On Creativity

 Hi there.  Still waiting on my chairs and assorted furniture here in California.

Meanwhile I've been sock knitting.

These are my typical 64 stitch vanilla sock with an eye of partridge heel using hedgehog fibers yarn in the ozone colorway.

Say that five times fast.

I really haven't been working on much else, but I had another reason to stop by and hang out for awhile.  I was asked to talk about how I got into all this crafting stuff.  Which is an interesting story (or not, depending on your perspective).

It actually didn't start with knitting.  My first love was counted cross stitch.  I guess that happened when I was a child, my mom was an avid cross stitcher, I think she dabbled in crochet, too.  But I didn't really take to it that much.  In the spring of 2007 I moved in with Zac, my now husband (spoilers!). I was a student at the time and he lived about 6 hours north of where we met and where my dad lived at the time.  Zac had recently gotten out of the navy and landed a rather amazing job at a power plant.  Six Hours North.

But I took the risk and I moved in with him. His job was rather taxing at the time, it was a rotating shift thing and I was bored.

That's when I remembered cross stitching.  A quick jaunt to Michael's one weekend and I was off.

Somewhere in that time I got pregnant.  I befriended a woman whose husband worked with Zac.  She was a doula, and her mother was a knitter.  I didn't know all that about her, but when Hazel (my daughter) was around 18 months old in December 2009, she invited me over to learn to knit with her mother and another friend of hers.

Knitting was one of those things that I never had any inclination to do.  It seemed difficult, I thought it was for grannies, and I said I'd never do that.  See, now, if any of you know me, you're laughing right now because you know that if I say that, nine times out of ten I'm going to try the thing.  If not bury myself in it completely.

Instead of waiting for the knitting party, I bought a few needles and yarn and got started on youtube.  6 hours later I sort of got the hang of casting on and knitting.

Honestly I should have waited.  I've taught quite a few people to knit, and it is so much easier when someone is there to hold your hand a bit.  What took me 6 whole hours usually takes my students about 30 minutes.

Anyway, I'm sort of going on.  Looking back, it feels like my life was leading up to knitting.  I had a few other things to do, what with taking care of a child and all, but from that point on I was always knitting. 

In the winter of 2011 I found ravelry.  Ravelry is a social media site and pattern database for knitters, crocheters, spinners and weavers.  It took me to another level of knitting.  I went from basic knitting, maybe a cable, to fearless lace, complicated cables, charts and beyond.

That was the year that my son was born and we all moved to New Hampshire. Ravelry enabled me to meet new knitters in the area when I got there. 

 I have a bit of a... strained relationship with that social media site now.  For a long long time, it was like a best friend.  It connected me to countless crafters around the world.  I found LSG, I found my people. LSG is a group on ravelry full of irreverent crafters like myself.  It stands for Lazy Stupid and Godless.  In 2020, the owners of the site decided to revamp it.  Unfortunately, it was not tested properly and within a day or two of roll out, it caused several people to have seizures, and Quite a few more to experience eye fatigue, migraines, other maladies.  I was one of the 'headache due to eye strain' people, but even if I weren't, the reaction by the site maintainers was Appalling.

I did quit the site for about 6 months, and started the blog here.  But I did return in January.  I figure I punished them enough?  I don't know, it's the most useful knitting tool out there, I'm convinced.  They did make some repairs to the coding to make it a bit more usable for a majority of people. Mostly though, I missed my friends.  I missed them dearly.  With COVID being so isolating in the first place, it really was the worst timing of all.

ANYWAY.  We're not here to talk about that.

I think we've left off at around 2012.  I've just moved into our house with my two kids and husband.  I'm making friends locally.  Things are exciting still.

One summer we went up to a friend's mother's campground for dye weekend.  That was Super fun.  There we knit, hung out, dyed yarn and bonded.  It was an annual tradition for years and years and it was something to look forward to for sure.

In fact, one particular year, 2015, we all got into spindle spinning.  One of my friends was into spinning and weaving and some of the more niche fiber arts.  She was the one that enabled us to dye yarn in the first place.  Well, I said I'd never do it.  spinning? On top of all the knitting I do?  I don't think I'll ever do that.

(I can hear you laughing!)

Why yes, I buried myself in it.  And the following Spring I begged Zac for a spinning wheel.  Not that it was hard to convince him.  It was not.  He has always been happy that I pursue my hobbies.

Somewhere in there I learned to sew on a machine.  I did mostly project bags and simple dresses.  Straight lines and some zippers.  Maybe some quilt piecing.

That's honestly about it.  I did learn to weave a few years ago, but honestly it kind of hurts my back and doesn't pull me the way spinning and knitting do.  I also delved into english paper piecing (there was a post about hexies a few months ago if you recall).  And I dabbled in embroidery too, which scratches an itch that counted cross stitch does not.  In the latter there's order and control, in the former there can be chaos.

This leads me into an interesting discussion about creativity.

If you can believe it, for the longest time I didn't consider myself to be creative at all.

I thought that creativity was a different animal altogether from crafting. I thought that all creative people were rogues who manifested things and improvised.  People who saw the world from a different perspective, who were able to throw things together and have it turn out.

Finally, after much thought, I realized it's entirely the opposite.  Improvisation is really only successful when you know the rules first.  Any creative endeavor begins with understanding how the thing works.  Chefs, painters, craftsmen, musicians, wordplay, anything.  No one starts cooking by throwing ingredients in a pan.  Well, some do.  But it's not the improvisation that makes one creative, it's the making things that make one creative.

I am a rule follower.  I like a good rule.  I thought that meant I couldn't possibly be creative.  Me, who crafts all day long.  Not creative.

Confounding.

I don't really have a good way to end this post.  I hope you enjoyed reading about how I got where I am.  If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I'm an open book.  Hopefully next time we meet, I'll have chairs.