Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Design Notebook: First-ever sweater!
After my first successful capelet completed this summer (which I finally got to wear last Friday and I am bonafide in love with) I have decided to go all the way and crochet my first-ever sweater! Interweave Fall 2012 has a lovely colourwork pattern that looks like a good first sweater project (difficulty level of 2). I couldn’t really afford to do it in their suggested yarn, so instead I ordered a silk/wool combo from Knitpicks. Very similar to the yarn I used for the capelet. Also, I adapted the colourway to include my favourites since I couldn’t get exactly the colours shown below.
So! This sweater and the colours as shown below – of course I can’t start untill I get some more gifts completed, but at least I’ll have all my materials once I’m ready to go and I’m quite excited about it 🙂
Wednesday’s best intentions.
I came to work with the best intentions to get a certain task done, but somehow my day (so far) has been mostly used up with union matters. This is all fine, because I enjoy both sides of what I do here, but it’s become a frequent occurrence lately – and the situations I am asked to help with are getting more difficult.
Fortunately, I am also finding that the skills I’ve been working on via the Justice Institute Mediation program are definitely paying off, and I think I am increasingly able to bring a more measured approach to some of the really difficult cases I get involved in. Plus, I have so much stuff to practice! More than anything I feel that after ten years of being a union steward, it’s something I’m pretty good at, and I’m glad I’ve had this opportunity to be an advocate for some really great people because it continues to teach me a lot about myself.
Now, on the other hand, crochet is a brand new skill (like my segue?) and I’m just at the start of that learning curve – but look at the photo above! Totally in love with these new fingerless gloves made out of self-striping sock yarn – even if they are not quite a matched pair. (No one will notice once they are on).
A tale of two work bags….
As I’ve mentioned here before – I didn’t always know how to sew, and I certainly didn’t grow up with any abilities in that regard. In fact, I was raised with the belief (penned in my first report-card from Kindergarten) that I “lacked hand-eye co-ordination” and therefore would never be very good at anything that required it. (Funny enough, I played the fiddle all through my upbringing and that requires a lot of hand-eye co-ordination…. it’s just that I was measured it in how straight I could cut with scissors, not whether I could master a complicated musical instrument).
Anyhow! About fifteen years ago I taught myself to cross-stitch (from a book) and that was the start of learning about handwork for me. I still had no notion of sewing, but the easy crossed stitches on Aida cloth counted from a pattern made a lot of sense to me and I took it on.
That work bag on the top left is the first thing that I ever sewed (if you don’t count the miserable bean bag frog that I barely completed in grade six sewing class) – ten years ago, just prior to embarking on a road trip, I got a piece of cotton twill and hand sewed a small envelope in which I could carry scissors, threads, patterns and embroidery hoop in one place. It was the simplest design I could think of and as you can see from this photo, I didn’t know a thing about finishing my seams:
But despite its rough and rudimentary nature – I have used that work bag for the past ten years and it’s held together quite nicely – a testament to the fact that even the most basic, shoddily done hand sewing is ten times more resilient to most of what you find in the bargain stores.
In any case, I have felt recently that a new work bag is in order, as my original has been fraying – and while I could have gone with a more complicated pattern or design (with pockets or dividers) – I love the simplicity of the work bag that folds down easily and tucks into almost any purse. Plus, the basic canvas/twill shows off my recent hexagon obsession so nicely:
This little project represents just a half hour of work on my sewing machine (the hexagon detail was done separately by hand), but even more so it stands as a reminder that sometimes the most basic thing is what works best.
Life at 4 km an hour.
Lynn Headwaters is my favourite place to hike in the Lower Mainland for two reasons: it is only a 15-minute drive from my house and it offers a variety of hiking challenge-levels depending on my mood. Along the river is a flat, easy walk. On the upper trails are steep grades to Lynn Peak and undulating forest paths that wind through to an old logging debris chute before turning back. And for distance, Norvan falls at 14 kilometres makes a satisfying destination. I have hiked all of these trails at one time or another over the past decade of spending time there – balking only at the rough back country trails up Coliseum Mountain or through Hanes Valley due to reports that they aren’t well marked and I’m probably not in the greatest shape for such adventures.
My last two Mondays off work however, I have started my day with the 5.5 km Lynn loop hike which provides a good mix of steep grade, undulating paths and a flat 1.5 km return to the trail head. It’s not only an opportunity to get the dog out on a decent run, but I have always enjoyed hiking alone – and while Lynn is busy most of the time, if I go early on a Monday the upper trails are all but empty (until around ten, when the power joggers come out). This is some of the first solo hiking that I’ve done in at least a year – and I had forgotten just how much I get out of such short jaunts. Just an hour and fifteen minutes of trail time is really all it takes.
One of my observations over years of hiking is how much differently the mind seems to operate when in the act of walking than when stationary or driving a car or even riding a bike. Herein lies one of the greatest pleasures of hiking alone – the uninterrupted spool of thoughts my mind reels though as I make my way. Not in the monkey-mind, chattery sense – but in a light, exploratory mode that moves along with my physical being and is let go the minute I step back out onto pavement and get into my car to go home.
