I don't usually share pictures which are not mine but this is a perfect match with the text. I found it over here.
Reading time: 17 minutes
Keywords: craft as therapy, patterns of life, emotions, knitting, crochet, mindlessness, and love
Playing in the background: Pauli Hanhiniemi: Muutkin mokaa (we all make mistakes so let us see ourselves with compassion), J. Karjalainen: Mennyt mies (about the many faces we have), Dave Lindholm: Pieni ja hento ote (how we should hold each other with a tender grip, as gently as the wind touches us) – or any other song ever written in any language could be on this playlist, and Peter Gabriel gives the answer to why.
As time goes on, you'll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn't, doesn't. Time solves most things. And what time can't solve, you have to solve yourself.
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance
People may call what happens at midlife “a crisis,” but it’s not. It’s an unraveling – a time when you feel a desperate pull to live the life you want to live, not the one you’re “supposed” to live. … to let go of who you think you are supposed to be and to embrace who you are. – Brené Brown
... everyone has to knit when they're here. ... But not every person has to use yarn.
― Kate Jacobs, The Friday Night Knitting Club
Dear universe, you know exactly how reluctant writer I am, hoping every story to be the last one I need to figure out and to write down. You seem to like to use blackmail, keep me awake at night until I do as you want to. Why don’t you just let me fall back to my old ways, into comfortability and a steady schedule brushing my teeth at 7:04 each morning after a somewhat good night’s sleep? Since you seem to disagree, here below is the edited version of the last post I didn’t manage to edit before Christmas. This is a story about emotional work told through the metaphor of crocheting rugs. What is common for both is following or creating a pattern. Both activities also take resilience and flexibility. While creating, knots of the mind get solved in general. Making also seems to put things in proportions. An everyday misfortune which originally invokes a strong feeling gets balanced out after a moment of repetitive movement of the pair of knitting needles etc. Others have of course thought on the same lines before when it comes to the therapeutic nature of knitting and crochet, also a twinkle in the eye. So, here below are a few thoughts on emotional work and making my way. And nope, clearly not a professional, just someone figuring out these things for her selfish benefit. And now I think I better warm up my winter cold hands a bit before grabbing this story and its metaphors in my hands.
It occurred to me once while watching these piles of tangled t-shirt yarn, how often we have such unsolved clutter inside us, the rest material. Perhaps they end up somewhere in the closet, perhaps we never solve them or then embark on the task with patience when the time is right. Perhaps we are sometimes forced to do so, we are solving those piles to save our lives. What perhaps happens is a midlife unraveling, or call it a nervous breakdown, call it spiritual awakening or whatever you like. Maybe it is just the high time to earn our balls (of yarn) in life, if and when we feel that something important is being neglected. The unfortunate thing with this kind of mess inside is that if we do nothing, we repeat the same patterns (and there is nothing wrong in that if those are not harmful to us). What is more unfortunate is that we may also give our messes for others to carry, our difficult emotions. Perhaps we hope that others can solve the tangled yarns for us too – we seek from others or from the outside world what we are lacking inside emotionally to fill our needs. We can call these tangled yarns, we can call them minefields around us which can hurt others. We can use whatever metaphor gives the best point of view for our story. When it comes to minefields, I have a feeling that those in many cases hurt us more than anyone else. Anyway, what we are not aware of, we so often repeat, and the patterns need to be brought into consciousness if we dream of a change in our lives.
At this stage, I've become quite familiar with this kind of work, solving the tangled yarns, the emotional mess inside figuring out what is what. Many times, I've got totally lost there as well. I understand how we should honor anyone who begins this kind of a crochet or knitting project. It is always a courageous act to look at a different kind of pain: lack of love, shame, grief, disappointment, unworthiness, fear, insecurity, egoism etc. and our own shortcomings as humans. It forces us to look back in our own past, it forces us to look inside. Maybe for the first time too, we allow ourselves to feel and grieve those parts inside which never before have been seen with love. When solving the yarns and making them into balls we surely earn them too, after all the work and patience. Sometimes the pain can be so real that it takes us to bed for a day and we may not even know what kind of pain we are dealing with - if it even is ours, or some ancient pain handed down in generations. A therapist would perhaps explain the same kind of work that we circle around pain as long as we need for identifying it. Then we ask ourselves if we need that pain anymore and if we are ready to leave it behind.
