Live Your Creative Life

I am not big on New Year's Resolutions.  The way I see it is that any day is a good day to make a change for the better, make new plans, start something new, finish something old, make a habit, break a habit, whatever strikes your fancy.

I did have a thought that "more life, less work" would be a good plan.  It went right out the window on January 2nd.  So much for that idea.  January 3rd fared even worse in that regard.  Third time was apparently the charm because I managed to stop working fairly close to five o'clock.

Will I now magically stop working on time every day from now on?  No.  Of course not.  But I will keep trying, and maybe eventually I will come out on the plus side.

In addition to increasing the ratio of life to work, there is the matter of quality of life.  What do I want to do with all of this time I will have once I stop working so much?

In addition to continuing to follow my passion for knitting, spinning, and things fibery in geneal, I want to read more, for certain.  I used to read voraciously when I was younger and didn't have grown up responsibilities or the great time drain the Internet.  My reading appetite increased and decreased over time, and my tastes changed.  I moved into a house I had to share with another person, so I got rid of a lot of my books.  Then I started knitting with greater focus and frequency which led to greater skill and the discovery of fabulous yarns, so my disposable income went into yarn rather than books.

Last year, and it may have started in 2017, I started to rediscover books and their enchanting possibilities.  What I have not as yet rediscovered is my reading attention span.  I worry that reading takes away from my knitting (and now spinning, which I picked up last year), which it does because I can't really knit and read at the same time, but I need to not worry about it.  I knit for pleasure and to learn and create and as meditation, but I read for those same reasons, too.

I used to read almost exclusively fiction, but now I find myself interested in the stories of people who were or are participants in and observers of history, as well as novels by and about people who are different than me -- live in a different part of the world, speak a different language, or have experiences I will never have (for good or ill).  I want to learn more about my chosen hobbies of knitting and spinning, try new techniques and improve overall.  To that end, I have set myself the goal of knitting my way through Milarrochy Heids by Kate Davies.  She has also written a memoir, Handywoman, which is on my reading list, as is the memoir of Jane Hawking, who was married to Stephen Hawking for thirty years.  If the film The Theory of Everything is to be believed, without her there would have been no Brief History of Time.  I am embarrassed to say that it never occurred to me that he had been married and that his wife would have been his primary caretaker, facing all of the challenges that responsibility would entail.

There are plenty more titles I could add to the list, along with movies to see, podcasts to explore, and music to hear, but they could (and probably should) merit posts of their own.  Or I will post sidebar lists.  Or both.

How this writing thing is going to work is still a mystery, but I am to keep writing because writing is writing.

Is this thing still on?

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.

~ E.L. Doctorow

I have been doing a lot of thinking about writing publicly, as in resurrecting the blog.

Ever since (and maybe a bit before) I heard those words "president-elect Donald Trump" come out of my kitchen radio on that fateful day, I have felt less inclined to keep quiet and more like I have something to say.  Out loud.  And not just to the cat.

In the last couple of years, my eyes have been opened not only to the depth of misogyny and racism and intolerance of whomever might be the "them" of the moment still so prevalent and entrenched in this land of the free and home of the brave but also made me really angry about it.  It has also made me angry that I hadn't realized just how safe and isolated my life is.  And how luxurious.

I have a house and a car, neither of which has been threatened or destroyed by wildfire or hurricane or tsunami or earthquake.  I have heat and electricity and drinkable hot and cold running water.  (Hot running water is my absolute most favorite modern luxury.  There aren't too many things in life better than a nice, long, hot shower.)  I have plenty of clothes and food.  I have a tiny bit of money in the bank.

As I was becoming more angry, I was also becoming more grateful.  Every night, especially if it has been a difficult day and I am having trouble falling asleep, I make a gratitude list.  If job stress is keeping me awake, it can be difficult to be grateful that I am employed, but I can still be grateful that I don't live in a war zone, and the roof is still attached to the house.

2018 has been a challenging year.  A number of major events which I knew were inevitable came about in fairly quick succession.  They were the kinds of things which I expected to be horribly devastating and had no idea how I would handle.  I didn't always handle them well, and there were moments when I definitely wanted the world to stop so that I could get off, but I survived them all not too much the worse for wear.

I might write about those events.  I might just write about food and yarn and books and movies.  I might rant about the injustices of the world.  But I am pretty sure that I need to stop thinking about writing and start writing.

To Swatch or Not to Swatch -- the eternal knitting question

Okay, so maybe not eternal, but frequent and the subject of much debate.  I'm not sure that I can add anything new to the conversation, but as I become more experienced as a knitter, I do more research into techniques and fiber, and I pay more attention to the technical side of knitting -- how needle size and fiber content and ply affect stitch definition, drape, and gauge.  When I ran across this post from Love Knitting, I felt compelled to add my two cents' worth of input to the conversation.

While I see the value of a swatch, especially for a garment which needs to fit, I don't think that it is the be all and end all. It needs to be a guideline because a 4x4 inch square is only going to tell you so much.  If there is more than one stitch pattern involved, make a swatch for each because your gauge may vary significantly.

Washing and blocking the swatch gives you some indication of how much the piece might grow, but it doesn't tell you what the sheer weight of the fabric will do to your gauge or how long term wear will affect the item.

If it's a cowl or scarf or shawl, maybe I don't want to match the gauge in the pattern. Maybe I want something tighter or with more drape. I take it on a case by case basis.

