Thoughts

Today, and many days in the preceding weeks, have got me thinking about a few topics that seem to keep coming up: the relationship between failure and progress; the role of fantasy in creative life; challenging situations that are still completely worth it.

Failure and progress.

Today I sewed a zipper, and that's about all I did, and I feel pretty good about it nonetheless.  I pinned and sewed and ripped and re-pinned over and over again until finally, my waistband seams were meeting on the left and right and my dress zipped up in the back, just like it should.  Every time I had to rip the seams out and do it again, I had to take a second or two to be angry before trying again.  But then I would do it again, because even though I get frustrated, I wouldn't be happy with it in the end if I didn't.

And earlier this week, I made two different and very awful muslins of a skirt before figuring out what the design needed.  I walked away frustrated as shit when the second muslin in a row turned out ugly, and as I walked up the street to get a cup of coffee, I suddenly realized what needed to change.  I had to sacrifice an element of the design to keep the original intent, but then the skirt turned out exactly how I had envisioned it.

I've had this thought before - particularly as it relates to knitting, which is much more forgiving a medium than fabric - but this week I have felt it every day.  Failure can be constructive.  Failure means you've found out which direction not to go; failure means not accepting what is not good enough; failure speaks to the integrity of your creative vision.

At least, this is what I tell myself the seventh time I have to sew that $*##(@* @#*$ing zipper.

Fantasy.

I have yarn and fabric dancing around in my head, yarn and fabric that have absolutely nothing to do with the fashion show.  Grey cashmere and black & white checked cotton and grass green tussah silk... frabjous day!  I am queuing projects like crazy, and taking stash pictures, and designing things in my head that can't possibly exist for months and months and months.  It's both deeply satisfying and frustrating as hell.

Challenges and worth.

Today I thought about my trip to Indonesia in any sort of depth for the first time in a long time.  I'm not sure I've talked about it before, but Bali was a difficult, exhausting trip.  I also had an amazing time.  I watched rain come in over the mountains and out to sea for hours.  I heard Sanskrit prayers projected off the next mountain in the middle of the night.  I rode on the back of a motorbike down rolling hills covered in banana trees.  I saw some of the most beautiful coral reefs in the world.  I also left with a massive staph infection that took two months to recover from, that I still have scars from.

But in the end?  I am so, so glad that I went.  My world grew ten sizes bigger from that trip.

And so: the fashion show.  I doubt that the fashion show will leave scars - although I am pretty awesome at stabbing myself with pins! - but I have a feeling that after the daily struggles with stress and uncertainty have faded, my world will be a few sizes bigger.

And that can't be a bad thing.

Final Notes on 2012

This year was big.

The yarn shop I was working at closed its doors in mid-February, and I started going to its transplanted Friday Night Knit Group in Issaquah, which has been a great source of friendship, support, and laughing my butt off.

We adopted MacGuyver, aka Mackie/Mr. Boo, in March.  I love him fiercely.  He bounces when he's happy, he licks faces, he tries to eat my engagement ring, he enjoys stretching out on flat wooden surfaces when he's relaxed.  He is my first pet as an adult as well as Lumberjack's and my first pet together, and he's the best rat probably ever.

I started getting more serious about fashion school, and in April, Lumberjack and I made the decision to move to Ballard from our lovely apartment in Bellevue so that I could spend more time at school.  I still miss it sometimes, but it was absolutely the right choice to move.

In August, we went to LA to visit my grandma, and took a day to go look at fabric.  I ended up buying about 85% of the fabric for my line while we were there, and it was a huge factor in my decision to participate in the fashion show this coming April.

I visited Oberlin twice this year - once in late March with Lumberjack, and again in September by myself.  I miss Oberlin and all the people I know/knew there, and it's nice to go back and revisit the people and places that shaped who I am today.

Lumberjack and I went to Reykjavík for Iceland Airwaves.  We saw Sigur Rós, Phantogram, Vacationer, and several really amazing smaller artists and bands.  I had insomnia the entire time and got my first migraine.  We went to Blue Lagoon for an afternoon.  I bought yarn and some really cute fabric (which I should totally remember to share!) and we ate surprisingly good Thai food.  It was a long, hard trip, and it took me several weeks to recover when we got home - but it was a huge learning experience, and I wouldn't change a thing.

Over the year, I've met lots of new people and made several new good friends.  I am constantly floored by their generosity, kindness, and sheer awesomeness.  I couldn't ask for better friends.

Shit started getting real re: the fashion show.  I'm still kinda in denial.

2013 promises to be another big year: the fashion show is in April, one of my best friends is getting married in June in Oberlin, we're getting married in August, I'm hoping to finish the fashion program by the end of the year (which includes Ballgown), and I'm also hoping to apply to the JET program so that Lumberjack and I can fulfill our dream of living in Japan together.