The trouble with these piles of that because the yarns are so entangled, you can get all lost there, not recognizing what belongs where and what is for you to carry and what for others. These yarns can leave us yarns tightly wrapped around our throat and our bodies silencing our voices and those parts in us which are worthy to be seen, worthy of love. That part I think I’ve written enough of before, the causes of abuse, projection, so I leave it here. What I unfortunately did was that I carried the piles for all too long believing in the content of the piles, taking on more and more, the difficult emotions of others (through shaming, blaming, diminishing etc.). I seem to like yarn and I was kind in a wrong way. Eventually, I was so badly cornered that I had to change the direction, refuse to not to take on any more of what was for someone else to carry emotionally. So, I started solving the existing yarns in my stash, made them into balls and started making rugs. Maybe that is the way some of us become rug makers of our own right.
When making rugs of any kind, the wisdom of the child and the muscles of the adult seem to be needed. I spent the time needed with the dark parts of humanity, and with time I made them into balls to see the primary content. Then I had to draw a pattern with them in order to see clearly, the old patterns I had been repeating. The proportions became gradually clear as well, and what belonged where, whose yarn or pain I had been carrying. I started to recognize my true emotions. I released anger time after time through this physical work alongside many other ways and boundaries became clearer and clearer. Gradually the parts which were not seen before became visible and that is when we can start standing tall on our own homemade rug - a new belief, a new mindset and a new pattern to live by we have created in the process. There are still tangled yarns and new may come on the way as well. This work is something we get to practice to do every day, how it is to be a human. So, there is luckily always enough crocheting material :-), but no longer a big messy pile inside. The process of healing has taken me so many years since I had to make balls out of other people’s messes left for me a very long time ago on top of my own since there needs to be an order in my mental and emotional yarn stash and I can’t have everyone else’s yarn laying around everywhere. So, I have balls here for a few people that are not mine.
What this process also teaches is that these kinds of leftovers from the textile industry can be turned into something beautiful, material deemed to be unworthy of love, maybe in some cases unworthy of human touch. I hope we keep on creating beauty and show how the beauty of our kind looks like. And nope, just to make it clear, I don't crochet any doormats so that others can wipe off their dirty feet on them. In real life, I probably have made a few at the beginning of this blog still. Those were luckily made for my own home. I also feel like loaning a Finnish poet Tommy Tabermann here, I think he has said it best. There is only one rule in life, a vital condition. A trembling soul is not to be stepped on. What talents have we lost in this world with judgment, ridicule and through self-abuse - self-critique, what kind of talent are we all the time losing? Talent which is just too scared to come out, talent inside each and one of us?
One reason to become a rug maker of our own right may be our relationships. We tend to look for the familiar patterns in others and a partner who reminds us of our father or our mother. We hope that he/she can help us to solve our tangled yarns from childhood and may end up disappointed. For some of us, our inheritance can be quite something and to avoid the same destiny as our parents (especially when young), we don’t only end up making rugs. We make all the possible home textiles with our own patterns as well. By the way, I like this funny and informative short speech by Alain de Botton on love and relationships. He is my new favorite and I am so happy that many philosophers/psychologists have taken a stand on all the happiness talk/self-development going on in our society and other important topics as well during the last years (for example Svend Brinkmann and Sami Pihlström). I wonder though why most of them are (middle-aged) men? I wonder if Google can give me a few female names as well, have to check. When it comes to relationships, Alain de Botton may disagree with me, but just to get this metaphor added in the story, I think that when it comes to relationships there are things which we can sweep under a rug and then there are those we can’t no matter how generous we are in our assumptions. There may be differences between sexes here as well when it comes to our cleaning habits, have I noticed. I just think that if we leave the cleaning up too late or our cleaning habits differ too much, we may lose the whole rug to stand on and the once beautiful pattern created together. We may lose our relationship.
For many reasons, I find it to be important to learn to carry our own emotions, to understand when we react from a wound, a belief or when we presume, interpret and judge. I think we are learning these things better and better all the time in Finland. We learn to reflect when we would want to inflict our pain on someone else instead of feeling it through following Brené Browns thought here once again. And to not only to learn to carry our emotions but to release them out of our bodies as well is important, at least when looking at the world around from the perspective of a sensitive person.
When it comes to these balls that are not mine, I’ve obviously had to peek in in the process as well to keep my stash in order. And it is no wonder that these kinds of balls don’t turn me on, or anyone else. I don't think that it is my task to make anything with them either. The way I see it is that we carry our responsibility and solve our tangled yarns. Then we know what to apologize and can do that with sincerity and then we can have our balls back. The bigger the pile we have left to someone else, the bigger balls we can earn if we have respect for sorting out the mess we have created. There is justice in the size of the balls, there is justice for everyone within the metaphor. There is respect and a possible love has nothing to do with it. Love, it just is. I accept that this is just my way of thinking and living, cleaning and keeping my house in order and trying to live in truth but hopefully with a gentle touch. And I, of course, know that I have left my piles and balls somewhere during the journey as well and haven't always remembered to apologize when it should have been done. Yet, while sorting out the mess and mending the patterns, releasing the ones I don't want to take further, I think I've earned my balls. I take good care of them too, and of course, try to store them as beautifully as I can. :-)
And since we won’t always get our justice, perhaps we don’t get our closure with a story in the past or somehow struggle to let go of some past issues we perhaps can find our own creative ways into it, like through this metaphor? It can be a bit fun too. We find our way from the past into the future without unnecessary burdens, piles of yarn, I hope, even though it may take some time.
