Nevertheless, she persisted.
Forever and Ever, Thank You!
Reposting this because I found out today that a beautiful cedar chest I was supposed to inherit from my grandmother has been mistakenly lost. Trying to remember that the true gift is the knitting, which irrevocably altered my life and my heart. Thank you Grandmom. Thank you for my forever gift.
This is an excerpt of a letter I recently wrote to my grandmother, who taught me to knit. I had been thinking about it for awhile, and finally got off my ass to write it. I’m posting it here because I think many of you share my feelings about the gift my grandmother gave to me. Thank you for reading.
L, C
Yom Kippur
September 14, 2013
Dear Grandmom,
I’ve been wanting to write you a thank you note for forever, and finally, on this Yom Kippur, I’m taking the time to thank you properly.
Thank you.
I want to thank you for the greatest gift anyone has ever given me. I don’t remember the exact date, but that rainy day after lunch when I asked you to teach me how to knit is a sacred day in my life. I was in a very bad place, my anxiety was overwhelming me and I wasn’t sure I would ever find peace. Who would have thought that neon orange acrylic yarn and slightly crooked aluminum needles would deliver that peace? You taught me to knit and purl that day. I don’t think that either of us could have predicted that knitting and purling would also show me how to live a more balanced and contented life.
Here are some of the invaluable blessings that knitting has given me in my life: I’ve learned that no one is perfect. Through my knitting I’ve come to accept that everything I make, by virtue of being made with my own two hands, will bear some mark of my humanity and therefore be imperfect. Oftentimes this has been a difficult lesson to accept, and on many occasions I have ripped out yards and yards of knitting to fix a mistake. But no matter how many mistakes I’ve made and fixed, there are always more coming, reminders of what’s important and that my knitting is beautiful because of the mistakes, not despite them! There are many traditions that specifically suggest that you add mistakes to your handiwork so you don’t offend the gods. Humans cannot be perfect – that’s the realm of the gods. Perfectionism and feeling like I need to be perfect in my life has caused me a good deal of anxiety. Learning to let go of that, especially through my knitting, has been wonderful.
One of the pioneers of the modern knitting world, Elizabeth Zimmermann, said: “Knit on with confidence and hope, through all crises.” This has been true for me on so many occasions, it’s impossible to count! I will recall for you one time – George had been diagnosed with Melanoma and he was being operated on to remove the growth. I had sat in the waiting room through countless of his orthopedic surgeries by myself and didn’t even think to ask someone to wait with me for this surgery. I was wrong. It was dreadful waiting – the hospital specialized in treating cancer and the waiting room had an unbearable life or death pale over it. I was alone and scared, but I had my knitting. I worked row after row of a sweater and the knitting helped calm me. Counting the stitches and following the pattern kept me in the moment and prevented my mind from wandering too far into the unbearable places my brain likes to linger.
It’s not just in the life or death moments that knitting helps my monkey mind. On a regular, easy afternoon, anxiety lurks in me, ready to ruin the day and knitting is there for me then too. It keeps me grounded and in the moment. My love of knitting is so strong it can pull me back from the brink of despair. Another example: During my pregnancy with Cali, when Meli was so small and we had only been in our house a few months, I was sick from all the hormones and knitting was the last thing on my mind. I tried here and there, but it wasn’t doing it for me. Fast forward to the next winter, Cali was about six months old, the days were dark and I was in a bad place again. Besides being exhausted, anxious and on the edge of postpartum depression, I felt like I had lost all my creativity. Someone gave me advice to go out and get it back and I took that advice to heart by pulling out a huge pile of brightly colored squares I had knit to make up a blanket years before I had kids. Every day, a little bit at a time, I seamed those squares together. All those stitches I had knit so long ago in a better time, came alive under my fingertips and ignited my love for knitting again. Soon I was sitting in my parked car while Melina was in school and Cali napped, listening to the radio and knitting for a couple of glorious hours. Peace was mine again. Even if the world was chaos around me, I knew that for a couple of hours I could knit and catch my breath.
