Going against (my) nature.

People don't normally quilt with linen - and there is a good reason why. It shifts in all directions; it has movement and lacks stability. It's structure is not fixed - like a cotton. When we painstakingly cut our shapes out for a quilt pattern, what we are normally looking for is precision. Using linen distorts your pattern - your straight lines end up a lot less straight.

I'm a fan of precision. I have an undergrad degree in measurement. That is why (as Anna pointed out to me this week!) my urge to quilt with linen is so interesting. Our nature is part of us; our tendency to do things in a particular way and look for certain qualities in what we are creating. A big part of mine is about loving order in what I make. Loving logic and maths and symmetry. I struggle to create things that lack these qualities - unless I have purposely decided before I begin that it is a hack job type situation. 

What Anna pointed out to me while we were basting this quilt was that I seem to be pushing against my own nature. Looking for ways around my nature - creating disorder out of the orderly process of putting together a quilt. And through the process, maybe learning how to live with me-created wonk. Or even better yet - maybe learning how to embrace the wonk. 

The linen/cotton mix of the denim stripe has a more fixed structure - so two corners of the quilt have straight lines. 

Anna is smart - just have a look at that first image on her website! She is an artist and an art teacher, is very thoughtful and she often has words for things I struggle to explain. I talk and talk, and she turns my curly thinking into something I understand. And I love her for it. Working with her to baste a quilt, either hers or mine, is one of the simple joys in my life. We have done it before and we will do it again. One of the things I love most is the process of putting a quilt together encourages discussion about the big stuff; life, love and ideas. The basting providing time and space to discuss future projects, and ideas, and allow them time to take shape. We are often discussing craft as we baste; it's value and meaning in our lives. The way it allows us to see and understand more about ourselves and what makes us tick. The way craft can make clear to us, through all the tiny choices we make as we create, what we value and who we are. 

One idea that has come up over the years is that what we are attracted to in other people's work is sometimes what we ourselves would struggle to create. If you look at my craft-textiles board on pinterest you see two very distinct types of quilts. Those that are incredibly precise and ordered, and then those that are abstract, loose, improvisational. Order and precision I can do. But, while I adore improv and looseness, the idea of doing something like that myself makes me feel kinda stressed (what do you mean the corners wouldn't line up?) . 

“There’s a sunset and a sunrise every day. You can choose to be there for it, you can choose to put yourself in the way of beauty.”

— Cheryl Strayed’s late mother Bobbi, from Wild

Ever since I saw the film Wild with my women the other night, I've been thinking about the idea of "putting yourself in the way of beauty". Making a choice to live beauty, to make beauty. By choosing materials that work against my (strong) instinct to control things it's almost like I'm forcing myself to create something that I would consider beautiful. I love the looseness but if I tried to create it I would just keep making things neat. I almost can't help it!  If I hadn't made the choice to use those particular materials I wouldn't be able to create it - the looseness that I think is beautiful. The materials themselves are choosing the shape of the finished product and it's one I have little chance of controlling.

This quilt has involved so much fudging! Fudging to retain my strong straight-line design while accepting in part that I can't achieve it in linen. So many contradictions. I've wanted to pull it out and start again many times - but I didn't. I decided to go with it, fudge a bit and see where it lead. By using the materials I've used, I end up with a finished product I am proud to have created but that doesn't come naturally to me.

Stash Less - Why Restrictions Rock - has then stretched me even further. By creating a rule that means that I can't just buy more of the dirty blue linen, I was forced to (shock, horror) improvise and use some denim linen cotton to fill in the gaps when I ran out.  

By nature I would have created an orderly two colour design - the second blue gives the quilt some interest and some depth. What the process has produced is something that is more beautiful than I would have created if I had made it as designed with one colour blue and straight perfect lines. 

I totally fudged one side of the centre by ironing it when we were basting and hand sewed this extra flap down. You can see why in the photo at the top of the post on the right hand side of the main square. None of it is square.

That isn't camera distortion my friends - the corner of the quilt that is totally distorted. 

To use linen in a quilt and then to not follow it where it leads seems to me to be going against it's nature. But the fact that I chose it, and the fact that I am following it's lead, making the piece it wants to make is almost going against my nature.

That said (and again as Anna pointed out to me ;)) part of my nature is to challenge my nature! 

