Today is the ten year anniversary of the death of Joe Strummer who, only in the months after his death became such a hero to me, so it goes.
I still living in New York on the first anniversary of his death and attended a tribute show at Irving Plaza with my best friend Jamie, one of the biggest Clash fans I’ve known. It got off to a slow start but as soon as someone threw a beer bottle at the lead singer of Detachment Kit for not knowing the Spanish verses to “Spanish Bombs” it really hit its stride. Ari Up performed “Police and Thieves” and The Slits’ “Shoplifting”, Vic Thrill and Saturn Missile performed “Bankrobber” and Eugene Hutz performed “Cool n’ Out” and “Johnny Appleseed” which, retrospectively, was my favorite performance of the night.
The Clash is inexorably tied to someone I cared for very deeply toward the end of my senior year of high school, one of those people who, through a very brief encounter, changes you irreversibly. The Clash will always mean a great deal to me and will always be how I choose to emotionally summarize that experience.
Cowls. They’re everywhere, right? Here’s a cowl of mine I’d like to share: The Bethesda Cowl. The pattern incorporates elements of lace and cabling and is very simple. I’m not sure if anyone has designed anything like this before, so forgive me if it’s been done! Skip to pattern.
This is NOT a fun knit. It’s a row of k2tog, yo which is as fun as it gets. Then it’s a purl row. You know how purl rows are never as fun as knit rows, right? Then it’s a row of cabling, and that’s even more awkward. And then it’s another row of purl! This cowl is work.
And now, the fun part. The cowl is named the Bethesda Cowl because I knit it while watching HBO’s adaptation of Angels in America. Twice, with no respite. If you’ve spoken to me in the past few weeks I’ve probably already enthused evangelically about how deeply it touched me, and how I’ve been trying to stave off watching it a third time by reading synopses and analyses and watching Munich (also written by Tony Kushner) and Wit (also directed by Mike Nichols and starring Emma Thompson).
I’d been meaning to watch Angels for about six years since Netflix noticed I’d been consuming the entirety of Al Pacino’s filmography interspersed with a lot of films about AIDS. I’m not going to say I’m OBSESSED with AIDS, but I am interested in the epidemiology of it. I routinely re-read the original 1981 New York Times article breaking the story about the prevalence of Kaposi Sarcoma among gay men in New York and San Francisco, usually accompanied by a lachrymose viewing of Longtime Companion every few years.
But that’s not what this is about. This is about Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, this is about why I called the cowl Bethesda. In the context of Angels, Bethesda refers to several things. Bethesda Fountain in Central Park is the protagonist’s favorite part of Central Park. According to the epilogue, Bethesda is an angel who descended in Jerusalem, and where her foot touched the ground, a pool appeared that heals people of their pain. Bethesda, Maryland, is also the real-life location where Roy Cohn, whose persona was adapted to the play, died of AIDS, and it is also where Joseph McCarthy, whose persona is also important to the play, died as well.
I AM obsessed with Angels in America. I am in love with the beautiful, metrical dialogue, I am in love with the themes. I am in love with the characters and the cast whose skill and judgment in portraying these characters enables me to love them. I am in love with the brutal sense of humor in the face of tremendous gravity and, by contrast, the phantasmagoric settings of both delusions and dreams. My heart.
These are all of course very basic elements that can make up any play, and I haven’t gone into any depth as to why Angels meant so much to me. One of the overarching themes of the play is change. The protagonist rejects the idea that stasis is bad by rejecting the prophecy given to him by the Angel of America. The play itself rejects the idea that stasis is bad by eliminating the characters who have not changed from the epilogue. Each character struggles with something inside them that they can’t change. It made me consider all the worst parts about myself, the things that sometimes make it hard to get out of bed even when I am living the life I envisioned for myself, and while the play’s message hasn’t given me courage to stop ruminating about all the insecurities and the selfishness, I do feel a great deal of empathy for all the characters.
Does it make any difference that I might be one thing deep within? No matter how wrong or ugly that thing is so long as I have fought with everything I have to kill it? What do you want from me? What do you want from me Harper, more than that? For God’s sake, there’s nothing left. I’m a shell. There’s nothing left to kill. As long as my behaviour is what I know it has to be, decent, correct that alone in the eyes of God.
Joe Pitt, Angels in America
And so, the Bethesda Cowl. I’d like to believe that the cabling and yarn-overs emulate the ripples of the Bethesda Fountain or the spine in the wings of the Angel of America as a reference to the play or the miniseries or the mythology. But really I’d like it to commemorate how deeply this play adapted to an HBO miniseries has affected me.
The Pattern
Cast on 33 stitches.
Row 1: Purl to end of row.
Row 2: Slip one stitch. (Slip next stitch to cable needle and hold in back; knit next stitch off the needle, then knit next stitch from cable needle) to end of row.
Row 3: Purl to end of row.
Row 4: (k2tog, yo) to last stitch. Knit last stitch.
Repeat the above 4 rows until you reach 19 inches of knitting. Bind off and block firmly to add length and width to the cowl and to open up your yarn overs.
Slip the stitches held on waste yarn and the stitches from the provisional cast-on onto needles; graft together using mattress stitch intended for bind off and cast off edges , being careful not to twist. You can graft the cowl together first and then block it as I did but prepared to spend an entire day waiting for the thing to dry.
“Furry” Christmas everyone! I don’t even know what to say except that I guess it was a matter of time before I started designing and knitting for the cat. I’ve always wanted to knit us matching hats but I think this is eccentric enough.
I used doubled Dale of Norway Baby Ull and size 8 needles. I don’t have a figure on the WPI but I think it knits up like a DK or light worsted weight yarn. It took less than one ball of white and less than one ball of red.
I don’t remember EXACTLY how I knit this as I’ve become exceedingly poor at documenting things lately, but if you’ve ever knit a sweater or a vest, it’s very similar. Knit a tube, split and work back and forth decreasing at the ends for the arm holes, re-join. FACE is a large male cat (14 lbs, nearly 2 feet long) so you may want to adjust the number of stitches as your pet’s adorable head necessitates.
Cast on 40 stitches in CC (white?) and knit three rows of garter in the round (remember, garter in the round is knit one row, purl one row).
Before you start row 4, split your stitches onto two needles. Working back and forth:
Row 4: SSK, knit to two stitches before end of row, K2Tog
Row 5: Purl across
Complete these two rows once more. Switch to MC (I’m going to guess you chose red) and:
Row 8: Knit across
Row 9: Purl across
Row 10: SSK, knit to two stitches before end of row, K2Tog
Row 11: Purl across
Complete these four rows once more.
Complete rows 4-11 for the stitches on the other needle. You should have 24 stitches between the two needles but don’t take my word for it.
Divide the stitches evenly between 3 needles; you’ll be working in the round now. On the second needle, place a marker in between where the stitches of the flaps don’t yet connect between the 12th and 13th stitch.
Row 16?: K2tog, knit to 2 stitches before marker, SSK, k2tog, knit to 2 stitches before end of row, SSK.
Row 17-18: Knit across.
Repeat these three rows until you have six stitches on your needle. Break yarn; thread through remaining live stitches with a tapestry needle and pull tight.
With CC, make a big-ass pom pom and sew it to the hat.