Besides helping me through the bad times, knitting has expanded my capacity for joy and friendship! Infertility really hurt my ability to write fiction – I was too preoccupied. But I stumbled upon a different community – online diaries that talked about knitting! I started one of my own and was back to writing every day. Through my knitting blog, I have met people all over the world that share my love of the craft. I have learned new techniques, been exposed to new yarns, but mainly I have been welcomed into an amazing community. Through the seemingly simple act of knitting and purling, I have found best friends that will be with me throughout my life. I have cried with these people, been lifted up by these people, been made better by these people. Most of all I have laughed with these people – deep, healing belly laughs that make my world a more peaceful place.
Knitting has also given me a wonderful link to my past. While you are a good knitter, you’ve often told me that it was Nana who was the real knitter in the family. I sadly don’t remember her knitting, but I do remember the fisherman sweaters and ponchos we all had when we were kids. Sometimes, while I knit, I think of her and like to imagine that my skills as a knitter have come from the Frankel women – it’s in my DNA. Sometimes I like to imagine that really I have no choice in my life but to be a knitter. Knitting is my destiny.
She’s wearing the shawl I gifted her.
It may seem like a tall order to expect from wool and sticks, but knitting has had a tremendous impact on my life. Thank you Grandmom. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for teaching me to knit. Thank you for everything.
I love you with all my heart.
Cara
AND THE WINNER IS…
SUE!
Sue, your prize is on its way!
Thank you all so much for playing! And thank you for the fantastic birthday wishes. I hope you all had a lovely and wonderful happy new year and that 2015 is filled to the brim with lots of fibery, crafty goodness!
Happy New Year from my family to yours!
Love,
Cara
An End to A Madness
Not the end, but definitely an end. In fact, lots and lots of ends. But really, the end of something very special.
I have finally, FINALLY finished my miter square blanket – Miter Madness – that I started so many years ago. And when I say finished, I mean every seam, every border, every end.
It’s hard to say anything more about it that hasn’t already been said really. I knit all 120 miters in a six week period using 85 different colors of Tahki Cotton Classic way back in the Spring of 2007. I knit so much I put a hole in my finger. And then those miters sat in a box.
While those squares were sitting in a box, I had two babies and moved into a house. In the old days, I had all the time in the world to knit, blog about it, and do a bit of work on the side. I spent many hours a day by myself – glorious, wonderful ALONE time. I’m rarely alone these days and time to myself is a luxury.
The Back Side
The Winter after my second daughter was born, I was really struggling. I won’t say I was full blown PPD, but I was not in a good place. It was during this time that I pulled out my box of miters and decided THIS WAS THE TIME. I wove in all the ends and blocked all the miters then started seaming the squares. I seamed and seamed and when it was all together I knit the border. Sadly I didn’t really blog any of this, but by the Summer I was done. I had a dozen or more ends still to be woven in, but otherwise it was done. And then into another box it went. Seriously.
What pushed me to finally finish it? It’s kind of funny. My daughter was doing a science module in school on fabric and we were encouraged to send in some fabric samples. I thought how fun would it be to bring in all my knitting swatches (I have a ton) and my spinning wheel and show the kids in her class how fiber becomes yarn becomes a finished object? So much fun! And I thought they would love to see the blanket. So I wove in the rest of the ends and cut them all and in a couple of hours – voila! THE BEST FINISHED OBJECT EVER!
You have to know I’ve been dreaming about the FO shoot for this blanket for a long, long time. I knew I wanted to hang the blanket the way I’ve seen people hang quilts, so I hung a laundry line across my back yard and took the pictures above. But I also wanted to take some arty, cool pictures. I channeled my inner Vicki and the greatest FO shoot of all time, and set to work.
This is by far the best thing I’ve ever knit. I’m so ecstatically happy with how it turned out, but I’m also sad that it’s finished. This knit wasn’t just a lot of fun to knit, it was important for me to knit. Once or twice while the miters languished in their box, my dear friend Kay, Queen of All Things Mitered, offered to seam the blanket for me. As touched as I was by the offer, I knew I needed to do it myself. The WHOLE thing. And I finally did. I finished it. ALL of it. And I’m a better knitter and dare I say mother, because of it. I cannot wait to see where my knitting madness takes me next.
