Cherished Knitting

Over the past year, I have read far too many obituaries of people I know or know of. Relatives, friends, schoolmates, parents of friends, celebrities and work-related acquaintances.  Far too many have gone this year. 

Besides the natural evocation and contemplative impact I encounter upon reading a commemorative death notice, one of the most lasting marks impressed on my heart has been the use of the word cherished by those who remain.  

Cherished husband... cherished father... cherished son or daughter... cherished mother and wife...  

Were they indeed cherished when they were alive? 
Did they feel protected and lovingly cared for?  
Were they adored? 
Held dear? 
Doted on? 
Revered? 
Admired and held in high esteem every day of their lives? 
Not just after their time here on earth...as memory? 

Do we remember to ensure that the people we call our loved ones know they are treasured when they are animated participants of our everyday existence?

If not...Why not?

Feeling cherished is, in all probability, one of the most important contributors to general health: healthy relationships, reduced stress, greater motivation to succeed, and overall successful functionality.

Why is it such an easy word to write in a death notice, and such a difficult task to perform on a daily basis?  So many people I know tell me how they don't feel appreciated at home or at work; don't feel that their families care about them as much as they should.  Taken for granted. Taken advantage of. Ignored. Scapegoated. Does it really take that much energy to cherish?

I think not.

We have gotten out of the habit of cherishing the people in our lives.

Sometimes slowing down our fast paced lives is the secret recipe to Cherish.

Fast food. 
Mass produced clothes. 
These are some of the culprits of the NonCherished.  

Some of us who still enjoy constructing meals that take hours to prepare -- we know that we do it, in part, to show friends and family how much we care.  Yes, we could cater, yes, we could shortcut our way through an aisle at Costco: but we don't.  Festive meals strengthen tribal bonds of friends and family.  We break bread to make connections.

Similarly, as Knitters we create for those we cherish.  We measure and slowly fasten loops to unite simple fibre into an expression of adoration: scarves shield, sweaters enshrine, socks preserve, mitts embrace, and hats guard against malice for the people we care about.

Most knitters I know are constantly knitting gifts.  Many more knit for charities.  In fact, I believe that to share something you have created with someone you have never or will never know is the ultimate form of cherish: 'I don't know you. But I made this for you. Because you matter.' That's what I wrote on the note I slipped into the hat I knit for the 1,000 Stitches for Syria Project.  Those words along with 'Welcome to Canada.'

It's one of the reasons I knit socks as gifts. Socks look difficult, but once you wrap your head around their construction, they really aren't all that more arduous than a hat or shawl.  Yes, they are more than show-offy displays of "hey, look what I can do! I can turn a heel and knit with 5 double pointed needles at once"... but when you need someone to understand just how much you cherish them, socks are a genuine indication of just that:
 
"If someone makes you a hand-knit sock they really, really love you. Why?  Because a sock is knit with what essentially are toothpicks and dental floss, the knitter must screw up their eyes to keep track of those teeny tiny loops and learn to master a perfectly turned heel flap -- not to mention putting a knot in their neck to do it -- and in the end, voilà, a sock... You see, you know they really, really love you... because THEN they make you a SECOND SOCK TOO!" (Knittishisms, 2008)   Yes! They cherish you THAT much!

It's time to remind the people in our lives that we cherish them. Say it. Knit it. Even when you'd like to throttle them... hug them and measure them for a new cardigan.  It's better than a solemn farewell printed in a daily broadsheet that they will never read; and it will do you both a world of good.

Sock Knitting is my Happy Place

You know it's too many when you've transformed your yarn stash into a sock stash trove.

I have been cleansing both body and spirit through a long cathartic knitted process that could be described as PTSKD (post traumatic sock knitting design).  

I believe the enormous pressure of last Fall has been successfully washed away via the stitch by tiny stitch creation of footwear.  Becoming a real-live, ole-skool style, 3D printer of socks, was the only way to successfully weave a secure fabric of my cosmos back into solid footing.  Sock Therapy, would be an apt description; the creative process so closely linked with resuscitation and renewal.  And now....what next?  My Mum brought me some lovely handpainted DK yarn from her travels through Alaska and my immediate thought was "SOCKS! YAY" ...but no... please note: suggestions for a non footy, one-skein wonder are most welcome.

I am about to embark on a year long Knit Your Own Bar Mitzvah: Maverick turns 12 in the morning. 

It is time to start planning, designing and creating Maverick's iconic Bar Mitzvah 'ritual' items.  Stay tuned... ideas are forming, and how they manifest themselves over this upcoming year should prove, I hope, engaging for you readers.

Maverick goes tubular

Completed just in time for the school ski trip. 

