Knitting on Impulse

Happy New Year!

For the first time in possibly ever, I have no New Year's resolutions.  No desperate bursts of will-power, no lists of deficiencies to correct - just a decision to leave my feet solidly on the ground and navigate the chaos, challenge and uncertainty of the coming year with ridiculous amounts of joy and optimism.

I do have a theme song, though: 

Happy New Year!

Boldly Going Places

 

As we wound down the switchbacks of a sweltering southern British Columbia highway this summer, it was the dog that caught our eye, scurrying back and forth in his seat and clearly having the ultimate face-out-the-window experience. While I'm sure there are many reasons why this is technically Not A Good Idea, I am equally confident that almost any dog on earth would gladly trade old age for the chance to ride in a sidecar on the open road.

Speaking of boldly going places, I've gotten it into my head to embark on the educational process towards a new career. Actually, it's more of a parallel career stream to the one I left five years ago, but since their respective channels are carved very deep, there was no way to truly get from one to the other (and I am very very sure that I want to be in one and not the other) without going right back to the beginning. Thus, I'm presently working my way through a selection of senior undergrad psychology courses, preparatory to applying to a Masters program and hoping like heck that 15+ years of hard core experience in a related field will stand me in good stead. (Also that my brain works as well as it did 20 years ago, though based on my first final exam, I think that's reasonably likely.) 

The plan (if all goes well) is to do undergrad and the first phase of grad school entirely by distance learning, to allow me to be present for my kids and (nearly) equally importantly, to continue the yarn business. Summer was challenging, but with the return to school day routines, I think the yarn/university duo is doable. Apart from the financial imperative, one of my prime goals in this endeavour is balance - to hold on tightly to the creative identity that was crushed insensible by the Other Profession. Remember the ridiculously cryptic Athena post? This decision was essentially the point, and I'm holding on tight to Athena's model of womanhood: textile artist, intellectual, warrior, and protector of heroes. It works.

Recombobulating

It has been a seriously disruptive couple of months. There's been happy but routine-trashing things, obnoxious energy sucking things, exciting things, worrying things, new things, variations on things that have been around for years but are enormously draining just the same.  All at once.

The resulting monkey mind has not been especially conducive to writing, and, unusually, has even made it difficult to sit still and knit.

What is emerging from the chaos with startling clarity however, is the need to revisit and reclaim a broad swath of my personal territory - both mind and body.  Many aspects of that project will necessarily remain cryptic, but I have no doubt it will inform and invigorate my creative expressions.

Here's a bit that I am more than happy to proclaim to the world: I've returned to running and weight training, dropping 17 lbs (and 3 inches off my waist) since Christmas. (Not that anyone has noticed... AHEM.... visiting family!)

More importantly, I'm beginning to fully inhabit my body again - to feel it energized and strong, full of possibility and capability. I freely admit to loving the gym - the zen-like focus on muscle groups, the mathematical satisfaction of analysing and optimising biomechanical forces. The fact that I'm steadily reclaiming sections of my wardrobe is simply an added bonus - there may even be properly modelled shots of knitwear in my blogging future.

Speaking of creative expression, I should show you the April colourways, aka the Emerging Collection:

 

From left to right: Daffodil, Orange Crocus, Red Twig Dogwood, Dark Purple Crocus, and Fresh Dirt.  The Emerging collection is currently available in Summit Sock and Bluefaced Bliss (fingering); there is also a set of Quintets in each of these bases.

I suspect I'll be less scarce now.

Halfway to Spring

February 2nd is an auspicious seasonal milestone, being variously titled Imbolc/(St.) Brigid's Day/Candlemas/GroundHog Day, and doubtless many more I failed to discover.  It represents the midpoint between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox (at least in the northern hemisphere); in other words, we are halfway to spring. It's a milestone of hope: cold still grips the land, but the days are noticeably longer and we begin to imagine and prepare for the onset of warmer weather. (Actually, as lovely as that sentiment sounds, we here in Whistler would be just fine with a little extra snow and extended spring skiing. Once the mountain closes in April though, we're pretty keen to get on with the melt.)

As for forecasting the exact onset of the thaw: the bears are still hibernating, and since our hearth fire is gas, we won't be inspecting the ashes for signs and portents, though the layer of dust on the mantel might well prove instructive. It was a cloudy day here, so any critters who may have poked out their heads would have seen no shadow, which presumably foretells an early spring.

As for a family celebration - I talked with the kids a bit about the significance of the date, and though my daughter was impressed with Brigid in a girl power sort of way, the children are most keen to focus on the proximity of spring. Typically, they've requested cake to mark the day, my daughter suggesting we ice it in two halves - one white, to represent winter, and one green with flowers, to represent spring.  Since it's a school night and half the family is presently huddled in bed shivering and sniffling, I think we'll postpone that to the weekend, but I promise to show you pictures when it happens!

Bloggers have traditionally participated in a silent poetry reading on this date, in honour of Brigid's association with poetry, and though I have failed most years (the last being 2007), I do think it is a lovely practice (though by the looks of it, that ship has sailed and everyone else appears to have moved on. Never mind.)

