It doesn't matter where you go on the first floor of a hotel in Regina, Saskatchewan, it is still cold.
The business centre is just off of the lobby, and everytime someone enters or exits, a blast of -20 degree air comes in. I suppose I shouldn't complain; I don't live in this all the time. We get down to -20 in Ontario all through January and much of February, but it starts so early here. You have to hand it to the prairie folk. They're hardy stock, on both sides of the border.
I've spoken in the morning and in the evening for the last few days, but the afternoons I've had free. During these spare moments I've been hibernating in my hotel room with some luxurious, yummy cashmere yarn I bought this summer. I'm knitting fingerless gloves that are unbelievably soft. It's like carrying around an angora rabbit on your hands. They're so warm, even though they're relatively thin, and the yarn is just delectable to work with. It's been bliss.
What hasn't been as blissful is the offerings on the television. Even though 60 channels are available, there really is nothing on. We don't live with a television; we do watch movies, but more often than not I'm on the internet or just knitting in the same room as my husband does his hobby. I do enjoy watching television when I travel; it's a bit of a treat. But this weekend there's been nothing on. I deigned to watch CSI Miami yesterday, and I found I couldn't watch much of it. I just don't want to see dead and mutilated bodies. I know many love the show, but I find it so dark.
This afternoon I surfed to see what was on and the only show was Hoarders. Looked like an interesting concept (I thought about it more like a decluttering show), but boy was it depressing. I only lasted five minutes before shutting it off, because these people have honest to goodness mental illnesses. It seemed wrong to watch them, like they were in a zoo.
Instead I checked what movies were on, and settled for Julie & Julia. I really enjoyed it. First, it was so complimentary of marriage. Both women received their greatest joy and support in their lives from their husbands, and in turn realized that they were to support their husbands, too (and feel convicted when they do not). With all the marriage bashing going on, it was refreshing to see something that treated it well.
But the food in it was almost as delectable as my cashmere yarn. I love cooking, though I'm definitely not a French chef. But as I was watching it occurred to me that the appeal of someone like a Julia Child is that we women, even if we lead mundane lives, want some beauty there. And food can be so beautiful. In our lives we can settle for drab, or we can take that extra step to make the everyday stupendous.
Julia Child made it stupendous. And as Julie, the modern day character, immerses herself in these recipes, she feels a thrill that was so lacking in her life.
Many homeschooling curriculum publishers offer curriculum on the wifely arts of housekeeping, and I have to admit to finding it mildly amusing, and at times a little off-putting. It is not that I don't appreciate cooking; it is only that the curriculum seems so intent to slot our girls into a certain mold. And yet I think these books have a point. Generations ago these things were concerned "art": cooking, decorating, homemaking. They were not drudgery. Women made beautiful art out of scraps of fabric in the form of quilting. They knit rag rugs. They created masterpieces for dinner, even if they didn't know how to cook the French way.
Today we try to take shortcuts in everything. We don't make rag rugs. We don't cook from scratch. We try to avoid what seems like work. And yet isn't art also work? And can't work also be art? We have substituted the art that used to be a part of everyday life and instead carved out the time that would have been spent on that art and busied it up with watching television, or running even more errands, or driving our children to gymnastics.
Maybe we need a touch of art in our lives. Maybe we need a foray into French cooking, or into Christmas decorating, or into knitting cashmere fingerless gloves. We need more art in our lives.
I have been speaking this weekend about the pressures that we women put on ourselves to achieve certain things at Christmas, and I don't mean to put more onto us. But as with most things in life, the problem is not the THING. It is the ATTITUDE. This year I want to bake cookies. Glorious, yummy sugar cookies, with real butter, no matter the fat content. I don't want to do it because I feel pressured to bake for my family and neighbours. I don't want to do it so that I can be a proper mother. I want to do it so that I can have the thrill of making my own cookies.
Maybe you need such a thrill in your life, too. Watch the movie, and let yourself dream a bit. What can bring beauty and art into your everyday life? Is it cooking? Is it crocheting? Is it writing? God Himself creates; I think He smiles when we do, too.
So this season, find the joy in making something beautiful out of what is just a simple part of life. And feel your heart thrill in the process.
Last week I took a five day road trip with my mom.
We drove nine hours to the state of Maine, where we participated in the Maine Fiber Arts Tour. About a hundred odd farms, studios, yarn shops, and more were on the tour, and we chose the ones we were interested in most. In general, this happened to be farms. We saw prize winning sheep, angora goats, angora rabbits, and my favourite--alpacas.
Here's an alpaca:
Their wool is four times warmer than sheep, and it is SO soft!
But angoras are my mother's favourite. She's planning on getting some soon. Check this one out:
The owner is holding up the ears so that you "can tell it's a bunny". Otherwise it just looks like a blob of fur. We bought some skeins of wool mixed with angora, and it's heavenly. Don't know what I'll knit it into yet, but it is so lovely. Almost as nice as the alpaca!
