeks back.

Macoun at Twist Collective

I still need to sew on the buttons and block the collar. Blocking involves soaking or washing the sweater in water and then pulling and poking, bunching and stretching until the knitted fabric is the shape you want it to be. Then you leave it on the dining room table to dry, which takes less than a day in dry winter weather.

Wool is malleable. When you block your knitting the stitches open up and even out. The fabric becomes softer and more cohesive as the little scales on the sides of the wool fibers make friends with their neighbors. The pieces to this sweater have already been blocked, but the shawl collar needs shaping. It will be stretched out horizontally and shaped around a folded towel to hold it in place. After it's dry, the wool will remember where to roll, where to fold over, following the knitted-in shape.

There is a lot of knitting in that collar--and it's knit 2, purl 2 ribbing, which is a bit tedious. (Knit 1, purl 1 ribbing is worse.) My carpal-tunnel-compromised fingers are tingly this morning after last night's determination to finish. But the collar makes the sweater and you do what you have to do, because, well, craft.

Still winter.

I take to the couch when it feels wintry in my soul, with knitting in my lap or a book, or both. Awaiting a passive sort of healing. The broken and sad parts inside knit themselves back together somehow, with bits and pieces from all over--the wisdom of authors, friends, family, my own past--brushing up against each other, making a new coherent whole.

Under the surface, under the snow--Easter's there, somewhere.