My contribution:

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads

of her life, and weaves them gratefully

into a single cloth—

it’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall

and clears it for a different celebration

 

where the one guest is you.

In the softness of the evening

it’s you she receives.

 

You are the partner of her loneliness,

the unspeaking center of her monologues.

With each disclosure you encompass more

and she stretches beyond what limits her,

to hold you.

Rainer Maria Rilke

What are your thoughts at this time of year - do you mark it in any special way, with cultural or personal traditions?

Pruning and Possibility

Possibility is my chosen focus for this month, and I've been thinking it through a little differently than I have in the past.

The upside to possibility is the dizzying sense of abundance, a heady combination of imagination, ability, and desire - the belief that virtually anything could be done if I put my mind to it. (Sadly, I've had to let go of my childhood dream of being the first person to walk on Mars, but pretty much everything else is still on the table.)

The flipside to that (and I'm trying very hard not to say downside, but it feels that way) is that I can't do it all. More specifically (since my feminist sensibilities are bristling): while it is entirely possible to acquire many and diverse abilities, and even to practice them simultaneously, there are real limits to the number of projects that one can accomplish in a given span of time, and those limits are even more restrictive if one hopes to do them well.

As someone whose entire persona is constructed around the notion of the overachieving underdog,  who survived the first several decades of my life on the blunt strength of Never Never Never Give Up, this pruning of possibilities doesn't sit at all well. It feels an awful lot like loss.... like giving up.  As though every sweater not knit, every design not realised, every creative thought not acted upon, is a kind of death to be regretted and grieved over. Add kids into the mix (a project unto themselves), and after a while there seem to be far more creations thwarted than completed and anticipatory loss begins to dwarf the joy.  Toss in an overabundance of "sky's the limit" inspirational articles and a jealous look at the magnificent accomplishments of all those childless fellow artists with limitless round the clock hours at their disposal, and the whole notion of possibility begins to seem like a cruel joke.

It was getting to be a death spiral, and thus my new outlook for the year began with redefining my relationship to possibility.

I took an unflinching look at the real available work time in 2011 (rather startlingly smaller than the numbers free-associating in my head), set out my project dream list and began tallying up the required hours. The initial imbalance was on the order of 5:1, and for the first time in my life, rather than resolve to drive myself harder, I began to prune. I found it helped a great deal to reframe the process as decluttering, rather than loss.  I discarded anything with a whiff of guilt about it (ie. Use Up All the Seconds), set aside projects that were sensible but failed to really excite me, and gave myself room to explore and permission to stumble and regroup along the way. (It sounds obvious, but this is really breaking new ground for me.)

One of the projects that made the cut launches with tomorrow's update, and I've been caught up in a white heat of inspiration playing with it this week... so much so that I have to give you a wee teaser:

 

Looking Up

It's one of my favorite things to do in the late day winter sun.

 

 

Even though the days are only marginally longer, around here January tends to see considerably less precipitation and more sunshine than November and December, so the world feels bigger, wider, full of possibility.

Possibility is the idea I want to celebrate this month. Although in many ways I feel more industrious in September, there's no denying the appeal of turning the page to the first day of the first month of a never-before-seen year (assuming, of course, one uses the Gregorian calendar.) It's the appeal of a pristine sheet of paper, a brand new journal, fresh powder. There are no eraser smudges, no cross-outs or coffee stains, just a glorious shining moment in which mistakes are a thing of the past and anything at all is possible.

2011: A Year of Celebration

I considered Gratitude, and I know many people have been successful with the concept, but it doesn't demand the kind of proactive energy I need right now. When you've developed the habit of living in survival mode, hanging on by your fingernails, gratitude feels a little tacked on.  As in: barely getting through the day, but at least the cat found his litterbox this time. Celebration isn't a salvage operation for a hard situation, its a way of choosing a whole new one - at least, that's my intent.  I see it as a form of mindfulness - marking seasons and cycles and milestones - taking notice, paying attention.

Like the Solstice project. I love the comments that you all contributed - the ideas, stories, ways of marking meaning and passage. And as promised, I took the list of contributors in order, used random.org to pick a number, and..... (drum roll).... the winner is: Linda M. You've won three skeins of yarn of your choice - anything at all in the store that strikes your fancy. Congratulations! (I'll email you, but you know where to find me :))

I'm pretty sure this won't be the last contest of its kind, but I'll say more about that another day.

 
 

 

Above: the happy outcome of Very Cold immediately following Very Wet. 

Magic.

Solstice

The boy and the husband and I stayed up 'til the wee hours to watch the lunar eclipse, which in our location was a cloud-filtered patch of light that disappeared on cue.... and never came back. The snow rolled in and the clouds thickened and though we waited until the appointed hour of re-emergence and beyond, it was not to be.  It was still exciting to see such a rare event, though without visual confirmation of the moon's return, I was seized with a sudden nostalgia for Space 1999.