In fact, let me give you a few more alpaca photos. Here's a baby:
And here's two babies with a mom:
Are they not the cutest thing?
And here's something else I learned. Cashmere comes from goats. Did you know that?
Bought some lovely cashmere at this one farm to make some fingerless gloves.
All in all, it was a great time away with my mother. Every now and then I do need to take some time and connect with her without the kids.
We also learned that there is a remarkable lack of foundational garments worn by the women in Maine who raise animals for fiber. It seems they all love to knit, but they don't mind if certain things droop. To each her own, but personally, I love my "foundational garments". I need the help to have a bit of shape!
Ever thought of that? Before sin entered the world, and God punished Adam and Eve, he had already assigned them work. They were to care for the garden, and watch over the animals. They had things to do.
Work was not punishment. There is something intrinsically good about "the works of our hands". Throughout the Bible, one of the blessings God promises His children is that one day they will get to "enjoy the fields they have planted" and "live in the houses they built". Too often, they would plant and someone else would eat it, or build and someone else would take it. But it is a blessing to be able to enjoy something that we produced ourselves.
Do we forget that? I think the problem is that our "work" has become so far removed from our "hands", in some ways, that we miss the satisfaction that comes in completing something. When you work all day, outside of the house, in meetings or in strategy sessions, you are accomplishing something. But it's a different feeling than when you garden and you actually see something grow, or when you build something in a carpentry shop or when you knit.
I was thinking about this last night when I finished another sweater. Here's a not very good picture, but see what you think:
I was using up all kinds of yarn I have, so I decided to a striped sweater. It's made with about 25 different yarns, and I had a lot of fun doing it. It looks better with a long shirt on underneath, but it's a warm sweater and it's hot out today, so I just took the picture with that. I probably won't wear it until the winter.
But on to the point at hand. There is something really satisfying about accomplishing something with your hands, of producing something with your own effort. We feel it when we give a room a thorough cleaning, or when we make a scrumptious meal, or when we plant a garden. We feel it when we needlepoint, or scrapbook, or woodwork.
And I think there's a reason for that. God is a creative God and He is an orderly God. In nature, the law of entropy tells us that things go from a state of order to state of increasing disorder. It's impossible for it to go the other way. And so when we intervene, and create order out of disorder, we're participating in God's creation, in a way (I don't mean to be blasphemous, but you know what I mean, right?). When we take a disordered room and clean it, we're actually doing a godly thing. When we take different bits of yarn and create something useful out of it, we're participating in a godly endeavour.
But here's the problem: all these godly endeavours are slowly being drowned out in our society. A century ago, when most people had the experience of living on a farm, they knew what it was to work the land. I don't mean to glorify that life, but I do think working with the soil teaches you something that working on a computer doesn't.
They also made their own clothes, and cooked from scratch all the time. We don't.
Even our hobbies are increasingly becoming technified. We watch TV, blog (!), surf the internet, or play videogames. These things are all fun, but what do you have to show for it later? Maybe one of the reasons we increasingly feel dissatisfied with life, and yearn for a vacation, is because we don't get the true satisfaction that comes from doing something with our hands enough.
Maybe if we took more time during the day to turn off the computer and the TV and pick up a crochet hook while we listen to music, or talk to our kids, or if we ventured outside and weeded a garden bed while talking to Jesus, we'd feel better about our lives and we'd have less of a need to escape.
Modern life is both a blessing and a curse. All that we have is a blessing. The ease with which we can meet our basic needs is such a relief compared to what the most of the world lives like today, or what our own culture lived like a century and a half ago. But it's a curse, too, because it takes us that step away from the works of our hands.
So let me encourage you today: take up a hobby. Create something. Work with your hands. It doesn't even have to be good; just do something! It gets you in touch with God's creativity, I think, and it lends a rhythm and a beauty to our lives.
What do you like to do? What relaxes you? Have you ever had that experience of feeling dissatisfied, largely because you haven't been creative or productive with your hands for a while? Tell me about it, because I'm still working out my thoughts on the subject!
They say that guilt is women's number one emotion. At any particular time, we're feeling guilty about at least two things. And if you're not feeling guilty right now, if you thought about it for a while, you could talk yourself into it.
Some of those things are serious. We feel guilty for not exercising. We feel guilty for not eating right, praying enough with our kids, cleaning more.
But some are more frivolous. For instance, do you have a closet in your house where you place all your unfinished craft projects? My house is filled with UFOs. My mother says that she's leaving me hers in her will. We have them everywhere. We spent all that money on scrapbooking supplies, and then we've done so little with it. We started that needlepoint for the baby's nursery, and the baby is now 11. We started that quilt, and now we have basting all over the place and it looks ridiculous.
