How to use this Page

The Knitting Machines.
Michael Sedano


In my mother’s familia, all girls learned to amasar, make chile in a molcahete, and crochet. Such skills helped define a person’s womanly competence in her generation.

Are her tortillas round, thin, and even? How fast can she produce tortillas for a table of hungry eaters who don’t use forks? 
Is the chile she makes chiloso and sabroso with just the right amount of everything?
Can she make anything other than a doily?

Including my mom, all the women in the family made great tortillas de harina. Aunt Stella is hands-down the best chile maker on both sides of the family. Stella's salsa makes gente sweat, wipe their eyes, fan their mouth, then ask for more.

My grandmothers weren't really into doilies, though they had them. As a result, mom didn’t find crocheting as engaging as knitting and quilting. Indeed, over the years my mom took night school and private classes, she bought books, acquired tools, yarns, quilting fabric, and myriad equipment for sewing and knitting.

As her arthritis worsened, a lifelong experimental attitude led her to automation: store-bought instead of the palo; a blender to make chile; and finally, she bought a knitting machine. Then another, then another, taking the classic good-better-best route. Her third knitting machine is a home-based loom out of the industrial revolution, a punchcard-driven, motorized, knitting machine.

She enjoyed two sewing rooms. One for the three knitting machines plus her Singer Slant-O-Matic 403, another for her quilting sewing machines, tools, boxes of fabric, and racks of yarn overstock from the knitting room. And it gets better.


RTFM; my mom invented the idea. There’s nothing you can’t learn on your own, and with the right tools you can do anything; that’s where I get those attitudes. I have all the manuals and tech sheets for the equipment, plus textbooks, handwritten notes on needle counts and machine settings, and punch cards galore.

What am I going to do with these old knitting machines, yarns, and equipment?


I offered the stuff to Homeboy Industries and the Home of Neighborly Service in San Bernardino. Homeboy/Homegirl doesn't do textiles. The Home organization has a sewing program—mostly quilts. I haven’t been able to finalize the Home's pickup of the yarns, fabrics, books, and machines. I suspect they depend on spirit and good intentions more than organization and planning, so I need Plan B if they don’t pick up the stuff before I sell the old homestead.

La Bloga readers are Plan B. Who knows an organization—any organized group of people with or without papers—who want their gente to learn to set up and use knitting machines? And if the machines fail, use the yarn and textiles to fashion quilts, crochet, and knit?

The whole kit and kaboodle are free to anyone, FOB Redlands California.


On-Line Floricanto Strikes Solstice Chord

Last Tuesday, La Bloga teamed with Poets Responding to SB 1070 to sponsor an On-Line Floricanto for the Wiinter Solstice. Francisco Alarcón, who founded the Facebook community of seven thousand poets and readers, wrote an expository introduction explaining the Mayan calendar counting system and correcting the wildly incorrect conclusion the world was ending. ¡Hijole!, some people.

The nine poets selected by the Moderators and Alarcón for last week's Floricanto For the Approaching Solstice captivated La Bloga friend Vanessa Acosta, of Cultural Arts Tours & Workshops. Vanessa emailed details of how Floricanto For the Approaching Solstice led to a wonderful evening of friends, food, and reading poetry aloud.


Vanessa printed out the eleven poems for each guest to choose a reading. “A Brazilian guitar player Roberto, came and played impromtu as each of us picked a poem and read it. I did the first Spanish version and Lupe Vela followed it in English. Then I read the Bios of each of the authors you so graciously listed before I introduced the reader who was interpreting the poem.

Everyone was nervous, but once we ate dinner, drank lots of wine, we were all ready to read the beautiful poetry out loud.  We all became performers last night. The guitarist in the background set the mood for each poem.

Monica Valencia made a beautiful vegan pumpkin cheese cake with a chocolate Mayan symbol that was delicioso. Before we began our poetry reading, I saged everyone.

La Bloga really inspired me into having this event at the last minute. I think this is so important to have and I thank you for giving yourself to this wonderful work. Mil gracias for giving all of us your gift of sharing books, poems, literature and introducing us to the wonderful writers who contribute to La Bloga. Happy December 21-22 Winter Solstice - welcome to el Sexto Sol!

Amelia ML Montes with an array of Alma Lopez' images.

Amelia ML Montes and Kathy Más Gallegos before Yreina Cervantez' portrait (NFS).

Display Comments Add a Comment

500 words is best friend to a prolix writer. And, as Manuel Ramos observes, this is fun, the 500-word thing.


Confessions of a Draftee: Snowy Ride Up the Mountain

Michael Sedano

Costillas found his grip on the truck’s canopy, and with his left boot on the rear bumper swung himself up into the deuce and a half.

“Anahash,” he greeted the two Korean KPs hauling chow up the mountain. “Ne,” one said. The other looked away from the snowy landscape and pointing to the bench across from him, said something. “Mu-la me,” Costillas answered palms up, “No ara, mee un hum,” he apologized.

Specialist Fourth Class Miguel de las Costillas shivered in the penetrating cold despite his long johns, wool OGs, and fur-lined parka. He walked to the plywood box bolted to the floor against the cab. The foam rubber cushion would absorb a little of the violent jostling that punished his kidneys and ass during the rough bounce up the mountain. No luck. Next to the chow cans, the cushion held a circuit board, and there was nothing he could do. Missile repair parts had priority on any truck going up the mountain.

He snuggled into the corner where the canvas curved against the back of the cab, catching an imagined hint of warmth off the exhaust pipe. “Yoboseyo,” the older KP called. “Yoboseyo, Joe. Yogi, you yogi.” He pointed again to the empty bench where Costillas had leaped into the truck.

“Ne ne,” Costillas denied, “kamsamnida chingo, I stay here.” He didn’t intend to sit near the open end where the cold wind and blowing snow sucked into the truck. Worse, if that were possible, when the deuce and a half bounced against the primitive roadbed the shocks were greatest there at the far end and Costillas’ back was already killing him. Ski gunned it and the truck sped out of the Admin Area toward the Tac Site that occupied the mile high mountaintop at the end of the seven mile track.

Wham! The truck bounced Costillas into momentary free flight that ended when his back crashed against the steel side of the lurching truck. He bounced off sideways but managed to keep himself on the bench as gravity and inertia heaped punishment and pain on him.

They were in the storm now. The two Koreans were sharp silhouettes against the blinding whiteness. Ski gunned the motor at the third switchback. Something felt wrong. The truck slid weirdly sideways. To the furious spinning of wheels and grinding gears the truck slid backward. The two Koreans coiled their bodies in readiness to leap out. Costillas’ eyes bulged in sheer bloodcurdling terror. “Oh fuck, I’m not gonna make it. Damn it, menso. Damn it damnit.”

He should have been with his wife back in warm California, going about his quotidian duties of taking roll, ogling hippie chicks…not plunging off a mountain in a picturesque arc in the middle-of-nowhere.

Wham! The truck crashed into the side of the mountain and stopped. The tires found traction, the chow truck lurched forward, back on track. The three men exploded in wild, genuinely hap

Display Comments Add a Comment