 

Getting back to the topic of this post: Today is Winter Solstice. I've had an urge for several years now to mark or celebrate it in some fashion, but it always seems to sneak by me in the hustle of Christmas preparation. Since moving to Whistler, we have become intimately connected to the natural rhythm of the seasons like never before, and it seems right and proper to incorporate these seasonal milestones into our family awareness - to mark their significance, take notice.

I'm fascinated by the range of traditions occurring around this time of year on the theme of light prevailing in the midst of deepest darkness.  Our own family practices in that regard are pretty much limited to lights on a tree... and I'm really interested in exploring and expanding that. So here's my question: What sort of traditions, celebrations, or practices do you observe around this time of year that pertain to light? Any and all: religious, non-religious, ethnic/cultural/historical traditions, strictly personal celebrations or practices... not necessarily limited to this particular day, but happening in the general vicinity.

Leave your answer in the comments (or link to your blog if you've already posted on the topic or want to say something more expansive).  I'll keep the contest open until the end of this year, and January 1st I'll draw one name at random to receive three skeins of any in-stock yarn of the winner's choice (cashmere, silk, sock... anything they like.)

Happy Resolution Day 3/26

A hot bath and a glass of port. No photos, sorry.

It was a long day, capped off by a very long evening of homework woes (both kids) and the existential angst of a little boy whose formidable intelligence way outstrips his ability to cope with the possibilities it presents to him.

Plus a deadline I am pushing right to the wall.

I would have skipped the happy altogether if I hadn't promised the blog. 

It was nice port.

Thinking About Textiles

I've been thinking about the ideas in this post for a long time, but Franklin's painfully astute animated video nudged me to try to put some of them into words.

The starting point for me is the startlingly wide gap between my feelings about the creation of textiles  and those of society in general. Or more specifically, the gap between the online community I belong to and the community in which I live. I have all but ceased to talk out loud about what I do, because I invariably wind up feeling sheepishly defensive.

I would like to say from the start that this isn't about a personal need for reassurance or accolades, because I am really really happy with the path I'm on. I feel incredibly privileged to be part of an online community in which the creative love I pour into my work is received and understood for what it is, a community with deep roots and traditions and people to whom I can look up (way way up), whose achievements are so far beyond mine that they inspire me to dream way outside my own box.... how many artists are so lucky?

What fascinates me though, is the sheer magnitude of the disconnect that occurs when I tell people in my physical community what I do - because big gaps, especially ones that are way bigger than expected, are a really good place to look for insight. It brings up interesting questions: Since this is now my livelihood, how do I identify with it in face-to-face life?  Does what I do for a living have any value or significance beyond a kind of geeky personal amusement?

To our local arts organizations, Functional = Not Real Art, so I'll always be a fringe pretender in that arena.  C'est la vie. To friends and mentors in the business community, who granted me a fair degree of legitimacy for creating jewellery, the reaction I now get to the knitwear design and hand-dyed yarn business is awkward silence, and a quick change of subject.

I find that fascinating. I expected incomprehension, or unfamiliarity, but not this almost pitying discomfort.

Since food and clothing are both fundamentals of human survival, let's consider food for comparison. Someone who cooks a fabulously delicious meal from fresh ingredients is generally admired... even by folk who don't have the time, inclination or acquired skill to do the same. Making great food from scratch is a valued thing, a thing to aspire to, and the fact that it can be practiced by people at all socioeconomic levels doesn't diminish that.

Making clothes, on the other hand, is perhaps akin to picking through the dump for scrap metals - base work done by illiterate unskilled labour from "somewhere else" who are grateful to be able to feed themselves on the pennies a day earned.  Expensive clothing derives its value from the space-age technology of the fabric (in the case of active or outerwear) or the conspicuous cachet of the company label. The closest our society gets to acknowledging the human factor is the celebrity status of a big name designer - even then, it is not the physical act of making that is valued.

It's the best explanation I can come up with.

Does it matter? Within the fibre community, we laugh about the muggles who don't understand our interests, band together in our shared geekiness, but is the dichotomy of invisible economic bottom-dweller and nerdy hobbyist really the sum significance of making clothing and textiles? People who write their wedding vows in Klingon** are misunderstood too, but that doesn't doom millions of people (mostly women) to lives of poverty and ill health, doesn't write off as inconsequential a group of professions incredibly diverse and rich in skill and tradition, and as old, in fact, as humanity itself.

Is there any sort of moral imperative to talk to the disinterested about the art and value of Making, of fibre and textiles, of knitting? It would be considerably less awkward to keep my work within my happy online bubble, and most days I am more than a little inclined to do just that.

Nevertheless, as I do venture out of the house on occasion,  that still leaves the matter of how best to answer the dreaded question, "What do you do?"

**For the record, our wedding vows were in Greek. We speak neither Klingon nor Greek, but a travelling Tunisian hairdresser kindly translated for us. The Greek, that is. I'm pretty sure he didn't speak Klingon either.