This type of thinking seems qualitatively different than the kind I do when driving long distances, matched to to the footfall perhaps. One person I knew once commented that to walk everywhere was “life at 4 km at hour” and he figured that was the optimal speed for the mind to activate. But, like a moving meditation, I find the act of sitting to write and capture the flow of those thoughts nearly impossible. To be stationary breaks the moving spell and I am again tethered to a single place, my mind sluggish after its romp through the forest. It’s this conundrum of needing to sit still to write after the freedom of movement that makes good nature writing so difficult. To have the experience of outdoors and then to attempt to set it to the page has always struck me as something that must be practiced always in order to find the balance between the modes – outdoor/indoor, moving/still, forest/city, earth/computer, organic/artificial.
But tis something I would like to practice, as impossible as it seems to me. This act of fixing dirt to the page, of scribbling undergrowth in the margins of my prose.
I’m currently reading two books of nature essays which I will share my thoughts on later this week. (Nature-essay being a form for which I have great affinity.) The question as always is what makes it work and how do I get there? Perhaps we’ll get more words out this fall than I have for the past few months. These forest jaunts certainly make me wish that to be so.
More of this. Less of that.
I am having a difficult time keeping up with the week – my brain feels compressed and it’s all I can do to keep the tasks straight to get from one place to the next. It’s a result of no downtime, really – days of work and evenings packed full with social engagements, rehearsals, classes. Tonight, it’s The Accordion Dance party – which my band, The Flying Folk Army is headlining…. And in between all of this I’ve been trying to read a book my professor loaned me last week (Rousseau’s Dog – a popular history of the fight between Hume and Rousseau which I am gripped by), as well as work on my gift projects (I got four large quilt blocks completed this week and have been crocheting on the bus everyday on my way home from work).
And herein lies the struggle with busy that I have been working to disengage from for at least the last two years – starting with the last time I took on so much it almost destroyed me. (That was “emergency” collective bargaining that I got pulled into two years ago exactly – which sucked up three months of my life from start to finish and ruined my health, not to mention detracted from my wedding to Brian and the time I should have been spending just enjoying our being together).
Anyhow. Coming out of this period of what can only be described as institutional abuse, I made a firm commitment to *end* my relationship with my union on a leadership level – the single best decision I have made in the last decade. One way I managed to do that was by enrolling in a graduate program which gave me something to move into as more space opened in my life. And then I have also found that I have very naturally moved into more creative pursuits too – textiles in particular over the last year – but music has also made a reappearance in my life (somewhat spottily) in the last year.
Which just goes to show that once I ended one pursuit that was making me frantically busy, I just added a bunch more things that take up a great deal of my time.
BUT. After a year of being pretty much entirely free of union commitments (other than shop stewarding, which happens during work time) – I can acknowledge that even though I am doing almost as much as I was previously – THERE IS A HUGE DIFFERENCE IN TIME QUALITY. Yes, I fill up my days outside of work – but I do it with
- art
- music
- camping
- cooking
- making, and
- socializing
…..instead of meetings, petty in-fighting, feeling bad about how I’m not doing enough, and engaging in power struggles.
I mean, let’s face it, the internal culture of power-based organizations is always going to foster toxicity – whether that be unions, political parties, or even (some) non-profit organizations. Even more than that, the internal culture of these institutions promotes the self-importance of BUSY in a way that robs us from actually LIVING an interesting life.
(PRO-tip: Rarely have I met a politician or union leader who seems to actually be an interesting person outside of their job. As in, they can’t talk about anything except work – and maybe the recent Okanagan wine tour they went on.)
Okay! So if I’m going to fill up my calender, it’s obviously better that be with things which bring me gratification and joy – rather than things which make me miserable and sad about the fate of humanity. But still. There is a balance to be struck – and these first two weeks of September are a reminder of how much I don’t want to feel frantic or burned out when I engage with activities I otherwise really enjoy.
Not to mention, I am trying to get away from being the kind of person who answers “BUSY” when asked how I am. I despise that answer (though it’s such a handy default) for all the reasons Penelope Trunk writes about here. The answer “BUSY” seems to me a lot like the people who won’t put their work-Blackberries away after hours — loaded with false importance.
And I don’t want to be that, despite the seduction of feeling included in everything. What I want to be is someone who is content with a variety of small moments – puttering at home, making things (even badly!), hanging out with my family, taking the dog for little walks . And while I think I have made a lot of progress on that front recently (this summer was just amazing for all the hanging around doing very little I got done), it’s very easy to suddenly get caught in the “I shoulds” and get overwhelmed by all the commitments I end up making.
So I’m going to work on prioritizing a bit better and actually “schedule” in some inviolable self-time every week. It’s about ego-awareness, really, and giving myself direction – and permission – to increase my capacity for healthy life-governance.
Still and all – I’m pretty excited about the gig tonight!
Red Cedar 