Stripes!

In this episode, I chat about wanting to cast on a million sweater projects, almost all of which are in Veera Valimacki's new book of knitting patterns called Stripes.  I also talk about knitting is providing me with a lot of comfort as I handle the stress of back to school and work transitions.

Music credit: Ketsa, "Day Trips"

Transcript

[Music credit: Ketsa, “Day Trips,” Upbeat intro music with bells and trills]

Holly 00:40  

Hi! [laughter] I am so excited to be chatting with you. I’m trying something different and I hope it works. My puppy is on the other side of the room looking at me very curiously. Everything is still pretty quiet in my house so I thought I’d just say hi and try and sneak in a podcast.

Holly 01:06 

It is the Sunday morning of labor day weekend, which is the official end of summer. I guess it’s the unofficial end. Gosh on the lunar calendar we have a couple more weeks left! But for all intents and purposes it’s the official end of summer. And frankly it has been for a couple weeks now in my household. My kids went back to school two weeks ago. I went back to school this past week. And we are in it. One kid is already home sick and a colleague is out and it’s just been nonstop since we jumped back into things.

Holly 01:51

I’m really worried that I’m going to burn out. I’m not sure how I’m going to keep up with things. Work is *really* intense right now and not in the creative ways. There are sometimes when I am focused on the writing and research aspects of my job and other times I’m focused on the teaching and administrative parts of my job and I’m in one of those phases. I’m fielding a lot of emails from panicked students and trying to sort out and find answers to their problems. Their problems range from very, very serious to some that are less serious but still feel really important to the students. SO I’ve just been putting out a lot of fires. I feel like a firefighter and it has me responding in ways that I haven’t in awhile. It really brings me back to the early days of recovery. I haven’t felt this way in a while so I’m just checking in.

Holly 03:04

One of the things that grounds me is knitting. And I’ve had to make time for knitting. There was almost a day that I didn’t knit and I could kind of feel it in my mental health. And I know that sounds a little extreme but I hope to chat a little bit about that.

Holly 03:30

I am really excited to be here. For those of you who are just joining, my name is holly and this is a knitting podcast about recovery, however you define that. It is really about thinking about how sewing, knitting, crocheting, spinning, anything creative that helps us cope with a challenging sitaution. For me recovery is a 12-step program. I’m in al-anon. And the challenging situation that I’ve been dealing with is my ex-husband’s alcohol addiction and my own family history of the disease. And I talk about how knitting helps me keep my serenity. So of course, you should take what you liek and leave the rest. I’m not an official spokesperson for knitting (laughter) and I’m certainly not an official spokesperson for al-anon. I’m just sharing a little bit about how I get by. And yarn and meetings help me to do this. 

Holly 04:48

So, knitting. I have caston-itis. I want to knit all the things. I thnk it’s really reflecting my pace of work. My brain is really frazzled and I’m looking for those dopamine hits where I can. So i’ve got 8 million sweater plans. Of course they’re sweaters. Of course they’re all colorwork. Of course they’re all fingering weight. [laughter] why make it easy when I can make it hard? [laughter] I’m really trying to let myself have that joy of planning and not get caught up in the shoulds and shame, ie. that this is irresponsible when I have so many projects on the needles. Because I do have good projects on the needles [laughter] But for now I’m just really trying to survive. And that means I need extreme joy! [laughter] I’m looking at the semester and thinking, oof, how am i going to keep this up? What’s the pace gong to be like? How am I going to get me and my kiddos through this. How are we going to enjoy it? What are we looking forward to in the weeks ahead? How can I be responsive and not reactive in program language, to really make sure that I’m not discovering old parts of myself that handle the crisis of addiction in the family…that I’m not bringing that to the workplace. Trying to solve everyone’s problems. Trying to keep everyone happy. There’s a lot of primal stuff in that and I’ve just got to make sure that I’m doing my job and that I am doing it well but that I'm not bringing all that extra emotional energy to the table.

Holly 06:53

Knitting helps me to do that. I’ve been working on my stripes sweater. It still feels like summer when I work on this project. I’m using this silk yarn–so nice!--that I got at a summer sale at my local yarn sale…last summer [laughter]. So i’m doing okay! It’s been cast on. It only sat in my stash for a year.[laughter] And the pattern is so amazing. It’s from Veera Valimacki's Stripes book from Laine publishing. I think I mentioned this before. I’m in a really knitting library book vibe. I bought this book this summer. I want to buy the new Laine book, Knitting Traditions, I think it’s Estonian knits. So pretty!

Holly 08:00

If purchasing hobby materials is about a fantasy of my life–I think it sometimes is–the fantasy I have is that I’m able to read as well as make. I love books. I love yarn. I love puppies. That’s sort of how I get by. Not surprisingly, my purchases lately have been that.

