loose strands

It seems that every fall, like clockwork, I rediscover knitting. There is a cardigan project that I either started last year or the year before (I don’t even remember!) that just yesterday I plucked out of the closet and resumed as if no time had passed. It felt silly how easy it was to simply start again, begging the question: why didn’t I finish it before? That is a question with no answer, one that feels hardly worth asking. Why didn’t I finish it? Because I didn’t! Because it wasn’t possible for a thousand reasons. Will I finish it this year? I’d like to think I will! But I hold open space for the idea that I truly may not, and that is ok too. I am very gentle with myself about knitting. I am not so gentle with myself about other things. That is because knitting is purely a hobby for me. It is not wrapped up in my livelihood, nor is it a weight-bearing pillar for my self-esteem. It is something I like to do, and have done for many years, and it really is as simple as that.

Knitting a sweater is a significant undertaking, much bigger than knitting a hat or other smaller project. You can expect to spend something like 20-40 total active hours on a typical sweater, sometimes even more. I might have more success with smaller projects, but the problem is that I find smaller projects less motivating because I feel less excited about the finished object. But apparently I don’t even find sweaters that motivating because this one has been languishing in its project bag for months. I blame motherhood — or really reduced capacity for following through on things that are not absolutely essential to our family’s ongoingness. I used to have much more momentum for all of my personal interests and projects, a much stronger internal engine moving toward completion. That engine is tired now. Still running, but tired.

I have finished two sweaters in my life as a knitter. Both were knit between 2016-2018, a very different moment in my life. In some ways, this was my creative heyday. I was on fire! This was the period when I conceived of and built many of the projects that formed the foundation for the work I continue to do today. I started sewing my own clothes and learning how to draft patterns (leading to All Well, a sewing pattern business). I began writing daily poetry (leading to my first book, There is a Future). I started stepping away from other work pursuits and working for myself, learning how to run a business. I started making art in a real way. I created collaborative projects. I sold my work. And… I was knitting. I felt like a boiling pot almost all the time, simmering a million ideas at once and somehow tackling ALL of them. Looking back at that season, I feel amazed and bewildered — all that energy, all that hope, all that capacity, and I used it all so well.

My first sweater was the Agnes Sweater by Melissa LaBarre. I was extremely influenced by Cody Cook-Parrott to knit this sweater, I think basically copying exactly a sweater they knit. I was seeking mentors everywhere in that season, looking to kindreds near and far for my next move. I figured if something was fun for Cody it would probably be fun for me too — and I was right. I even bought the yarn at their old shop, Have Company, while we were passing through Ann Arbor on a road trip, which felt really special and significant to me at the time. Knitting that sweater felt revelatory, and I think I did it pretty quickly, in just a few weeks. I wanted to know that I could do it, and then I really wanted to wear the sweater! I wanted to be a person who could knit a sweater, so I became one. I don’t wear that sweater very often anymore, but I know I will keep it forever. It’s an artifact of a very important season of my life.

My second sweater is one that I very much still wear all the time. It actually might be my most worn piece of handmade clothing ever — I’m wearing it right this minute as I write this, and I typically wear it at least once a week if not more. It’s the Cline Sweater by Julie Hoover, and it is perfect in every way. I love it, I cherish it. I should actually probably knit another one. This sweater feels like my greatest success as a knitter. It’s a special thing when a handmade garment or object becomes so deeply a part of your life that you forget that you made it. That’s how this sweater feels. It’s just my favorite sweater — but also I knit every single stitch of it with my own hands, over hours and hours, days and days. I have memories knitting this sweater — visiting Chicago during one of the many “snowpocalypses,” sittting on my friend Margaret’s couch in Berwyn watching cars skid and slide down a big hill, almost gracefully. That day, and so many others, is stitched into this sweater forever. There is something deeply incarnational about knitting, almost even moreso than sewing (beyond quilting perhaps). Handwork does that, or any project that you touch repeatedly over time. Spirit is infused in the physical object, so much that it becomes something different than what it is. I believe that deeply. A handknit garment is more than what it is.

