When A Piece Starts To Get Unruly, The Fun Has Just Begun...

"I know of the way of all things by what is within me."

~ Lao Tzu ~

I think it looks like a rainbow colored taco shell.... of
course, folded in half it looks like an oyster shell...

Now the fun begins. I started at the center with my first crochet stitches ever. With each color change I have tried new stitches or little patterns making each of the rows a little different from one another. I asked the wonderful women on my fiber list, Women's Artistic Soul, for suggestions. And then I sat there a few nights ago, having gone all the way around with the light blue, a very soft thin wool that tends to break easily, and the second go round I had an idea, and I am delighted with it. What is happening is that it is starting to pull the ends in. It will take many more colors to achieve this goal, but I think what it's going to be is a purse, a big round one, with spoolknitted drawstring cord, and spoolknitted or crocheted handles. At least I think that's what it's going to be. One never knows, certainly not the intuitive artist!

And the above quote by Lao Tzu is so apt with a process like this, and it works in two (or more) different ways. If you trust what is within you, you don't worry if you can accomplish your goal, you just do it. And then when you see that you can indeed do it, you gain more confidence in yourself so that the ability to do more things, to manage Life itself, becomes less frightening, and seems more doable. One feeds the other and makes us far more capable of handling the things that come our way.

When I was leaving my marriage in 1999, a woman who had walked that road before me and made it through very difficult times said something to me I have never forgotten, and it is one of the most important things anyone has ever said to me. She said, "When someone asks me if I can do something, I always say "Yes!" and then I go home and figure out how to do it. She is an artist and her freelance work took her down many different avenues. She had enough faith in herself to know that she could jump in one way or another and get the job done, and further, she had no choice, she had to to survive. And survive she has.

I think this is one of the reasons that I have been drawn deeper and deeper into the fiber arts over the years. When you knit, weave, spin, crochet, whatever artform you are working in, there is a beginning, a middle, and an end. You can see the thing start to come together, you can see it come to completion, and you look at it and you think "I did this!" And it reinforces within us the knowledge that we can be more than we thought we could, that we can gain a new skill, that we can make a thing of beauty, and this knowledge carries us down the stream of life giving us more confidence along the way. It stands us in good stead, this knowledge that we can create, we can achieve our dreams, and once we know that is inside us, we can tackle anything, we can take on the world.

I know this to be true because I have been going through a very hard time for many months. As the worst of it hit this summer I started this piece of crochet, and there have been times that I have clung to it for dear life, crocheting madly round and round, with no destination, I simply had to crochet. And it has steadied me and is helping me through the hard times. What a gift. A simple crochet hook and a bag of balls of colorful yarn and there you go. What could be easier? Oh, there are multitudes of stitches still to learn and many more kinds of things I will eventually make, but for now, none of it matters. I am crocheting my world together with each stitch, I am following what is within me to create something outside of me, and in doing so am strengthing my inner core so that as the hard times ahead come I will have a tool to see me through. I don't go anywhere without my crochet bag and sometimes, if I get nervous or afraid, a few simple stitches are all I need to help me come back to my breath, relax, and work all of my jangling frayed edges into the "piece" that is myself.

So today I work with the blue, finishing the round I am working on that is starting to draw the edges in and bring the piece together. I am always thinking one color and a certain stitch pattern ahead, and I work the current row in such a way that the next color/row will dovetail in just as I want it to. I think no further than that. The rest will be revealed to me along the way. I just say "Yes! I can do it!" and then figure out how...

Blessings and love to one and all, and trust what is within you, it will lead you where you need to go...

Maitri

Crocheting Without A Destination...

"It is good to have an end to journey toward;

but it is the journey that matters, in the end."

~ Ursula Le Guin ~

This journey that I am on with crochet has become both a very poignant, and important time, and is also teaching me, once again, about the healing power of art. You see, my mother's long battle with cancer is catching up with her, she has lost her sight, her valiant spirit has collapsed, and she is depressed in the way where nothing you say helps, and she is, in her way, past helping, gone deep inside herself, on a journey she must travel alone, no matter how many loved ones are around her. A devout Catholic she says she can no longer pray. To hear her say that knocked the wind out of me, but I stay up for her, and then I fall into tears and the bottom falls out from under me.

What is most interesting to me is that I began to crochet a couple of weeks ago right before this fast downward slide began and now I am crocheting as if to hold on to reality, hold something tangible in my hands, and as I crochet round and round my body relaxes, my breathing is regulated, and for a time my depression lifts. The art of crochet is a life source for me just now, and Le Guin's quote is so pertinent... it's not the end that matters, but the journey. I am crocheting without a destination. And this is exactly what I should be doing.

I have thought of things it might become, but already I know I will just keep going and going and going and heavenly days, it could end up a bedspread before it's all over! It really doesn't matter. I just need to keep going. Round and round, hook and yarn and hands moving to some internal rhythm and it really is about the doing of it, not whatever thing it might become.

I have always worked intuitively, and often been surprised where I ended up, but I at least had an inkling when I started where I was headed and simply followed the Muse that was taking me there. Now, this time, I am crocheting as if crocheting itself was all that mattered, not what I am making, not where I am headed, I simply need to hold this piece in my hands and continue to work in new colors and try new stitches and create new little patterns along the way. And there is a kind of freedom in this the likes of which I have never known.

