{"id":1456,"date":"2012-01-28T23:50:16","date_gmt":"2012-01-29T05:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1456"},"modified":"2012-01-28T23:58:05","modified_gmt":"2012-01-29T05:58:05","slug":"knitting-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1456","title":{"rendered":"Knitting & Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"

My mother was a terrific knitter (and seamstress, and designer, and needlepointer, and…well just about everything.\u00a0 Engineer, nurse, built some furniture, designed everything from houses to ranch pens to clothes, carved wood, painted pictures…and made biscuits I will never equal.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Watching her pull together a knit-in-the-round sweater with no seams (especially one of the patterned ones) was a visual metaphor for what I do writing books (I realized this years later, after she’d died.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You could talk to her while she was knitting a sleeve.\u00a0 Often you could talk to her while she was knitting the body.\u00a0 But when it came to The Joining, when the two sleeve tubes were mated to the body tube at the correct angle , with her signature little cable running up the join,\u00a0 when there would be enough double-pointed needles in the project for several hours\u00a0 to make it look like a torture device, there was no talking.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There was silent removal of empty coffee cup and setting down of a filled one.<\/p>\n

I started knitting again last spring, after a 40 year gap.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I started with a scarf, as I had when I first learned, only this time I did it in garter stitch the whole way.\u00a0 (My first had a garter stitch border on a stockinette scarf.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I wanted to knit for other people (and several people are wearing my scarves now) and I wanted to knit a few things for myself, including socks.\u00a0 My mother had knit me two pairs of hiking socks, way back when, but those socks were old and had problems.\u00a0\u00a0 In the course of the year, I’ve knit quite a few scarves and became disenchanted with the blanket I was knitting when I found that the yarn melted in fires–and thus was the wrong yarn to give to a child (its original purpose.)\u00a0 But in spite of practicing some ribbing last fall to remind myself how to do it, I hadn’t started a sock.\u00a0 I’d bought yarn for socks (thick hiking-type socks, what I like to wear) but hadn’t started one.<\/p>\n

Friday night I realized why.\u00a0\u00a0 One of those fascinating tangles humans get themselves into about intrafamilial territory–who is “the cook” or “the knitter” or “the gardener” and how much “turf” can be shared.\u00a0\u00a0 Who\u00a0 “owns” which roles.\u00a0\u00a0 My mother knit everything: socks, mittens, hats, sweaters of many kinds, even (for herself) a pair of knit slacks.\u00a0\u00a0 But.\u00a0 She did not knit scarves.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I knit scarves…and except for one baby hat decades ago, nothing BUT scarves.\u00a0\u00a0 Aha!\u00a0\u00a0 I had defined her as the person who could do those things, and myself as the person who could only do the leftover bits.\u00a0\u00a0 Not helpful, especially as she died in 1990 and even if she had been a turf defender, she wasn’t defending it anymore.<\/p>\n

So Friday night, in the momentum of that awareness, I started my first sock.\u00a0 And here it is.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The first six\/seven rows of\u00a0 ribbing<\/em><\/p>\n

I did not follow the rules for knitters.\u00a0 For instance,\u00a0 before you start a project you’re supposed to do a gauge (or tension) swatch.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You find out your stitches per inch in that yarn on that size needle, and from that you know how many stitches you need for your project.\u00a0\u00a0 I knew that my momentum for doing socks was unstable, and it was better to start while I felt it.\u00a0\u00a0 I’ve done gauge swatches before.\u00a0 I will again.\u00a0 But sometimes–and this was a time–what you need to do is just…jump in.\u00a0 Start.\u00a0\u00a0 You cannot, as one of my riding instructors pointed out, guide a horse that isn’t moving.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (Or, as I found out one embarrassing day while out sailing, a boat that isn’t moving: no motion, no rudder effect.)<\/p>\n

Was I,\u00a0 looked at analytically, ready to start knitting a sock?\u00a0\u00a0 Had I mastered all the individual techniques, including turning a heel, picking up stitches?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Had I done my gauge swatch in this yarn with these needles, then washed and dried it and pinned it flat?\u00a0\u00a0 Had I learned the Kitchener stitch, that invisible way of finishing sock toes (and other things?)\u00a0\u00a0 Had I measured my leg carefully, and done the calculations from the gauge swatch to my leg to know how many stitches to cast on?<\/p>\n

Well…no.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But the moment had come to start.\u00a0\u00a0 To take my best guess and learn from the results.\u00a0 To DO and not just fiddle about.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (Probably not ever a good idea if you’re building your own airplane, but a bad, funny-looking, non-fitting sock won’t kill you.)<\/p>\n

For those of you who have thought about writing, who have thought you’d really like to write a book someday, the metaphor should be obvious.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, there are books on writing.\u00a0\u00a0 On every part of writing.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I talk about the craft sometimes.\u00a0\u00a0 But you’re never going to be as ready to write as after you’ve written the book….just as reading books about knitting (socks or anything) and looking at needles and yarn\u00a0 and listening to other knitters will not get your fingers moving and your own hand-knit something (scarf or sock or knitted doll).\u00a0\u00a0 After I knit my first scarf I knew some more about knitting.\u00a0 After the second, third, fourth, fifth…I knew quite a bit more.<\/p>\n

And what taught me most about writing was…writing itself.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So if you’re still sitting there wondering when you’ll be ready to write a book…you’re as ready as you can be without actually writing it.\u00a0\u00a0 The first one may be lousy.\u00a0\u00a0 The first two may be lousy (but the second\u00a0 should be better in at least some ways than the first. ) \u00a0 And if what’s holding you back is what held me back with socks–your own internal belief that Someone Else is really a Writer, and you aren’t…yet…then realize that no other writer owns the turf.\u00a0 It’s not like you’re invading my space, or Shakespeare’s space, or any other writer’s space.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The space in which you write is YOUR space, just like this sock (should it be a sock and not a mess when I’m done) will be MY sock, not an invasion of, or disrespect of, my mother’s socks.<\/p>\n

Realizing that you have such a space–a virtual space, in that it’s in your head–in which you can define yourself as Writer and start writing–may help those of you who’ve been stuck on the edges for awhile.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It certainly helped me with this sock project.<\/p>\n

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My mother was a terrific knitter (and seamstress, and designer, and needlepointer, and…well just about everything.\u00a0 Engineer, nurse, built some furniture, designed everything from houses to ranch pens to clothes, carved wood, painted pictures…and made biscuits I will never equal.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Watching her pull together a knit-in-the-round sweater with no seams (especially one of the patterned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,53,5],"tags":[62,112,107],"class_list":["post-1456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","category-life-beyond-writing","category-the-writing-life","tag-craft-of-writing","tag-life-beyond-writing","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1456"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1462,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions\/1462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}