Author: mausi

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Time…

Hello, my dears! I hope things are going well. Here in my pocket of the world, we’re speedily careening toward Halloween, which is the best and brightest spot in my calender. I’m home all the time now, doing my best to make my talents bear some fruit. I’ve been enjoying putting up art on Redbubble, and this week I started a Youtube channel, so I can offer some spinning videos. It turns out spinning is as soothing to watch for others as it is to do it myself.

So now that I’m home, and home all the time, I’m definitely having a reevaluation of what my time is good for. I cook more, and have more time to experiment. I draw more, and have more time to try new things. I spin more, and I’m finding it gratifying  to work my way through the big bales of fluff that are begging for new exciting forms. This yarn below started out as a nice big bundle of alpaca locks, reminding everyone who saw them of a huge litter of calico kittens…

 

I’m always torn between keeping the yarns and knitting them up myself, or sharing them with all of you. I think I need to make a few of these for the shop, just as an excuse to keep one or two for myself.

Anyway, time. It’s such an unsettling feeling now. I used to be in a rush all the time, desperately trying to cram as much as I could do into whatever seconds I could do it in. I did a lot of multitasking. Now that I’m working on projects and new art and yarn and whatnot, my work schedule is…flexible. Start spinning at 7am? Why not? Do a quick sketch to expand on later, right before bed? No reason not to, right? Embroider something, take a 2 hour break to eat lunch, clean the living room and play June’s Journey? That seems to work, funny enough. Make something for dinner I haven’t tried? Why in the hell not?

I still have to get the hang of how I work best though. When I’m not working on something specific, I can be all over the map about what to do first.  I guess that will come with practice. But it’s such a different experience from what I’m used to doing for years and years: Set schedules with little or no room for deviation, where lateness was the ultimate taboo and speedy multitasking was the order of the day. The reasons I’m home are horrible, but I gotta say,the freedom can be kind of exhilarating, if I don’t think about the whys too hard.

I hope you get time too, in ways you didn’t have before. I know it’s different for everybody, but I know everybody I’ve talked to is reevaluating their time, and what they value and how to make room for those values now. I hope there’s room for good sleep and a cherished meal, and talks with friends no matter how far away they are.

Be safe, keep knitting, and be well, everyone. And make time for yourself.

 

 

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Guts…

Hello, my dears! I hope everyone is alright. I hope wherever you are you’re safe and comfortable.  And it can be okay if some days you just feel like a complete mess. I’m pretty sure that’s the new normal now. Recently I’ve been knitting up Gutmonsters again, because I knew so many people that seemed to need one. Gutmonsters, despite their monstery ways, are oddly soothing beasts, because there’s something completely delightful about pulling out a bunch of crocheted innards and stuffing them back in. They’ve become champions of being okay with messiness sometimes…

(It’s hard to keep a dignified facade when everybody can see your organs.)

They also help remind me that perfection is not a thing, especially these days. Sometimes its okay to just be enough to get the job done. My best Gutmonsters have a lot of randomness in them. Their guts aren’t proper guts, though there’s usually at least a recognizable brain in there somewhere. They’re mysteriously unidentifiable for the most part. And that’s the best thing about them, in my humble opinion…

So if you’re feeling a little scattered, a little spread out and messy, that’s okay. I think we all need to be, There’s a lot going on.  And when you stuff your guts back in again, they don’t always end up in the same place they started. But they’re still useful, still doing the weirdo things they need doing.

Also, I make the worst analogies ever. And I’m totally okay with that…

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Are you ready, boots? Start walkin’…

I’ve had some strange, interesting news these days that I haven’t really been talking about much. My husband is recovering nicely at home, but his health will be on the frail side for the forseeable future. And my FMLA leave is winding to a close. And with a job that deals with the public as much as mine does, it’s a real risk every day for a long exposure to Covid-19. So Matt and I talked it over, and we decided it would be the smart move for me to resign my job and stay home over the winter, helping out and making more art. So, that’s the plan. My coworkers miss me, and I miss them too, but I can’t risk bringing home something horrible for Matt. I already do every time I come home from an errand. Me. I’m the horrible thing. Heh…

So I’ve started stuffing this webpage with buyable delights, as many as I can make. The response so far has been really gratifying, and I’m so happy to see it. Also, Matt and I have added a link to Redbubble so people who wanted prints or merchandise with my artwork can have it. I’m happy about that too; as a kid in middle school my dream was to have my work on a spiral notebook, Lisa-Frank style. That dream has come true!!

