{"id":1635,"date":"2012-07-17T21:34:03","date_gmt":"2012-07-18T03:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1635"},"modified":"2012-07-17T21:34:03","modified_gmt":"2012-07-18T03:34:03","slug":"yarn-and-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1635","title":{"rendered":"Yarn and Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, in the past year, having some knitting to work on has helped me past story tangles.\u00a0\u00a0 (So far, writing has not helped me past knitting tangles at all.\u00a0 Unfair!)\u00a0\u00a0 There are similarities.\u00a0\u00a0 To make progress on either knitting or writing requires putting one little thing after another: a knit stitch or a purl stitch, a word or a punctuation mark.\u00a0\u00a0 Untangling yarn from a badly wound ball (I wish yarn manufacturers would either make good balls or sell it in skeins) is like diving into a story that’s gone immobile and refuses to “come out.”\u00a0 The current yarn culprit is a ball of gorgeous purple heather which promised an easy pull from its middle and then developed such a tangle that the ball began to disintegrate and I still can’t get more than 18 inches at a time “free.” \u00a0\u00a0 It’s also gauging differently than the other yarn I’ve been using (different brand, so not unexpected.)<\/p>\n

The current story culprit is using the same tricks…refusing to move more than a short distance before jerking to a stop, and not acting like “normal” text in the pace\u00a0 or the ground it covers.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, what I was confident about (the other yarn, the same sock pattern I’ve been using)\u00a0 has turned into a fuzzy-edged mistake-prone territory that will be socks eventually, but not the socks I was hoping for.\u00a0 Ditto the story, which is fighting hard against me, and not with me.<\/p>\n

As with yarn, when stories do this it usually means you’ve got hold of the\u00a0 wrong bit to yank on, and yanking harder won’t have a good result, not unless you like a lap-full of purple heather entanglement….or a lot of disjointed scenes that don’t seem to connect anywhere.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think this is last-book-itis, a complicated story-disease that comes from the collision between the necessities of publishing and storytelling, and the wish for an impossible eternity.<\/p>\n

Stories end, or they aren’t stories.\u00a0 Books end.\u00a0 Groups of books sharing a story arc end.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The previous books–all of them–offer a wide range of possibilities for the last book–a lot of choices to be sifted through–to make the last book do that thing last books are supposed to do, snag\u00a0 the main plotlines and a selection of subordinate plotlines,\u00a0 and weaves them neatly, firmly, and correctly, into the Turkish knot finial for the group.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I thought I knew, two-maybe even three–books back, how this one would go.\u00a0 I was wrong.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Both the books themselves and outside influences have dealt roughly with any certainty I had then, and now…the lapful of purple heather yarn, on the one hand, and the plotlines that are sort of lying there.<\/p>\n

Two cures are possible, for both yarn and story.\u00a0\u00a0 For the yarn, since I have two inches of ribbing already knit and do not want to do it again, it involves a very careful disassembly of the part of the ball that’s still a ball,\u00a0 threading the other end through a toilet-paper-roll and then wrapping the yarn neatly\u00a0\u00a0 around the back of a kitchen chair (since I don’t have a ball-winder or a swift)\u00a0 and from thence wrap it into a ball around the toilet paper roll in such a way that the working yarn is coming out the hole.\u00a0\u00a0 (My mother the knitter would be rolling her eyes:\u00a0 “Just undo the knitting,\u00a0 make your skein around the chair back, and roll from there and start over.”\u00a0\u00a0 But…what’s life without trying the near-impossible?)<\/p>\n

For the story–since it’s absolutely impossible to undo the previous books–I may have to go back to the previous books and do the series outline I never did in the first place because…I don’t do outlines.\u00a0 Except when desperate.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m taking a leave of absence from choir until at least after WorldCon.\u00a0\u00a0 No interruptions (other than ArmadilloCon, which is business) and a little knitting to ease my hands.\u00a0 Or–I could take the wild leap of faith that the Plot Daemon will rouse from his nap, or come back from the pub, or otherwise heave one of his big sighs and put me right again.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s happened before.<\/p>\n

For everyone’s amusement (this same picture is on LJ, but why not have it here?)\u00a0 here are “sockupines”…socks at the maximum moment of spikiness with five or six double-pointed needles in them.\u00a0\u00a0 They’re not sockupines now–although they’re not (as mentioned above) the socks I was hoping they’d be…but they’ll be wearable (I think) and that’ll do.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Turned heels are at the bottom of the image.\u00a0\u00a0 Left one has had its heel stitches divided, preparatory to picking the the stitches alongside the heel flap.\u00a0 Right one still has all the heel stitches on it. \u00a0\u00a0 Purple needles (smaller size) hold the side stitches.\u00a0 Silver needles (larger size) are the ones used for the actual sock.\u00a0\u00a0 Both are now rejoined, returned to four standing needles and one to knit with, so the opening resembles the gaping maw of a deep-sea predator as the “lower” needles have many more stitches then the “upper” two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, in the past year, having some knitting to work on has helped me past story tangles.\u00a0\u00a0 (So far, writing has not helped me past knitting tangles at all.\u00a0 Unfair!)\u00a0\u00a0 There are similarities.\u00a0\u00a0 To make progress on either knitting or writing requires putting one little thing after another: a knit stitch or a purl stitch, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,5],"tags":[112,20,107],"class_list":["post-1635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-beyond-writing","category-the-writing-life","tag-life-beyond-writing","tag-progress-report","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635"}],"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=1635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1637,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635\/revisions\/1637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}