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knitting

Feels So Good to Finish

February 11, 2015 by admin

I don’t do “projects.” I do long-term relationships. I started my novel-in-progress more than two years ago, and it’s just now shaping up enough for me to think about sending it to an editor. Lord knows when it will be done, though I’m hoping by year-end. I’m forever walking the line between optimism and soul-crushing disappointment as I live with this story over and over and over and over again.

That’s why it’s nice to finish something, anything. And to finish a large project, well, that’s particularly exciting.

So today I reveal to you a new bedspread, a year and a half in the making. The pattern of the double wedding ring is common in quilts, but this is a knitted version. Turns out that for the cost of the yarn, I could have bought a hand-made Amish quilt, already done.

Knitted Double Wedding Ring Quilt
Knitted Double Wedding Ring Quilt

But where’s the fun in that?

The pattern for this, if you are a masochist dedicated knitter like I am, can be found on Ravelry. It’s easy to knit, but putting all those pieces together? Oy. 1,080 pieces make up the rings, and the assembly alone took more than six months.

As with all long-term relationships, there’s the thrill at the beginning. You can’t wait to get started and get to know each other. Each day brings new discovery and excitement, and you want to spend all your time with your new love.

Then one day, you’re sick of your beloved. The relationship isn’t as easy as you thought it would be, and you want space. Maybe you cheat, taking on a smaller project on the side, such as making sweaters for your granddog, or patchwork throws from spare yarn. You have to re-evaluate your commitment.

What all the cool dogs are wearing!
What all the cool dogs are wearing!

Yet when the relationship is real and true, though, you hang in there until you get to the other side, and you fall in love all over again. You notice how the relationship stays with you even on your worst days, waiting patiently without judgment. It’s worth all the trouble and hassle and time.

Under the bedspread at night, I am cozy and safe and secure, the same way I feel in a relationship that works. And as I enjoy the satisfaction of completion, I am buoyed again and know I can finish anything I start, even those pesky manuscripts that aren’t yet ready to release.

With our beloved, whether a person or a project, if we hang in there, we can be more than we thought we could. Safe and secure and warm, we can soar.

Do you have projects that take forever to complete? Please tell me I’m not the only one! 

 

Filed Under: creativity, writing Tagged With: completing projects, crafts, finishing, knitting, relationships, writing

Book Review Tuesday: Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting by Ann Hood

November 12, 2013 by admin

Don’t knit? Don’t write? It doesn’t matter. Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting is really a book about life. Yes, there are a few patterns in the book for anyone who wants them, but with passion and humor, a variety of writers share their stories of what knitting means to them.

What I love about this book is that these writers are, for the most part, not great knitters. Some have given up on the craft altogether. Others work hard to get to the “good beginner” level. Rather than conjuring images of contented grandmothers creating magic with some yarn and needles, these writer/knitters are often clumsy with a needle, reporting plenty of tears and dropped stitches. A rare exception is the writer who is a skilled knitter, but who discovers her perfectionism when teaching others, seeing how that perfectionism stifles joy.

Parents and grandparents, now gone, are remembered lovingly, along with tinges of regret for words left unsaid, thanks withheld. One writer/knitter makes endless sweaters for his dog, who is quite the fashionista. Another writer/knitter, a longtime lesbian, is surprised to fall in love with a man who knits. Each essay brings its own unique surprise.

My favorite essay is To Knit a Knot, or Not: A Beginner’s Yarn by John Dufresne. I love the way he knitted memories into the now, easing back and forth with the confidence of an experienced writer, much as an experienced knitter eases through a difficult project. Plus, he’s pretty darn funny.

Ann Hood came to knitting through grief when her young daughter died, and it’s no surprise that she would provide such a book, filled with everything from turbulence to joy. That’s been my experience with knitting; it has the power to show our lives to us, and to smooth the rough edges if we let it.

Filed Under: books, grief, Life Changes Tagged With: Ann Hood, grief, healing, knitters, knitting, knitting books, loss

Random 5 Friday – On the Road

October 25, 2013 by admin

Good morning and happy Friday! Once again, I am connecting with Nancy over at A Rural Journal for her weekly Random 5. It’s been a great way to connect with other bloggers, so come join the fun!