Perfect for a day of snowboarding and tubing: 

The Billy Pilgrim, Slaughterhouse Five Socks (Literary Knits by Nikol Lohr)

Modelled here by himself... a very tired young man. But a content young man with toasty warm feet thanks to Canadian Fibre (Riverside Studio in Wakefield, Quebec) 

Oh dear...I need a new project... 

February is upon us and I have stash busted myself out of impromptu knits ... 'just cuz'...

Stay tuned for February's Fabulous Fibre Forays. 

Why Knitters make the BEST Project Managers

To answer all my social media friends’ questions: No, I have not been AWOL.  I was on a course this past semester. 

I signed up in August, thinking “…hmmm a 13 week course, 3 hours of lectures per week…plus…what? …maybe another 3 or 4 hours of reading a week?  No problem. I can work this into my already hectic schedule.”  WRONG.  Try 20-40 hours per week with the assignments and studying all in.  It was a second job… or rather, third or fourth job, when you factor in parenting, my ‘real’ job, and volunteer commitments. It didn’t take me very long at all before I suffered a case of wholehearted lament. Earsplitting brain-chatter and thoughts invaded my silent walks and bike rides to and from campus each week: “I don’t HAVE TO take this Project Management Course… it’s professional development... I can drop it… OMG – what the H*LL was I thinking? But no – I have to set a good example for my children… finish what you start… don’t give up just because things get tough… @#$%… sigh….”

Needless to say, I gave up reading fiction, the paltry screen-time in which I used to take pleasure, and did a lot of stress knitting. 

A LOT OF STRESS KNITTING.  For the Rebel Knitter: Stress Knitting = Socks.  Something about minuscule, petite stitches with tiny little needles and meager, skinny yarn makes me feel like the goddess Athena: goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, mathematics, strength, war strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill.  Recognized for her calm nature, Athena is a well-known goddess, recognized as only entering into combat for just reasons, and never fighting without a purpose…all traits that proved necessary for the duration of this course. 

No…I am not being overly dramatic. Seriously!  There were times when I would have clocked a couple of my Teammates if they had been present in the room.  Like the time I discovered that one of them had plagiarized their Plan.  Don’t get me started!

I loved the Professor – he is a great teacher.  His lectures were both interesting and entertaining; which was immense, because I doubt there were ever two more boring textbooks than “Successful Project Management” and the “Project Management Book of Knowledge” (insert audible yawn here).  For goodness sake… when we got to Communications Management and Human Resources Management I was all lit up with excitement… Finally… something engaging.  But no… these two tomes managed to make even PEOPLE mind-numbingly boring!  Seriously!  People ARE NOT BORING… but when discussed by Project Management manuals… apparently so. 

60% of the class was based on exams and the remaining 40% on the Group Assignment.  I hate group assignments – people can be such wildcards; and my team was a collection of wildly different personalities. They chose me as the Project Manager on that first day of class. This was going to be a challenge for me. I hadn’t worked on a group assignment since Grade 11 History, 35 years ago.  But I had led groups. I could do this, I knew that – I just needed to survive it.

Things that made me happy during this class:

• Beating the odds. I discovered quickly that I felt out of my depth.  This was a business course.  I am an artsy.  I have worked professionally, running other people’s departments and businesses for over 25 years but I had never before taken a single university-level business course.  Confession: I almost didn’t pass High School Economics; it was my inability to read and follow the Stock Market page of the Montréal Gazette that led to that near disaster – still wish I could decipher  the bloody thing – I’d probably be a billionaire by now if I could.  Honestly, I speak five languages including the cryptic phraseology known as the knitting pattern, which I can only liken to the ability to decipher a secret binary code written for fibrenistas, and when written well can take on mystic significance.  Just ask anyone at your local yarn store!  But NASDAQ? NYSE? Forget about it. It's like Klingon to me.

• Having a team that listened and didn’t argue. They even called me their “fearless leader”. Yeah. That was pretty gratifying.  Truth be told, I plied them with coffee and brought baked goods to many of our meetings.  As anyone who has attended a Stitch n Bitch knows, the secret to a good meeting is in the eating.  Put that in your boring Project Management primer, Mr. or Ms. didactic schoolbook publisher. It’s true and I doubt anyone would refute the value of a good triple chocolate brownie at a brain busting get-together.

•  Discovering my brain still works just fine.  It had been over two decades since I had defended my Grad School thesis.  Two babies, several jobs and several thousands of loads of laundry later, I wasn’t sure it would.  Yay… my Uni 4.0 GPA remains intact.

Things that made me miserable during this class:

• Losing all my free time.  All of it.  Every single nanosecond of it. Yes, I could have blown the course off a wee bit, perhaps not done my best and still ‘passed’. But I am one hell of an obstinate sod, and I always give 110% (what knitter doesn’t!?)

