No War: #The100DayProject Day 8

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 8:
How do we resist the forces of Empire and White Supremacy and Patriarchy and Christian Nationalism, which are—really—one and the same? We make the world we envision, the matrisphere (as Perdita Finn calls it), the communities of nurture and sustenance and protection, and we grow these communities as we watch the towers fall.

Their world is beginning to tip and tilt and fall apart, and rich white men are going to start trying to save their own selves. In the process, they’re going to start turning on each other, eating each other, pushing each other down so that they can try to stay afloat. The people will be there to push them out of the way, because we have a bigger thing to do. We have circles of community to preserve and to build. We have children to protect. We have nurturing and sustaining to do. We don’t have time for their hate and their lies. They’re going to take each other down, and when they do we will be there with our soup and our hope and our bandages and our knitting and our spinning and we will create a new world. Let it be so.

Project work today: About twelve rows on knitting on the second sleeve, Another 10 or so hearts and flowers for Pride, a No War sign on the coffee table, and participation in Deborah Oak Cooper’s Wave Goodbye to the Patriarchy Spell.

The100DayProject
@dothe100dayproject

#The100DayProject: Day 7

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Day 6:
My heart is heavy today with the reports of US and Israeli attacks on Iran. 

This morning my Book Group talked about this book, The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife, about a case of mistaken identity that brings redemption and healing to a series of tragic and painful stories. The primary issue of mistaken identity revolves around the idea that so often people don’t really see elders. And the main character, through his own terrible grief, is able to truly and deeply see the people he encounters.

How can I be a better Seer of others? How can I not let anyone go unnoticed or ignored? 

I crocheted hearts and flowers as we talked.  Each little heart, each little flower, is a prayer for peace.  Later, I finished the first sleeve of The Alone Together Sweater and began the second. I’m feeling anxious about whether it will be a cohesive garment when I finish.

The golden winter aconite were alive with the electric hum of the Little Sisters, and the barn overhang was swarming with the coming and goings from the wild hive.

#The100DayProject

@dothe100dayproject

#The100DayProject Day 6

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Day 6:
“The best reason for a knitter to marry is that you can’t teach the cat to be impressed when you finish a lace scarf.” ― Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, At Knit’s End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much

Actually, my biggest knitting fan is my cat, and I think he can’t wait until I am finished with The Alone Together Sweater, so I can wear it and he can sit on me.

Today is another day of Parent Teacher Conferences. I’ve never taught at a school that brings me such joy during PTConferences. We do team meetings, and we sit around and talk about how the student has grown, strategizing ways to make learning easier and more effective. The high schoolers attend their own conferences, and they participate in the strategy sessions. Today at the end of a session a student gave an impromptu speech about how much Janus has supported their personal and academic growth, and their parent had everybody getting teary talking about how proud they are of their student’s persistence and kindness and creativity.

Today I got to the ribbing at the wrist of the sleeve, and made nine little hearts for Pride, holding onto that beautiful and loving energy of my students and their parents and my colleagues. May we all See each other with such gracious eyes.

@dothe100dayproject

#The100DayProject

#The100DayProject Day 5

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Day 5:

I came in to school today, and this was in my box! A colleague bought it for me. I feel Seen! The synchronicity is abundant these days.

This knitting element of my Tying Up Loose Ends project has me thinking a lot about textile arts, how they’ve been so often the province of women, how “women’s work” has so often been derided as less than the work and the art of men, how the spinning and the knotting and the weaving of threads are ancient work, necessary to our ancestors for keeping families clothed and warmed, how these acts became magickal acts. 

We spin the stories that connect us to each other, weave and knit together the strands of our separateness into whole community cloth. We untangle threads to see more clearly the path we must follow.

I cast off the second front piece today, and began a sleeve. Thor really does love this project.

#The100DayProject

@dothe100dayproject

#The100DayProject Day 4

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Day 4:

I’m home today because all my Parent Teacher Conferences are on Zoom, so I have moments between conferences when I can knit a couple rows—a palate cleanser for the brain, if you will. I’m almost finished with this front panel.

Next week is Spring Break, and I have a feeling I might finish this sweater then! Unless I find myself unraveling to remake bits. I am in this project to learn.