Sadly, the original’s sold, but you can get prints now! This house was made for walkin’. It’s what it’s gonna do…

But even with the happy distraction of making new things and seeing them fly out the door here at home, I have worries. The same ones every tiny business has, along with the pandemic worries. I just hope that my attempt to keep my tiny family safer is the right thing to do. I feel like it is. And let’s face it, sometimes the world isn’t exactly subtle with what is and isn’t a good idea anymore. Sometimes you just have to run with whatever you have and make it work as best you can. And I promise to do that…

Love you all. Stay safe. Stay well. And hey, who wants a cool spiral notebook?

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Knitting and Impostor Syndrome…

No matter how good you are, no matter how long you’ve been working on making your fiber art of choice the best it can be, no matter how much time you can spend or classes you take or knack you may have…for many of us there’s always That Whisper…You know the one. “You suck. That pattern is lame. Other people are so much better at this than you. Why can’t you pick something more challenging, or get a better yarn? Is that approach really the right choice, or are you just being lazy? Gawd, why THAT color? What’s wrong with you, really?”

Even with the insulation of the Pandemic as the perfect excuse to play Keep Away with the rest of society, there are times that criticisms can sink their sharp teeth into your brain and stay there for a while. They can make you put a project down for a while. sometimes for a really long while. Sometimes it’s just your own inner voice bringing the doubt. Sometimes its other knitters. I’ll say it: Most knitters are the warmest, kindest, most generous of people, gleefully offering help and supplies and books and advice, and revelling in other people who Understand. Then there are knitters that are spiteful, horrible gatekeepers that let you know it if you can’t afford the right yarn or have a pattern they think is too simple or gaudy. The fights can be epic, especially for people who never see that side of the fiber community. But knitters are people, and people are terribly imperfect, and they can hurt. Especially if you’re new or have had bad experiences down your particular lonely road. Sometimes That Whisper comes from those people. “Wait, you do cables like THAT? and what’s up with those yarn overs? Humph. Clearly your way is not my way. ”

Even though I’ve been doing fiber arts for a while, I’m not immune to the sting of That Whisper.  Not least since I really like handspun yarn, and use it all the time. Handspun yarn, especially the art yarns, tend to shine best when the stitching is fairly simple, as you can lose a lot of the more complex stitches in all those colors and textures. It also makes for gratifyingly fast projects that are fun and easy, so I tend to gravitate to them. Especially these days when there’s just so much to worry about…

Why oh why am I knitting winter wear in the summertime!

 

I had been hearing That Whisper while knitting up a red hood. It was supposed to be a Red Riding Hood sort of thing, with a little capelet, but I really wanted a scarf/hood combination instead. But the scarf would be warmer, and an easier fit for more people! And I didn’t have enough to make a capelet, not really. But doing a scarf instead? Cop out much? I can’t do better than that, huh? *siiiiiiiigh*

Hey Little Red Riding Hood, You sure are lookin’ good…you’re everything that a Big Bad Wolf could want…

It wasn’t until I talked to another knitterly friend of mine that I realized that the second guessing and running myself down wasn’t helping me or my project. I hadn’t worked on it for a few weeks since I kept looking at it and muttering to myself, “Capelet. Do a freaking capelet. A scarf is just cheating. You cheating knitter, you.” I realized that it was better to trust my instincts in the first place, and listen to what my hands wanted to knit. They wanted to knit a scarf. They wanted something snuggly that wrapped around a throat and kept a warm hood in place in really cold weather.

When you hear That Whisper, don’t listen to the voice. Listen to your hands. What do they want to do? Sometimes your muscle memory is telling you the right thing to do, and it’s good to listen to it. And those other voices? They don’t have to wear what you make, or make the decisions you do. And often That Whisper is hiding their own whisper, the one saying, “You’d better BE better than everybody! Every day! All the time! No matter how weird or inappropriate it is!” And that’s it’s own unhappy hell, no matter how good you are.

