Nisselue: #The100DayProject (11)

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Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 11:

My brain: One day, it’s full of squirrels chasing each other and generally making a mess of things. The next day, I get so hyper-focused on one single task that the whole day is gone before I realize it.

Today was one of those latter days. I started working on the Nisselue, the red Norwegian knitted cap that represented resistance to the fascist empire of the Nazis. Before I knew it, I had finished the hat, and the day was nearly done. I’ve blocked it and it’s drying now. Tomorrow, I will add the tassel. (Oh, and I cast on and knitted the first couple rows of another attempt at the front of The Alone Together Sweater, round three.)

Let’s be so single-minded in our work for justice and an end to violence, shall we? What roles shall we take up?

Witness
Mutual Aid
Advocacy
Speaking Out
Vigils
Making Connections

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Fail Better: #The100DayProject (10)

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Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 10:
Here’s the thing: I made some adjustments to the pattern thinking it wouldn’t affect the outcome much. It’s been two years, so Bagger no longer has the free pattern on her IG page, so I couldn’t use it even if I tried. My idea to create two panels with slight decreases at the top simply didn’t work. I put it all together this morning, and I hated the shape of it. I’ve never made a sweater before, and I have been hoping that I could just make a lovely messy thing that I would love to wear.

So I unraveled again today. I’m a little frustrated, but also determined to make the final sweater something I WANT to wear. Maybe I’ll make a poncho? I’m going to set it aside for a while and work on this hat, and some of my other projects.

So it has been a bit of a Samuel Beckett project so far. “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

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Sleeves: #The100DayProject (9)

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Tying Up Loose Ends

Day 9:
Second sleeve is finished! I’ll begin to put it all together tomorrow. Ugh. I’m nervous that it just won’t look right.

I tried beginning the Norwegian Resistance Tassel Cap today. Got about five rows in and lost track of where I was in the ribbing. Ripped it out. Tried again, got confused again. Unraveled. Cast on. Unraveled. Cast on, unraveled. I think the lesson is not to try watching a show while I am trying to begin a knitting project. 

And sometimes life is like that. I think I have learned a lesson. Grown. Become. Then find myself back at the beginning again, reworking stitches I thought I had  mastered. Unraveling bits in order to find a more suitable rhythm, less mess, less chaos.  And then it comes, and you get it, and you can’t remember why the beginning was so hard.

Focus. I think this hat needs to be a magickal hat, needs me to focus on my intentions as I knit. Tomorrow I will ground myself and breathe before I cast on those stitches. Casting on sounds satisfyingly like witchcraft.

Also. Witch hazel blossoms bloom in the winter. I took a photo of these at my friend Sarah’s house today. I think I am ready to bloom, too.

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No War: #The100DayProject Day 8

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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.

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#The100DayProject: Day 7

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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.

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#The100DayProject Day 6

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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.

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#The100DayProject Day 5

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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.

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#The100DayProject Day 4

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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.

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#The100DayProject Day 3

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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.

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#The100DayProject Day 2

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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.

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