So we feel like we can never follow through.
I used to do that. I started every new craft under the sun. I made soap. I sewed. I painted, stained, and stencilled. I made cards. I wove.
And then I realized something. I don't actually like doing very many of those things. I really don't. What I do like doing is knitting. And so I have decided to do one craft for the rest of my life, and only one. I may occasionally choose a one day project, like making soap, that I can do with my kids, but on the whole, I will not feel guilty about not quilting. I will not beat myself up for not painting my old piano in interesting ways. I will not feel guilty about not refinishing my coffee table.
Because I knit awesome socks. And you should see the sweaters I make!
That colourful one I made when I was 19. It's got a little out of style, so since that picture I remodelled it and made it into a cardigan. It's nice.
Of course, I still have lots of unfinished projects. They're just all knitting. But I know I'll get to them sometime, because I really enjoy them.
So I don't think there's anything wrong with finding one craft that you really like, and concentrating on it. And all those other things you started, but never finished? Give them to someone who actually likes that sort of stuff and get them out of the house! You'll feel a lot better.
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It is good to know the areas in which you have no self-control.
For me, that area is novels. I don't read novels that often, mostly because when I do, the rest of my life gets utterly neglected.
When the children were younger, if I got into a novel, they would have to make their own lunches (I know we have peanut butter around here somewhere; go find it. If not, just have some ice cream). They would dress themselves. They would play by themselves. Because I could not leave that novel until I got to the last page.
Over the last few weeks, while I have been sick, I've reread the Diana Gabaldon Outlander series, which I love. There's parts of it I don't love; she seems far more explicit sometimes in the violent scenes than need be, and parts are rather ugly to think about. But it's a great, exciting romance that spans six books, I think, which are all wonderful.
Anyway, this morning I had things to do. Many things to do. Important things to do. But I also had 70 pages to finish. Guess what won out?
Happily, I am now done the novels, so I can get back to my real life. But I do laugh at how I just can't seem to put books down. I'm not sure why that is, but I've always been like that. I'm not one of those people that can have a novel "on the go", reading a chapter or two at a time, and then picking up where I left off later on. If I start it, I have to finish it, usually in one go.
Picking novels is hard, too, because I don't want something that's too sexually explicit, but I also want something with real life in it. I love some Christian writers, like Francine Rivers' Roman series, and some of Karen Kingsbury. I like the thriller and legal novels a lot more, like Randy Alcorn or Randy Singer. But occasionally there are secular writers I love, too, and Diana Gabaldon is one of them.
I think the reason I like her is that she portrays marriage in a really beautiful way. All the sex scenes in the book (the good ones, that is; not the rapes) are between married couples, and they're not explicit. It's not like soft porn or anything. But it is very romantic. It always gives me warm and fuzzy feelings about my own husband, which I figure is a good thing. And I do like the way she stresses marriage in her work. I think she's writing from a very Catholic background, though that's just my own guess. But I like that.
Now that I'm done, I think I shall get back to knitting. My knitting fell by the wayside recently because of illness and other distractions, and I never feel quite right unless I'm knitting something. And knitting I can pick up and then put down without spontaneously combusting, so it's a safer hobby. So I'll go back to my "knit at least two rows every day" to stay sane prescription. Somehow I always feel more grounded with needles in my hands.
Books are like an obsession to me; they fire me up, and it's hard to come back to reality. Knitting, on the other hand, grounds me in reality. It gives me time to think, and be peaceful, and even pray. So I'll go back there for a time.
The novels have been fun, but it's time to return home. And it's probably about time to start feeding the kids again, too.
Last week I flew down to Sonoma, California, for a professional development conference with my agent. We learned tons about marketing, humour, and best of all, I finished knitting two pairs of socks! Well, actually, some of the marketing information was extremely useful. But I did really need that time to knit again!
(For anyone who is interested, the pinkish socks use a short row heel, while the purply/blue ones use a traditional one. It was fun).
Anyway, another thrill was getting to meet other writers! And I didn't even realize that some of the mom bloggers that I read everyday are actually represented by my agent, too. So it was great to meet Dawn Meehan, aka mom2my6pack at Because I Said So! She has her first book coming out in April, and is she excited! I remember how that felt.
I also met up with Tricia Goyer, whom I've known online for quite a while, too. Tricia twitters. A lot. And she writes great books!
Here I'm standing with Tricia.
And here I am with Dawn and Tricia. I have to say Dawn looks way too good in this picture compared to the rest of us. I caught Dawn several times in the bathroom phoning home, finding out how her husband was doing with six kids by himself. But in pictures she looks all dignified. But I'm not bitter.
The worst part of the week was the jetlag. We had to drive to Syracuse the night before so we could fly within the States instead of flying out of Toronto, which is a hassle and which is more expensive. But we had to be at the Syracuse airport at 4:30 a.m., which meant getting up at 4. For a plane that was delayed an hour and a half. But I'm still not bitter.