Thank you, dear readers, for coming along on this journey. If you missed any crazy, mad part of it, you can read the project archives, from the first square to the last and all the silly stats in between.
L, C
Create Your Own!
Three words that strike fear in the OCD/Perfectionist who happens to be obsessed with color. CREATE YOUR OWN! In my lately never-ending pursuit of self-striping sock yarn, it was brought to my attention that the fantastic Jessica of Yarntini offers a Create Your Own Self-Striping Yarn Club. WHAT?!?! YES! You get to create your own custom designed colorway from her 21 semi-solid colors – a rainbow on steroids of possibilities – not once, not twice, but THREE times! Dude. SIGN ME UP!
And I did. I got in and we had to quickly pick colors for the February skein. You can choose to do a 2-stripe, 3-stripe, 4-stripe, 5-stripe or 6-STRIPE skein and I’ll give you a second to guess what I picked. I went with the 2-stripe and picked a nice blue and red for a simple striped sock. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Of course I went for the six striper and promptly panicked. How was I going to choose? I was paralyzed with the possibilities (have you seen her gorgeous colors?)
I ruminated a bit and decided that I definitely wanted to use the dark gray and light gray (charcoal and smokey). But that left me with four more colors. I had no idea.
And then I was driving home from Bar, past the same houses I drive by every single day, and I saw this:
GRELLOW!! I loved the door on this house! How did I never notice it before? But here it was, a bright spot in an otherwise dark, dreary and depressing winter. I had my third color! (Lemon Drop)
Now to choose the others! (This is the part where my OCD takes over in a kind of scary way. There’s a possibility that some might think I went too far. And there are others, thankfully, who will know I didn’t go far enough. You know who you are and I love you.)
Not long ago, on Instagram, I was exposed to a game app that will suck the life out of you if you’re not careful. CONSIDER THIS A WARNING! I cannot be held responsible for how many meals you miss, or how many times your kids have to literally knock you on the head to get you to pay attention to them, or whatever priority you completely ignore while playing BLENDOKU! For those of you who’ve never heard of Blendoku, it’s a puzzle game app (available for Android and ICrap) that has you put colors into their color wheel order. You really have to know your colors and it’s addicting and fascinating and a MUST for anyone who loves color. I can imagine knitting whole garments based on this game. Fair isle, miters, stripes – it’s all there!
It turns out that I started playing Blendoku around the same time that I needed to pick my colors for the Create Your Own club. My brain was on color overload. So I did the only thing I could and printed out all the photos from Jessica’s gallery so that I could shift and sort the colors to pick my last three.
After looking at the color cards, and playing endless hours of Blendoku (RESEARCH!) I had FOUR colors picked out – Charcoal, Smokey, Lemon Drop, and I knew that I absolutely HAD to have Deep Gin in my mix. I thought I might have an inkling as to the last two colors, but shifting around the printouts wasn’t doing it for me anymore. I had to pull in the big guns.
I stole some time away from the family and activated Photoshop. I downloaded all the pictures in Jessica’s gallery and started making stripes. I needed to see what the colors would look like stacked on top of each other and I needed an easy way to move them around. Not only was I picking colors, but I wanted to pick the order of the stripes as well. I put together a file with 21 rectangles and filled them in with all the colors.
Now I had my template! And it would work fabulously for any all other skeins I decided to create. YAY! I set to work: mix, match, scrap, mix, match, scrap. I had it!
My six colors, in order: Olive Juice, Smokey, Deep Gin, Key Lime, Charcoal, and Lemon Drop.
WHEW! It’s the perfect combo of dark and light – each light stripe is followed by a dark stripe – the values are spot on! I sent my colors off to Jessica and waited with bated breath. She was nice enough to indulge me a little and tell me that YES INDEED my choices were wonderful. (She may very well regret the day she let me in this club.)
Today my ACTUAL yarn came in the mail! I could not be happier!!!
