Statement on the Events of 11/5/24

Knoontime Knitting  

I wrote this for my weekly craft salon, and wanted to share it here as well.

Statement on the Events of 11/5/24

I know we’ve seen the news by now, and that the results are not what we wanted. I wanted to say a few words and provide, if I can, some measure of solace for the times that are ahead of us.
Plenty of words will be written and spoken in the coming days about what happened, why it occurred, and what to do about it. But my focus is, and must be, closer to home. What is relevant for our purposes is this: the foundation of our personal wellness comes down to at least three things: mindfulness, community, and creativity. It is by exercising those three things, which are entirely in our control, that we garner the strength to heal, the resilience to act, and the strength to respond to adverse circumstances.
Mindfulness:
Mindfulness doesn’t only mean meditation, and meditation doesn’t only mean stillness. As trauma specialist Molly Birkholm points out, there are three key questions we can ask ourselves whenever we need to come back to our home ground:
1. What is present?
2. Where am I feeling it in my body?
3. Is this information asking me to take some action in the world?
If you, like me, are experiencing a flood of emotions and anxiety, that first question is where our focus will have the most impact. As we learn to sit with our discomfort, to hold the hurt parts, the anxiety, the fear, and the rage, we come into coherence: coherence with our emotions, with our bodies, and with our minds. It is in coherence that we can act from our best and most enlightened selves. This is not comfortable work. It is not easy work. It IS work. It is THE work.
Stay with the emotions as you can, and remember that they tend to come in 90 second waves, like labor pains. Breathe. Practice good self care. Eat well, sleep well, hydrate. If we fall off the wagon and binge on junk food or drugs and alcohol, give ourselves grace to realize that’s a trauma response. We are trying to self-medicate. Get back on the wagon. Follow your program. I’ve got some resources below if you need them.
Community:
A Good Yarn: Makerspace and Crafting Salon is not going anywhere. We will continue our “politics-free zone,” and for the same reason that I put that in place when we started this. It’s not to white-wash what’s happening. It’s not to make nice. It’s not because there are good people on both sides. It’s because, plain and simple, we need a fucking break. We need a break from the vitriol, the division, and the very real fear for ourselves, our families, our community, and our world. Do not think for a moment that I am blind to any of these things. It is precisely because I see them and feel them so keenly that I need to stake out a place where I say, this place, this sacred space, this liminal space is a space out of space and a time out of time and is inviolate to the forces of confusion that seek to destroy it. It is, quite simply, a radical act.
Remember our communities. We are not alone, and there is nothing we cannot accomplish when we work together. I know that it might not feel like that right now, and that you, like me, are feeling bruised. That’s why these steps are chronological. Go back to the beginning. Go back to the breath. What is present. Where are you feeling it. Is the information asking you to take some action in the world.:
Act. Join your local Indivisible chapter. Cure ballots. (Ask me privately what that is if you haven’t heard of it.) Join Red, Wine, and Blue. Follow Heather Cox Richardson and Dan Rather. Talk to flesh and blood humans and stay the fuck off social media when you want to connect, and really connect with other humans. Come to craft circle. You don’t even have to say a word, just sit there and soak up the energy. Remember: Winnie the Pooh and friends didn’t kick Piglet out when he was feeling down. They sat with him.
Creativity:
I’ve said this many times before: all writing is a radical act. I would expand that to all acts of creativity are radical acts. Our power is in our hands and our voices, and in our ability to play. Audre Lorde said it best: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare.”
Child-like pursuits are also radical acts. It takes balls to color as an adult. It takes balls to stand up and say, I like to knit. It takes balls to make something, to have the temerity to declare ourselves “artist” in a world that is fueled by monetization.
Do it anyway.
Stay strong. Keep the faith. Write.

Resources:

Mindfulness:
Yoga Nidra:
Molly Birkholm has a number of resources. There are quite a few, but the ones I like are a series she did during the pandemic:
Community:
Saturday studio time: Saturdays, noon to 2 Pacific on Zoom (leave me a comment to discuss if you’re not already on the list)

Indivisible: https://indivisible.org/

Red, Wine, and Blue: https://redwine.blue/
Heather Cox Richardson: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ (there is a free version of her daily newsletter; she also puts up an audio version the next day. Letters come out daily in the evening. She’s a professor on the East Coast of the U.S.; non-partisan.)
Dan Rather: https://steady.substack.com/ (there is a free version; he’s a retired U.S. reporter, non-partisan)

 

Creativity:
The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron
Seattle Writers Group on Discord (leave a comment and we can discuss privately if you would like to join; open joins are paused for the moment for the safety of the community)
Monday Write-ins with Writer Zen Garden (leave a comment and we can discuss privately)
I will have more info and thoughts in the coming days, but like you, I’m reeling from the news. Be gentle with each other. And above all, remember you are loved.