But, ever since those two, I have never finished another sweater. There’s one project I worked really hard on and then abandoned. I still have it down in my studio, half-finished. I think I need to frog it (aka undo all the stitches) and turn the yarn into something else. But I have high hopes about this cardigan I am knitting now. It’s the Traveler’s Cardigan by Ozetta, and it’s simple and lovely and I really want to wear it. I’m very close to being done with the body at this point, which just leaves the sleeves and collar — so it actually feels possible to finish this year if I stay with it. But will I be able to? I wish I could say for sure.

Why all this talk of knitting? Well, because it’s not only about knitting. Any creative person has had the experience of falling deeply into a practice for a time, finding great satisfaction and success, and then gently falling out of practice. We leave these loose strands all the time. I’m thinking of my novel draft. I really thought I was going to hunker down and finish it last year — I wrote about it almost exactly a year ago, here.

masterpiece

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October 17, 2024

I started writing a novel in early 2021, and I’m picking it back up in earnest now. I want to finish a draft. With 40k words already written, a full manuscript feels possible — but is this really in me to do? I am trying to witness myself in this process, keep an eye on what is coming up for me as I stack words on words, build a little imaginary world t…

A few days ago, I opened the file again for the first time in a year and started reading. I still really love and believe in this project. It’s good! I feel excited by it! So, why didn’t I finish it last year? Or in 2021 when I started it? I could make up a bunch of very real reasons why (parenting! burn out! other work! etc!) — but the truth is that I don’t know. Because there are plenty of things I have seen through and made happen in the past year too, amongst all those constraints. It occurs to me that writing a novel is a lot like knitting a sweater, actually. It’s a long project, with a big messy middle. When you start knitting a sweater or writing a novel, you know that you’re in for a certain level of endurance. Sometimes you are ready to meet the moment and make it happen, and sometimes you aren’t, and there really is no explanation beyond that. The creative life is not simple, nor is it straightforward. Projects simply take the time they take. I feel confident that I will finish the novel and the sweater. But… maybe I won’t. Maybe in five years I’ll find this 2/3rds of a sweater and take a deep breath before undoing every stitch my own hands had made. Maybe in twenty years I’ll read these 50,000 words of my novel and take a deep breath before closing the file and doing what needs to be done. I don’t know what will happen, really. But I believe that I can finish them, and I also feel that I want to. Will that see me through?

Knitting a sweater is risky — you spend all this time and money (yarn is expensive!), and then it is a very real possibility that you won’t love the finished object. That’s a hard thing for me to wrap my mind around. My own two sweaters sort of illustrate that — one is like my ultimate garment, worn all the time, the other feels more like a novelty that I don’t often reach for. I am afraid I won’t love my new sweater — but is that a reason not to finish it? No. It’s just part of the process, that fear. My novel feels the same way. What if I put in all this time and then it isn’t actually good, or no one wants to publish it? What if I show it to an editor and they want me to make HUGE edits. All those fears are real. Are they a reason not to do it? I want to say no, but part of me hesitates. I have limited time, limited energy. Sometimes leaving a project behind is the right thing to do. And, as much as I love my novel, I can’t tell where it falls on that spectrum. There is always risk in creative work.

Looking back at the version of myself who finished two sweaters and started so many other extremely fruitful projects, I can start to feel bad about who I am now — person who starts things but does not finish them. Person who can barely handle the things that need to happen. But I am the same person. I have adapted to a new environment (caregiving, motherhood, etc. ), but I am still the same girl who was that boiling pot. I can feel that energy returning, but differently. There are more pots on the stove now, more things I am responsible for. Literal children, for one. But also just a different weight to life. The stakes are higher. My career is less pliable. I sit here wearing my blue sweater, my favorite, feeling held by my younger self. She made this sweater for me to wear it. I can remember that I have the power within me to make something out of nothing. I can remember that I can finish what I start. I can finish this novel, I can knit this cardigan, it is within me to do. The question is, do I want to?

Today, I say yes — but I know I am a blessedly unreliable narrator when it comes to these things. We will see about tomorrow. All projects I start will be finished or left behind, and that is simply the way of things. They will take the time they take.

Consider — what are your loose strands? Which projects have you set aside for a while? Do you feel like picking them up again? What would it take to finish them — or is that even what you want?

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let’s take the time we take!
xoxo,

Amy