Coming Unspun

Recently, I've been systematically destroying a sweater I knit last winter.

In knit-speak, such wanton unraveling is known as frogging, because you "rip-it, rip it" (ah, knitting humor) until your faulty project is yarn again. It's a cute name for what can be a painful process-- all that work, hope, inspiration, and time unraveling like it never existed. I first condemned the sweater to frogging back in January and only now, in May, have I executed the sentence. It took me that long to get the nerve.

But about one sleeve and half a torso into the deconstruction, I realized something. The whole process didn't pinch nearly as much as I thought it would. I was actually finding something relaxing, deeply satisfying-- even fun-- at watching my hopelessly mucked-up sweater transformed back into soft gray skeins of woolly potential. I could make anything from the reclaimed yarn, and my next sweater would be even truer to my vision because I knew what didn't work.

Lucky for me, last night was a two-for-one special on epiphanies because I've been struggling with something very similar concerning my writing.

Over the past months, I've been re-examining my long-held writing goals and aspirations in light of my real-world responsibilities. I have a daughter who's almost two and insatiably curious, a house that refuses to keep itself clean of its own accord, and still only twenty-four hours in a day. Fifteen, really, because my intelligence and creativity nosedives after nine p.m. My previous vision of my writing just doesn't fit anymore; like my poor, malformed sweater, it isn't functional for my current needs.

So I'm unraveling it too.
Slowly, with a grimace, I've been taking apart my preconceptions of what writing should mean for me right now. Now probably isn't the time to write my masterpiece of American literature, or try to launch my grandiose writing career. I really don't know if I should even worry about submitting at all at this point. I'm breaking my dreams down to raw material-- a love of words and their
possibilities-- and finding joy just in exploring that richness. Just like with frogging my sweater, I've discovered there is a satisfaction, even a peace, at transforming my writing from a frustrated mess to a ball of potential.

I can write anything from here. I could even write nothing and my words, my story-children, would still be there waiting when I came back.

Here's to coming unspun. In our knitting and in our lives, sometimes it's exactly what we need.

Freewrite No. 2

I like walking in the early morning
when the sun is fresh and the breeze cool,
when the humidity is not yet sticking to my face and arms like flypaper,
I like passing coin laundries and coffee shops, watching the
big money people drop their dogs at daycare, watching the
pocket-change people wait for the bus.
I like the smell of honeysuckle and the exasperated horns of the morning traffic
to which I am immune with my stroller and tennis shoe freedom
I like my daughter's bare feet and pink toes
and the entire day stretching before us, like the sidewalk,
one uncluttered line of potential not yet criss-crossed with detours and regrets.

And Yet Another One...

You Are Teal Green

You are a one of a kind, original person. There's no one even close to being like you. Expressive and creative, you have a knack for making the impossible possible. While you are a bit offbeat, you don't scare people away with your quirks. Your warm personality nicely counteracts and strange habits you may have.

What Color Green Are You?

Random Quiz Results

Admit it, you all love the occasional online quiz.....digital introspection and amateur head-shrinking all at the click of a mouse.

Apparently, I am

Your Thinking is Abstract and Random

You are flexible, adaptable, and creative. There's many ways that you can learn - and you're up for any of them. You relate well to other people, and you do well working in groups. You can help people communicate together and work with each other's strengths. You don't work well with people who are competitive or adversarial. You prefer to work toward a common goal... not toward conflicting goals.

What Kind of Thinker Are You?

Scrubbing Couture

Once in a while, I realize that there's this whole other plane to domesticity of which I am rarely aware let alone part. Like when I visit Martha Stewart's website, out of morbid curiosity, and find a Valentine's feature on how to make handmade paper envelopes for distributing your home-baked, hand-decorated cookies.

What amazed me was the thought that there were housewives out there who had time not only to bake and decorate gift food but to handmake individual envelopes for them. Are there stay at home moms out there with that kind of time? Apparently. I would love to meet one....I have a few chores she can help me with in her free time.