Saturday Craft Circle

Knoontime Knitting

I got some new yarn from KnitPIcks called “Oceana” in the “Spirulina” colorway. It’s worsted weight, 54% superfine alpaca and a new fiber, 46% SEAQUAL (R) YARN, which is reclaimed plastic from the ocean. It’s got a nice loft and halo. I tried several needle sizes (4 was way too small and 9 was way too big); size 7 seems to do the trick.

Here’s the detail of the “Vertical Lace Trellis” stitch from Barbara Walker’s stitch guide, volume 1 (the one with the blue cover). I really like how it is coming out. It’s got a great drape, and the halo makes it soften.

Here’s the completed swatch. I’m thinking of making a top-down cape or poncho, haven’t decided yet. We shall see.

A Is For… The A to Z Challenge, of Course!

Knoontime Knitting

Welcome to the A to Z Challenge! I’m getting started a little later than I intended, as I’m writing this on the 2nd of April, but I figure, leap, and the net will appear.

This image is from a series that I did a while back as an inspiration deck. I used the seven chakra colors plus brown. It was a fun project to think about, to come up with images that represented the color to me if not the chakra itself.

This month, for the A to Z Challenge, I will walk through my studio as I see it, not necessarily as I would show it to a visitor. I’m naturally a right-brained thinker, but since I have to live and work in the left-dominated neurotypical world I’ve learned to adapt. This month, I decided to try something different, and just post what I felt called to post for myself.

This blog, if you haven’t visited before, came about because I realized that I seem to have a learning difference in translating things from 2D to 3D. I’m hyperverbal (and thus a novelist), but I wasn’t always that way. I’ve always been a storyteller, but being raised in an abusive household I learned to hide my natural mode and survive as a left-brained thinker. I got very good at it, to the point that I now make a living in an analytical field and have an MBA in Finance.

In 2016, with the American election and the kickoff of what we now know is a strong Christofascist movement in our country, I started to feel seriously overwhelmed by everything. I didn’t realize at the time what was happening. The writing was the first to go, then the knitting, design work, and eventually, my weaving. I have done a few pieces here and there but nothing approaching my previous “normal.”

It’s been a journey but I’m finding myself closer to my “old me” than I’ve been in a long while, and I decided to take the opportunity of the A to Z challenge to challenge myself – to write, to show up at the keyboard daily, and to think about things that make me passionate.

And today, that’s craft: Knoontime Knitting: One Writer’s Journey Into 3-D. We changed it when we did a blog redesign, to “Where We Let the Squirrels Play,” and that fits too. Ultimately, it’s a philosophical discussion about craft as practice and a showcase, for myself if no one else, of what I did really do. A witnessing of my own process; midwifing my own creativity.

I hope you’ll join me, and that herein you will find some small inspiration for your own art, whatever that is.

Welcome.

Here are the rest of the images from the series:

Orange

Yellow

Green

Blue

Indigo

Violet

Brown

Knitting Notes For Saturday

Knoontime Knitting

I realized that I hadn’t been posting about the projects I’m working on, so I took some pictures last evening to get caught up. A few years ago, I started a course on Craftsy called “Wee Ones,” by Susan B. Anderson; making little stuffed elephant toys, and then set it aside. I picked it up a few weeks ago and finished this little guy.

Nadya was sitting next to me and wanted to see too.

Maybe not THAT close…

She decided to sniff it a couple times.

The eyes are made with some antique buttons from my grandmother’s button collection.

Here’s a close-up. It’s a cute little design.

And in other news, I decided to try making a koi fish. Susan B. Anderson has a little fish pattern and I used this to adapt the pattern and make it bigger.

This will be the face. I stuffed it too much at first and then realized I’m not making a sock, I’m making a fish, and it needs to be flatter.

This end will be the tail. It’s made in similar fashion to socks.

The tail is made on two needles, but still knitting in the round. I’ll post pics when it’s done.

I’m thinking I’m going to try another one with a lace pattern to simulate scale. And also one with overlaid fins. We’ll see; still playing around with it.

