Here you go, Wake: A project abandoned. - And the process of recollection was enjoyable, so thank you for the prompt. :-)
Long ago - surely it is one or two lifetimes - long ago, I was in my early twenties and was having my second go at really, properly learning how to knit. THIS TIME, I was going to do it PROPERLY.
As a child (told I was clumsy, and known for not having brilliant fine motor skills) I'd gotten as far as plain or garter stitch with knitting, doing the wonky squares and scarves that have wobbly sides, not only due to stopping stitches but also not having consistent tension, or something. Probably I held it differently each time I took it up. That's only just now occurred to me, as I now know that how well I can hold a pencil or pen is quite a variable thing for me. On some days, the pen is held lightly and I can write neatly for a while - for a while. On others: no, no neat writing today. Today, we have tension and wobbles and it's a Scrawly Day. Hand and arm will not co-operate.
Ah: I remember crafts as a kid. Quite quickly, I got the idea that I was bad at it, because I would get impatient to finish, rush the job and end up with... well, you can picture it, I'm sure. The crooked creature made with corks, matchsticks and glue. The drawings that never pleased me or anyone else. The clay work from school that was always irregular and never, ever neat: the coil pot that had uneven sides, even as a round thing. I think my dear mum, 86 today, still has the solid blue clay dice (die?) that I made in high school and gave to her. Hah - it took ages to dry through, and it is... wonky! - But she had kept it, and not even lost it, which probably I would have done, even if I tried to keep it. It is a good book-end.
There was a badge that I undertook to gain, for Girl Guides: something to do with loving books, the criteria for which I attained easily, except for one: I had to repair or re-cover a book. My feedback on that one eventually taught me a new expression: "skew-whiff". Thinking it was a sentence filler like "ummm...", I used it like that, until told what it really meant; then and only then did I fully understand what the assessor was trying to convey about my book repair! - But I got the badge to sew - probably crookedly - onto my uniform sleeve; a badge with a book, and that was all that mattered! :-)
Knitting: an earnest try in late teens or early twenties, I think. I learned how to do basic stocking stitch. Being impatient for length, I knitted a long, thin strip of reasonable evenness, and then had the vision: I would knit a jumper (sweater) like this! - In a long spiral of stocking stitch, all different colours. I kept the project in an old, vinyl travel bag, and would forget about it for a while, rediscover it, have a renewed go at the project, then forget about it again.
At some point during the knitting of The Potential Spiral Jumper, I got married and moved house. A few years of chaos passed; did I ever rediscover that project? There were, eventually, a number of moves and currently I have absolutely no idea whether I still have the bag, and whether the Potential Spiral Jumper is still intact or, as is likely, consumed by moth larvae over the years.
Poor Potential Spiral Jumper: doomed to not exist due to a combination of distraction, impatience, low skill, and the whole thing about I-don't-see-it-and-therefore-I-forget-it-exists.
Oh: and to be kind to myself: I know now, decades on, that I was an autistic woman, trying to manage a household, and to work, and to raise two brilliant autistic kids, with an autistic partner, none of us with diagnoses or support.. and just constantly overwhelmed with life. - So there were no brain cells left for the Potential Spiral Jumper. I wonder what happened to it?
I guess it now has existence as a concept. :-)
There is a happy postscript:
For the last decade or so of my work language teaching, I got heavily into storytelling, creating illustrations for my mad stories with touch screens that forgivingly erased multiple wonky lines. Sometimes I would draw at work, going through a student's recount of a holiday or something in the target language, and drawing nutty cartoonish pictures to go with the story. Not only did I love this process, but the kids loved it, too. I think part of the reason was that they were NOT good drawings, and that left them feeling encouraged to have a go themselves. - That, and their weird flatness made them laugh.
There were, in the end, quite a few stories with my trademark flat, cartoony characters in them, and a couple got made into "proper books" with comprehensible text in the target language, and often humour. Not published or anything; just through those businesses that make photo books for your family.
