Flat Stanley, The Knitting Version

A couple of weeks ago I shared an article, A Knitter’s Guide to Falling in Love with Slow Progress. In it, I encouraged us all to change the way we think about our longer projects and the role they can play in our lives.

Rather than considering them as a long-standing item on the to-do list (you know, those items we keep transferring from old to new lists or worse, the ones that keep us toting old lists around along with our new lists), we could think of them as temporary companions for a relatively short span of our lives.

Did you ever encounter Flat Stanley?

Flat Stanley was and is a fun and simple activity for school-aged children. I became aware of it when I was homeschooling my own children. The basic idea is that a child sends a handmade drawing of Stanley through the mail to someone. Stanley spends some time with the recipient as a companion and then returns home with tales of his adventures and sometimes even pictures. Several students have sent Stanleys to famous people and received replies that provide a view into a few days of someone else’s life.

I’m looking at my Anzio Amaryllis sweater as my latest Flat Stanley. This yarn is knitting up beautifully into a light, fuzzy, warm alpaca bit of loveliness as I’ve moved past the raglan sleeve holes and am an inch or two away from the lace bit near the beginning of the “hem.”

So, what have my companion and I been up to in the past couple of weeks? (You can catch up on the story of how this Italian yarn came to me here.)

Blooms

Well, we put in a bunch of flowers around the outside of the house. I was so happy that some of the bulbs I planted last Fall actually popped up earlier this Spring (if you’re new here, my thumb is not any shade of green). Those flowers have all faded and now there are some nice perennials (that someone else planted before we lived here) that are doing their things.

There’s also an amazingly healthy patch of mint that we’re trying to kill. It amazes me that I cannot kill a plant when I am actively trying to do so, considering how many plants I have killed while desperately trying to keep them alive. We went a little nuclear in that area and it’s currently covered in black plastic and mulch, so I’ve got annuals in containers around the front. We put in some clematis and coneflowers around back in a new little bed and are hoping very hard that the doggies will leave them alone (and getting an assist from some fencing). And, of course, like every aspiring container gardener, we have the requisite basil plant and cherry tomato plant ready to be roasted into oblivion by the Kansas sun later in the Summer.

Baskets

My sweater knitting has been interspersed with crocheting more of the baskets I mentioned last week. They’re so satisfying to make and were really well received when we gave a few away with plants in them last weekend for Mother’s Day.

I ended up repotting several of our houseplants (the ones who have not yet succumbed to their fate, as Dad loved to tease) this week and a few of them seemed to need fancier digs.

For the crocheters, my recipe is simple: I’m holding 4 skeins of dishcloth cotton together and using an M size hook.

I put 6 single crochet stitches in a magic loop and join.

For the next round, I chain 1 to get the height for the round and then make 2 sc in each stitch, join.

Next round, ch 1, (sc in next st, 2sc in next st) repeat between ( ) all the way around, join.

For every following round for the base, repeat the last round, adding one more sc between each st with the 2sc. Eventually you won’t have to count anymore, you’ll just be able to see that you’re consistently making the 2 single crochet stitches in one sc in between the 2 single crochet stitches in one sc from the previous round.

Once the base is as big as you want, continue in single crochet until the height is as tall as you like.

I made handles on a few by chaining stitches instead of making single crochets over as wide a space as I liked for the handle, then going back to crocheting to anchor the chain/handle and continue building up the side of the basket. When I came back around to the chain, I put the same number of single crochets in the chain as I’d “skipped” when I made the chain.

Beautiful Salads

I made a couple of fantastic kitchen discoveries this week that I definitely want to include as I think about my experiences over the knitting time of this sweater.

As I mentioned earlier, last weekend included Mother’s Day. We had the privilege of celebrating with some family and I brought a salad that Greg had in his recipe box, written in his mother’s handwriting. It was called Million Dollar Salad. We had to do some minor tweaking, but the finished salad had mixed greens, slivered almonds, red onions, feta, strawberries, kiwi, blueberries, and a dressing made with mayo, balsamic vinegar, poppy seeds, raspberry jam, and sugar. It was so good.

The other new salad was a Pinterest discovery.

This Mediterranean Quinoa Salad is my first non-bread use of quinoa in a recipe, and I liked it! I’m going to have to hunt up some more uses for quinoa. Do you have any favorites?

Spring companion

The goal of all of this is to learn to cultivate a love for the slow process involved with knitting.

This particular step, of appreciating the time period marked by the beginning and end of the project, has so much potential to add meaning to our process. In addition to what I’ve already mentioned above, I reconnected with a friend I hadn’t seen in about 15 years at another friend’s daughter’s graduation party. I learned of an older friend’s death, one who’d had a sweet friendship with one of my children. I’m anticipating a family wedding. I’m helping plan a memorial. I discovered a book I think is going to be very helpful in working through some issues a friend and I are finding ourselves identifying with.

I can choose to associate all these things that happened or started during this time with this sweater project and intentionally attach them to the process of making it. When I wear it, I will have the benefit not only of a warm and beautiful garment, but of a curated collection of thoughts and experiences that make that garment more meaningful and more personal.

Does that sound like the sort of thinking that might add something to your own knitting experience?

What are you working on today?

Happy knitting!

Kiersten J