Then I went and wrote on the door of my home a new mantra to live by: Create a mess in my yarn stash and I come and take your balls.
Standing back and admiring my own cleverness I thought that it may now be quiet behind my door, no one Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door looking for some Human Touch or other lyrics and songs to sing together in the nearby Karaoke bar. Oh well, I thought. It is high time for others to adjust and life is good like this as well. Then I quietly closed the door behind, grabbed my hook and joined together the 11 stitches I created last year, joined this last chain stitch into the first one with a slip stitch as we do.
There is love in different forms in those stitches, how we learn our life lessons, knock on different doors and learn to open our own door into vulnerability, love and true belonging. We learn about the light and darkness and try to figure out our relationships and a few other things as well. We grab the child in our loving arms and he/she takes us home if we have lost him/her somewhere down the road. We meet our own darkness, the pain, and the shame through looking the whale courageously directly in the eyes and release it out of our waters. And then after earning our balls, we get to create new patterns, new beliefs to live by and move on in the story from the first act to the second. And then we start the same circle again. Some days and circles are better and some days our stereo system breaks down early in the morning. There is no music to start the day with and the cup of love we tried to mold in pottery class doesn't hold water. So, we go and knock on all the possible doors if someone would help us to repair the stereo or loan us theirs. We brew some coffee with our new more-expensive-than-life espresso machine, open our own door wide open in case someone would want to come for a cup of coffee, but it may be silent. We have also fallen out from Santa Clauses name list altogether even though we have been the kindest of the kindest princess and elf for years. No wonder if we then end up in the shopping mall of life and lose the child there, or all three of them - the wounded one, the invisible one and (the secretly our favorite) inner child. Since there is no one guiding us back home we go and buy a few interior design magazines, some ice cream, and few fishes for the whale since today is not the day to meddle with that fellow. Today we just numb our emotions with sugar and dream about a beautiful home. We leave the whole task of earning our balls for some other day and buy a few skeins of beautiful yarn from the shopping mall instead, even though our yarn stash is in the size of a medium-sized yarn shop already. At the end of the day, we look at the camera roll in our phone and there is nothing we really want to tell anyone on social media about the day of our life. So, we go to bed instead and then we get to wake up together with a younger version of Bill Murray into the same day again in the film Groundhog Day. Not that it is necessarily that bad :-) and we get a new fresh chance and hope that tomorrow has something better in store for us (maybe literally in a store) and that we manage to take a small step forward in our lives.
I call this my circle of mindlessness; the circle of life and I leave mindfulness and such for some higher life forms. I rather think that there we all are, in the gutter of Shawshank Redemption together with Andy crawling forward, but hopefully looking at the stars with Oscar Wilde. And the wisdom is in doing it together, the message art tries to send us every day. And one basic message art sends is the importance of emotional presence and connection, or what? I am so sorry but I feel like poking meditation and mindfulness a bit with my knitting needles because I am afraid that we once again may use something as a means to put more responsibility on the shoulders of individuals instead of looking at what should be changed in our societies. And when looking through the lens of trauma, it is good to be somewhat skeptic and cautious as well. Some methods can also be too heavy for our bodies.
When it comes to the concept of mindlessness, I thought last year that perhaps I could start thinking about Ph.D. in linguistics but the universe seemed to think that PTSD is a much more appropriate abbreviation for me to think and write about (dear universe, I am not in good terms with you). What can one do but to go and to own the letter combination one is given and create a vocabulary to live by to get to do something one loves? We don't choose what is fun, fast and easy if Brené Brown is one of our dear gurus, after all. I just hope that all the work and all her wisdom moves me from three-act tragedy into a three-act comedy.