• Discovering that people cheat! Well, I know that people cheat - I'm not that naive... just really surprised that people who have graduated from University, theoretically know the rules... well, that they do it ANYHOW.... seriously disappointing. When I realized that one of my teammates had lifted their plan straight off the internet, I lost it!  Like I said, if he had been in the room I might have thumped him over his twisted melon. That’s like buying a sweater from the GAP, cutting the label out and telling everyone you made it yourself!  Besides, if he would like to risk his own expulsion from the course or university, so be it. But when you work on a group project and cheat, you can get the lot of us expelled.  Foul fiend... I almost French-braided the cretin’s nuts, I was so livid. We didn’t have time to play around, we had so much left to do, so what did I do? I wrote two of his plans for him…. and rewrote his other two because even though I told him “only original work” and to send me his work “not in point form,”  the man cannot write a solid sentence. Grrrrr…. Come on knitters... you would have done the same thing too.  Which one of us knitters hasn’t knit more than his or her fair share in a collective group afghan or the like?

During the last few days of the group project when the clock was quickly ticking down, and I was suddenly discovering a lot of other people’s “oopsies” that they were supposed to have fixed but didn’t, my wonderful Document Editor and I shared many, many ”OMG!” moments.  I confessed that I was considering making my first knitting project after the final exam a sweater that would read “Project Manager” on the back and “I hate people” on the front… she said, “that’s nice, make me one too, except on the front I want it to say Get your #$%& together people!” D*mn, I like that woman!

But it all worked out in the end. I even aced the final exam, which was multiple choice. 

N.B.:  I hate multiple choice tests! I’d rather have a high-colonic than endure one…unless, of course, it’s a Buzzfeed Quiz, I excel at Buzzfeed Multiple Choice Quizzes.

To celebrate my triumph, I knit my friend the hat I knew she wanted, and am currently making my boy, Maverick Knitter, some socks from one of my favourite books, Literary Knits: Billy Pilgrim/Slaughterhouse Five Socks.   Morose?   Perhaps.  But I feel like I have come home from the War ... victorious.  Besides, my boy is growing. These heelless socks make perfect sense for an emergent young man and a shoe size that is in constant flux; and hopefully they will keep his toes toasty in his new hockey skates. 

Yes, spoken like a true knitter.
Or rather Project Manager.
Same thing!

Knitters make the BEST Project Managers.

Why?

Because we know how to create the plan, work the plan, revise the plan, and on occasion: frog the @#^*%$! plan back to beginning and start again.  We cast on, do gauge swatches, measure and re-measure, adapt plans and block… and more often than not we figure out how to make the d*mn thing work anyhow. 

Yes, indeed, knitters do make the BEST Project Managers.

Butterflies, Brie, Ben & Jerry's and Balls and Balls of Beaded Silk and Wool

I don't know about you, but my summertime knitting this season has been.....uninspired. 

I've made a few pairs of 'gift socks' for assorted relatives ... a teddy bear or two and a couple of pairs of fingerless gloves. Nice 'easy peasy just in case I need a present', or 'OMG I need a present that I can knit in an evening or two' projects that aren't exactly what one would call Alzheimers-preventing-sudoko-for-knitters patterns. 

But it's summer...so...yeah...no sweat...
Because knitting in the summer can be a sweat inducing thing.  

I call my current 'on the sticks' piece a hodge-podge-palooza of leftovers.  I could spin this into an 'I'm being so environmental and eco-friendly' story.  But seriously: How many bits and pieces, end of roll, lovely sock yarn do you have in your stash? I have oodles and squoodles.  Hence my latest, mostly brainless knitting endeavour of which I am quite proud: I will soon be ready to recover the IKEA throw pillow in the playroom. 
 

Yes. I know. Excitement City.
You're panting just hearing about it. 
Ha!
Me too.
Not.
But it is pretty. 

It was inspired by all the butterflies that have been swarming around me in recent weeks.  (Is that symbolic, I wonder?)  Maybe I smell like milkweed. Not sure.  But the colour-ways I chose are based on my newly acquired butterfly friends.

Regardless of my location, they have been fluttering around.  Much friendlier than the August Wasps who also find me irresistible. 

But after the past couple of days, I think the 'knitting gods' are demanding I up my game a little. I believe the challenge of a complicated sock pattern is called for: and soon.  I have been happily floating through my summer daze with my low-neuron-engagement knitting.  But last week things went completely off the charts absurd.  Clearly, the powers that be felt I needed a jolt.  I texted my experience(s) to a friend via a Facebook chat one evening and having just looked it over, if I hadn't experienced the bizarre farce myself I would swear the person who wrote my texts was on a pharmaceutical cocktail of Timothy Leary proportions.

