When I first met Shelli Martinez she was
knitting a pair of sweat pants.
Knitting them.
I was incredulous. “Is there actually
a pattern for knit sweatpants?”
Well, no, it turned out, unless I was talking about the pattern she made on graph paper after taking apart a pair of her favorite jeans to see how they were constructed.
I remember thinking,
“I have so much to learn
from this fearlessly creative woman.”
Continue reading “Creativity Talks: Shelli Can–and Does–Make Things By Hand”
ReahJanise Kauffman is a prolific, inventive, skilled knitter who also develops and sells her knitting patterns online. She’s the kind of knitter I’d like to be if I ever got serious and grew up. Knitting, and knitting WELL are great skills to have. But making your own patterns is taking knitting to a whole other level as far as I’m concerned (remember, I don’t do numbers, and you do need math skills to make patterns). Continue reading “Creativity Talks: ReahJanise’s Inspired Knitting and Patterns”
“All life, living or ‘dead,’ is interwoven like silk
threads in a fine brocade.” — Philip Kapleau
I was in Utah for my birthday this year, visiting my sister. She pulled–from where, I do not know–a pair of Norwegian mittens and a reindeer hat my mother had knit before she went blind, long before she died in 2017.
Continue reading “The Return of the Norwegian Mittens”
Sometimes my daily life is doing, not writing about doing. This past month was pretty much doing: I’ve been knitting like a whirlwind. Socks for a friend; a hat for a COSTCO clerk who liked my hat so much that I had to make her one of her own; 4 tightly-knit birds nests for a North Carolina waterfowl rescue group who had put an SOS for them. Continue reading “Keeping the Yarn Moving”
There were a lot of reasons I decided to start a knitting group this year in my neighborhood outside Washington, DC. Although I’m shy, I had set an intention just before New Year’s to become more engaged socially in 2019. I had seen how my mood in 2018 always picked up while being with others. And I also realized during my New Year’s introspection, that I’m actually really good at getting people together. I’ve been doing it since high school, and people have enjoyed the activities I’ve organized. The biggest reason for starting something was that I wanted to do more things that made a difference to and for people–and I wanted it to be ME who came up with the ideas for how I would contribute. Continue reading “Knitting. Together.”
How long must a person knit before she accepts a basic–and crucial–understanding about the craft? How many misshapen, unexpected, Star Trek costume-like sweaters does she need to knit before she realizes she is doing something very, very wrong? How many hundreds of dollars must be wasted on good yarn that is turned into shrouds for octopuses? Continue reading “Lesson Learned Along The Walk of Shame”
My sister was the one who started the idea in my head. “Have you ever heard about a ‘weather scarf’?” she asked. I hadn’t. She explained that she had heard that someone had knit a scarf with colors for daily temperatures and she thought I might want to do that now that climate change has brought my Northern Virginia hometown more wild swings in temperatures. Continue reading “Putting It All Together”
As I posted earlier, I spent a lot of the second half of 2018 trying to recover from a torn tendon and tendonitis in my right hand–that meant no knitting, no hand writing, no bread dough kneading for months. Well, that has changed! Continue reading “Marathon Knitting”
I knit a lot for charity. It’s rare that I knit anything for myself. When I focus on a need that I can help fill–in my very small, but creative way–I get fully immersed in the work to the detriment of all else.
Until recently, I wasn’t aware of just how detrimental my singular focus could be–to me.
Continue reading “In the Absence of Creation”
“Stitch by stitch, moment by moment, we are knitting a fabric of
present moment awareness.” — Becky Stewart, KnitOm
I follow Becky Stewart of Knit Om, a private knitters’ group on Facebook. She is a constant inspiration, helping my bring awareness to my knitting. She’s leading a 30-day knitting challenge, each day challenging us to think in new ways about our knitting, and to knit mindfully, meditatively. Continue reading “My “Why” for Knitting”