Because I Can’t Scrapbook

I’ve had a new personal project going for some time now.

It started as a way to burn through some stash. Years of knitting and crocheting have left me with dozens of bits and clumps of yarn, leftover from as many projects. Add that to the budget acquisitions (it was on sale), yarns that didn’t work for their intended purposes, and the occasional random skein that must have been purchased under some foolish or malignant influence, and you’re looking at mild pileup. Having seen a good many other stashes on social media, I would give myself 5 or 6 on a 1-10 scale of stashing.

Above are some of said stash ghosts, many of which have haunted my closet for more moons than I can count on both hands. Both feet too, for that matter. But, as they say, no more.

With Which I am Quite Pleased

This is what I’m making with them:

This is the Seaglass Tee by Wool & Pine Designs (a team of two designers, Abbye & Selena). I sighted this pattern on Instagram shortly after starting an account (I knew there was a reason I got on there…) and, in an uncharacteristic fit of spontaneity, purchased the preorder. The full pattern came out shortly after and I’ve been happily knitting away.

The pattern was designed as a stashbuster for sock yarn scraps. Each row pairs two colors in a 1×1 stranded pattern; the colors are intended to be distributed randomly. I did curate a palette of leftovers to work from (blues, purples, pinks, and oranges) but have been mixing them up as much as possible. It’s far from done, of course. Trudy’s taller than I am, but I still have a few inches of body to go. Then I’ll hit the sleeves and try not to tense up over the small circumference. Provided no disaster strikes, I’ll have a fun new tee for early fall.

A Confession

I confess it wasn’t only spontaneity that motivated me to make this tee.

The years haven’t just left me with baskets of skein fragments. Every fragment used to belong to a project, an event, and a phase in life; and, though it makes me sound obsessive, I remember all of them. Every one. Some of the ‘parent’ projects are pieces I still have; some I gave away; some have been lost. There’s a story that goes with each of them—thoughts, feelings, and at times questions. When I look at this collection of oddments I don’t just see wool, nylon, and hand-dyed colors, or even socks and mittens and garments I’ve made in the past. I see why I made them, who I made them for, the circumstances surrounding that time frame, and even my own state of mind.

I have hefty long-term photographic and auditory memory. This means that for me, recollection is less like going through a journal or even a picture album than going to a 3D movie with surround sound. Even that’s not an accurate analogy—smells, tastes, and sensations are frequently wrapped up in my memories as well. Maybe this is why I’ve never managed to set aside the time to scrapbook; I haven’t needed to. Even if I couldn’t summon up the past more quickly than I can punch a song title into YouTube and hit play, my surroundings, belongings, and activities are still coated in them like a patina. If I’m a 5 out of 10 stasher, I’m a 9 out of 10 memory bank.

This summer has been a time of enormous personal upheaval for me. I’m slowly processing assumptions I’ve made that have been proved wrong, events I could never have foreseen, and sweet memories that seem to have turned sour. Friends who are older and wiser than me are going through it too. Many of them have advised me, sensibly, not to live in the past. I want to listen to them. I also find the past screaming at me from around every bush and corner, in my house and car and yard and hometown—a past I can’t afford to simply block out, even if that were possible.

J.R.R. Tolkien said that his stories came out of the leaf-mold of his mind (it took me years to catch on that leaf-mold meant composted leaves). Everything he created in the present was created from a mishmash of his previous experiences. Keep in mind, Tolkien lost his father as a child and all his friends as a young man. He went through heartbreak (she did end up marrying him…), nearly died of trench fever, and saw Western civilization shaken at its foundations twice by the World Wars. He simultaneously insisted that he never drew inspiration directly from his own past; for example, the spider that bit him as a toddler never affected his perception of spiders as an adult. If you say so, sir. Except, well, Shelob. Come on now.

From where I’m standing, it seems perfectly possible for both of his statements to be true. The Lord of the Rings and its attending mythology are not simple retellings lifted from Tolkien’s life. But he also wrote what he knew, what he loved, and what he hated. He didn’t recreate his own life; he took the fragments and shards of life he’d been handed and created something new.

Planting in the Leaf-Mold

When I look into the plastic bin I’ve been keeping my Seaglass palette in, I see a lot of things. I see hopes that suddenly disappeared from the horizon, stability I once hoped would be lifelong, and optimism that has gone unfulfilled. I see my current self trying to make sense of it all, and possibly failing. There’s a major structural mistake in this sweater, which I made when I was apparently too tired to read the directions.

This piece of knitting is completely out of my wheelhouse. As someone who’s seen in navy, black, or charcoal grey approximately 365 days out of the year, it’s hard for me to imagine wearing something that’s aqua and peach and fuschia and lavender and neon pink all at once. And on top of that, it’s designed to be worn either right or wrong side out. There’s something vulnerable and downright weird about the idea of wearing a colorwork sweater inside out.

What’s even more out of my wheelhouse is the randomness. My fanatically ordered self, preoccupied with symmetry and routine, keeps wanting to only place that neon pink every 6 rounds or only pair a cool color with a warm color. My brain wants the pattern of stripes to start repeating itself at some point, and thus to cruise along predictably until the end. I’m like Captain America with his “I’d just like to know who I’m fighting”—except in my case I’d just like to know what I’m doing. But it doesn’t work that way. I have a full skein of one color and less than 20 yards of another. They’re all different brands and different fiber blends. My plastic bin isn’t like a box of Legos where all the dots obviously fit into all the holes. Life isn’t, either.

So instead of fighting it, I’m trying to work with it. Trying to take it one round and one color combination at a time, trying to give my attention to every individual stitch instead of the entire garment, trying to let go of the need for it to be perfect—trying to let go of the future. That structural issue? I misplaced several increase rounds in the yoke, then fudged it to fix the row count and moved on. I think it’s going to be okay.

Along with letting go of the future is putting the past in its proper place. I can’t get rid of it and I can’t deny it; those memories are part of me now and I doubt they’ll ever go away. Really they aren’t just recollections—they’re incidents that continue to impact me in dramatic ways. This project is a small (and perhaps absurdly abstract) attempt at turning them to good account. All these scraps and tangles, with their associations and origin stories, are melding together into one big new thing. Maybe when the old stories are incorporated into a new one, the old ones will start to make sense. Maybe they’re not really over and there’ll be more to tell in the future. I can only hope and pray so. Making a sweater for ourselves is easier than making a future. But the sweater is somewhere to start.