Here’s my Random 5:

  1. I finished knitting my first hat this week. I won’t show it yet, because I want to do the blocking and finish work, but I’m pleased with myself.
  2. My tip for the week: always get the right tools for the job. When I was making said hat, I tried to use my double-pointed needles instead of a circular one, because that’s what I had in the house. It didn’t work out, though, so a quick trip to my local yarn shop, and I was good to go! With the right needles, it went faster and easier.
  3. We arrived in NYC last night. It was our first flight into JFK, and we waited in line for 45 minutes for a cab. It took less time to get from JFK to Chinatown than it did to wait for the cab.
  4. I’d love to tell you about my Neighbor from Hell, but since we’re in a legal battle with them, I’ll keep mum for now. The good news is, he’s a lot older than we are, so odds are that we’ll outlive him. We figure he’s going to be a thorn in our sides until the day he dies. He’s just that kind of guy.
  5. When one decides to live gluten-free, then more planning needs to go into travel. We ate a hearty breakfast, and then ate lunch at the airport rather than getting food on the plane (I read Delta’s menu, and the only gluten-free option was cheese and dried fruit). For the flight, I took some homemade gluten-free granola and some apples. We needed something before bed, and the nearest open restaurant was Italian, which is a bit like a recovering alcoholic going into a bar…but I found a nice shrimp salad on the menu. We’ll see how the rest of the trip goes, but so far, so good.

Have a great weekend!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: bully neighbor, gluten-free, knitting, neighbor from hell, travel

Bedspreads and Novel Writing: It’s the Little Things

July 10, 2013 by admin

A few weeks ago I got it in my head that I wanted to knit a bedspread. I don’t know why. These notions just sort of show up, and I either wait for them to pass or jump on them. Usually I jump on them and am sorry later as I ask, “What did I get myself into this time?”

So, of course, I’ve jumped in. Again. I’ve given up the quest for self-improvement in favor of self-acceptance, so all I can do is shake my head, smile, and say, “Yep, that’s what I do.”

After some searching, here’s the pattern I settled on. It’s easier than it looks, because I’ll make a lot of little pieces that I then sew together. Of course, making a lot of little pieces can get tedious. I started knitting the little colored strips…80 of them for each of 13 colors. I don’t like doing math, but I can tell you, that’s a lot, and those pieces represent just part of the quilt.

It’s no coincidence that I’m revising a novel at the same time. Without boring you with all the little details, it feels much the same as working on this quilt. There is the whole that is the ultimate goal, which I’m reaching by working on thousands of little, tedious pieces.

I’m reading The Wonder of Aging: A New Approach to Embracing Life After Fifty by Michael Gurian. Based on what I’ve read so far, it would appear that this new approach to quilting, writing, and life is a reflection of my age and current stage of life. I’m okay with taking time to work on the little details. Yes, I’d like to write books faster than I do, but I’m more interested in writing better. Eventually I’ll have enough of those little pieces done to put them together in one of the rings. Eventually I’ll read through a draft and say, yes, this one’s ready to go to the editor, because I’ve done my best.

It seems curious and paradoxical to want to slow down the process. There is so much to write! So much to get done! Sometimes it feels maddening to become more deliberate, more thoughtful, less action-oriented. Yet somehow, I suspect, I will get more done. My drafts may go more slowly, but I will need fewer of them (I hope). In the end, I hope to have a beautiful heirloom quilt and a beautifully written book to share.

Filed Under: books, creativity, writing Tagged With: aging, book revisions, craft, detail, double ring wedding quilt, knitting, novel, revising, rewriting, writing

The Zen of Wool

October 10, 2012 by admin

A group of ladies sat outside in the fresh spring sunshine spinning wool into yarn. Each wheel had its own charm and one, or sometimes two, treadles. Fluffy fiber transformed into even strands that wound onto their bobbins. They looked serene, relaxed…happy. “I want to do that,” I said. So, when I saw the name and telephone number for Amelia Garripoli, aka The Bellwether, I was ready. She was starting a new beginner spinning class the next week.

A leap of faith — a new wheel!

My first spinning efforts, like me, were tense. Terror showed up in the thread as it alternated between “not spun enough” and “spun to within an inch of its life.” Here I was with yet another “enjoy the journey” activities, darn it! 10,000 hours, Garripoli says, is what it takes to develop mastery. At my age, let’s see, that calculates to…never mind.