Friday Night Musings

Knoontime Knitting

I was chatting with a friend online this evening and shared a picture of my pin loom weaving box and realized I hadn’t shared it on here. I haven’t shared much on here recently at all, really.

As we collectively learn to navigate our catastrophically changed reality with COVID, it’s important I think to realize the collective stress we are under. It’s attractive to fantasize about all the “things” we’ll get done in this new in-between-time, but the reality is that stress seeps into everything like poison into a creek. Particularly for us here in the States, that new reality is horrific: as of this writing, over 150,000 dead and 5 million infected.

I find it hard to focus. I am, though, keeping up with crafts. Oddly, I haven’t been pin loom weaving this month but knitting – I’ll post some pics of that at another time. What I wanted to share for now is a glimpse into my pin loom weaving because it’s something I can do when my body is too stressed, my hands too sore from stress, and my brain unable to count for lace repeats.

As I shared the pics with my friend today, I remembered that I’d started weaving for a purse to replace one that my mother crocheted. It’s a project bag and it got so ratty and falling apart but I didn’t want to get rid of it. It wasn’t out of a pleasant sentimentality, since my mother was a horrible child abuser, but I still held onto it out of emotional attachment. I finally decided that’s goofy, I don’t want to drag around such negativity with me – particularly with my art.

And thus the idea for a knitting bag was born. The weavies are done, and next up is to sew the pieces together.

On the rigid heddle weaving front, we’re getting ready to start our weavealong in the Yarnworker School of Rigid Heddle Weaving. (If you’re a weaver, why not join us? More info here.) I’m so excited because I’m experimenting with some endangered wool called Churro. I’ll post pics of that at another time. But I was noodling about my weaving tonight and recalled reading about Morse code weaving in the Inventive Weaving on a Little Loom by Syne Mitchell. I decided to look it up again and there’s a Morse code translator! Check it out, here.

I thought it might be fun to try weaving a poem, and I even have one picked out to play with. I’ll keep noodling it and if it comes about, I’ll share pictures with you.

What are you up to these days, Dear Reader?

Playing With My Pin Loom

Knoontime Knitting

Today I took some time for Sunday crafting while I was watching and participating in the BotanicWise Allies for Plants and People Symposium. This year, the Pin Loom Weaving Support Group held a Weavealong hosted by TexasGabbi of Turtle Looms. The weavelong ran for six weeks and, though I did not finish on time due to the stress of the global pandemic, I’m still plugging away at it. I made all the weavies called for in the weavealong, but I used to be intimidated by sewing the weavies together – part of the weavealong instructions.

I’m happy to say that I no longer am intimidated by this process! I’ve successfully sewn Week 1, Week 2a, and Week 2b weavies together. And today, I worked on the extra project for Week 2, embroidering a weavie.

This caused me some consternation, because my very first textile art was embroidery. I could not settle on a design I liked. I dithered and hemmed and hawed, and overthought, and finally, today, decided I’d had it: JUST DO IT, as Nike says. Right? Right.

Only problem was, when I started to embroider on a finished weavie, I couldn’t get it under tension. It was flopping all over the place because the weavies are such loose-weave fabric, and I don’t have a small enough embroidery hoop. A friend suggested putting the weavie back on the Zoom Loom, and thereby under tension. I tried that, but fabric off a loom settles and it’s next to impossible to get it back to its former state.

Then it hit me: why not make a new weavie?

Voila.

This time, I switched back to my main color, a lovely charcoal grey marino wool blend. Then I used my CC3 color (contrast color #3), which is a light grey variegated color, also a marino blend. I used a detail of a pattern from Alice Starmore’s book, Celtic Needlepoint (if you haven’t checked out her work before, you owe it to yourself to visit her site that she shares with her talented daughter Jade Starmore, Virtual Yarns). I added the year and then took it off the loom. I’m really pleased with the final look of it. When it came off the loom, the threads relaxed and came together, so the needlepoint really pops.

Next time, I’ll share some of my herbal adventures. I have some lemon mint infusion steeping on my counter overnight and tomorrow, I plan to make a mint syrup.

What about you, Dear Reader? What are you making?

Slow Craft

Knoontime Knitting

Image of pin loom woven squares.

