Alternative Knitting

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Knitting Bookstore
to browse and drool

Anne's
s*t*a*s*h!
(blush)

52 or 79 things I have discovered about me, life and knitting. Or fewer. Or more. Currently 77

What Anne does for a living

Work on needles

New for 2006

Rachel's lime green cashcotton sweater

Unexpected knitting in greens

Anne's finished projects 2006
Amethyst cashcotton sweater
Lacy hemp shawl

2005 2004 2003 2002

Online yarn stores and resources

Knitty
Threadbear
Ozeyarn
Martina for sock yarn
Kangaroo
House of Hemp
Ford Barton
Laughing Hens
Hip Knits

SECRET

I've gone blank

Bodywork and other training
I've done a shed-load of training in the last few years, some in new areas, some pretty advanced. These are the training establishments I recommend for outstanding integrity, professionalism and allround excellence:

Jean-Pierre Barral
Visceral Osteopathy

John F Barnes
Myofascial Release

Human Givens
A new approach to emotional health and clear thinking

Upledger Institute
Craniosacral Therapy

Jing Advanced Massage
Advanced Clinical Bodywork
Remedial Massage
Myofascial Release
(I also teach with these guys)

Pilates Training Solutions

May 28th

Has it been so long?
Since I last posted? Yes. I've been to see Laura Solon in the meantime - superbly funny and clever, timing to die for. And now I have two weeks off clinic in which I am doing three days brief psychotherapy training in London, one day Table Thai training, holding two workshops myself, and then three days teacher gettogether with Jing. so not exactly a holiday, but, you know, a change is supposed to be as good as a rest...

Charleston and Hand-knits
I also went to one of the literary events at Charleston Farmhouse (where Virginia Woolf lived), just up the road from us. I know the house well, and every year for the Brighton Festival they have an enormous marquee in the gardens and an elaborate parking system making full use of vast numbers of overenthusiastic men in shiny yellow coats wielding walkie-talkies to guide hundreds of motorised visitors up and down the mile-long single track lane to the house. That is an event in itself, and one meets the most delightful, well-read people on the way. I was guided in my smart car to the smallest space available (tee hee) only to find that I sank straight down into deepest gravel. The yellow becoateds hadn't encountered this before as no other car is short or narrow enough not to have at least one set of wheels on terra firma. Fortunately it didn't take long to push / pull me out after the reading. Nothing rattles despite smartypants' undignified adventures, I am happy to report.

Ah yes, I went to see Jane Smiley talking about "13 Ways to Look at the Novel", a strange woman, not a good reader of her own work (it sounded as if she were reading a foreign translation of it), but to give her credit, she was wearing a hand-knit jacket, as were at least 25% of the several-hundred-strong audience (think about it, that's one hell of a lot of hand knitting having gone on) - which is absolutely de rigueur when visiting Charleston. There were some beautiful Rowan designs, and very many which may well have been original, I have certainly never seen them before; the colours were magnificent, dancing and playing with the Charleston pallete. Except for Jane's, which was rampant aggressive yellow. She seemed just a little bored with the whole process, and not a little alarmed by the marquee's repeated attempts to flap away in the strong gusts prevalent in this area. I didn't find her engaging enough to buy the book, but her work is certainly interesting and her quips on Philip Roth amusing. I suspect I should like her politics if I liked her enough to find out about them.

May 14th

Right: Knitting. Maths. And sock architecture.
Yup, I've been knitting. It does happen. I've had no motivation for production or finished objects, but I've been needing the sense of yarn sliding through the fingers. And that's what it's all about, isn't it? There were days when I would use acrylic, and I just can't now. I need hemp and silk at the moment. And maybe some alpaca. That being as it is, Rachel's sweater in cotton and cashmere is not progressing. But my hemp swatch for I know not what is. And I have a yearning, such a yearning, to start some alpaca socks. Alpaca? Will wear out within minutes. But I want to knit fine alpaca yarn and I want to fly the sock architecture. It's the maths again, I want to sense the schematic and the numbers floating around in front of me, interweaving on a sort of virtual screen, swirling in 3D, proportions and short rows forming heels and toes. Oh god I'm off again. I could just go off on a sock-knitting fantasy, but it's so much nicer to have the physical sensation of doing it at the same time.

Kate Smurthwaite
Went to see Kate Smurthwaite last night at the Brighton Festival. She was on at the Marlborough Theatre , an amazing pub theatre I hadn't been to for a couple of decades - the last time I was there I was stage managing something there - 43 seats in the upper rooms of a very small and highly trendy pub. Such amazing atmosphere. It was like being in an invited audience. Started late, 20 minutes or so. I think they were waiting (!) for 4 late-comers. Bizarre? We thought so.

