Show Me Your Granny Squares!

As a writer, I often start some random craft when I get stuck mid-story.

I have snippets of supplies for all kinds of artsy stuff—yarn for crocheting, thread for embroidery, gold wire for jewelry making.

In 2011, I purchased copious Swarovski crystals as part of the standard procedure for performing burlesque. Think megalithic crafting adventure, where the culmination of the process just happened to be a striptease. IMHO, the big reveal paled in comparison to my ability to fashion feather fans and a pair of pasties.

I held tight to my blinged underthings for years after I broke up with burlesque. Those sassy undergarments were a token of my commitment to the craft AND an acknowledgment of value.

Yes, Blissom, there really was a paycheck for your creative work! But where has it gone?

When I became a flight attendant, I tossed all my supplies.

I wanted to identify as a writer—full stop. As a storyteller, I convinced myself I didn’t have time for girly things like arts and crafts. Regular visits to Michaels and Joann were traded in for long hours fixing syntax and my story structure.

Like the yarn from my latest defunct sweater project, I’m now untangling the ideas of that limited belief. And it’s bringing up a lot of questions:

• What kind of creative work is considered valuable? And why?

• Am I squandering my time when I start some creative project outside of writing?

• Can I craft and be a serious writer?

• Do I have any value as a SAHM doing the domestic things of a 1950s housewife?

Recently, my husband got pinged at the last minute for a business excursion, which left me single-handedly managing our 6-year-old for a week.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking: Stop your whining! 

Mothers do this all the time.

But wasn’t it Pamela Adlon in Better Things who said, “Every mother is a single mother whether she’s married or not.” I understood that sentiment the minute my better half hopped on an airplane and flew to a hotel room unencumbered. Yes, he arrived on the other end of an intense 9-to-5 work schedule. But damn it, if I wasn’t envious of his evenings in an empty room! 

I was starting a new treatment for Lyme disease, so solitary motherhood meant no downtime during a physically trying period.

From Sunday until Saturday, my child followed me from room to room. Busting into my bath one evening, she announced she needed to use the toilet (we have two others in the house). When I decided to call it a night and get out of the tub, she said, “Good, I need some privacy, anyway.”

I have no doubt she’ll eventually be running a small country, but for this week (which included Valentine’s Day and my birthday), I was on solo duty 24/7 with an adorable little dictator who refused to let me out of her sight.

Self-care wasn’t an option.

Exhausted and in physical pain, I struggled with a Herx reaction for most of the week that lit up my chest down to my kidney region. Everything hurt.

Did I start drinking in the afternoons? No, I picked up my crochet hook and learned to make a granny square blanket.

The experience took me straight back to mid-March 2020.

In January of that year, I had paying writing clients for my editing business. But when the doors closed on my child’s Montessori school in the spring, I was at home with a no-napping toddler, and editing was out of the question.

I didn’t allow myself time to grieve my writing loss; instead, I started stitching. And I added embroidery to my child’s clothes. If I was going to be subjected to the life of Ma Ingalls, by god, I would make my Little House on the Prairie creative—even from the valley of Phoenix, Arizona.

Growing up in the 80s and 90s, I resisted all things girly and domestic.

I blame Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl and bands like Riot Girls, who were busy smashing the patriarchy with punk. My mother and grandmothers weren’t angry at anyone, which made them seem a smidge oppressed even if their shoulder pads were the size of some football quarterback’s.

“Would you like me to teach you how to cook?”

“I’m good,” I told my grandmother as she prepped her Southern fried sorcery from the stovetop.

The fact that I religiously arrived at her house to eat her fried chicken didn’t stop me from seeing her domestic duties as inferior to women with “real” careers.

“I was thinking of buying you a sewing machine as a wedding present,” she pronounced at the dinner table as she passed me the pepper sauce on the eve of my first marriage.

“Why? I’ll never use it.”

It was an honest response.

I hadn’t allowed my grandmother to guide me on anything domestic since my 8-year-old fingers produced a single strand of crochet.