Overall, this year has been one of huge transitions.  It's been hard, but it's been good - I live in a great part of the city; I have a wonderful partner, a kickass family, and awesome friends; I have a dopey rat companion; I'm doing what I love.

Don't let the door hit your butt on the way out, 2012.

Bring it, 2013.

A Year In Knits (And Some Crochet): 2012

This year, I finished:

6 scarves/scarflettes (including 1 crocheted scarf!)

9 shawls

4 hats

8 cowls (1 not pictured)

2 pairs of socks

1 crocheted doily

=

30 projects

Out of all of these projects, 10 of them went to other people; this probably marks the least selfish knitting I have ever done in a year.  Yay!

So, without further ado, here they are:

 

  

 

 

 

  

 
 

If some of these looked unfamiliar, it's because... well, they probably are!  Two were shawls that I knit for professors, and the rest - well.  The rest are either oversights, or I only got around to photographing them a few days ago.  I spend so much time working on projects that sometimes it's sort of anticlimactic when they're actually finished, and sometimes photography and blogging can fall behind a little!

I will also say, after going through all these pictures: I really, really miss our old back porch.  The current porch is a weird shade of brown, and while it makes some colors pop, it really affects some colors in a terrible way that can't even be fixed in post-processing.  Grey is a beautiful, cool backdrop that warm brown can't possibly compare to. If only I could change our porch - but alas, we are but renters.

And as far as my goals for this last year, how did I do?

Well, here they are:

"My knitting goals for 2012 are:

Knit 4 sweaters

Continue the hat challenge, but in a more achievable way: knit 6 hats

Design and publish 4 patterns

No buying yarn from Jan. 1st until my birthday, April 15th

Knit 5 pairs of socks

Knit 6 lace projects"

Sooooooo.  About that.

In 2012, I knit:

0 completed sweaters (but currently have 3 in progress - that counts... right?)

Continued the hat challenge, but only knit 4 hats.

Designed and published... uhh, 1 pattern.  But I knit others!  Which are not written up yet.  So yeah, 1.

HAHAHAHAHAH.  Failed miserably at stash diet.  I did try - but Madrona got me.

Knit 2 pairs of socks.

Knit 9 lace projects.

So, overall, a mixed bag.  But you know what?  I like lists, and I like goals, and I'm going to do it again this year.  No matter how entertainingly, miserably, and deeply I fail at it.

Because looking back at these projects - even if they weren't planned, even if they weren't perfect - I knit a lot of beautiful things (beaded shawl!); I knit a lot of useful things (hats!); I knit a lot for people I love (scarves and hats for Derek and Lumberjack!) and I had a lot of fun doing it.

So, tallying it all up, let's just say that I succeeded.

Happy New Year's Eve.

Stash: Blue, Blue, Blue, Pink.

 

Lately I've caught a blue bug.  Shortly before we left for Iceland, I went out to a Hazel Knits trunk show with a friend, and ended up buying two very different skeins of Artisan Sock.  There were lots of other colors that were beautiful, and perhaps more representative of what I wear in everyday life, but for some reason a light blue and a cherry-blossom pink streaked with grey were the colors that sang to me that day.

The pink was no surprise - I have a well-documented obsession with pinks, particularly warm, floral pinks - but the light blue came out of left field.  My friend and I proceeded to happily discuss the merits of light blue.  And ever since, I have been much more aware of blues; where before, I might pass over a sky in favor of a berry, now I am finding myself attracted to the quiet beauty of blues - the color of the inside of a glacier, the sky in Reykjavík at dawn, a cat's eye.

And in general, I am feeling this dichotomy of things: pink is my comfort, my tried-and-true, my beloved.  Blue is a new friend, a hobby that I've just started practicing.  Pink is knitting with my friends in Issaquah.  Blue is learning to tailor a pocket, or drafting my first circle skirt.  Both are equally pleasant, but blue has a hint of excitement and anxiety, where pink is less exciting, but made of unconditional love.  And I am trying to make time in my life for both.

(For the curious, the yarn is, clockwise from top left: Madelinetosh Prairie in Baltic; Madelinetosh DK in Bloomsbury; Hazel Knits Artisan Sock in Serenity; Hazel Knits Artisan Sock in Pink Purl.)

Happy Friday.

Blue/Orange

The light here does funny things.  I've been waking early every morning, stirred by some internal sense of the time of day halfway around the world.  Rising out of bed to pad along the cold wood floors, arms folded, the light outside blue and eerie.

