[PD] nubile young pd question

[star morin]

hi all.  i'm fairly new to pd, and have a question along those lines:

i've created a 2 inlet sub patch called [vari-meter] to handle drawing
of arrays (or a metronomicly refreshed tablewrite~ for the pendants :^).
inlet 1 for signal, and inlet 2 for refresh speed. so far so good - it
works.  

i'd like to make the array name an argument to the patch to make it an
abstract, but can't figure out how to pass it. 
 
i've tried: [tablewrite~ $1] with a create of [vari-meter arrayname],
but $1 is null.  after reading some more of the docs, and it seems that
arguments given to abstracts are 'create parameters' - how do i access
these in a sub patch?

thanks - 
star