Have you ever intentionally or unintentionally worked outside your comfort zone? And did you love the result?

Felicia x

How to get faster at knitting - Part 2

So I wrote post last week called How to get faster at knitting - and I'm so chuffed you guys liked it. I read through the comments and started answering them but then decided that I should just follow up with another post in response instead - with some answers to questions, some additional info and a summary of your suggestions.

Before I start I wanted to say I really appreciate all the suggestions you made! What the comments definitely showed was that every-single-one of you has your own take on it, and your own knitting history that lead you there. 

Learn to knit without looking!

Jillian suggested in the comments that she would love a video (rather than my description) that showed how to learn to knit without looking and so I did that. This one is for you Jillian!

The video is good for throwers and flickers. Might not help you continental folks. 

Pain when knitting.

So I have heard some stuff - like that knitting lever style is good for pain in the hands as it is a big movement using the full arc (this from Stephanie Pearl McPhee) of the hand - therefore is less likely to cause RSI type pain as that is mainly about little movements that aren't using the full extent of the muscle.

But I also think that there is just a logical train of thought about this. If you are in pain with a particular style, try one of the other styles and see if you can use different movements and muscles. For example if you are knitting right handed then try Portuguese - a different hand and rather than using the fingers you are using your thumb to flick.

The lovely Sara pinged me on instagram after the post last week. She tried something from the video that meant she could knit after a six month knitting hiatus due to pain! She didn't change her style but just one of the movements she was doing. Happy happy days.

I wish you luck if this is an issue for you and would love to hear how you get on. I'm sure others would love to hear your experiences of pain/nopain if you have managed to sort this out. 

Other places to find efficiencies

I wrote a whole paragraph about this but forgot a couple that I think are worth mentioning (people's comments reminded me of a few of these). Points 5 & 6 are the new ones.

1. How you hold the needles, from above or below.
2. How you tension your yarn, around which fingers.
3. How you wrap the yarn around the needle tips - throwing, picking or flicking.
4. The angle with which the needle tips meet - could be almost parallel facing one another, at 90 degrees or heading towards parallel.
5. How you load and hold the stitches on the needle
6. How close to the needle tip you knit the stitch - closer to the tips is generally faster.

Another more specific efficiency I was thinking about was around using DPNs. I spent a bit of time working on this last year and it really has made a difference to how fast my small circular knitting is (sleeves etc). For me, I needed to remember to push the stitches to the end of the needle so they were ready to go for the next lot of knitting, not drop the yarn when I changed the needle and do a kind of needle flip to take the needle from my left hand (where it had no stitches left) to be ready to be my right hand active needle. My transitions became much smoother and I got faster with DPNs and stopped avoiding them. Win. The point of this paragraph is I guess to say that there is always learning to be done. Unless you are Stephanie Pearl McPhee maybe. 

Experimenting with knitting styles

So there were many many comments about this and I wanted to make a summary of some of the suggestions. Forgive me if I miss any. 

1. You can not only use elements of multiple styles BUT you can knit one style and purl a different style. This works really well for some people. There were many different examples in the comments of people choosing this. Nana left a comment pointing to a video of combination of Portuguese and Continental http://nionoi.pt/es-mais-portuguesa-ou-continental/ - Thanks!
2. There is a style called combination style which I have heard of but know nothing about, so you might want to investigate it.
3. Another thing you might want to investigate if you have an aversion to purling is knitting backwards - youtube it!
4. Lots of left handers have luck with Portuguese or Continental!

Continental Purling
So obviously my continental purling left a little to be desired but doing the video clarified for me that I prefer the twist method. I just need a little more practice.

There were a couple of other suggestions in the comments. 

1. Robin left a comment saying that her continental purling looked more like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOS8pIEa8iU where you are holding the yarn much closer to the needle. This was instead of my large (awkward) swooshing movement. 
2. Tasha and Kate also talked about wrapping the yarn of the continental stitch in the opposite direction. Elizabeth Zimmerman calls this the "easy way to purl" but there is something really important to understand if you choose this. It twists the stitch on the needle so that the right hand side of the stitch is on the back of the needle rather than on the front. On the next row, to make sure you don't twist the stitch, you need to knit into the back of the stitch. All this means is you need to have a good understanding of the structure of your knitting - if you are unsure then go and have a look at my post The Secret of Becoming A Great Knitter. It will help - promise!