I can recommend the show highly, and I'd like to go and see her again. I think it will get even better as it builds momentum. Kate is bright, clever, and could be very very funny; She certainly lived up to the name of her performance, "Adrenaline", was quite high when she hit the stage - and didn't quite connect with the soul of the audience (all 40 odd of us!), although she went through some pretty slick moves to get the necessary repartee going and set up a couple of good running jokes with individuals. The whole performance was well crafted, logical (she's a mathematician, I couldn't help thinking), flowed well, was well rounded, sections interrelating nicely. In fact, the structure was very, very transparent which seemed strange, I don't know why. It added to the feeling of being once removed from the heart of the matter, similar to watching Brecht.

I find myself then observing the stagecraft more than enjoying the entertainment. It's fascinating to see what happens minute by minute when a performance relies on interaction with the audience - and bizarre then when the audience is nudged away rather than drawn in. The material was good, funny, not nearly as sharp as I had expected, although much of it happened on several levels, which was entertaining. But no real surprises. It wouldn't have stood on its own without interaction with the audience - but that's the way it was written, so I'm not complaining. Several times I thought she'd lost it... you know that terrible feeling when you're not confident in the performer's confidence, and you think she might be going to die on stage? I thought twice that she had actually gone blank ... and then she retrieved well. Adrenaline upon adrenaline? Part of the show? Probably not.

And now I'm going into bodyworker mode; I know what happened from the moment she came on. Other bodyworkers will recognize this: She was not in her body when she came on stage. Not totally at home, not connecting with herself. She was also not grounded - this may be a bizarre concept for performers, I don't know - but she was missing connection with the earth and through that with her audience. Not only were the audience once removed from her material and the core of her performance, she was too. I think that if she had had a gut level connection within herself and with the audience, the whole performance would have happened on a different plane. Now, if you're not in your body (very very likely in circumstances of high adrenaline - what a coincidence!), you're not going to be grounded either. And if you're not grounded, you stand a greater risk of being out of the body. Being out is not a bad thing per se, and very necessary in times of real trouble (like: can't stand it in there, disconnect and escape!) It's not such a good thing when your performance relies on interaction between you and the audience. Put it this way: if 'you' are not in the body (usually slightly outside the body), the audience is looking to connect with you through that body, and you're... not actually there. But the audience thinks you must be there, where else would you be? So 'you' seems less than real (yes) and not quite authentic (yes) and, well, the connection is not quite there. And that's what happened.

She's professional, well rehearsed, thank goodness, and it showed. But I think she's looking for something more, and I certainly am. As a performer (and as a teacher) you have to be yourself, really be yourself, then gather up the energies of the group, take hold of them, work with them, play any roles you have to (in the classroom) or planned (on stage). There is no possibility of gathering energies if you are not in yourself, being yourself. Towards the end, maybe the last 5 minutes, she was happier, more integrated, and it was very, very obvious. 'You' or your 'essence' or your 'soul' or whatever you may call it can flit in and out and we were catching glimpses of that, promise of breathtaking stuff to come. I'd go and see her again for those moments. She is so good, I've a sense she may be able to fly, and she may then be able to leave her audience different, transformed.

Oh yes, and good breasts. Just thought I'd mention that. Sorry to lower the tone.

May 7th

May flowers
So where are they? March winds and April showers and all that haven't brought many May flowers yet. Everything is so behind. But the gunnera has managed finally to begin sprouting without being clobbered by a frost. We've had some dafs. The blossoms are flowering. The fish are coming up to nibble the water lilies, little blighters. It's still cold, though.

Science fiction?
I've been reading a lot of Melissa Scott's work. Science fiction. Intellectually challenging. Very, very good stuff. She has a running scenario in Dreamships in which starship pilots take control of their ship by means of some kind of communication device wired directly into them, under the skin. by means of this they key in to a responding device in the ship and 'feel' that ship, and by means of gestures - or anything they choose - monitor, follow, direct its movements and its internal workings. When I first read this I was riveted. It sounds exactly like what we do in bodywork. We have a communication device wired in to us - we are born with it. We 'key in' or 'tune' in to other mind-bodies, following, monitoring, supporting and sometimes nudging or directing the self-healing tendencies of the mind-body of our focus. We too use gestures, hands-on techniques, to aid this, often osteopathy or massage, myofascial release, craniosacral therapy, and so on. Beyond bodywork, some use knitting to bind together broken hearts and minds, theirs and others', weaving, spinning, music, theatre.