I was equally amazed, as I browsed a magazine in the doctor' office, that you could purchase designer cleaning items-- rubber scrubbing gloves, dustpans, mops, scrub brushes-- in a bewildering array of modern colors and styles. And darn it, some of that stuff is cute. The bright blue rubber gloves, with their bold floral cuffs in a contrasting retro print, were so obviously a symbol of Ultra Domesticity that I felt a bit guilty for sneaking a look at the price tag to see if I could afford them. Ten bucks for a pair of rubber gloves is certainly beyond Walmart prices but not unreasonable. Perhaps the Martha Stewart woman wears these sort of gloves so her hands aren't rough for all that delicate paper she uses in her handmade envelopes.

All of this got me thinking.

Is it so wrong to want to bring beauty into the more mundane aspects of homemaking? The Martha Stewart Syndrome, embodied by the envelope-making house goddess I describe earlier, is really just a hyperextension of a good idea--- that everyday tasks deserve a bit of the extraordinary. Ms. Stewart has made an empire by commercializing that concept and creating a cult of the domestic where perfect women fill their perfect homes with exquisite creations that display their feminine prowess. Think Stepford Wives and pink angora sweaters. This stereotyping of the feminine role is just as damaging as the
Power Woman myth or the Sex Kitten myth or any of a dozen distortions of womanhood society thrusts in our faces.

But I really did like the cute scrubbing gloves. Does this mean I'm one step away from become a pink-sweater drone?

I don't think so.

Because, like I said above, the everyday truly does deserve touches of the extraordinary. Those of us who labor at home face any number of routine, mundane tasks daily. Dishes need washing, floors sweeping, clothes laundering...the list goes on. Even the most motivated house-cleaner-- which I am not-- has to admit there is something rather plain about dish soap and mop buckets. So why not infuse a little beauty into the process? Will cute scrubbing gloves remove my dislike for cleaning the bathroom? Not entirely but it will give me a bit more joy in the process. Will a mod-striped dustbin inspire me to dance Cinderella-like with my broom? I doubt it, but the artistic part of me will sigh happily when I see the colors.

When we take time to elevate aspects of our housekeeping routines, we elevate our attitude towards those routines. It could be as simple as picking out a cooking apron in a fun print that you wear each time you prepare a meal--- not only do you spare your clothes but you've created a small ritual for yourself, a tiny space for beauty to inhabit part of your day.

Certainly, moderation and common sense must be a part of this incorporation of beauty. It's all too easy to be swept up in our consumerist society's notion that being is the same as having. The things we use in our homemaking do not, in and of themselves, define us as homemakers. Nor will they give us a heart for tending our household. As with anything in life, a right perspective is important.

We all could benefit from small, deliberate acts of beauty in our daily routine. Maybe for one woman this means flowers on the kitchen window; for another it may be a little bit of lip gloss even though only a toddler will see it. Deliberate beauty could surface in way a wall is painted or the color of a pair of curtains.
It could even be found in a pair of bright blue, retro print scrubbing gloves.

Which I still just might buy.

Oh, and the gloves, among other interesting household items, can be found
here

Freewrite No. 1

Driving down the edge of the storm:
ogre-faced clouds grimacing from the south, wind devils spinning circles in the tops of the trees. Tornadoes are afoot, pouncing on small towns like cats after a mouse, unaware they are tearing through the china cabinet. Rain slithers under the dark sky,
but I am safe
behind my glass, tourist to a downpour.

Evening Litany

Thank You for the food we share
Thank You for the hands that break the bread
Thank You for this shelter from the cold.

Thank You too for those we love
Even when it brings us sorrow
Thank You for the joy of hearth and home.

Thank You that You call us friend
Thank You that we know You
not as myth or legend but our Father
why should we be called Your children?

Thank You that You chased our hearts
Thank You that You poured Your life out
That You that we are made part
of Your very flesh and blood.

Thank You for the living Body
all the saints as one before Thee
Thank You for the family of faith.

Thank You for Your soon return
until then our hearts are yearning
Thank you for the life that has no end

As we go now into night
we lift up these praises to You
Father, Lord, Redeemer, Savior,
grant us peace till morning's made new.