When we finally arrived in Sonoma I was exhausted, but dinner that night didn't start until 6:30 their time (three hours behind little ole me). We went to bed early.
The next day was just hectic: full of classes, and I had to get my pictures taken by a professional photographer, and lots more stuff. So by the evening I had a migraine. A bad one. So bad I ended up throwing up, which I have not done with a headache since I was 16. By then I was a little bitter.
Now it's five days later and I still have a residual headache. And the bitterness is growing. But it was still a marvelous time, and Sonoma was beautiful! Best of all, apparently we missed freezing rain and snow while we were away. I think my kids were bitter about that one.
I'll post some more pictures of biking in the wine country, which we did one afternoon to get some fresh air and make me feel a little less like a slug. That was probably the highlight of the trip.
Now I shall go take some more Advil, and think about the wonderful weather down there...
While I was in Alaska earlier this summer I knit socks for my daughter's birthday. I love knitting. I even take socks to the grocery store to knit while I'm in line. Hey, they're portable!
But what do you do with the leftover sock yarn? I never use up a whole ball.
So I knit baby socks.
Here they are:
Right after I arrived home our neighbours that back onto our back yard had a baby girl. So I had the perfect little gift! And aren't they cute? One for my baby (who is 11) and one for hers.
Today's Works for Me Wednesday is about recycled yarn.
We had to figure out what to do with yarn, because we had it coming out the wazoo.
Let me explain. Our family, including my mother, travels to Africa frequently to work at the Mulli Children's Home, home to 1000 orphaned children. They do such an incredible job there, and I have never felt God so present anywhere on earth as I do in that place.
One of the things my mother and I have been doing is starting a knitting program for some of the teenage girls so they can earn money later. They have a huge sewing program, but everybody sews already. Nobody knits. So we've been sending over knitting machines and containers full of yarn. We put the word out that we wanted yarn, and it just keeps showing up. Every week my mother still gets garbage bags full at her door. We have so much yarn we don't know what to do with it. Most of it is just a ball of this and a ball of that, so we've had to figure out some patterns for it.
While there, we made some beautiful striped sweaters on the machine, like these ones:
I taught them how to use the machines, and voila! I especially like the one on the left. We made it in less than a day. But that's what you do when you don't have much yarn.
On the home front, though, we've also been trying to turn yarn into cash for the orphanage. A few Queen's University students have volunteered to sell stuff for us next year at Homecoming, so yesterday my mother and I made sample scraf kits. This is where the recycled yarn really gets interesting.
Queen's colours are red, blue and yellow. Sounds awful, I know, but they didn't ask my opinion. So we took those yarns and we started combining three yarns at a time to create more interesting yarns (most of the stuff that's donated looks awful on its own). Add a few "furry" or "fuzzy" yarns in, and it gets quite lovely.
Here's the ball we made:
Looks really nice, doesn't it? And it mostly was made from crap, if you don't mind me saying. So if you have little bits of this and little bits of that, you can twist them together, combine yarn, and come up with something that's lovely.
We started knitting the scarf yesterday. Here it is so far (Katie, my 10-year-old, and I are very fast knitters):
(Note for knitters: I know some of the colour changes were on the "wrong" side when they should have been on the right side. I wouldn't normally do this, but we're trying to create a continuous skein that the students can knit on their own, without constantly adding colours, so the colour changes just fall where they may. And since this is a sample, we had to show it how it actually will look). We're going to leave the ends hanging and then add fringe, and maybe even tie some beads on some of the ends from the colour changes.
That's not all you can make by combining three yarns together, either. Here's a baby poncho I did (I haven't worked the ends in yet):
And here's a blanket I'm working on. I just need to crochet the top band in navy and work the ends in and then I'm done:
The point is that if you mix three yarns together, they make something much more interesting. And so even relatively ugly yarns, or uncomfortable yarns, can be used because they'll be masked by other things. It's quite fun, actually. I've also made adult ponchos and baby blankets, and the baby blankets sell for quite a lot of money. They look like one of a kind.
In the blanket, the navies that are bordering all the squares aren't even all the same. I just kept picking up new navies to use when I ran out. It really doesn't matter.
So use up your scraps! Another friend of mine goes to Goodwill and buys handknit sweaters just to unravel them and use the yarn. It's an inexpensive way of getting yarn! After you've unravelled it, wet it, and microwave for a few minutes on low and the kinks will come out. You can look for instructions on that through Google.
Anyway, hope I gave you some inspiration!
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About Me: I'm a Christian author of a bunch of books, and a frequent speaker to women's groups and marriage conferences. Best of all, I love homeschooling my daughters, Rebecca and Katie. And I love to knit. Preferably simultaneously.
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