update on the weather

"I have news for you, the stag bells, winter snows, summer has gone.

Wind high and cold, the sun low, short it's course, the sea running high.

Deep red the bracken, it's shape is lost, the wild goose has raised it's accustomed cry.

Cold has seized the birds' wings, season of ice. This is my news."

Funny the things you find in your pocket, written in your handwriting. Then you realize that is was something you did at work while reading a book on Celtic verse. To be included in your journal that is bits and pieces that you didn't write, but that struck a chord in you. On the back of the slip of paper it says "Author Unknown, 9th Century."

Nothing can describe San Francisco less accurately than the above passages. We are setting records for winter heat and clear skies around here, the normal fogginess dissapearing to some other part of the world. Temperature inside my work reached 82 degrees on Thursday and Friday. I felt like a weak Victorian woman, coated in dust and must from the filthy, mildewed books people bring us,(They are always demanding money: "It's OLD, and YOU don't WANT it?!!!" Like anything old is antique and valuable.) unsteady and damp-faced from the heat. I have never worked in a ny place with air-conditioning. Bookstores cannot afford things like heating or cooling systems, so we made do by strategic fans and coats and gloves and space-heaters in the winters.

This weather makes it a bit hard to justify the knitting binge that I am on. I watch movies and work on my top secret project, finding that I can knit pretty well while my eyes are focused on something else. I am always astounded by the mind's capacity to follow a pattern while the eyes watch a plot, and attention is elsewhere. It's sort of like using a number-pad on a computer: the less I think about the placement of the numbers, the better. So far I have only knitted scarves and slippers and fingerless gloves, and armlets. I feel I need to tackle something bigger and more complex. (A sweater vest!) Michelle and I discovered the most amazing yarn store in the Castro and I went there and spent too much money on delectable cottons and wools in the most amazing delicous vivid colors. The whole store (Imagineknits) is pretty much floor to ceiling with yarns that are a spinner's work of art. As a color fiend, I was in heaven.

I have a very enjoyable life right now. Most of my time is taken up by creation of some kind or another. I got to unload the new collection of antique children's books that Black Oak recently aquired, and that was fabulous. There was the Arthur Rackham illustrated Alice in Wonderland, and a charming and painfully funny kids book from the 30's with illustrations that were photos of kittens dressed like little children and pirates. I think I have to buy it just to share it with the world.

Anyhow, I'm off to go knit in the sun. Have a good weekend, all.