“Letting go is the lesson. Letting go is always the lesson. Have you ever noticed how much of our agony is all tied up with craving and loss?” ― Susan Gordon Lydon, The Knitting Sutra: Craft as a Spiritual Practice

I found that quote online, and just went and ordered the book on Thriftbooks.

#The100DayProject

@dothe100dayproject

#The100DayProject Day 3

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Day 3:

It’s harder to see the progress in only a few rows today, in about 15 minutes of knitting. Long day.

I’ve been wanting to write a little bit about Art as Resistance. My husband and I have both been enjoying creating thoughtful and artful signs for protests, so that’s one kind. Poetry which calls the dictator and his toadies to account is another kind. You see it everywhere sprouting up on the internet: reels of fierce new protest songs, comics and collage and editorial cartoons and posters and t-shirts and buttons. I want to keep pushing out my own art and poetry in active resistance to cruelty and evil.

Also, simply doing art of some kind is, for me, a powerful resistance. Bring me beauty! Bring me joy! Set my feet to dancing! We’re in this thing for the long haul, and we need all the art, all the music, all the poetry and dancing.

Recently, knitting and crocheting have been extremely regulating for me. The Files and the evil they uncover have me quivering daily in fury that dysregulates my nervous system. I feel like I am dissolving into a red haze. And so I take up the yarn, repeating the same stitches over and over again, watching the stripes of color appear, feeling the softness of yarn sliding over my fingers, listening to the swish and click of yarn and needles. I am going to need to stay grounded and regulated if I am going to stay in the fight. Making art is part of that necessary medicine.

#The100DayProject

@dothe100dayproject

#The100DayProject Day 2

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Day 2:

Yesterday after I posted, I continued to knit my ATS 2.0, so the first photo is where I began today.

The Alone Together Sweater was designed during the pandemic by Lærke Bagger, a wildly creative out-of-the-box textile artist from Denmark (look her up on IG). In her directions, she gave permission just to knot yarns together. The idea was that since we couldn’t go out shopping, we needed a way to creatively use up our stashes, using two or three strands at a time, giving the feeling of impressionistic painting with yarn.. Her original construction was a back, a front, and two arms. After my initial sweater was too wonky, I decided to divide the front into two pieces to make a v-shaped neck. I might make it a cardigan or I might stitch up the front.

What I love about this project is that it gives me the permission I crave to be free-spirited and messy. There is a punk quality to her designs, a refusal to force herself and her art to fit into the pretty and fine art box. And yet her designs are incredibly artful and exuberant.  

This is the first time I have made a complete knitted or crocheted garment (other than a scarf or shawl), and ATS 1.0 was the first time that I have unraveled a project of any significant size. So I’m growing.

#The100DayProject

@dothe100dayproject

#The100DayProject Day 1

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 4 Comments

Day 1:

The first photo shows the two completed pieces (of five) of the Alone Together Sweater I began in 2021 when I was in Covid Quarantine. I completed it about a month ago, and unraveled it because the sizing was way off. The second attempt (ATS 2.0) is less wildly wonky, but still wacky, but in a satisfying way.

Today I cast on the 35 stitches for the third piece, and knitted 11 rows. 

Then I sewed in the loose threads on several flowers for Pride. I have 53 ready to go. I think I’ll want to increase my goal number from 200 to 400.

This afternoon on a Zoom call, I am going to do some mending. I won’t keep up this pace for 100 Days, but today is a Sunday and rainy.

#The100DayProject
@dothe100dayproject

Tying Up Loose Ends

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I have finally managed to get my brain-squirrels at least running in the same direction. I think.

I had a wild and unmanageable list of exciting and interesting possibilities for #The100DayProject, lots of potential for daily dopamine sparkles, but a couple days ago as I was vacuuming the rugs (I do that occasionally), I had a brainstorm: What if this year’s 100 Day Project would be about tying up loose ends? What if I made a list of all my Unfinished Projects, and pledged to work on one of them every day for 100 days? The daily dopamine hit would be less sparkly, perhaps, but the satisfaction in the end could be immeasurable.

So here’s the plan:
1. Spend 10-15 minutes every day on an Unfinished Project. If I have an occasional crazy busy day in which I am simply running all day from thing to thing, I can give myself a short break and do five minutes.
2. I must work on a project from my project list, and not create a new project mid-stream. I can still work on things off the list, just not as a fulfillment of this project.
3. I will take a picture of my progress on whichever project every day to log on my social media for accountability’s sake.
4. I do not have to finish one project on the list before picking up another–it’s about making progress on the things I begin but haven’t finished.

