In this episode, I talk about the shift in the season and how it has me thinking about summer, knitting shawls, and the fun of brioche knitting (even when dealing with the ups and downs of addiction).
Music: Ketsa, "Day Trips"
In this episode, I talk about the shift in the season and how it has me thinking about summer, knitting shawls, and the fun of brioche knitting (even when dealing with the ups and downs of addiction).
Music: Ketsa, "Day Trips"
[instrumental intro music, upbeat with trills and bells
Music Credit: Ketsa, “Day Trips”]
Holly 00:30
Good morning! I hope you're well! It's Sunday: it's around 10 a.m. and my crew is still very sleepy and slow. I wanted to sneak this in because I know it's been a bit and I am really excited to share with you what I've been working on.
Holly 00:36
It has been a strange couple of weeks. I've had some challenges I feel like in every area of my life and it's really been helping me to focus on recovery and what's kind of getting me through this time of transition and, you know, not surprisingly, there's been a lot of knitting.
Holly 00:45
Knitting is my comfort. It really helps me to stay calm and it gives me something to do with anxious energy. I’ve really just been in the zone with knitting. But lately this past week or so it has jumped straight into the heart of summer, we’re talking 90 degrees, tons of humidity, and I don't know if you've read about it but we have a once every 17-year-infestation of cicadas. There are always cicadas in the summer in DC; I kind of associate their hum with the summertime buzz along with air conditioners and lawnmowers and the smell of freesia and sunscreen as well as that thrumming noise that cicadas make. I guess what I'm trying to say is summer is here. It's knocking on the door and it's bursting into my house because my air is not working so it's super hot. (laughter).
Holly 02:20
And it has me thinking all kinds of things about summer knitting. My kids are still in school online but I am really in my summer mode in terms of work and that has got me thinking about seasonal shifts and how we handle them as a family and how they connect to the rhythm of alcoholism, which has its own cycle.
Holly 02:49
In terms of my making, one thing that I always do is that I always knit a summer shawl. I always knit a fingering-weight shawl in the summertime. I got this from Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitting Almanac (I think it's month June or July where she talks about traveling and knitting projects). I love the Knitting Almanac. if you haven't read it it's really...I almost want to say like read it like a book rather than a knitting pattern. It took me a really long time in my knitting before I could knit an Elizabeth Zimmermann pattern. Her patterns are challenging. I know many many many people have talked about this but they're kind of like recipes and they’re recipes like on the Great British Bake Off challenge, where they don’t give you the specifics. You know how the contestants are trying to figure out how to make something from like a list of ingredients but not necessarily from a set of instructions... that's that's like an Elizabeth Zimmermann pattern. It used to really throw me for a loop. It frustrated me because I just couldn't grasp it and not unlike the program it really just required time and making sure that I trusted myself that I was okay with making mistakes and that I was really focusing more on the process than the product and that took me a really long time to mature into that approach.
Holly 04:20
That was when I started knitting. I was either working with Rowan patterns, which were so specific, and by the way nowhere near what I could fit into in terms of their sizing. I was at tthe very tail end of their size chart so that lead to a lot of knitting fails and then I was also trying to like jump into Elizabeth Zimmerman patterns which were like super complicated. [laughter]. but one of the things that I heard or read when I read this book which is really loved her style I just thought she was like this kind of funny, cranky writer and talking about knitting. And if you’ve read any of her works; she's just sort of got a unique perspective. I'm not sure I would like her. To be honest with you it's a very unique perspective and I sometimes wonder if I'm sure I would like... or I guess what I'm trying to say is that she comes from a background that's so different from mine in terms of class and I would imagine that for others a race or her perspective is limited in a way that always makes me slightly nervous. I used to wonder if I'm included in the address to her audience.
Holly 05:35
But regardless of that, if I set that aside, it's really just that her voice is really unique and it's fun to listen to her describe her life. She calls her husband “the old man,” and she's always like knitting with him in fishing boats or they are on fishing trips in the rural North Midwest and they live in this kind of old farmhouse with some cranky cats and she's got this cranky husband. And that wasn’t me, not when I was single when I first started knitting and not when I was married later with my husband (who was certainly cranky but not about fishing… laughter). It really didn’t resonate too much with me but I kind of loved that and that's what drew me to her.
Holly 06:20
Part of why I'm rambling about this is that in one of her pattern books--the Knitting Almanac, which has a pattern a month, like patterns for mittens and Christmas ornaments and sweaters. Each in a month; She's a very prolific knitter (laughter). But in it she says that the perfect summer project is a shawl and I just I don't know why that resonated with me. Her point was that you could pack it up really easily and take it with you; and that it grows across the season so in the hottest months, it's very small so you don't have some huge wool sweater on your lap you just have this tiny fingering weight yarn. Of course at the end of the summer you have a much larger project to work on. Of course you would be taking this on a European vacation every some (because of course that's what she did) and that you know this would solve your packing problems because by the time it was cooler you would have a blanket shawl knitting project to keep you warm so you wouldn't have to do an extra project.