So while I do try more complicated knits here and there, it’s the simple ones that give me the most joy. I ignore That Whisper, because it doesn’t know happiness the way I do when I knit that way. Also, sometimes it makes other people warmer than they were before they met me…

My sweet husband: Kind, tolerant, heavily insulated by alpaca…

Keep making fun things, my fellow knitterly friends. Whatever your project is, I’m proud of it, and of you…

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How to Knit, part 75: Knitting During a Pandemic…

So, you’re at home. The Pandemic is chugging along, and you’re trying really hard to not get it, or recover from it, and you’re in no mood to go out and do anything because there are people out there, and people are emphatically Not What You Want right now. You’ve binge-watched all the Netflix you can stand. You’re sick to death of baking bread, and your sourdough starter died. Again.  How are you going to pass your time in between Zoom meetings and grocery deliveries? Well, you can mail things to friends and hope like heck they actually get where they need to go…

(Good luck, pretty card. Please please get to where I’m actually sending you…)

Or You can do something really soothing and bust out something to knit. You can start something fun now, and *maybe* have something finished and pretty by the time the weather starts turning cold.  But first you must face…The Yarn Stash. Yes, that delicious mountain of fluffy potential you’ve been socking away for that special project or moment. And those moments have arrived with a vengeance. It’s been a few months into the Pandemic now, so many of us have already whittled down that mountain into more of a smaller-but-still-formidable hillock.  But that just means that the yarns that are left in The Yarn Stash are all the more precious. So my thought process ends up going something like this:

1st Step: Open the cedar chest that has all The Good Yarns.

2nd step: Gasp at their pretty colors and how good the cedar makes them all smell.

3rd Step: Snuggle them like fluffy, multihued kittens for a few minutes.

4th step: Realize an hour just went by like it was nothing, and that you still haven’t picked out anything to knit with.

5th step: Well, how about this skein? No, too precious. And too thin. Do I want a thicker yarn for a quicker project? What exactly am I going to be making anyway?

6th step :Snuggle the yarns a bit more. Let them tell you their secrets. What they want, what they *need* to be. Whisper back to them how much you love and appreciate them. Refuse to think this is weird.

7th Step: Lay on the floor surrounded by balls and skeins of yarn and take a huge nap.

8th Step: Wake up confused and with strands of mohair sticking to your clothes.

9th Step: Get online and loot Ravelry, Knitty.com and Pinterest for ideas about what you should be knitting, which you should have done before playing with all that soft, fuzzy, wonderful yarn.

10th Step: Finally! A pattern you think you can sink your teeth into that can use yarn you already have! Success!

11th Step: Open the chest and start looking for the yarns you need.

12th Step: Repeat Steps 1-11 until you get hungry or there’s something else that you need to get done…

Eventually the right yarns and the right project will end up in your lap after all, giving you something comforting, soft and soothing to do. It might just take a few tries. And a few naps. Maybe more than a few naps. And that’s okay. The New Normal is a weird place to lay your head, but at least all those yarns in your stash can make it a soft place too…

 

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Love, and Fear in the time of Plague

Hello, lovely readers! I hope you’re all staying well and healthy out there, wearing masks diligently and being very careful.  These days I always feel more and more like I’m quoting a Jane Austen novel when I talk to people, since I’m always asking after their health. So, what have I been doing recently, since COV is the party guest that just won’t leave? I’ve still been at home on family medical leave with my husband, who’s still recovering from his stroke. Recently he’s had Botox injections in his arm and leg, and it seems to really help his spasticity there a lot. But there’s still a long way to go. We stick very close to home, apart from rehab appointments and doctor’s visits, but we’re both painfully aware that it wouldn’t take much to get unlucky and get infected. I’m hoping like crazy our luck holds until a vaccine is available in the far-flung future. I just want to get us both to 2021 in one piece.

Meanwhile, in between doing helpful things for Matt, I’ve been making more masks for loved ones. Cooking a lot. Cleaning a lot, but never enough, really. I’m investing more time and energy for things to put in the webshop. I’ve been absorbing Youtube tutorials and lectures to keep my mind busy.  But I’m avoiding things like restarants and bars like, well, the plague. Can you blame me? Every time I see the numbers go up from a bunch of partiers at a bar or another spreading event, I end up muttering, “Oh nooooo, so much no; every single no!” to myself. It’s much better to sit on the back patio with a spindle and some wool, and just have a quiet time spinning and keeping Matt company.  After all that time apart in the hospital, I appreciate his presence even more than I did before he got sick and before all this happened.