Back to the story though, one day it will then be time to let our hooks and needles to rest altogether. It happens usually somewhere in the middle of a pattern or the circle of mindlessness. If we are lucky the circle has already slowed down by then and we have time to enjoy of all the things we made, the patterns and the colors while we tell about our adventures to the following generations. And what would that older version of ourselves tell us? Mine would probably say to me that darling, the key in life is in gratitude. Maybe it even is the birthplace of love? At least gratitude cultivates and nourishes love inside have I noticed. I think she would also say to me: My dear darling, whoever knows loss, or fear of loss, already understands life, understands love. It also means that you have lived and after each circle of life, it becomes easier and easier to cherish every moment and every day. I hope you stay realistic and have high enough expectations for yourself but low on others. Treat everyone well and have generous assumptions about others but keep only those people close to your heart and life who treat you well. Give other people your time, if and when you have time and energy for that. Then love and light will flow freely. Maybe, it is that simple, life – on paper. I wonder though what the older versions of others would say.
And I think that the older version of myself would also tell something like this about the patterns to me. This is what she would teach.
Whenever starting a new pattern, we often have to make a few starts before a project starts going forward like on rails. Then the necessary confidence gets built in the stitches. So, don’t give up even though some days you feel like it. I hope you also have curiosity, passion, and resilience to crochet and knit outside and beyond the existing patterns (of life), to create the beauty of your kind and to stand up for your voice. That you have the patience to explain why something is important for you, important to be seen, what is hidden in the stitches – your thoughts, your emotions, your inspiration sources, your life. And even when using existing patterns, we all have our beautiful handwriting, our hooks, so the end result is never the same. What you create will be all yours. And that is what we do anyway when we learn something new. We use existing patterns to learn the necessary skills so that we can then start creating patterns of our own. We learn the rules so that we can start breaking them the right way.
Maybe this is the way crochet and knitting as art forms go forward, and patterns of life. I hope that you also try to open up to different kind of patterns, different kind of beauty, and therefore learn from others, may they be friends of crocheted diamonds or knitted brioche, or both. And how important it is to understand your own pattern world inside, bring it into consciousness. Only then you can understand and honor the patterns of others. Then you learn your true colors and how colors are combined together in different ways.
For us makers, there is also huge gratitude towards the previous generations. We build on their achievements. We continue on working with their wips, projects, and patterns crocheted halfway. Some of the patterns we inherit may be broken and we are left with the task to mend them and to sort out the tangled yarns. We may then end up discarding the old ones altogether and just hope to be free from them haunting us. We also get inspiration from the history and our contemporaries. Names and voices of women like Brené Brown and Karen Blixen are hidden among my stitches and lines of diamonds and I keep on adding inspiration there. And when it is our time to give the hooks and patterns forward, we always hope we manage to give richer patterns and tools for the following generations. I hope we show them our love towards handmade, our passion to create and therefore how we love ourselves. It is the example that counts most after all. I also hope we manage to pass on the love for the self-made since it teaches that everything worthwhile having and achieving in life takes time and effort – and gives real joy. We may count the stitches wrong in the beginning, we fail, we learn and then eventually succeed. Making teaches that nothing is perfect not a person nor a handmade item (in a time when I sometimes feel that even our thoughts should be perfect). There is empathy. And first and foremost, that we manage to support them and give forward self-confidence to use unique color combinations and to create new and unique patterns, and perhaps not that much of what we see in media. And we hope that they are free from our broken patterns.
So, I hope we keep on making.
This story was just one way to look at how it is to be a human of course. For my part, I feel like laying down my hooks and needles now both ways. I don't know what the universe thinks but I need a vacation, here is one tired lady laying on her homemade cushion in the middle of the circle of mindlessness. And then I think I feel like "spinning a yarn" instead. There is a little critter who wants to be sewn and his story to be told when the time is right. Those stories I feel much more comfortable telling anyway than these that are more connected to my life. From my point of view, this is also the right post to end this blog with, but we'll see.
Here below a few more quotes, so many others have already said what is worthwhile saying so much better after all. I’ll just add here: hashtag craftastherapy, hashtag mindlessness.
And happy, happy New Year!!!
Seeing a pattern doesn't mean you know how to put it all together. Take baby steps: don't focus on the folks whose skills are far beyond your own. When you're new to something - or you haven't tried it in a while - it can feel impossibly hard to get it right. Every misstep feels like a reason to quit. You envy everyone else who seems to know what they're doing. What keeps you going? The belief that one day you'll also be like that: Elegant. Capable. Confident. Experienced. And you can be. All you need now is enthusiasm. A little bravery. And-always-a sense of humor.
― Kate Jacobs, Knit Two
Especially in a world that doesn't need homemade anything. That's when we need homemade everything.
― Kate Jacobs, The Friday Night Knitting Club
Pick up a crochet hook and start a chain reaction.
– www.happilyhooked.com (seen on Pinterest)
This was the last sock Fredrika Runeberg (1807-1879) worked with. She was a novelist and journalist although most of us still know her best through her husband, our national poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg. Their home museum is situated here in Porvoo.