Lever Knitting
One thing that got mentioned a few times about lever knitting was that you couldn't knit in the round, or use circulars. You can! Instead of using a static needle you hold the right hand needle of the circular static by kind of cradling it between your thumb and your forefinger. You can see it in this youtube video here. 

As always love to hear your thoughts, successes, and suggestions!

Felicia x

Fringe is asking about your favourite knit!

So I'm a little tired and lacking inspiration so instead of writing an actual post I was wandering round the internet checking some of my favourite blogs - like the ever inspiring Fringe Association. And today Karen is asking the question - What's the knit you can't you live without? As I posted the photo above last week of my favourite on instagram I thought I would just show it to you. 

I loved reading the comments on Karen's post - there are some fantastic sweater suggestions in there. If you feel like adding to the list of favourite sweaters then head on over and leave a comment on the Fringe post. What a great communal list! (I've turned comments off for this post so I don't steal her post ;)). 

My all-time favourite is Vitamin D by Heidi Kirrmaier and all the Ravelry details can be found here. It was my second try at Vitamin D. The first time I made it I made it with the flaps at the front before realising that I wasn't that kind of girl. Second try was perfect - a generic kinda V-neck cardy with a little detail. I wear it all the time and it is the perfect complement to the 95% blue/grey wardrobe that I have. The 3/4 sleeves make it suitable for 3 seasons here and the yarn  looks like it did the day I made it - I adore this yarn (Old Maiden Aunt Alpaca Silk). It is the combination of the pattern and the yarn that really makes it sing for me. 

I probably have one other which is the first cardigan photo in my post on how to choose a sweater pattern. That cardy rocks! Oh and James. I can't forget James. Or Lila…. who could forget Lila. Actually I wear all four of those all the time!

See you all Friday with an update on the How to get faster at knitting post. 

Felicia

I'm not creative.

I have been lucky over the last month to be asked to talk to some really interesting people - I've taken part in not one (the Woolful podcast I mentioned last week), but two podcasts. The second podcast was released on Saturday and can be found here. I was talking with Helen of Curious Handmade about Stash Less* as part of Helen's Simplify and Declutter month. But before we got to Stash Less, Helen and I talked a little about creativity. I've been thinking about it a lot since we spoke and I don't think I articulated my thinking about it as well as I could have. As creativity is something I've pondered a lot over the years I thought I would have a go at doing it here. A bit of thinking out loud to see where we end up…..

For years and years (like 20 of them) I walked around saying "I'm not creative". Over and over again. There was a mix of reasons. I saw my mum as the creative one in our family - she taught me sewing and quilting and she could draw - drawing seemed to be very creative. I did science and maths at school and for some reason I saw science and maths as being factually based and not at all creative. When I was in high school I saw myself as being a scientific type. I loved the fact that science and maths had facts to back everything up. It wasn't subjective. It seemed logical.**

But there was another reason why I said I wasn't creative. I think I said I wasn't creative because I felt like to say you were creative kind of meant that you were saying you had talent. I felt that the two of them were linked; creative people were talented. The idea of me being creative felt wrong for two reasons. One I didn't feel like I had talent creatively, and two, because creative=talented I felt like if you were saying you were creative it meant you were saying you were good at something (which culturally isn't that done in Australia).

I'm not 15 anymore and I've read many things since. I wrote here about how I don't believe that you need to be talented to make things but I want to take it a little further.  All that reading has lead to a shift and because of that shift I'm about to state the obvious - I believe that everyone is creative. We make a zillion different little creative decisions in our everyday life. How to wear our hair. How to move. How to arrange our table. Putting a towel on a towel rack. Creative thinking is one of the things that makes us human.  

Kids show us this. They are fearless at two and three about how they draw and paint and put things together. They are creative all the time. Their clever little brains are constantly solving problems and learning things along the way. As we get older it's the judgements that get made about our creativity (combined with our individual personalities) that can then lead to us freezing up and starting to view ourselves in a different light. A great example of this is a kid I know well. She loves art. She loves creating things but she totally gets stuck if there is any kind of pressure on her - and often that pressure comes from inside her - to make something that is perfect or realistic. Her judgement that it won't be "right" means that sometimes she won't even try. She won't draw even though she loves it and the pressure seems to be coming from inside her. 