Since beginning those drawings, I have discovered that actually having a scribble on the laptop touch screen is quite enjoyable. I keep on drawing, from time to time, mainly for the process. Now: where has the stylus gone? I'll find it one day. :-)
Oh my goodness! Reading this was an absolute delight! I love that a small prompt could elicit such an intricate and wide (I love that you described my storytelling as wide! And am excited about this new meaning in my vocabulary) story.
I have some wonderful memories of the kids playing Stella Stella Ola during a playdate in that space as well as seeing DeAnne Smith perform. I am looking forward to seeing the new space when we visit Lunenburg. The fact that it is so close to a place we visit often (my in laws live there) feels very serendipitous!
There's a LOT of heart in it, and breath, and movement, expanding and contracting and travelling on.
- And my brain isn't working right now, to remind me of projects forgotten, to share with you... surely therw are many..I will come back to it, perhaps.
...
Just: a note of appreciation, here, for you being a particular, splendid human, who builds... shapes...creates... embraces...invites...
I’m ever so grateful that we’ve found each other in this big wide world and this space specifically.
Today I drew a fairy wrens (but I kind of made it up based on what I thought a fairy wrens might look like)…and now it’s about to hang in a gallery. And that is because of you and your sharing of your fairy wrens story! 💖
I look forward to reading the stories this prompt brought up for you and so very much understand a brain that is not currently working (mine is having difficulty in the very moment…I’m writing from a loud restaurant in order to regulate)
Curious & Kind will forever be the starting point for me to truly blossom into the me that I had to hide from the world. Being accepted for who I truly am, was a turning point in my life’s journey. I was free in that space. I felt the love and respect that every human should have. I was welcomed and seen. Thank you for all the wonderful days of joy experienced there. ❤️❤️❤️🐙🐌🍄
Here you go, Wake: A project abandoned. - And the process of recollection was enjoyable, so thank you for the prompt. :-)
Long ago - surely it is one or two lifetimes - long ago, I was in my early twenties and was having my second go at really, properly learning how to knit. THIS TIME, I was going to do it PROPERLY.
As a child (told I was clumsy, and known for not having brilliant fine motor skills) I'd gotten as far as plain or garter stitch with knitting, doing the wonky squares and scarves that have wobbly sides, not only due to stopping stitches but also not having consistent tension, or something. Probably I held it differently each time I took it up. That's only just now occurred to me, as I now know that how well I can hold a pencil or pen is quite a variable thing for me. On some days, the pen is held lightly and I can write neatly for a while - for a while. On others: no, no neat writing today. Today, we have tension and wobbles and it's a Scrawly Day. Hand and arm will not co-operate.
Ah: I remember crafts as a kid. Quite quickly, I got the idea that I was bad at it, because I would get impatient to finish, rush the job and end up with... well, you can picture it, I'm sure. The crooked creature made with corks, matchsticks and glue. The drawings that never pleased me or anyone else. The clay work from school that was always irregular and never, ever neat: the coil pot that had uneven sides, even as a round thing. I think my dear mum, 86 today, still has the solid blue clay dice (die?) that I made in high school and gave to her. Hah - it took ages to dry through, and it is... wonky! - But she had kept it, and not even lost it, which probably I would have done, even if I tried to keep it. It is a good book-end.
There was a badge that I undertook to gain, for Girl Guides: something to do with loving books, the criteria for which I attained easily, except for one: I had to repair or re-cover a book. My feedback on that one eventually taught me a new expression: "skew-whiff". Thinking it was a sentence filler like "ummm...", I used it like that, until told what it really meant; then and only then did I fully understand what the assessor was trying to convey about my book repair! - But I got the badge to sew - probably crookedly - onto my uniform sleeve; a badge with a book, and that was all that mattered! :-)
Knitting: an earnest try in late teens or early twenties, I think. I learned how to do basic stocking stitch. Being impatient for length, I knitted a long, thin strip of reasonable evenness, and then had the vision: I would knit a jumper (sweater) like this! - In a long spiral of stocking stitch, all different colours. I kept the project in an old, vinyl travel bag, and would forget about it for a while, rediscover it, have a renewed go at the project, then forget about it again.