It’s EXACTLY what I was hoping for. Here’s a close up:
It’s hard to capture the colors with my phone (I’m actually getting a NEW REAL camera this week – stayed tuned for LOTS of pictures) but the blue is much more teal than blue. But you can see the grays and greens and YELLOW and I love it. Thank you so much Jessica! It’s PERFECT! (It’s taking everything I have not to cast on immediately, but I want to finish my Super Duper Boogaloo socks first! It’s just Yarntini all the time around here.)
I can’t wait to start on my next skein!!
L, C
Unfortunately sign ups are now closed for the Create Your Own Club and Jessica probably won’t be offering the club again for awhile because she and her family are embarking on a big move, but follow her blog for up to date information. Her yarn is gorgeous!!
Bar Crazy
FYI – This post is picture heavy.
It’s hard to believe that a year ago I wrote this post, which means it’s been TWO years since I started my Bar Method journey. I thought, on my second anniversary, it would be a good idea to catch up and let you know how things stand.
I still love it. As much as I ever did.
I still try to go five days a week, although this winter it’s been a challenge to keep that up what with school closings, and the studio having to cancel classes due to weather and all, but I’m pretty sure I’ve managed. Even better, my studio switched up the schedule in the new year and a very popular time slot that I frequent has changed from a regular class to a Level 2 class. L2 classes run for the same amount of time, but pack in a ton more exercises, the result being a VERY fast class (almost fast enough that you don’t register at first how crazy hard it is!) that is super intense. You need to have taken at least 50 classes before you can take an L2 because there is very little set up time between exercises – you need to know what’s going on. I think I have the 50 classes covered – maybe I’m up to 500? Still, every time I take the class I’m a bit nervous going in – can I do it? Can I make it through? And then at around the mid point, when we’ve finished the super intense portion of class, I get the most incredible burst of energy! I LOVE IT!
One of the best things about this new L2 class is that most of the women I take class with I take class with ALL the time. We frequent the same time slot due to kids and school and it’s like we’ve sort of progressed to this level as a group. I feel like we feed off each other. The energy in the class is amazing!
I’m really glad to take this intense class once a week, but that in no way means that a normal class isn’t still incredibly difficult. One of the best aspects of Bar Method is that the better you get, the harder the classes get and I’m here to tell you that’s absolutely true. The beginning of class always feels so ridiculously impossible and until those endorphins kick in I wonder every time how I will get through it.
But I do. And I love it.
This winter has been hard on my mind and body – too many days stuck at home with the kids = too much bad food, too much drinking and just blah – but if I can get a class in I feel strong in mind and body. I’m so grateful to have an outlet, especially these day.
Many of my friends will tell you that when it comes to Bar, I’m a glutton for punishment. I want my ass kicked. I want that shake. I want to feel like I’ve gone to my limit. Otherwise, why do it? All or nothing, baby. All or nothing. And I try so hard to give it my all.
I’ve heard many many people talk about the wonderful atmosphere and community at their studios, but I’m here to tell that the teachers and students where I take class are the best! They lift me up when I feel down, through exercise and camaraderie. They are obsessed, just like me. When I found my knitters, I found my people. And when I found Bar, I discovered a whole other family as well. (Some of whom are knitters!! DOUBLE OBSESSION FTW!)
Happy Anniversary to my beloved Bar! I hope I can keep tucking for many, many years to come.
All of the pictures that appear in this post were taken by me at my studio. I was fortunate to have been asked by the owners to photograph the instructors taking a master class on a few occasions. I hope these pictures relay the beauty and strength of these women who inspire me daily.
As always, thank you for reading!
L, C
The Winter of Our Discontent
I don’t know what the weather has been like at your house, but it has been positively appocalyptic at mine. I live in Northern New Jersey where everyday you wake up like you live in Siberia – or actually – I guess not, because judging from Sochi, which is actually IN Siberia, it seems kind of warm there. (Um. No it’s not. Thank you Tricia! I lost my brain cells in the snow! Actually I think I confused Maria Sharapova’s hometown with Sochi.) Whether it’s been the polar vortex freezing everything in sight, or snow, snow PLEASE GOD MAKE IT STOP NO MORE snow, or the fact that my children haven’t had a full week of school (literally!!) since Christmas, this winter has, for lack of a better word, SUCKED!