Walked into work and got accosted by a street person... which isn't weird in itself, because, I get approached by various 'characters' every day -- I live and work and wander around downtown Toronto -- this is nothing new.  HOWEVER... this dude was over the top. Normally I smile, am respectful of their various 'situations'.... but this guy jumped out of nowhere, right in front of me and started verbally abusing me... yelling... circling me... not letting me walk down the sidewalk... like I said... over the top ... Then a couple of 20-something year old business suited guys stop and one asked me "Are you okay Ma'am?" The first thing that hit my grey matter was: 'since when did I become a Ma'am?' ... I rolled my eyes and said - 'I got this' (don't ask me why -- I just knew I did.) And I stared right into the eyes of Mr. Wacky Nutbar and said in a very strong tone: "ARE YOU QUITE FINISHED? NOW BE QUIET AND GET OUT OF MY WAY" Shock and awe, baby -- totally worked.  One of the 20-something year old young men smiled with an "Oh - yeah - she's using her mom voice"... anyhow, I got to the office a couple of minutes later and that's when the adrenaline OMG moment hit me. What the hell? AND THEN I FELT BAD... I shouldn't have yelled at him..  but you know what? He pissed me off.... #1 Don't accost me #2 Never accost me before I've had my morning coffee... that's a really important thing.  Seriously. He was an inch away from my face yelling, screaming and when he started preventing me from walking passing... my lack of caffeine... well... yeah you know.... it kind of took me over. Mind you, it was good to know that chivalry still exists.  Some young men stopped to try and assist... I guess I reminded them of their mothers.  So the next day... I decided I had a choice... avoid the same street/walk into work or walk the same path. I decided that clearly I HAD TO walk the same way in -- otherwise I might be afraid to ever do it again...The dude was not there and I felt better. But as I turned the corner, some other guy comes right up beside me and starts walking stride and stride with me... no clue who or what he is about then he whips a harmonica out of his pocket and starts playing it to me.... like for 2 blocks.... inches away from my face -- what the hell? when I thought about it later, I started to laugh so hard I almost peed my pants, because the saddest part of it all was that he was a HORRIBLE harmonica player.   Then that same day, on the walk home, another guy slowed down on his bike and started riding along side me, singing (on the top of his lungs) some Italian Opera solo (alas, once again, only passable as a vocalist).  So, the next day, on the walk into work I start thinking: Maybe I should hang a sign around my neck: WARNING: I HAVEN'T HAD COFFEE YET... PISS ME OFF AND I MIGHT JUST CLOCK YOU. But no worries... my two lurkers are nowhere to be seen.  But then I turn onto the street where my office sits and guess what?  Yet, another one of the 'local flavour characters' tries to engage me. I think what happened next can be chalked up as 'Rebel Knitter has finally mastered the DON'T EVEN death glare". Because it was an immediate stand-down moment for the dude. Immediate.

Now, seriously. Can you blame me for finishing off my days with Brie, Baguette, and Ben and Jerry's.  Also look for a mind-bending project from me soon.  Bye-bye Brain Candy Knits, hello Brain Busting Lacy 3D magic.  It's my penance for blissful, low-brow crafting.

UPDATE: SHE BE DONE. ..

Mama's got a new pair of socks

How did Mrs. Noah knit on the ark?

April 8th... What a day. It's like April Fool's day caught up with me, one week late.

1. Walked to work and got caught in a rainstorm. 

2. By the time I left for physio in the afternoon, the rainstorm had turned into a 'hey, was that Noah's Ark that just floated by?' type of rainstorm... 

3. I got to the office tower where the PT office is and got stuck in a revolving door section with an overweight man who was texting while walking and didn't look before he got in and ended up wedging me face first into the glass window of the door...then he had the nerve to get into the same elevator as me. Seriously? You  couldn't wait for the next one? 

4. Finally arrive at the physio office and their electronic paying facility kept failing "must be the rain," the receptionist told me.

5. Sat down in the reception area to drip/dry, knit and chill for 10 minutes until Jocelyn calls me only to discover that MY YARN IS WET, EVEN THOUGH IT WAS IN A CLOSED ZIPLOC BAG!  and then it dawns on me...I am dripping on the only not soggy parts of my knitting. sigh  Which leads me to wonder, How did Mrs. Noah knit on the Ark? (Because surely she would have kept her yarn in Ziploc bags to keep the kittens and monkeys from getting into it) 

6. Then, when I went to collect my son from the gym this afternoon I got hit in the head/neck with a baseball. Seriously? Who plays baseball in a basketball gym while kids are playing pickup basketball? and ...

7.  oh never mind. my head hurts and my rant is done.