Creative Life Sampler

If you've ever been excited to start a knitting project and put it off because you know you have to unwind the skein to create a ball of yarn first, a swift and wool winder combo will get you over that hurdle! My daughter requested this as a Christmas gift and she couldn't be more pleased. It's pretty easy to set up:  A skein is unfolded carefully to ensure that the familiar loop of yarn doesn't get twisted and the beginning thread remains facing outward. The collapsible swift expands to make the skein taught and the beginning thread is hooked on to the winder. The yarn is transferred to the bobbin on the winder when the crank is turned. It's a simple and quick process. No more draping the skein across the back of a chair or struggling to keep it on your knees as you wind a ball and work your wrists. No more tangles and knots to grumble over. This creates a nice, neat ball that doesn't stretch or damage the yarn.  Honestly I thought this was just a gimmick when ...

While on the east coast earlier this month, a friend recommended that we check out Webs Yarn store in North Hampton, Mass. I don't think I've ever seen so much yarn in one place! For all you knitters out there, this is well worth a visit.  The front show room is filled with so many tempting yarns and lots of sample projects to show how they have been used. They carry everything you could possibly need to create something special, right down to a great selection of really fun buttons. One of several button fixtures, sorted by color But keep going to the back of the store and you'll find a warehouse with rows and rows of yarn to browse. This place is full of inspiration. Even if you're not looking for a new knitting project, the colors, the textures, the sheer volume and variety of fibers will definitely get the creative gears moving. And if you are looking for a new creative outlet, there is a room set aside for a weaving classroom with multiple looms available. There ar...

This shawl was created in 2014 with a pattern from knitsimple: 33 knit Shawls by SoHo Publishing Co. It's a collection that ranks the projects on complexity with a scale of 1 to 4, which means that with one book the beginner can progress through each project and eventually tackle the "experienced" category. The advantage of knitting shawls is there are no complicated edges, like the armholes or neck edging of a garment, to navigate. The simplicity of the shawl shape focuses your attention on the pattern itself, (and sometimes it requires a lot of attention to get lacy patterns right.) It's been a while since I've posted a knitting project. So, as I was collecting my thoughts to write, I googled quotes on knitting for a little inspiration and ran across this one from writer/knitter  Stephanie Pearl-McPhee : Every ball or skein of yarn holds something inside it, and the great mystery of what that might be is almost spiritual.  Gears started turning and I rem...

The Guy in the Yarn Section (2 of 2) Today's post comes under the heading of "a stranger's gem". This pattern is from Sock-Yarn Shawls by Jen Lucas Several years ago I was in the yarn section of the local big chain craft store browsing through the pattern books, looking for a new project to take on a trip. People were coming and going around me, but I noticed an older gentleman also perusing the books. Now up to this point, the males I had observed in this kind of establishment had generally been dragged there by eager crafters, commonly referred to as "mom". For me this was like sighting that rare bird you've wanted to lay your binoculars on all your life. My curiosity was stirred and naturally I had to strike up a conversation. It paid off. He was a rather experienced knitter. In the course of our conversation, he shared a fantastic, creative tip... Every knitter is familiar with tackling a new, complicated pattern, missing a step, dropp...

Creativity and Our "Occupations"   (2 of 2) History is full of the documentation of humanity's creativity. It is not limited to a certain age group, a specific gender, or culture, or any other construct. The desire to design and make something, compose and perform, experiment and invent, speaks to an inherent need to express the quality of creativity... it's a desire we all, more or less, possess. While catching up with a couple of moms recently, I heard about how their sons are doing. In one case, a young college student had taken up pottery and was finding a lot of joy and peace in the creative process of working with clay. He has discovered that this activity brings balance to his day, offsetting the stress he had been experiencing in his rigorous college studies. In the second instance, a mom of two young men in their mid-to-late twenties told of new artistic outlets her sons were pursuing. One son had taken up painting in the after hours of his work as an...

Lesson on Creativity Learned The pattern for this beaded knit shawl  is found  in Knitsimple: 33 Knit Shawls  One of my visions for this blog was that it could be a forum for sharing ideas and encouraging each other to be creative. Since I’m most familiar with applying creativity to artistic pursuits, I’ve come to realize that maybe I had been unconsciously identifying creativity solely with the arts. It was as if I was saying to anybody who wasn’t involved in the arts, “Hey look over here! You need to bring this into your life!” This was brought home to me when my husband, who has a science background, reacted with surprise to one of my comments in my recent interview with Joyce. (See a portion of this interview at this link:   https://creativelifesampler.blogspot.com/2018/09/creativity-in-classroom-2-of-3-how-do.html ) He was taken aback that I said one might not think of creativity in the realms of math and science. It struck me that of co...

A Knitted Sampler Built Confidence (2 of 4) At one point I ran across a compilation of patterns that my grandmother had, and I decided to try them all. Each pattern’s directions included a photo and were written so the finished products all had approximately the same dimensions. If you were adapting the pattern to a larger project you would just repeat from the beginning.  So I gathered up leftover balls of yarn from old projects and my grandmother’s stash, and I got to work on those patterns.  What I found with the more complex patterns was that you really had to trust the directions because it could take quite some time before the pattern would emerge as pictured. And you couldn’t be reticent in pulling it all out and simply starting over. The fact was that I didn’t have any other aim than to try these patterns, and perhaps that made it easier to experiment. To me, they were like puzzles and it was fun to try to figure them out. In the end I had a strange collec...

Learning to Knit   (1 of 4) When I think of knitting, I think of my grandmother who taught me this skill. It seemed to me that she always had a project going.  Looking back now, I can see that there was a rhythm in her home. After taking care of the household duties, she would retire to her chair in the sitting room and knit until it was time for the next meal or the next round of chores.  She kept her knitting needles and other supplies in the bottom drawer of, what seemed to me at the time, a very large old desk. And when she needed a new set of needles, or a cable hook, or another tool, she would ask me to get it from that big desk. I think we can infer that, if I wasn’t literally right at her knee when I visited, I was definitely always in the vicinity. Perhaps I was nagging her to put her project aside to teach me to knit. Eventually, I got just what I probably really wanted: her attention. And I'm grateful she patiently took the time to share this activit...

Reviving a Creative Outlet   (1 of 3) Getting together with a group of people for a creative activity can be a very rewarding experience. In the case of my knitting friends, it reactivated dormant skills which I had abandoned when we moved to the west coast where sweaters were not an essential part of one’s wardrobe. The challenge was to use my knitting skills to produce things that were appropriate for our climate and to try new stitches or new materials, thus reviving a rusty but much-loved creative outlet. This lacy shawl was knit with a variegated Patons Lace yarn, producing a striped effect in this pattern from Sock-Yarn Shawls, 15 Lacy Knitted Shawl Patterns by Jen Lucas .

Group Support for Creativity (3 of 3) One summer we realized just how many of us actually knew how to knit, and it was suggested that we all come back the next summer with a group "assignment" to create the same item. The idea was to see what each of us would come up with while on vacation. Instead, after brainstorming for a bit, we agreed to pull names from a hat and knit for each other during the year. We planned to come together the following summer to exchange our hat creations. This turned out to be a fun project. We were knitting for a special friend, thinking of their tastes and personalities during the winter months - and looking forward to being together again in the warm summer sun. The next year our group got bigger and we knitted scarves... aren't we a happy crew? We have spent many wonderful evenings in a circle chatting over the events of the day, getting caught up on a year of personal stories, and solving the world's problems, (...