A future sweater?

As I practiced spinning, I thought about my writing. I’ll get the obvious out of the way: while spinning yarn, I thought about spinning yarns. Buh dump bump. Cue groans from the audience.

Still, if you can deal with sucky drafts, writer’s block, and working in spite of life’s constant interruptions, then you are qualified to learn to spin. Having taken a few months off from writing, I just traded in messy drafts for messy yarn.

I could have just bought yarn in the store. Knitting should be enough, right? But no, I have to keep going down the rabbit hole. Maybe spinning a cleaned, carded fleece would be enough. But then…

I hadn’t planned to buy a wool fleece, but the bag of rich, deep brown fiber looked too delicious to pass up. It came with a photo of the sheep, for God’s sakes! I had gotten a glimpse of him lounging out in his field. I imagined turning his winter coat into one for me, and I salivated at the thought.

My teacher had given me instruction on fleece washing, but I decided to catch some YouTube videos to brush up. Turns out that there are many ways to wash a fleece, with plenty of adamant opinions about the right way to do it. I watched several and took the common denominators to heart. Namely, don’t turn the darn stuff to felt.  This happens when we do “too much.” Too much agitation, too much temperature, too much handling.

Hey, it works, even when my teacher isn’t around!

I thought of an essay writing class that I took years ago in Houston. During my critique, people praised my work, my skill, my emotional connection…then asked me to revise it in such a way as to remove the circus tent poles that held the whole thing up. When I tried to rewrite it, it disintegrated into one long, boring mess. Too much handling. We writers have to find that balance, and we have to surround ourselves with people who won’t critique our work down to a pile of mush. Fortunately, while I can’t do anything about a felted fleece, I could reconstruct the original essay — which I then got published.

As I carded the fleece, it turned from globby matted fistfuls to smooth, soft hair, lighter in color than I expected, more of a golden tan. Each rolag, or rolled fiber taken from the cards, felt like fragile cotton candy. But would it spin?

I fed the fiber to the wheel, I felt something shift. I’d spun fiber that had already been prepared, but this was different. It was as though starting to read a novel from the beginning instead of jumping in at the middle. I knew it better. I had a relationship with the fleece. My work was still uneven and imperfect, but less so…and as I gently tugged on the fibers to lengthen them, I felt the rhythm of the treadle under my foot, the wheel turning at just the right speed, and the yarn filling the bobbin.

With each turn of the wheel, I felt my love of writing return as I longed to share the experience. I remembered each tender draft of a manuscript, messy and uneven. With yarn, it’s possible to add more or less twist where needed to create even strands. With novels, each draft brings improvements and new insights into the writing process. With time and patience, both the yarn and the writing smooth out.

Spinning is a form of meditation, and I see when my mindfulness disappears. All of a sudden my gorgeous strand of yarn has doubled in width, or the wheel turns in the wrong direction, causing my work to unravel from the bobbin. I stop, take a breath, fix what I can, and then go again, just as I do with my “regular” meditations. Our minds wander. That’s what minds do. All we can do is come back to the present moment.

The same is true for a manuscript. There are places where the writing sings, and then sentences where I say, “Huh?” Even after several drafts, I find places where my mind has checked out of the story and decided to explore other territories while I thought I was writing. The writer’s life requires patience and an ongoing return, return, return to the present.

Even in the end, the thread is never perfect. Yes, I can even it out and fix obvious mistakes, but in the end, homespun thread will never have the technical perfection of storebought. Mine won’t, at least!

Writing is never done and never exactly right. But at the same time, there is the time to let the book go out into the world, warts and all. A book is never perfect, never fully finished. The moment comes when the author must say, “Enough. Enough. This is the best I can do now.”

One day my fleece will be a sweater or a throw, something warm and soft and nurturing to the body. From sheep to sweater, I will know every aspect of this particular fiber. No other fiber will feel or act exactly like this one. It is my first, and it feels like a miracle. I feel the same way when I see one of my books for the first time. For all the imperfections, all the stumbles, all the struggles, there is a book in my hand, a miracle of cover and fonts and page numbers, with a story that only I can tell. From start to finish, it is mine, and perhaps it will fall into the hands of someone who will feel as though she has just donned a warm, soft, nurturing sweater to shield her from winter’s cold.

