About Me ColorJoy Home Page Free Stuff About Me Contact Me
ColorJoy Home Page
ColorJoy Home The ColorJoy Blog Buy Patterns, Recipe Books, CDs Patterns Schedule & Potential Classes Recipes & Food Information The LynnH SockTour LynnH Polymer Clay The Fabulous Heftones - Lynn & Brian

Letting Go Again

frogger.jpgI knit this piece in Africa, nearly two years ago. It was intended to be the bottom of a felted backpack that I had wanted to knit *before* I left, but it took all I had to just get ready for a trip I couldn’t plan. (How do you plan for something you can’t imagine?)

I tried to knit it while I was there. It’s from a pattern. I can’t knit from a pattern when I’m with other people, especially if they are bringing me into their home as family and talking to me in a language they don’t use very much (I understood them well, but I know it was work for them to talk with me for very long).

They did a lot of stretching to make me comfortable and I wanted to pay attention to them and everything around me. When I did knit in Africa, I knit socks. I can knit socks without looking at my hands, for the most part. I do have to peek when I do a heel or toe but most of it is just worry-bead knitting, repetitive motion for comfort. It helps me sit still, and I did a lot of waiting when I was on that trip.

addisstreetscene.jpgSo this piece was relegated to after everyone else went to bed. I spent a lot of that time writing in a journal, and as you know I tend to write a lot. I did knit but the bottom of the bag was all I accomplished.

I had intended it to be a neutral bag while on the trip. It is lighter in real life than it looks on my screen… that cream/light taupe marl that is sometimes called “Ragg Wool” color. I intended to dye it somehow when I got home. I’m clearly not going to do either, now. So Sunday I ripped it out.

I now have a ball of yarn weighing something like 85gm of yarn. I’m not sure where the rest of the 100gm skein went (or for that matter the other skeins I bought for the project). I am thinking I may use this for a Sassy Summer bag.

But I think this simple act of ripping is a continuation of my “throw away 10 things” day I had a week ago. I threw away more than 10 things, and I’m still looking at stuff around me with a more careful eye.

addiscoke.jpgToday I found the lid to a saucepan I have not owned since I moved to Brian’s house 10 years ago. Dang. Every day a new discovery. Maybe someday we’ll be able to move around here without dealing with all the clutter. I have seen the changes my brother Eric and his wife Diana have done in a relatively few years. It’s a miracle, the change that is really working for them every day now. They don’t buy if they don’t know where it will go before they make the purchase. I’m not there (Brian thinks that way but I never have). I can get there, one day at a time.

Meanwhile I let go of a fragment of knitting I never loved in the first place. Sassy Bag, here we come.

Photos: Fragment which is now history; two street scenes in Ethiopia. It’s such a blend of past, present and future. I think both were taken in/near Addis Ababa, the Coke stand may have been on the way out of town toward Nazret (Nazareth) which is in the rift valley area. I will never run out of photos of africa to show you here… I took 1400 and I think I’ve ever shown maybe 125 between this blog and a PowerPoint presentation I’ve given a few times.

One Response to “Letting Go Again”

  1. Diana Says:

    Yay Lynn! Must be something in the air, yesterday I ripped out the start of what looked like mini bag from the remnants of soysilk you gave me (I used the bulk of it for a thermos traveling bag) It had been stuck in my purse for months, so long that I forgot what I was trying to make with it!