And there’s the occasional Zoom chat with people. One of the most recent was a friend of a friend offering a lecture about how to deal with “fear as an entrepreneur”. I decided to give it a shot, since I have a (painfully small and wee) business and could always use good advice, but it was a terrible trainwreck. It started out reasonable, if somewhat canned, elitist and a bit disorganized, until one of the guest speakers started ranting about how “masks don’t really work; they’re just there to comfort people, and also criminals are using them to hide their faces during their criminal acts!”  I couldn’t facepalm hard enough as I quickly hit “leave session” as speedily as I could.  Funny enough, it didn’t really help me with my fears of keeping income coming during a pandemic, and gave me an extra fear of that anti-mask lady who’s out there probably picking fights at Kowalski’s and spraying rage-spit all over the produce.So, not as helpful as I had hoped, alas. Plus, the whole tone of the meeting was oddly dismissive of fear, the way people can be if they feel like nothing really bad is ever going to affect them personally.

Honestly, I feel like fear has it’s lessons to teach. Fear makes you pay attention to your surroundings. Fear makes you think hard about your actions. Fear makes you vigilant about consequences. Fear makes you appreciate what you have, while you have it.  I feel as long as you can embrace fear as a friend with something important to tell you, it’s not something that needs banishing or something that makes you weak or cowardly. I really wish the Zoom meeting had covered some of that. (To be fair,  maybe it did, after I noped out during the ranting. But somehow I doubt it.)

I scream. You scream. We all scream. Because we’re all still pretty freaked out about everything happening around us, every single day. But it’s okay to be afraid. That just means we’re paying attention. And if we are, that gives us all a better chance to get through to the next day, and the next, and the one after that. And that’s useful, in it’s odd way.  Also, take a break. Get out some yarn and play with it. Draw something stupid. Take a nap. Make a cup of tea you like. Let your fear make you pay attention to the things you love…

And when we all get to the other side of all this craziness, I am hugging you all so very hard…

 

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The new normal. And a new, new normal…

So this is the new normal. While we’re still very much in the throes of the pandemic things are (sorta) opening back up, which honestly frightens me on a deep and visceral level. We are now seeing levels of violence and levels of social commitment that are new, defining moments for our country.  My hometown is at the same time a memorial to a horrible act of police brutality, shellshocked ruins of places that are trying to rebuild and large and small acts of incredible kindness to try to pull us all through.

And right in the middle of all of this–the middle of the protests, the tear gas, the riots and the strange arsons in my neighborhood–my husband had a stroke.  There’s never a good time for a major health emergency, but this was an extra layer of worry and suffering for us both. For a few days my husband’s hospital had the National Guard  surrounding it, to keep it from burning to the ground. He was allowed no visitors, which was the hardest part for both of us. And I held the fort at the house, alone with a bunch of fire extinguishers and my phone for the Neighborhood Watch updates. There was nothing better in the world than when I could see and hug my sweet husband again.

And now that he’s home, I’m on leave from my job for a while so I can take care of him. He’s recovering nicely, but still needs help here and there, and I’m glad I’m home to be there in case of a stumble. And while I’m home helping Matt out, I’ve started embroidering. It started out simply enough, with little flags that said, “Tea, and Maybe Poison!” But the more I tried things, the more I liked it, and after I had tried out some cobwebs on a black fabric background, I knew I had something else to offer in the shop…

Cobwebs are always fun. Always!
My spider was clearly quite sozzled when she wove this web…

Sometimes it really is some of the little things that pulls us through the bad stuff. Like sitting in the back yard. Appreciating the grape vine taking over the fence and anticipating grape jelly.  Being happy Matt and I can sit out there together, after all that time apart. I’m so grateful to have him back.  And I’m hopeful that we can get through the rest of the year together too…

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Vintage skills, modern needs…

Skulls and flowers, Pandemic edition…

Hello, my dears, and I hope you and yours are staying safe and feeling well.  These days our strategies for this are all over the map, from being able to shelter in place to having to navigate a potential dangerous landscape daily in order to keep body and soul together. I hope whatever you have to do to stay safe is working out okay, and I hope we all can keep it up until better days come…

For myself, I’m kind of a mixed bag. I still report to my workplace, but far less frequently, and I’m kept abreast of things more and more by online communications. When I’m physically at The Jade Mines I channel my inner Howard Hughes with disinfecting, washing, masking and gloving. Everything I touch gets wiped down, or I wash myself, or both. I never talk to another coworker without a mask on, and most of them have masks too. A few days a week we have fun online lectures about art in the galleries, newsletters from our director and our personal department, and a handful of coworkers keep reaching out to me to see how I’m doing, and vice versa. Eventually we’ll reopen, and I’m still trying to picture what that’s going to look like for us. I try not to let the uncertainty and fear get the upper hand, but I won’t lie, there are bad days. I worry about my friends, my family members, strangers I admire, and everybody still out there holding things together as best they can. And I’m going to keep worrying as long as this goes on, because that’s how I’m wired…