Fast. 5G. Upload speeds. Download speeds. Streaming. Faster cell service. 24/7 news cycle. Always-on. Technostress is stress induced by computer use. “Its symptoms include aggravation, hostility toward humans, impatience, and fatigue. According to experts, humans working continuously with computers come to expect other humans and human institutions to behave like computers, providing instant responses, attentiveness, and an absence of emotion.” (1)

I don’t know about you, but I find that all exhausting. I use technology and have done since I was a teenager. But I find myself called to slow down in my craft pursuits. Take weaving, for instance. I enjoy pin loom weaving, which is what the picture above features. Popular in the 1920’s through the 1940’s, pin looms can be used to make clothing, housewares, toys, and other useful items. The standard size is a four inch square, though makers have created pin looms in a variety of sizes to satisfy inquisitive weavers.

What is it about slow craft that’s calling to us? There are now craft revolutions all over the U.S. and around the world, such as Seattle’s Urban Craft Uprising. Makerspaces are independent and now even part of public libraries. People are merging craft with technology, bringing new ways to old.

And for many of us, slow craft is the antidote to fast culture. We sit and chat, or watch streaming shows or listen to audiobooks. We meditate using fiber or wood. We dream on the canvas or with words on the page. We journal and take pictures with our smartphones. There are even classes on how to be a better photographer using your cell phone. All of which is designed to help us to slow down, stop running, and be in the moment.

The act of creation is a radical act. It’s saying to the world, this didn’t exist before but I’ve made it so. It is rule-breaking, not rule-following. It’s not necessarily rebellious, it’s simply outside the known. Sometimes it comments on the known and sometimes it finds the known irrelevant.

During pandemic, I’ve found myself returning to my pin loom. It calms me in ways that even my knitting can’t – it turns out I can’t count during times of high stress. I don’t have to count to weave a pin loom square. My pin loom group is on Facebook (fast technology meets slow craft) and hosted a Mystery Weavealong that went for seven weeks. It was such a relief to get off work, wander over to my nest on the lounger, and weave squares. Not because I had to, or because I had something in mind – the mystery part of the weavealong meant that I literally didn’t know what I was weaving until the very end – but because the act of making squares settled my mind and let me feel productive but not pushed to finish any particular project. Just make a square. Which color? The instructions told me. And through that practice, my mind calmed.

 

Resources

(1) Laudon, Kenneth C and Jane P Laudon: Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm, c2007, Chapter 4, pg 156.

Saturday Check-In – News from the Endless Knoontime

Knoontime Knitting

It startled me to find my last post was in 2016. It’s so easy to let ourselves be distracted by the shiny things and the squirrels. I’ve been thinking a lot about that recently, this conflict between output and inflow: output is our own creative production, and inflow is the overwhelm of media consumption. I’m certainly not the first person to talk about this; Adam Alter did a TED Talk on screen addiction in 2017 that you can check out, here.

Any veteran journaler will tell you, it’s the questions that are the key. Asking ourselves good questions can be the difference between skating along the surface of our thoughts and diving deeply into them. WHY do we step away from craft? Why do we stop writing/making/playing? What moves us off our center? It’s easy to blame something outside of us, but as author and creativity specialist Julia Cameron points out in The Artist’s Way, we use crazymakers to block ourselves or to stay blocked. At some point, we have to put the responsibility (note I did not say blame) where it belongs, and take it back for ourselves.

Hence, this post.

My friend Sunita, over at ReaderWriterVille, does a thing she invented called “Weeknotes.” In them, she converses about her week. I love the tone of them: compassionate toward the self, optimistic toward the future, and supportive of positive, outward productivity. It’s in that spirit I offer today’s post.

It’s not like I haven’t knit or made anything for three years. A lot has happened in that time: the American presidential election disaster; my husband nearly bled to death (he’s okay now); all three of our publishers went out of business; we moved cross country 2,000 miles (about 3,200 kilometers); I started a new job that turned out to be a horrible fit and then got a new job (which I love); and I had a cancer-scare (I’m all right, but found some other stuff and am in the process of getting well). Making, of necessity, became smaller – was it “of necessity” because of something external, such as me deciding it to be that way? No. It just organically happened, because I couldn’t really focus on anything larger. I did nearly finish the Hue Shift Afghan in the Jewel colorway (available from KnitPicks as a kit, highly recommended and I’m making the main rainbow tinted one next); but need to finish one final edge in black. I made Rachel a vest, but need to finish sewing it together (it literally is half-sewn along one side seem; WTF?). I learned pin loom weaving (which is actually loads of fun and there’s a fun online community, here; and I just found a rigid heddle weaving school today online, here). I started designing not one but two lace shawls (those of you who know me are probably nodding and saying, “Of course you did, Noony;” I get it, I really do), and then stopped, completely, until all I was doing was pin loom weaving.

