No Holds Barred
~Anna Swir (Świrszczyńska)

I catch hold of different things:
snow, trees, useless telephone calls,
the tenderness of a child, journeys,
Rosewicz’s poetry,
sleep, apples, morning exercises,
conversations about the salutary properties of vitamins,
exhibits of avant-garde art,
walls on Kosciuszko’s mound, politics,
Penderecki’s music,
natural disasters in foreign countries,
the joy of morality and the joy of immorality,
gossip, a cold shower, fashion magazines from abroad,
learning Italian,
a fondness for dogs, the calendar.

I catch hold of everything
so as not to fall
into the abyss.

Slow Rain
~ Gabriela Mistral
Translated from the Spanish by Gunda Kaiser and James Tipton

This water, sad and fearful,
like a child who suffers,
before touching the Earth,
fades away.

Calm the wind, calm the tree—
but in the tremendous silence,
this lean, bitter song
is falling.

The sky is like a heart,
immense, opening up, bitter,
it is not rain; it is a bleeding,
long, and slow.

Men in houses
do not feel this bitterness,
this sad flow of water
out of the heavens.

This long and tiring descent
of conquered water,
towards Earth, recumbent,
and paralysed!

It is raining . . . . and like a tragic jackal
the night watches over the land.
What is going to spring up, in the shadow,
out of Mother Earth?

Will you sleep, while outside
falls suffering, this slow water,
this lethal water, sister
of death?

Woot! I am officially a Cranky Old Woman! My letter to the editors at the San Francisco Chronicle was published!

This is the article on Minnijean Brown-Trickey, which was not important enough to be on the front page of the main section, but was instead relegate to the Local News section.

This story about five white stoner dudes from Marin County, who look like someone called Central Casting and said, “I need five actors who can play these characters who were friends in high school, and reunite for a weekend of grown up hijinks”, however, did merit the front page of the paper.

It’s not my first letter to the editor ever published, but I appreciate that they were willing to acknowledge the criticism.

A refresher, since it’s been a while from the beginning of this project:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Well, THAT took much longer than I expected. Not in the total number of hours to complete, but the number of months (19 total) that it took me to put in the time. All things considered (such as my travel schedule for my day job), that’s not unrealistic, but I did have vague hopes of finishing it in one year.

And now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for—the finished piece!

The Completed Piece

It’s not perfect. There are approximately 5,000 things wrong with it, but the important thing is that IT IS COMPLETE. DONE. FINIS.

I learned a great deal from doing this first piece.

*Two colors that look the same at night aren’t necessarily the same. To wit, the center piece in two different shades of cream. Sigh.
*A horizontal frame is not a good choice for my neck.
*Don’t weave when you’re tired. Or, at least, I shouldn’t. Pretty much every wonky bit of edge weirdness on this piece is a point where I thought, “I’m tired, I’ll just do two more rows and go to bed”. Yeah, no, STOP. Just stop weaving and go to bed.

However, I am pleased enough with it to use it. I dedicated it to the Nornir, and it’s now on my divination table/Loki altar/shared altar, and yay! It’s DONE!

Next, to test out a rigid heddle loom and see if that’s the way to go for the next project!