But as I sit here in my 2024 living room, where every weight and color of my yarn stash pops out from the end table next to me, I worry about the economy and consider how I might make clothes for all of us using old bedsheets if the need arises. Maybe it’s this anxiety that’s got me hoarding sewing supplies.

Crafting now feels like a necessity. 

And owning a sewing machine doesn’t sound half bad.

But isn’t dabbling in this other shit preventing me from my best work as a writer?

I no longer think so.

These remnants of half-made homemade kitsch are a parallel journey to what I weave into my writing. And for that, I can claim a writing style that’s all my own.

“You’re different from most of the writers we get,” said an editor in my 2012 interview at Nowhere Magazine. “We mostly hire sassy backpacker boy types.”

As a travel writer, I didn’t exactly fit in.

In its structure, my storytelling has always been more masculine with its pared-down exposition and focus on action. But I’ve never been able to keep my feminine nature from creeping into my work. I must acknowledge I intertwine all kinds of different fragments into my narratives.

Whether I’m writing about becoming a mother at 40 or capturing my 24-hour train ride from Monte Carlo to Madrid while struggling with a tampon in the tiny bathroom onboard, I examine the world through a feminine lens. It’s a style that’s kept me out of many travel magazines.

A better writer could keep her personal experiences to herself and appeal to a Conde Nast audience. But for me, a ghost story set in Jerome, Arizona, about a little girl who lost her mother during the early 20th century is destined to be the backdrop for how I meditate on my miscarriage.

I’ll never be able to stick to simple travel stories.

Haven’t we women had to go on inward adventures alongside our worldly Heroes' journeys all these years? We’ve returned to the ordinary world with the elixir countless times, but it’s only recently we’ve convinced others to use it, too.

Perhaps that’s why there’s been a crafting shift.

You’ll find the change in the vibrant colors of yarn, the latest patterns that look like works of art, and even in the types of people who are crafting. Yes, even men are taking up knitting needles now.

While I’m no longer flying weekly or taking my clothes off on stage, I’m still moving forward. I’m at home learning how to craft some granny squares while teaching the next generation how to craft a basic sentence. It’s a new kind of power I must learn to embrace.

I’d be lying if I said I was always happy about it.

I often allow my daughter’s activities to overshadow my creative life and self-care. Maybe that’s why I need crafting now more than ever. Each time I learn a new stitch or a better way to take remnants and turn them into something useful, I gain a sense of accomplishment. And if the grid goes down, everyone on the block will get new sweaters! 

But the real win for me is the calming effect of crafting. 

“Have you ever noticed that no one who knits on an airplane is ever in a bad mood?” I once whispered to a crew member mid-flight.

Maybe there’s finally room to embrace a feminine approach, where we weave our way toward something calming and enduring one stitch at a time.

If you’re ever feeling stuck in your writing, go ahead and pull up some crocheting videos on Instagram. Fix your algorithm to the feminine and experience what crafters know as the secret to tranquil creativity. At the very least, you’ll ease your anxiety and you may also create a handmade gift.

Then why not apply that newfound crafting knowledge to your writing?

Think about how you can stitch together different vignettes from your life into one integrated story or essay. Pull in a paragraph you cut from a previous piece or reference some random idea. Like strong contrasting colors, sometimes the best way to pull a final product together is by adding in a dash of the unexpected.

Only you hold the magic recipe for how to bring it all together.

They don’t call storytelling spinning a yarn for nothin’.

Check out Sarah Polley’s book Run Towards the Danger. Despite sounding like the exact opposite advice from Running Away From My Problems, this series of memoir-style essays tackles a similar approach to dealing with chronic health and overwhelming life experiences. If you’re unfamiliar with the Xenial, Polley started her career portraying Ramona Quimby in the Canadian TV series and she’s dedicated her life to relatable storytelling ever since. Her book is no different. And it may inspire your craft of narrative writing.