Here’s the List (for now–I may tweak it in the next two couple days before the project begins on Sunday, February 22):
1. The crochet shrug
2. The Alone Together Sweater (second attempt)
3. The Granny Square Yard Sale Cardigan
4. My Tanzania 2024 Book
5. The Rosary Zines
6. The Words Collection
7. The black Granny Squares–whatever was I doing with them?
8. 100 Hearts and Flowers for Pride
9. 20 more Little Protector Dolls for Radiance
10. Nisselue–the knitted and/or crocheted Norwegian Resistance Hat
11. Mending
12. The Red Thread Embroidery
13+ I feel like there are some more that I listed in my journal the other day, so I might add a couple from there.

I have a little cheaty thing going on in my brain right now. I have been inspired by a crocheter who makes elaborate neckpieces of different yarns and stitches, mixing knitting and crochet and different sizes of hooks and needles. If I were to begin one before Sunday, then it would be an Unfinished Project. . . Hmmmm.

I chose the name Tying Up Loose Ends for the project because I am trying to free up my mind for other projects. The image I am using is a crochet circle I am making. As I cut off ends of yarn from projects, I knot those that are longer than five or six inches to a ball of loose ends, and then I crochet them onto my circle. When it’s large enough, I will use it as the top for a beret. I’ll keep adding to the Ball of Loose Ends throughout the project.

The project begins on Sunday, and lasts until June 1. Go to #The100DayProject web page, if you are intrigued and want to join. My process is to:
1. Do the Project every day
2. Photograph or video it
3. Post on Social Media

At school, we are encouraging our middle and high schoolers to join us if they want, for the sake of creativity, mindfulness, or focus.

You can be very creative about your project choice: Try a new dance every day, give a compliment every day, do a watercolor a day, a Zentangle a day, doodle a face every day, do a breathing exercise every day, write a haiku a day, research a different animal every day, sing a song a day. . .

You Are Shameless

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

This is the post (3/3) that I wrote for my rosary group this morning:

Crown of Thorns Novena
Day 37 , Friday, 30 January 2026
Joyful Mysteries:
You Are Shameless!

Today, we walk through the Garden of Yes, to the House of my Beloved, to the Village of Birth, to the Blessing of the Elders, to the Finding of Myself in the Temple.

It is possible I have written of this here before. Several years ago, I wrote a poem about my grandfathers, the ways in which the patriarchy of my Mennonite ancestors affected the women. I can no longer find the poem, but I remember part of the end of it:

Oh, Shameless!
To be without shame.
Could you know, Sister-Ancestors,
that they blessed in their cursing.
We’ll find our own valley,
called Shameless.
Called Brazen.
Oh, carry that name.
I’ll wear it, too.

In many religious traditions, and particularly in some streams of the Mennonite tradition of my own ancestors, it was considered shameful just to be a woman, especially if you did not redeem your femaleness by being feminine, by keeping immaculate house, by serving, by listening instead of talking, but submitting to the will of God (which meant the will of the men in your family and church). Women have borne the burden of keeping the family’s honor, of doing the emotional labor, of passing on the culture. If she stepped out of line, she was labeled shameless.

My own parents did everything they could, fiercely and with great intention, to break those assumptions about gender and to give their children a different pathway to follow. And in many ways we did, and in other ways, we—like our peers—absorbed many of the messages that church and culture told us about women and men and about staying within the lines, about behaving ourselves, about not being shameful. And I, who am so many things that are not that womanly ideal, could never measure up.

No matter your gender, can you hear those elders and gatekeepers of the past scolding you for not being all you were told you should be? “Shameless! Have you no shame?”

Why, no. Thank you very much. No, actually, here on this pathway of the Joyful Mysteries today, no, I have no shame. I am shameless.

Practice:
Settle. Breathe. Rest in the Mother’s Arms.
It helps if you can look in a mirror while you do this.
Take the curse and twist it into a blessing, for blessing it is.
Say it: “I am shameless.”
“I have no shame.”
Say it again. Again. Grin at yourself.
You ARE shameless, you know.
So worthy. So Beloved.