I took a picture earlier with the scanner but had to scrunch the piece up and it was not a good picture. I laid it out on a pillow and took the above picture and you can see it much better. Also, I am playing with photography. Neither the scanner, nor my good camera, seem to capture the latest color. It looks red. It is really a hot pink. So right now I am not just learning about crochet, I am learning how to capture colors that are true to themselves. And through the crochet and the photography I am learning to be true to myself as well. Who knew that when I started this journey into crochet it would become the thing that would keep me centered through one of the hardest times in my life, but so it has.

Listen to your art. It knows better, very often, what we need and how to take us there than we can possibly grasp in the moment. It is our subconscious mind working out it's puzzles and problems and pain with the medium at hand. Once upon a time it was weaving for me, and I still love to weave, but it took something, just now, that was brand new and required a lot of time and attention to do it at all, and in this way it is pulling me through these dark woods as nothing else seems able to. I am deeply grateful, and I shall continue. You will see not only the outcome of the crocheted piece along the way, but an artist growing and deepening within herself. And it the end that is the most important thing of all.

Deep Blessings to one and all. Listen to your heart and let your art take you by the hand and lead you on your way...

Maitri

Obeying My Own Instincts and Intuition ~ And Thinking About Grandma Moses...

"I obey only my own instincts and intuition. I know nothing

in advance. Often I put down things which I do not understand
myself, secure in the knowledge that later they will become
clear and meaningful to me. I have faith in the man who is
writing, who is myself, the writer."

~ Henry Miller ~

When I read Miller's quote today I was thunderstruck. It was so apt for exactly how I am feeling as I work my way into this first piece of crochet. I've still a long way to go and this is the last time I will be able to scan it. It it nearly 8 1/2 inches across now, so I will have to move to photographing it. I love scanning because you get a much clearer picture, so the photographing of it with my camera will be an adventure too.

The reason Miller's quote fit so well with where I am is that this is exactly my process with crochet (as well as writing, and the other fiber art that I do...). As I am doing this piece I don't know how it will end up but I know at least 3 different things it could be, and it will be sizable when this piece is finished, and then I will begin freeforming around on it, and embellishing, and more. The fun part is watching it take shape, playing with color, trying different patterns I make up with each color, and letting my mind leap ahead to the next color and the next. It is thrilling, and truth be told I am as caught up in it as one is in a new love affair. I can barely put it down or think of anything else! I'm not just listening to the moon, I'm over the moon!

I was telling a friend something tonight. She is a photographer, fairly newly into this complex and wondrous art, and she was overwhelmed by all that she feels she needs to learn. It was in that moment that I realized that the reason that I started this blog was not just about my own journey, but because there are so many people that want badly to try something but feel they would have to learn so much before they could even start that, well, it's just too daunting. What I said to her was that one of my favorite things to carry in my mind is the life of Grandma Moses, who didn't take up painting until she was in her 70's, painted until over 100 years of age, and became a legend in her own time and beyond. She didn't have formal training, she just did it! So, too, with crochet. As I told my friend, just learn the first few basic steps to get going and take them as far as you can. You can learn other things you need to know along the way, but all you need do is pick up the camera, the paintbrush, the fiber work and just go with it. Really let go.

I've taught writing like this for 30 years. I teach journal-keeping in a deeply intuitive, healing way, and though this is seemingly about keeping a journal, it is also a push into picking up a pen and writing at all. Many of my students have been professional writers who were blocked, or people who wanted to write but were afraid to start. A journal is a wonderful place to start because you don't have to worry about spelling, punctuation or grammer, and you begin to know what your material is, what your stories are, who you are by writing, unencumbered by rules and worrying about how it will turn out in the end. It's your guts on the page. It's feeling. It's opening up the heartspace and letting everything just flow. It is not intimidating. Often people have taken pieces that started in their journals, and gone on to revise them and publish them. I myself have done this. But if they tried to write a publishable piece at the outset they would have frozen up because they would be too worried about whether or not it was "good enough." In a journal it just is what it is. You write and you are only concerned with the journey along the way. What you may or may not do with it later matters little in the moment. So, too, crochet for me now.

So I pick up this piece of crochet and am in the process of traveling to the outer reaches of what I might learn as I keep going round and round with no thought in mind as to what the end piece will look like. I have ideas about things that I want to try, and my mind is often leap-frogging ahead of me, but I am always open to changing my mind along the way. I know from my lifetime experience as a writer, since nine years old, writing professionally by twenty, and teaching writing for three decades, to trust the process. I once read a wonderful quote whose author has totally left me in this moment, but I've heard variations on this theme by several authors -- Trust the process, it's larger than you... -- and so it is.

And so I close here tonight, ready to go in and make a cup of tea, and settle myself in to play with my crochet. Continually expanding your horizons, learning new things, is a delight past measuring, and keeps us growing in so many directions our spirits are expanded enormously. Onwards and Upwards! Once more into the breech! And yes Henry, I'll gather up my instincts and intuition, my crochet hook and a pile of brightly colored yarns, and my mind will keep popping like a 4th of July fireworks display (... and what perfect timing, on the eve of the 4th!), and round and round I go, and where I stop, I don't even know. And that's just the way it should be, at least for me.

I am now officially a hooker. I wonder what color light a crocheter puts in the window?

Maitri