Seven Decades of Scraps

If you’re looking for some autumnal literary community and learning, put Lit Youngstown’s Fall Literary Fest on your calendar! Held from October 16-18, it’s got readings and workshops and seminars galore! I’ll be offering two sessions: one on building and supporting literary community through book reviews (a little bit of how-to and a little bit of why it matters) and a hands-on metaphor workshop! You’ll also be able to pick up a signed copy of Heading North at the book fair, and you can always snag a copy ahead of time!

There are half a dozen half-started editions of Loomings scattered in this folder—things I started writing to you, things I did not send. It’s been a fallow summer, by which I mean a summer of few words. In the spaces between the things that had to be done, I traveled a little, rode my bike some, read a lot, took a lot of naps. I tell you I didn’t want to take as many of those naps as I took, but I don’t regret any of them. This Monday marked the first day of classes of a new semester, and it starts the way these things always start: a little bit of panic that I try to sidestep because I don’t need it, because it will be fine. (It’s always fine.) This is my twenty-second year in the classroom, and this year I begin as a full professor, which is something that barely feels real. (When I started teaching, as a graduate student, I can tell you with 100% confidence I did not know what “full professor” meant. Now, I’m sure—pretty sure—getting over that hump to full professor had something to do with all of the naps I took in June, but that’s probably as close to explaining the meaning of it as I can get.)

One of the things I have been doing is preparing the Process & Production Studio on campus, which is a book and textile arts space I am cultivating for the students. Last year, we were housed in an empty faculty office; this year, we’ve been afforded a much better space in the old mail room, one that lets us keep the table looms and spinning wheel in the same room as the printing press and all of its type. There are big tables and multiple workspaces and a pair of low loveseats for reading or knitting or shooting the breeze. There are bins of yarn of every thickness and spinning fiber and embroidery thread and crochet hooks and knitting needles and tablets for card-weaving. Colorful paper organized in tidy little racks near the inks and the roller and spools of book-binding thread. The point of this space is to allow us to slow down somewhat, to make some things with our hands and (most importantly) screw up a little in the process. Screwing up a little (or a lot) is an integral part of learning, and I think there is no better way to illustrate that than with a tangle of yarn we can wrangle back into smoothness. Stitches we can cut and unpick. And if it can’t be fixed—if the fabric’s cut too small or the thread is unsalvageable or the text prints lopsided—the learning still happened. It wasn’t the end of the world. These stakes are not that high.

(What a blessing to have such a space as this, where the stakes are not that high.)

The space is made of gifts, too. A lot of the equipment and supplies were funded by a student-faculty research grant I wrote and received from a set of grants engendered by a generous, creative college board member who wanted to see folks do something different. Some of the yarn was a donation from a friend who moved away but is still missed (hi, Beth!). Nearly all of the fabric and sewing thread and notions came from my paternal grandmother, who moved out of her home of more than seventy years this summer. She—my grandmother—sewed garments in a clothing factory during her working years, and she made so many of her children’s clothes and grandchildren’s Halloween costumes despite that work all day. She made tablecloths with napkins and runners to match, as well as the odd quilt. Among those seven decades of quilting cotton and sensible knits and holiday prints and even upholstery fabric are other kinds of treasures: the leftover yard and a half of satin from a bolt she and I found on sale at the Old Trail Fabric Center twenty-seven years ago, when she made me my Renaissance Faire garb. It’s not especially historical, but I still wear it at least once a year. The denim patches in one box were clearly salvaged from my grandfather’s old blue jeans; what was too worn to be patched became patches itself.

There are scraps here maybe only the size of a palm, but if you are a sewist, you know that a palm-sized piece of fabric can become many things—a button cover, a stuffed bear’s nose, a doll’s purse, a cat toy, a little heart you fill with fluff and feelings and give away. The bits and bobs that she kept all these years are evidence of both thrift and the creative power of invention; she could see the possibilities that remained in something small.

I’m glad I have the chance to share all of this—the space, the supplies, the skills. I hope some folks can find resources in this place, some empowerment in mending something loved and keeping it wearable or useful or whole. I hope some folks can make something they want to share with someone they care about; I hope some folks discover they have more patience and persistence than they thought they had before. Forget January. The end of August is the start of the new year for so many. Let’s make something of it.

What I’m Reading Just Now:

First Kicking, Then Not by Hannah Grieco
Hannah’s debut story collection from Stanchion Press is a stunner—it’s sharp and thrilling and wastes no words. Get yourself a copy AND join us for Hannah’s reading at Lebanon Valley College on October 28 at 7 p.m.! If you’re not local, you can also join us on Zoom.

Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney
This is the eleventieth time I’ve read this—prepping to teach it in English Lit I in a week—and I just want to tell you how much I adore what Heaney has done with the text. If you haven’t read it, if you think it’s too old or too strange or too difficult (because it is old and strange), Seamus Heaney’s translation makes it very approachable. I still cry in places.

What I’ve Been Making Recently:

I always have too many projects going at once, and I never actually need a new one. However. While in the throes of semester prep—planning out readings and writing assignments and updating all my syllabi and reinventing several wheels and whatsits—I decided that what I really needed was a knitted cape. A big project. One that required me to pay attention row by row, rather than autopiloting in garter stitch.

(Why, Holly, why? Because the heart wants what the heart wants.)

So I hied me to Ravelry and went pattern-diving until I lighted on the Technicolor Dreamcloak by MarinJa Knits. The image below is not my Technicolor Dreamcloak, but a stunning rainbow iteration knit by Ravelry user birdcrazy.

This pattern is a real clinic in trusting the process. While I do knit a lot, I haven’t knit a lot of projects with short rows (except a few socks, long ago, before I understood that I don’t actually like knitting socks), so this has been enjoyably new. And though the pattern is thirteen pages long, it’s very thorough, and trusting the process has revealed the rhythm of the work. This is also a pattern that feels very much like writing a novel; perhaps this is why I chose it: the beginning goes fast, but the closer one gets to the end, the slower the process, the longer each row.

The other thing that appealed to me about this pattern is that it’s a steeked project: the opening at the front, where the clasps go, comes from cutting the knitting and finishing the edges. If you know anything about knit fabric, you know that cutting it usually means disaster (because it will unravel). However, because wool yarn wants to stick together (and can be encouraged to stick together more with a little bit of needle-felting, too), it’s possible to cut and then finish the edges without disaster. Many traditionally knit cardigans are made this way. Steeking makes the knitting much faster because one can simply keep knitting in the round, rather than making a flat piece of fabric that requires purling. You can see the part to be steeked on my photo on the left, the “west” of the project, where there’s a flat, stripey bit that doesn’t make all the lovely swoops and angles. When this is all said and done, my scissors will slice right through the middle of all that.

I’ve never done a steeked project before. It terrifies me. But there’s got to be a first time for everything, and sometimes you just have to do it scared. I’ll report back on this (likely months from now).

What are you working on? What are you doing, in hope and despite fear?