 

Filed Under: Life Changes, women, writing Tagged With: books, crafts, knitting, meditation, mindfulness, spinning yarn, writing, zen

Unraveled

June 27, 2012 by admin

“You’ve made a mobius,” hubby said.

“Is that a good thing?” I asked. Honestly, every now and then he speaks a foreign language to me. If we’re in a room full of other computer programmers, it takes less than five minutes for me to flee in panic.

As much as we share in common, he’s a math guy, and I can barely balance my checkbook. Still, I was curious, and I like to learn. What the heck is a mobius, and why do I care?

So, here’s the answer to the first part. Take a long strip of paper, give it a little half twist, and then connect the ends. When you draw a line on it starting at one of the seams, you somehow end up on the other side of the paper. This toy then creates amusement for math-type people with too much time on their hands as they explore all the implications.

So, how did I make a mobius and not know it? As you know, I decided to restart my knitting life with an absurdely complex project, a skirt. Turns out that I got my skirt in a bunch instead of my panties. I made a twist in the stitches somehow, and the skirt took on a lovely shape except for the part in the back where the knitted fabric turned over on itself, leaving a twist that would expose my unbunched panties. The only solution was to rip it out and start again.

I sought help from my knitting books. Turns out that knitters know what a mobius is. Who knew? Sometimes they make them on purpose, in fact. I found instructions on how to make them. I did not, however, find the words to tell me how to not make one.

Online, though, other knitters like me have wailed and gnashed their teeth, and nice, polite knitting ladies set them straight on what went wrong and how to fix it. Nice to know I’m not alone, anyway! Isn’t it great to type “unintentional knitting mobius” into Google and actually get some hits?

Of course, I’m all about metaphor, so you know I’m looking for the Deeper Message in all of this. Yes, I know. The message is to take a knitting class. Still, I felt like there was another Life Lesson to be had. Based on the mess I made, it couldn’t be good.

A few days later, I knew exactly what I needed to know, or rather, admit, to myself. My novel in progress, Blood and Loam, is still a mess. Set in 1970 in the Midwest, it explores a lot of big themes: war, post-traumatic stress, the changing roles of women (and some resulting confusion), and even the beginnings of the agricultural changes that now affect how we eat. Yes, I’m writing about corn and trying to be entertaining at the same time. You see my dilemma.

Anyway, like the skirt, the story unravels at the beginning. I had to face facts: I was going to have to do a lot more heavy lifting to get this book done right.

Worse, between the construction noise and other interruptions, I wasn’t getting the focused brain time to fix the problem.

By Friday, I was ready to throw the whole thing out. Well, maybe “things” as in plural — the skirt and the novel. However, I am nothing if not stubborn. Hubby says I should say I’m tenacious. Tomato, to-mah-to. Anyway, I don’t give up. The skirt looks too pretty in the picture (will I look as thin and have the model’s great hair when I’m done, too?), and I think that Blood and Loam is worth the struggle. I think it just requires from me, like the skirt, a greater level of skill than I currently have. The only way to get to that level of skill is to keep working at it.

And so I took a deep breath and cast on new stitches. Then I sat down with a hard copy of the manuscript and started to read through it again, making notes. What if I introduced the villain later? What if the creepy triangle showed up later to pack a bigger “Ewww!!!” punch? What if I rearranged some chapters? What if I added a scene in the first chapter? Little by little, something better started to take shape. Hubby took a long bike ride and left me alone in the quiet on a Sunday, no construction workers around, to break the book into pieces and to start reconstructing it.

A funny thing happens when I solve one problem. I get ideas to solve other problems, too. I’ve never felt that Blood and Loam works as a second novel because of some controversies in it. I “saw” the book that will come second…and the one that will come third. I had a pattern to follow. Yes, I’ve had a pattern to follow with the darn skirt, and you see where that got me, but having a plan makes me feel better, at least. I started writing, writing, and writing, and I’m finding my way.

Perhaps unraveling is a good thing. The new skirt will get done, eventually. Blood and Loam will become the story it’s meant to be. It all suddenly makes sense, and the Universe is set right again.

As for the math, though, I’d prefer to leave that to the experts. I hope I never see another mobius again.

Filed Under: books, fiction, women, writing Tagged With: fiction writing, knitting, knitting as metaphor, mobius, novels

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