At some point during the knitting of The Potential Spiral Jumper, I got married and moved house. A few years of chaos passed; did I ever rediscover that project? There were, eventually, a number of moves and currently I have absolutely no idea whether I still have the bag, and whether the Potential Spiral Jumper is still intact or, as is likely, consumed by moth larvae over the years.
Poor Potential Spiral Jumper: doomed to not exist due to a combination of distraction, impatience, low skill, and the whole thing about I-don't-see-it-and-therefore-I-forget-it-exists.
Oh: and to be kind to myself: I know now, decades on, that I was an autistic woman, trying to manage a household, and to work, and to raise two brilliant autistic kids, with an autistic partner, none of us with diagnoses or support.. and just constantly overwhelmed with life. - So there were no brain cells left for the Potential Spiral Jumper. I wonder what happened to it?
I guess it now has existence as a concept. :-)
There is a happy postscript:
For the last decade or so of my work language teaching, I got heavily into storytelling, creating illustrations for my mad stories with touch screens that forgivingly erased multiple wonky lines. Sometimes I would draw at work, going through a student's recount of a holiday or something in the target language, and drawing nutty cartoonish pictures to go with the story. Not only did I love this process, but the kids loved it, too. I think part of the reason was that they were NOT good drawings, and that left them feeling encouraged to have a go themselves. - That, and their weird flatness made them laugh.
There were, in the end, quite a few stories with my trademark flat, cartoony characters in them, and a couple got made into "proper books" with comprehensible text in the target language, and often humour. Not published or anything; just through those businesses that make photo books for your family.
Since beginning those drawings, I have discovered that actually having a scribble on the laptop touch screen is quite enjoyable. I keep on drawing, from time to time, mainly for the process. Now: where has the stylus gone? I'll find it one day. :-)
Oh my goodness! Reading this was an absolute delight! I love that a small prompt could elicit such an intricate and wide (I love that you described my storytelling as wide! And am excited about this new meaning in my vocabulary) story.
I have some wonderful memories of the kids playing Stella Stella Ola during a playdate in that space as well as seeing DeAnne Smith perform. I am looking forward to seeing the new space when we visit Lunenburg. The fact that it is so close to a place we visit often (my in laws live there) feels very serendipitous!
Wow! That's a
w i d e
story!
There's a LOT of heart in it, and breath, and movement, expanding and contracting and travelling on.
- And my brain isn't working right now, to remind me of projects forgotten, to share with you... surely therw are many..I will come back to it, perhaps.
...
Just: a note of appreciation, here, for you being a particular, splendid human, who builds... shapes...creates... embraces...invites...
Delights. Thank you, Wake.
I’m ever so grateful that we’ve found each other in this big wide world and this space specifically.
Today I drew a fairy wrens (but I kind of made it up based on what I thought a fairy wrens might look like)…and now it’s about to hang in a gallery. And that is because of you and your sharing of your fairy wrens story! 💖
I look forward to reading the stories this prompt brought up for you and so very much understand a brain that is not currently working (mine is having difficulty in the very moment…I’m writing from a loud restaurant in order to regulate)
Curious & Kind will forever be the starting point for me to truly blossom into the me that I had to hide from the world. Being accepted for who I truly am, was a turning point in my life’s journey. I was free in that space. I felt the love and respect that every human should have. I was welcomed and seen. Thank you for all the wonderful days of joy experienced there. ❤️❤️❤️🐙🐌🍄
I feel as if Curious & Kind was like an octopus…with so many limbs doing so many things…and multiple hearts…you being one of those hearts.
I’m ever grateful you found the space. And so so honoured to call you friend. 💖
Thank you for helping to make Curious & Kind what is was, and for helping it become what it will be.
Sounds to me like you've hung in there when it really counts.❤️