Holly 08:19

But you know I have a tight budget. I know I’ve talked about this before. My ex is in a much better place with his addiction. So he’s able to be a present father with the kids but he’s not able to financially contribute or really be reliable childcare so I think I can still say honestly that I’m doing this a lot on my own, even though that it is wonder and I’m so grateful to the universe that he’s back in our life in a positive way. But I guess I’m saying all this because the book is not cheap. It was around $35 US and that’s a big investment for me. So is yarn. You know I have a strict budget that I need to pay attention to. But I bought this because I just kept going to the store and visiting it. And there’s a sweater on the front that I’m making. I just love it so much. It’s tunic length, it’s silk & stripey. It’s really pretty. And it has pleats built into it, which I was really curious about how that worked. I was going to do my old sneaky… my mom would call it a south philly move, where I would just go to the store and read up how they did it and then try to reverse engineer it at home. But I just bought it after visiting it for the fourth time and holding it in my hands. I just bought it. And I am so glad I did.[laughter] I think I’m going to knit like four sweaters from this book. It’s so good. I guess I really like stripes, y’all. [laughter]

Holly 10:04

So I’m working on this stripey tunic. It’s really pleasurable. It’s just straight stockinette. You knit it sideways. [laughter] if you listen to the podcast you know I like a sideways construction. So the stripes are vertical rather than horizontal, which I think will be more flattering for…[laughter] you know, my middle-aged mom body. [laughter] But there are a bunch of other great sweaters in the book. So at this year’s summer sale [whispers: I can’t believe I did this] I bought two sweaters’ quantities of yarn. One is cotton. I have a little bit of regret about this. I don’t love knitting with cotton but there's another pattern in this book and I think it will be really great in this yarn. It’s another stripey tunic sweater for summer. And then I got this fingering-weight gorgeous yarn from De Rerum Natura. It’s merino and silk. Oh, it’s so pretty! I got a bunch of that. I think it’s called penelope? Is it antigone? I don’t know, I keep swapping them. One is a worsted weight and the other is a fingering and I got the fingering weight. This part is important because [laughter] I then confused the yarns, tried to buy more and ended up getting the worsted weight. So now I have four random skeins of yarn that I don’t need in my stash. Ahhhh, I was being that really responsible knitter and planning ahead for yarn chicken, i wanted to avoid that, so I bought too much *and* in the wrong weight of yarn. [laughter]. I should pay more attention. 

Holly 11:57

But to just round this out. But I think the dopamine hit I got from holding this gorgeous yarn outweighs the financial hit because that mistake alone is speaking to how frazzled I feel. I’m making a lot of mistakes in my knitting, which probably means I'm also making a lot of mistakes in the rest of my life. All of my attention is going towards work. It’s non-stop email and calls and texts and that brings up a lot of panic. I feel like I have to have the right answer, and that I have to have the right answer right away. And professionally speaking sometimes it really is my responsibility to help these people. But I don’t have to do it in a panicked state. I can make sure I’m taking breaks, and eating and exercising and taking care of myself, including knitting a few rows every day [singing] just to stay sane!

Holly 13:11

So I’ll finish by saying what i’ve cast on. I’m finishing up my tunic sweater. I cast on a baby sweater with the antigone yarn I just mentioned. I have this pattern–gorgeous wrap-around baby sweater, like a ballerina wrap, oh it’s so cute! It’s so nice in this yarn. But Oh! This pattern! Oh! Not pleasant to knit! I’m not normally a product knitter. I’m very much a process knitter. Like I get inspired. You just heard–I love the picture of the sweater I’m making on the cover of the Laine book, but it was really the pleats that drew me to it. Like I wanted to figure out how to knit those pleats. It was the technique. But this baby sweater is definitely a product knitting project. The pattern is needlessly complicated and definitely takes some brain space to knit. Thank god it’s a small project. I am on a little bit on a deadline. But I only pick it up when I have the brain power and I want to hold weekend space. For example, yesterday morning I was up with the dog I had had my coffee and I didn’t want to just sit in front of the computer. So I forced myself [laughter] to take up a challenging project and figure out what the heck was going on in this baby sweater. The key will be to leave myself good notes because I’m going to have to put it down. I’ve finished up my Lunae shawl [whispers: it’s so pretty!] I sewed on all the tassels. It’s so wooly. I didn’t think i’d want a wooly, wooly shawl. But oh i’m so glad I made it. I took a picture and sent it to my knitting bestie. It feels like it’s finished. I met my goal–i have my summer shawl! I finished my cable socks–the Marie socks! They’re so good too. So i just cast on for a new pair of socks, the strawberry socks. It’s been in my queue forever. I’ve had the yarn all ready. So I’m enjoying that. I think it will go pretty quickly. I’m trying out shorty needles. 9 inch circulars which I know people have mixed feelings about them. They’re controversial. I’ll keep you posted. But I like them, more than I thought I would. 

Holly 16:25

So this is my quick check in. I’m testing out to see if I can cut myself some slack and maybe show up here a bit more regularly and try some new ways to do this. But here I am waffling on for sixteen minutes. So I’ll stop and say goodbye now. 

Holly 16:44

I hope you’re well. Thank you so much for listening. It just means so much to me to know that this community is here and thank you. Thank you, thank you! I hope that you’re knitting and that you have beautiful materials to work with and I hope i get to talk to you soon. 

Bye!

[Outro music: Ketsa, "Day Trips," an upbeat instrumental song with bells and trills]