The wind is bitterly cold, and so strong that yesterday, we barely left the guest house except to eat - reports say it hit 150 mph.  Someone took a video of the wind whipping the sea up over the cars along the waterfront, and I feel a little better about staying inside, warm and dry.

But there's a kind of magic here.  Every country I've been to has its quirks: the ghosts in the groves in Bali; the quiet nods between strangers in Kansai; and here, something harder to pinpoint.  In the early morning, the whole city is quiet, and the sky glows blue while the incandescents of insomniacs shine a warm yellow-orange.  Our upstairs neighbors' feet creak across the floor in the early morning, and occasionally we hear music.  It feels like there are secrets everywhere.

WIP: Spruce Forest; Life

 

I am not a neat person. I never really have been.  I have a lot of clothes, a lot of yarn, and a lot of ideas, and sometimes this translates into a messy apartment - and most of the time, that chaos doesn't end up on this blog.  I have mixed feelings about this, because nobody wants to see outright filth, but sometimes I wonder how honest it is.  Because the truth is, although I like to share what I'm working on with a perfectly neutral background, the clutter is both a reality and a big part of my working process.

So the exception is that I go on weird cleaning benders when I'm stressed out, which happened a lot in the first few months we lived here - but lately the apartment has stayed more cluttered than clean.  The reasons are complicated, but the short story is this: I've been struggling with fits and starts of depression for the last year or so, and two things have improved that situation greatly in the last few weeks.  First, is that I've been working really hard at school, and I am a much happier person when I'm busy.  Second is that I finally went to my doctor to get a medication changed, and after a bit of a rocky start, the results have been like... well, like I have a brand new shiny lease on life.  Yay.

So because I've been busy at school, I haven't been knitting as much.  But yesterday I went to my local yarn shop and sat and knit on Spruce Forest for a few hours, and it was glorious.

  

I finished the body and started picking up stitches for the edging yesterday, so it's looking a little like a big knitted bag right now.  Nancy Bush's instructions are wonderfully detailed, so there's no guesswork when I just want to knit and not think about how to do a particular technique.  I'm going to be a little sad when the shawl is done, because it has been such a pleasure to knit - the yarn, pattern, and resulting fabric have combined to make a near-perfect experience that exists so rarely in a knitter's life.

Well okay, maybe I won't be too sad, because the only thing better than knitting a kickass shawl is wearing a kickass shawl!

Noms: Brie & Prosciutto Flatbread

I'm going to go with another totally out-of-character post and talk about food.  I've already catalogued some of my feelings about cooking here; but in short, my relationship with cooking is an ambivalent one.  I love good food, and I also love making things.  But for some reason, these two interests have never quite come together.

It's also funny because I've had this particular disconnect in my life before: when I was a chemistry major for a hot minute back in college, I loved the chemistry on paper, but not in the lab.  It was fascinating how you could write out a reaction with two or three or five different chemicals - often toxic in their natural states - snap off a functional group there, form a double bond here, and boom: life-saving drug.  Simple, finite.  On paper.

But the realities of the lab aren't as elegant.  Waste compounds couldn't be ignored, they had to be taken to the giant brown flask that looked like something out of a horror movie villain's lab.  Reactions that should have worked, didn't; particles that should have gone into solution stubbornly sank to the bottom of their solvents.  Things that were so reasonable on paper got complicated in practice, and in the end, I wasn't cut out to be a chemistry major, no matter how much I liked those neat little reactions on the page.

So think I have similar feelings about cooking.  Whenever I try, I start with good ingredients and get excited and have this picture in my mind of what it should end up like, but I never really have fun with the process and the finished product falls short.  So I eat my disappointing casserole, or stir-fry, or whatever the hell it is that I thought was a good idea until I turned it into radioactive goop, and I make a mental note never to cook again.

Lumberjack's been trying to help me through this cooking fail of mine.  (The geniuses at Trader Joe's have been a great help in this department so far.)  I know from knitting that you just have to keep on practicing, but I also know through knitting that life's too short to voluntarily do things you don't like doing.  So I have a lot of mental arguments about the merits of Perseverance In The Face Of A Challenge versus Honoring Thine Own Inner Stubbornness, Which Is Pretty Well Entrenched And Doesn't Like To Be Poked.

And then, every so often, we make something together that is so simple and almost stupidly delicious that I feel a distant, faint shine of hope that someday I will not hate cooking.

This is that something.  We did leave off the pear - the pear we bought went rotten unusually fast - but the rest was spot-on.  I had to take pictures of it because it was so pretty.  Who knew I liked arugula?  Who knew brie melted and bubbled in such a cute way?  Why are you so delicious, oh little flatbread pizza?!

Okay, cooking, I'll consider going on a second date.  But I'm not promising anything.