Slowly, I’m edging back toward making. I’ve learned some things. For me, a stable home and a stable day job are necessary for creative output. I find they settle and ground me in ways I don’t always understand. I wish I was happy-go-lucky, totally Zen and able to produce in any season, but I have found through long experience I’m not really one of those people. I do knit, and have done so through serious adversity, but having a stable home (which includes my family) and job (so I am not scared about where rent is coming from) is critical.

So what have I been making? Well, I don’t have a ton of pics in one place, which is part of this attenuated interregnum. But I do have a semi-circular shawl I’m designing on the needles and the name makes me laugh. I was thinking one day recently about vegetables, and manifestation, and how I want to eat more veggies and like them. I want to want to eat more veggies, is probably a more accurate statement. Then I thought about manifestation, and practicing the reality that I want to bring about. I had the yarn in my hands. The yarn is green. Then the squirrels took over and…

The I Love Broccoli Shawl Is Born

It’s going to need some serious blocking, but this is a semi-circular shawl based on Elizabeth Zimmerman’s “pi shawl” formula. The yarn is from Australia and is a lovely cotton blend that looks like it’s got mohair in it, but doesn’t.

I’m using a size 3 circular after quite a bit of trial and error as regards needle size. This is a yarn that color pools but even so, is quite lovely in stockinette; however, I think this type of faggotting really shows it to advantage. The predominant stitch is from Barbara Walker’s Volume I stitch dictionary, and is “Vertical Lace Trellis.” It’s only a four row repeat, two of which are purl across, so it’s much easier to work than it looks.

Other than that, I don’t have a whole lot of insights to share or profundities to drop on you. I just really miss blogging, writing, publishing, knitting, and making all the things. My squirrels got into the grain bin and have pooped on the good sheets in the linen closet. For the most part, I think I’ve gotten them wrangled, but I’ll refrain from any sagacious pronouncements of “I’m back and this is what I’m doing;” I’ve done that a couple times during this latest interregnum and have regretted it because it presages a dry spell.

So for now, I’ll close with this: thank you for visiting, and reading, and leaving a comment or two. I’m glad to be here, and I’m glad you’re here. Now. Let’s go make stuff, shall we?

Make Something Monday – and I Cleaned Out a Bin!

Knoontime Knitting

IMAG0459

Yesterday, I got a wild hair to rummage in my craft storage bins for some yarn that I bought waaaay back when I first started to knit.  I put it away, thinking I’d make a sleeveless sweater or something for the holidays.

Only, I’d bought four skeins, which isn’t enough for a sweater.

And so it’s languished in the bin for ~cof~ years ~cof~.  I also got some very difficult, fussy eyelash yarn of an eye-catching red.  I tried mixing it with this gorgeous stuff and it looked awful.  Rather than looking like a fur border, it looked like, well, a mess.

I’m not sure what magical alchemy happened yesterday.  Mercury is retrograde; maybe it’s that.  No clue.  But in I walked to my office, let my fingers do the walking through my binventory (I made up a word!!), and voila – new project glee.

Only one problem.  What the eff do I make, if not the sweater I’d been procrastinating?

IMAG0460

The yarn is a lovely, skooshie Plymouth 24k in a red and gold, complete with gold flecks.  I could do a rectangular shawl with thin tassels, (once I learn how to spell tassels ~fail~).  I could do a necklace or beads.

Hmm.  That’s actually not a bad idea.  I have four balls of it; I could use three for a triangle shawl and the one remaining ball for some jewelry.

IMAG0462

I started with a garter stitch border and then started yarn over increases three stitches in on each side.  When I had enough of an edge to make the point strong, I started two yarn overs in the center.  I’m going to do Little Arrowhead Lace from Barbara Walker’s Volume I, and then in the center, I think I’ll do budding branch once I have enough on either side of the center spine.

Oh.  As I’m writing this, there are really two centers, one on either side of the spine.  Hmm.  I can do buds, but have them mirror each other.  Facing center, or facing out?  I’ll noodle on that, but I’m thinking facing center.

IMAG0463

I got pretty far yesterday.

And I did not allow Kolya to eat the yarn.  Or chew on the needles.  Or steal the project bag so he could gnaw on the plastic.

Right.  I decided to be a textile artist in a house full of cats.  Brilliant.

What are you making this Monday?