And when the weather sucks, people become very, very grumpy.
Dudes. I am so very, very grumpy.
But! I have only barely given up on life! There is still some good in this world! Like this awesome hat I knit for myself!
It’s the Tofino Surfer by Tin Can Knits, which I knit with leftovers from Oshima. I gave the hat all the bells and whistles: ear flaps, braids, a pompom.
I love wearing it. It makes me considerably LESS grumpy when out shoveling all the wretched snow. And it keeps my head nice and warm when I’m out in the polar vortex. GOOD HAT.
I also started a new pair of stripey socks. Here they are rocking out their Fish Lips Kiss Heels!
And here they are showing you how nicely their stripes match!
These stripes, brought to you by Yarntini in the Super Duper Boogaloo colorway, make my OCD heart sing! And when you’ve been stuck in the house with your kids for what feels like MONTHS ON END, anything that can turn your OCD into a positive is AMAZING. I’m not even finished yet, but GOOD SOCKS.
In the last couple of months, I may have purchased my body weight in stripey sock yarns but let’s not think of it as overindulging. Let’s think of it as taking stock in my mental health. If matching up those stripes can make my OCD feel good, well, then, stripe away!
Hope this winter is treating you better than it’s treating me. And if not, I hope you have your own stripey sock antidote to make it all better.
L, C
PS – If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve seen these pictures before. And if you’re not following me on Instagram, well, why not? I post over there a lot. Come visit!
Start As You Mean To Go
Happy New Year!! I hope you’re all having a terrific start to 2014!
My day started out with lots of potential – I like to try to do all the things I love on the first day of the year to sort of set the trend for days to come.
This morning I got my ass kicked all over the place by one of my favorite teachers at my favorite place. Then we all decided to go ice skating – it was the girls’ first time! Meli did wonderfully! The place we went to has walker type things available for beginners to hold on and she was able to skate all by herself and even let go every now and again. The little one – well lets just say we’ll try again!
When we finally got home, I started in on the projects I wanted to get going. I’m going to knit my sister and my niece shrugs to wear over dresses for my nephew’s bar mitzvah at the end of the month – CRUNCH TIME and I’m not used to knitting under pressure! I’m knitting them out of Madelintosh Pashmina – which was a BITCH to wind up. Took me a few tries and a lot of tangles and wasted a lot of time.
I also wanted to cast on for Southern Skies, the companion shawl to Celestarium, which I knit last year. It was one of my most fun knits EVER. Celestarium covered all the constellations seen from the North Pole and Southern Skies features the constellations seen from the South Pole – which includes Capricorn. I will talk about both shawls at length soon, but suffice it to say that after the afternoon I’ve had, I most likely won’t be casting on for Southern Skies.
But! I’m not going to feel bad about that! INTENTION COUNTS! The yarn is all wound, the charts are all notated (more on that later) and the beads are set. It’s all ready to go and TOMORROW I WILL CAST ON!
I might have time to cast on one of the shrugs tonight – which is more important than the shawl anyway.
Sorry to blather on, but I’m just glad I was able to get a blog post in. This is the tenth JANUARY ONE that I’ve blogged, and I would have hated to miss it. One of my intentions for the year is to blog more and I think the last month or so I’ve improved drastically on this score, so the future looks bright – blogging wise at least.
I’d also like to get more sleep and to get my kids to sleep more – preferably NOT on top of me. We’ll see how that goes. I’m beginning the new year very very tired.
I wish you all a wonderful, wonderful new year! And thank you so much for reading this blog, now and in the past ten years. It has brought so much to my life – really it’s immeasurable – and you are all such a huge part of it. It’s felt really good to connect with you all again.
Happy New Year!
L, C
And a Partridge in a Pear Tree!
Wishing you a Merry Christmas from our family to yours!
L, C