Holly 07:32
So I took this advice to heart and started knitting fingering weight shawls every summer. It's become kind of a tradition of sorts away that grounds me in this seasonal shift. As I said before (I think) I teach and so the summer has a different vibe than the rest of the year for me. It's a bit like for many of us my work slows down in some ways but it also intensifies in other ways. So I perform a lot of the research of my job during the summer; that’s when I’m researching and writing so I focus on the more isolated aspects of the job than teaching or service in the University. And transitions are always hard for me even if I'm happy the transition just freaks me out and so I think having this sort of sense of “this is what I do every summer” helps to ground me and it just gives me some comfort.
Holly 08:47
I usually give these away. I don't have that many shawls and you know last summer I was working on a simple wrap by purlsoho in the linen quill yarn that is now so popular (it's gorgeous yarn) and I gave that shawl or that wrap to my friend for a holiday present this year. And so anyway I'm rambling a bit about this but it just gives me a lot of comfort.
Holly 09:06
So I've been thinking about what will be this summer’s shawl and as it happened I just finished two very complicated projects. One is a fingering lace cardigan that I just finished and the other was a cable sock pattern. I think I've been talking about both of these project for a very long time. Both are epic knits and I finished both in the same week and they both look really great. I'm really proud of them. And it reminded me that in this heightened moment when I'm feeling really kind of uncomfortable, why don't I just turn to a decision (laughter) I've already made and cast on that project.
Holly 10:06
So I’ve been obsessed with this brioche 3-color shawl by Knit Graffiiti. I think it is called “Coffee at the Grand.” it's really beautiful. It's like a purple, a pink, and a yellow pattern (the sample may even be black) but I just decided to dig around in my Rubbermaid container of yarn (laughter) and find some fingering weight colors of yarn that match or look close enough to hers so I didn't even have to think too, too much about the color choices and I could just hook into the more complex knitting of it. And I spent last weekend just trying to figure out the cast on for it and really teaching myself brioche which if you haven't knit brioche before it creates this incredibly springy fabric. It's totally fun and I'm sure you've seen it because I'm kind of late to this trend. I know everybody now is working on Mosaic knitting. I realize I'm behind the times and maybe way out of knitting fashion with my choice this summer but who cares! It's making me so happy.
Holly 11:40
I'm just so excited about these colors and seeing the yarn work up in this way and if you haven't knit brioche before the abbreviations are b r k & b r p which is a brioche knit stitch and a brioche purl stitch, which everyone calls a “burp” (brp) and “bark” (brk). It’s such juvenile humor but it's totally making me laugh especially since I've been hanging out with my preteens for a year.
Holly 11:57
And it’s linked to the ups and downs of recovery. As I said last weekend I really spent a lot of time doing the complex set up work that goes into starting a shawl. I just kept having to cast on and reteach myself this method of knitting. I think I must have cast it on and frogged it three times before it worked out. It didn’t help that the pattern begins with the dark purple yarn! I finally figured out what I needed to do with stitch markers, which made it so much easier to read the pattern. And the reason I was able to do this was that I had help. My husband who I love very much and who struggles with addiction with having two really great weeks of sobriety. It felt like he was really there... I felt like I was really talking to the person that I love and not talking through a fog of alcohol or worse a fog of alcohol withdrawal, which can in my instance, turn this loving person kind of mean and edgy. Anyway, I had the gift of his sobriety and he was having such a great weekend with the kids and kids were having such a great weekend with him and he was actually helping with some tasks around the house. And it just was... it was lovely and peaceful and happy and it gave me the creative space to cast on this project. So this shawl has a lot of happiness embedded in it already.
Holly 14:04
And then of course with alcoholism, which is a baffling, cunning and progressive disease...these periods of time get shorter and shorter. So he did not have a great week this week and this weekend did not have the same happy vibes when he came to visit the kids as last weekend. It… it just was kind of a mess and back to our sad normal. I'm grateful for the weekend that we had and I am also hopeful that we'll have more of them in the future especially if I can practice the tools of recovery and accept what I can't control and really keep the focus on me and what I can do to make myself feel better in these moments and also of course model that for my kids.
Holly 14:44
And the good news is that this cycle would have really ruined us this time last year for at least a month, it hasn't done that this time. I've managed to regroup, set some boundaries, and I'm having a really nice Sunday so far and I'm looking forward to returning to my shawl today when I have a little bit of knitting time later after all the chores are done. and I'm hoping that that happiness that I was able to embed into the fabric last weekend will continue as I shift into summer. I’m off to the races. I’m hoping that, as this project grows (as Elizabeth Zimmermann says) as I’m swanning through my summer, it will give me a lot of joy.
Holly 16:14
I’m also working on a pair of shorty socks and after the cable knit socks, these are knitting up super fast. I guess it's just a good reminder about the pacing of Summer, how it's different and how it shifts and how my projects can allow me to enjoy that rather than just hunker down into a pool of anxiety which is what I used to do any time there was change on the horizon. So I’ll end there. I hope wherever you are that you're enjoying this shift in the season and I am sending you good thoughts.
Holly 17:06
Happy knitting!