Knowing that this was how I thought, and then seeing the flaws in that thinking and the damage it can cause, is part of the reason I think I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about talent now. I want to distinguish between creativity and talent. Not because I don't think some people are talented. I do! But I don't think you need to be talented to make things and I think that to be talented you need to put in the hard yards.

The idea of talent - that some people have it - those creative people have it - can lead us to feel like it's not worth trying or even to the point where we think/say things like "I'm not creative", when maybe that is not what we mean. 

Talented….well that is just a judgement about creativity. When a group of people judge someone's creativity as good then that's when the "talented" thing comes into play. For the most part it's subjective. I might think someone is talented and you might not see their appeal. Generally someone is only given the moniker of talented upon presenting their work to people. To create the work that gets called talented is generally the end product of a long process.  What we see as talent is often the product of learning+practice+creativity+really hard work. I feel like talent isn't something that someone has but rather something that someone works for

I wrote about the idea of practicing in the gap here and that is what I do. I don't need talent to make what I make. While it makes me feel happy that other people sometimes compliment what I have made, I make for me and I’m the only one (other than my kids) that needs to like it. Again what I need is the creativity (that we all have within us) – and not talent (the external acknowledgement)  - to make something that makes me happy, both while I am engrossed in the creating (flow) and after it is made. 

Which leads to my next question around this topic - is talent the thing we should be holding high in our esteem, or should we be celebrating the work that goes into it. Or maybe it doesn't matter? 

Here is a quote from one of the many many Brain Pickings articles on hard work and talent in writing.

“Cohen approaches his work with extraordinary doggedness reflecting the notion that work ethic supersedes what we call “inspiration” — something articulated by such acclaimed and diverse creators as the celebrated composer Tchaikovsky (“A self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood.”), novelist Isabel Allende (“Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too.”), painter Chuck Close (Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work.”), beloved author E.B. White (“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”), Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope (“My belief of book writing is much the same as my belief as to shoemaking. The man who will work the hardest at it, and will work with the most honest purpose, will work the best.”), and designer Massimo Vignelli (“There is no design without discipline.”). ”

— Brain Pickings - Leonard Cohen on Creativity, Hard Work….

I guess the point is that talent isn't this special thing that some people are blessed with. Even those with the talent have to work for it.  (…..writing this I can hear what a contradiction it is…..) And we don't need to be talented to create. 

I want to follow the first quote with a second article - also from Brain Pickings on the Daily Routines of Great Writers. Have a read of this article. In each case a writer who is often held up as being really talented, as a great writer, works incredibly hard at their craft. They have discipline. They show up. They ship. They practice and they write.

UPDATE: This was posted 30 minutes ago but I've woken up and want to have one more go at it. 
When I was younger I confused and interchanged the ideas of creativity and talent. I believed that I made things, but that making things wasn’t the result of a creative process. Rather the making was the result of following or modifying a pattern - which is also true. However, that confusion lead to me denying that I had something that is part of all of us, my creativity. By denying my own creative input into the process – even just choosing fabric for a pattern – something of the joy of making was lost as I was denying my part in the process of making it. 

As I said - I'm talking out loud today - would be great to hear your thoughts and experiences. Do you think of yourself as creative? Have you ever had the thought "I'm not creative" and where does "talented" come into it for you?

Felicia x

* Stash Less now has it's own page which lists each of the posts so far so you can find them more easily than scrolling back through. 

**Obviously this is not what I think now -  scientists clearly need to use their boundless creativity to solve complex problems - and that this how they come up with the aforementioned facts. 

Backtracking

So at the start of the year I decided that I should change when I posted from Tues, Wed, Friday to Mon, Wed, Friday. The aim was that I would spread things out a little and hopefully get to comments. But that decision was one of those totally unthoughtout rookie errors. Posting on a Monday means you are working on the post (if you are a last-minute-Sally like me) on a Sunday night. And Sundays are for family and crafting, rather than writing about crafting. So that was never going to work.

So I'll be back tomorrow with a real post and I'll post as I have been for some time; Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. 

Till tomorrow.

Felicia