So what do I do when I’m not at the Jade mines? I’m trying hard to keep busy. There’s a lot of new yarns to put up in the shop now, and I’m so grateful for the kind folks who have stopped by for a look. I’ve been making embroideries too, and am surprised both by their happy receptions and by how fun they are to make. (So far all the ones I’ve finished are spoken for, but there’s a few ideas for embroideries to offer in the shop soon.) I’ve been painting a bit, and sketching a bit, here and there. And like just about everybody else, I’ve been baking. One thing I’ve expanded this spring is my garden–I have a large garden trough to keep tasty plants away from ravenous wild beasties, and I’ve been growing little scraps of veggies and fruiting plants in the kitchen…

Tiny green onions in a skull shotglass make me so happy!

I’ve also been hand sewing things, with helpful Youtube tutorials from loads of helpful people, and hypnotizing my friends with short videos of my spinning on a support spindle…

You are getting sleeeeeepy…because spinning is preeeeetttyyyy…

All these activities, besides being soothing and interesting, are actively helpful right now. All those handsewing tutorials helped me make masks for myself and for my family and friends. (Also I can now whip up a decent skirt and repair my clothes when I need to.. Thanks, Bernadette Banner!) The baking has it’s own rewards. (Lemon pound cake? Yes, please!) The spinning wheels help with my exercise routine as well as help me plow through my fiber stash, The embroideries lift my mood and help fine tune my fingers. The gardening comforts me and feeds me a little. (Right now it’s a very, very little. It’s still chilly here in Minnesota. But I’m looking forward to salad and eggplants, hot peppers and lots and lots of onions in the garden.) and I’m also glad to see other people doing the same thing I am; trying out older skills and fine-tuning them to help get through an increasingly worrisome modern world.

I hope we all get through okay to the other side of everything. And I’m taking everything I’ve been learning with me to the world on the other side of the pandemic, whatever that will look like. I hope you will too. Stay safe and be well…

 

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Quarantine…

I’m at home, mostly. By mostly I mean that here and there I’m at the museum where I usually work, keeping the lights on and the doors locked. The rest of the time I’m here, trying to deal with my own brand of Covid-19 anxiety by attacking projects. I’m one sleeve away from finishing a sweater. I’ve been embroidering something for a coworker. and I’ve been making lots and lots and lots and LOTS of yarn. I moved my favorite spinning wheel, Hester Hestia, down to the living room, and I’ve been watching movies, Youtube tutorials, and various friends playing music live while I spin. It’s comforting to still have my friends, even at a distance.

A few pretty, pretty yarns to while away the hours…

Otherwise? Social distancing, baby. Delivered groceries, verrrrry cautious walks around the neighborhood. I’ve been trying my hand at fabric masks, with a bit of frustration.  And I won’t lie; the times I go in to work I have terrible panic attacks before and after I go there. I have asthma, so I have lots of worries about contracting the virus. I’m just really grateful the museum is trying really hard to take care of it’s employees in real, practical ways. And I’m grateful I live in Minnesota, with a lot of people trying really hard to do the right thing, whatever that needs to be.

At the moment we’re under Shelter-in-place, so I’ve put the website on vacation mode until I feel it’s safer for me to mail out yarns. I’m also closing down the Etsy site for a variety of reasons. But if you need yarns soon and want something special from me, just shoot me a message and I’ll see what I can manage for you. Just stay safe, and hang in there, and I will too…

 

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Adjusting…

As time moves merrily forward, I keep finding new and exciting ways to make the world around me more interesting. Ways like more odd embroidery!

(Did I mention Nightshade is really, really fun to embroider? Because it is!)

Also, I illustrated a smallish, charming book for the excellent writer, Tansy Undercrypt!

“The Utmost Propriety” can be ordered online at lulu.com! Toss a coin to your inker! Oh valley of plentyyyyy…

But mostly I’ve been slowly, every so slowly switching products from my Etsy shop to here, and thinking of new yarns to make for spring. I won’t lie, this winter has been tough for being creative. I’m hoping this spring will be better. But that said, I’m looking forward to some new things to try, and I’ll share them with you all. And I’m grateful for your kind attention and support,..