When the gauge on a pattern matches the gauge listed on a yarn's ball band, I get a bit suspicious.  Did the designer really match the yarn's ball band gauge exactly?

The real reason for knitting a gauge swatch -- or otherwise determining gauge --  is that each knitter's gauge is unique.  And the knitter is not the only variable.  Needle material and shape, yarn weight and fiber content, and the combination of the two are all factors.  (Therefore, I'm not sure how much sense it makes to compare worsted weight knitting on square wooden needles to fingering weight knitting on round metal needles, as was done in the aforementioned post, unless it was to make that same point.)  In addition, each knitter's preference is unique.  You might get the recommended gauge and not like the fabric.  If so, find a gauge which gives you a fabric you do like, keeping in mind that it may mean making other modifications to the pattern (i.e. stitch count or yardage requirement) in order to end up with a pleasing (and properly fitting) finished object.

While I am far from an expert knitter, my advice is this: do what makes you the most comfortable and yields the best personal results.  Don't be afraid to experiment.  Realize that not all experiments will be successful.  Be prepared to try, try again, whether by ripping out and re-knitting or starting a new project.  Practice, practice, practice.  With or without a gauge swatch, your knitting will definitely improve with practice and persistence.

ETA: Shortly after I finished this post I came across Jill Wolcott's thoughts on the subject of swatching and wanted to include them because she has lots of interesting things to say about knitting.

In which "camping" is defined as "spending thirty days working a writing project or two"

And in which the author gets perhaps a little more personal than usual.

I am not much of a fan of New Year's Resolutions because such a specific label is restrictive, as if there is only one day a year when you can resolve to make changes and improvements in your life.  Then, if you don't follow through for some reason, do you have to wait until the next January 1st to start again?

I think not.

Every day is an opportunity to take stock of what you have (or have not) accomplished in previous days and then decide what to do going forward.

I have discovered that goals are more helpful, motivating, and achievable, if they are a combination of general and specific.  For example, I find "get some exercise at least five days a week" to be a more realistic achievement than "run five miles a day."  Sometimes goals evolve from being vague to specific.  After I finished one knitting project which had been lingering for quite some time, "knit more" evolved into "finish these three projects by the end of the year."  I didn't specify an order or hierarchy for the projects, and I am not going to worry about actually having more than three unfinished projects (not to mention other projects I want to start).  Instead, I am going to stick with these three.  I think it helps that they are a bit of a mixed bag.  The largest project is the simplest (no fancy pattern).  The smallest project is the most complicated, and the one in between is, well, in between.  The current order seems to be to finish the middle project first and then alternate between the large, simple project and the small, complicated project, but that may change.  The point is that I keep making progress and even if I don't do any knitting for several days, it is easy to pick up where I left off because I have a plan.

As a contradiction, the specific reading goal of fifty-two books a year is finally working out.  Last year I managed fifty-three, so this year, the goal is to read fifty-five books.  So far, so good, and hopefully it is a long-term trend which I can continue.

Cooking goals remain nebulous beyond "read cookbooks, try new recipes, be mindful of ingredients and where they come from, support local farmers and businesses," but that's okay because I think that it is working well so far.  I eat less processed food, and while my brain occasionally craves a fast food hamburger, my taste buds remember that the food I cook tastes so much better.  I do have a subscription to an online cooking school which I need to work into the schedule somewhere somehow, but I haven't figured out how to make that work just yet.

My favorite accomplishment so far this year is the successful baking of oatmeal cookies, but they deserve their own post, which fits in nicely with the goal I really wanted to discuss in this post: writing.

Writing used to be a necessary cathartic process to quiet the clamoring voices in my head.  As I have made progress on various projects and goals and have generally found a better balance between work and life, the voices have quieted significantly on their own, so that while I still enjoy writing, it is not quite the necessary survival skill that it has been in the past, which means that I often find myself thinking, "I should write about that at some point," but I don't make it to "some point," especially if I am going through a "stay away from the computer while not at work" phase.  (Now *there* is an extreme compound, complex sentence for you.  Watch out Marcel Proust!)

With the advent of the April session of Camp NaNoWriMo, I have decided to set a goal of getting back to writing.  I have given myself the choice of writing a blog post a day for thirty days or finishing a draft of the cookbook.  Obviously, I am starting with the blog, but I think that I will end up doing a combination of the two with the notion that if it takes thirty days to make or break a habit and if I can write every day for thirty days, then at the end of the month, I will have a new good habit.  That's the plan at any rate.  We'll see what happens.

In the meantime, I wanted to share the following story which came in one of the e-mail newsletters I received from the NaNoWriMo folks because I just love the positive power possibilities of the written word.  Enjoy!

Wrimo Spotlight
"My daughter Logan is borderline autistic and deals with extreme anxiety. She struggles significantly when things are not "perfect", and just couldn't get her words on the page. Any more than five sentences was a struggle for her. Still, I decided to try and see what would happen if I signed her up for NaNoWriMo.

By midmonth, she had attended her first write-in with my students and after that was writing non-stop. By the end of the month, she had written more than double her 1,000-word goal. What's more, she had become a completely different child.

She was so excited about her writing, she was carrying her manuscript everywhere, had read her story to the whole class, and was writing like mad. It's been inspiring to see the happiness and ease writing now brings her." — Holly B.