#The100DayProject

No War: #The100DayProject Day 8

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

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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#The100DayProject Day 1

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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.

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Tying Up Loose Ends

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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. . .

Bōchord: The Art of Book(mak)ing

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 1 Comment

Book. Proposal—

For #The100DayProject, artists choose an artful activity and do it every day for 100 days, recording their work, and posting about it every day. The project begins on February 23, and I decided to begin my Substack life by posting my daily creations here.

What is a book?

Is it words on pages between covers?
Is it a box, a basket, a vessel of words and images?
Is it a kit for your imagination?
What makes a book a book?
And what is the line between book and not/book?
Or is there even a line?

One of my students, when I posed the question to a class, said,

Perhaps a definition isn’t so much about
what a thing is as about how it is used.”

Wise young person.

My aim for #The100DayProject is to explore the spaces between what is “book” and “not/book.” I aim to make some traditional (though whimsical) books in the form of pages between covers, and some boxes, baskets, vessels of words and images, photographs, to expand the definition of what a book is, and explore how it may be used. . .

Can I create one book a day for 100 days? Perhaps I will have some days when I record the process of making one book over several days. I cannot let this work interfere with my daily work, so I give myself permission to make quick little zines on busy days, to call anything a book, and to create junk.

I will make a bōchord (library in the old English), a BOOK HOARD, a library of sorts.

bōc as Vessel
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

The leaves of the beech
quiver in the winter wind,
rustling whispers,
so many stories to tell,

Etymology: bokiz or bece
to bōc, to book.
Bark and leaves, cover and spine,
the line of words across a page.

It is written in the trees, you see,
not just cellulose and pulp,
but in the very essence of the word:
seeds of ideas, leaves, and bark.

Not only Goths but Gauls too
saw forest as library.
Livre from librum, the tender
inner bark of the tree.

When he was a child,
my father carved his name
into the soft grey
of the household beech.
I found the letters there,
the book of his childhood,
the story of branches
shading the quiet balcony,
the pious lives, the quiet joy,
the industrious aunts,
and some words allowed to be spoken
only by the whispering leaves.

Once there was a guardian beech
watching over the river and the valley,
serpent branches
spreading shadows across the hill.
But insects burrowed her barky pages
until the book of her began to die.
We honored her story, you and I,
the best we could; we read
the book of her until the end.

Here in the pages of my palms
I cup this small wooden bowl
you turned from the branch
of the serpent-beech,
a new vessel to contain magic
much as the tree herself
held her secrets, the livre,
the living library,
still here, alive.