Notes on Progress Your Own Way, Iridescence, and Writing the Long Way Around

Studio Notes

all things crochet

Do you ever feel like weeks are cruel in their speed? That's what this week was like. Dealing with sick kids, half days at school, and survival really cut into my crochet time.

I did more experimentation with my hook and yarn to help me decompress. I'm not sure how helpful it is. I get an idea in my head and I try about ten different things to get it to work with little to no success. But sometimes there are "happy accidents."

I am understanding more than ever before that I need to give myself freedom to jump around and work on what feels right. Progress isn't linear that way but it's better than no action, which is what would happen if I forced myself to sit down and work on something that is just not clicking right now.

Nature

sightings and experiences

My seven-year-old spotted some interesting colors in the clouds on the way to school this week. Most noticeably, random green splotches were skirting around the sun. I had never seen anything like it. After browsing photos online for a while is discovered that the phenomenon is called cloud iridescence.

I also saw two woodpeckers this morning at sunrise. I could not tell what type they were. One was pecking at one of the old Shag Bark Hickories in our front yard. And then the other came and chased the first off before I could get a sense of their colors. Shag Bark Hickories are gorgeous trees. Check out the bark! It's wild and beautiful.

Gathered Things

annotated links, readings, and ideas gathered this week

I picked up The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad from my local library. It is about journaling and creativity, and life. I know everyone has moments where it feels like an author's words are directed towards them.

You want to try something new, but you worry you'll be bad at it--you fear you'll humiliate yourself--and you never start. But I knew a fear-driven life was one where I never made plans, where I stopped myself from dreaming ambitiously. It meant living safe and small, always hedging against the worst-case scenario. Instead, I wanted to live boldly. I wanted to hold the best-case scenario at the forefront and have that guide my decisions and actions.

This quote starts at the bottom of page xvii and ends on the next. As I was reading, the author's words felt directed at me. I drew my eyes to the top of the page to finish and saw a small piece of blue yarn wedged between the pages that I hadn't seen when I started. I don't know. The coincidence doesn't escape me.

My modus operandi became this: to trust and find ways to delight in the mystery of how things unfold, even if it's not what you had planned, even if it's far from ideal, and to believe that facing the thing you fear brings you exactly what you need.

It's interesting. I love crochet. And I wonder if I can do this. If I can sell patterns. If I can be successful. But I started working towards that because the thing that scares me most is writing online. I felt that I simply could not do it. It was too scary, and it felt like I was too exposed. Selling crochet patterns seemed fun and an accessible way for me to put myself out there. And I'm doing that. But still I'm drawn to writing. Hence this blog. It's been easier to write from this angle. And I don't really know why I am drawn to writing. But I think I need "to believe that facing the thing [I] fear [will] bring [me] exactly what [I] need."

I also wrote a few weeks ago about wanting to share more about my word-of-the-year: trust. I'm working on that post, but it's still unraveling in its own time. But I hope that I can say in the future, "My modus operandi became this: to trust."

Pages later Jaouad writes this:

Even now, a writing prompt on its own can feel like homework. For example, if I'm told, "Write about a time you had a change of heart," my mind goes blank. The poet Craig Morgan Teicher described this kind of prompt as the equivalent of sticking your finger in a goldfish pond: All the goldfish scatter to dark corners.

But reading someone else's words before I write always stirs something new in me. It's such a natural way in to keeping a journal. Sometimes I respond to an insight, an image, a turn of phrase. Sometimes it's the fact that the person's experience feels so familiar. Other times, the writer's perspective is so unlike my own that I'm completely bewildered by it, and I write into that bewilderment. Someone else's words awaken a different train of thought, a new energy. A synapse fires that, moments earlier, was dead asleep.

That's what this section, Gathered Things, is really about. Letting another's words hone in on thoughts and ideas that have been blurred and distorted in my own head. Writing in this style makes blogging infinitely easier. I do wonder if in my previous attempts "to put myself out there" were akin to "sticking [my] finger in a goldfish pond." All my words just seemed to dry up and dissipate into nothingness. The thoughts are there, but unreachable. Maybe someday I won't have to write the long way around, but for now this is working for me.

Thanks for reading! I hope you have a great week!