MAEVE Magazine Blog

Born to Knit, MAEVE |Knitting in France

Well my trip to France with my family arrived so quickly. And now it is going past so quickly. One week in Paris. Five days in Nice. The days are flying by. I thought the days would be longer, but each one that passes us by seems to be shorter. The knitting continues.

I have knitted at: the Louvre, the Museum of Modern Art, in our apartment, at breakfast, on the train, at Versailles, on a boat in Nice, on the beach in Nice and I am sure a few other places that I have forgotten.

It’s amazing that when you are so far away from home, something as simple as knitting can make everything seem familiar.

I was having a tuff day. I essentially threw a tantrum and in my wisdom, stormed off, went and sat myself down in a park. I took out my knitting, and in my fury, started. I forgot everything around me, why I was upset in the first place, where I was, what the time was, and just ploughed though, putting my hands to work. Distracting myself was the best idea.

I love that I now have something to do whilst I am waiting. I seem to be waiting everywhere in France. Everybody is so slow. Everything moves at a different pace. Knitting seems to make the time that would usually be redundant more productive. It helps with the little patience I have left as well.

Although I am knitting for charity, a common theme throughout this “journey” is one of patience. I am feeling a little bit guilty that I am getting so much out of this experience when I should be giving to others that are less fortunate. I have everything I would ever need or want. In fact I have never wanted for anything, but I still feel a sense of emptiness which the knitting is filling. I think I have mentioned before, I now have a hobby, something that has been missing for a long time.

The original idea behind knitting to save (eating less, spending less) has been slow to nonexistent (it is completely impossible in France to eat less and spend less) but I have found so many other avenues along the way. I am content where I am now.

Good news, square two was finished today! 14 more to go….

Lierre Bayley is a Melbourne based MAEVE reader who has embraced the Born to Knit campaign. Supporting Save the Children as they attempt to knit 15,000 blankets for children in third world countries. Here we’ll update you on Lierre’s progress as she knits her blanket.

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Born to Knit, MAEVE |Knitting – Likened to a doomed relationship

As I was knitting my last row for tonight, I had a thought (well more than one, but only one that didn’t involve me cursing at my knitting needles). This knitting challenge is like a relationship that is doomed from the start.

It starts off well. Discovery. You discover each other (well I discovered the knitting needles so to speak). Everything is amazing and new! You learn things about each other, spend so much time together, share everything with each other, talk incessantly about the other person, almost to a point where you are driving everyone mad – people call it the “honeymoon period”. It can be a little tense, awkward even embarrassing, but you get over it and move on after a pash.

Then after a couple of weeks, the things that were once new, are now getting really old, quickly. Where you had the patience earlier to listen to his stories that go on forever with no ending, now you ask- is there a point? At around the fifth time you go out, you realise you cannot stand the way he eats, speaks and breathes. It was all a mistake – what were you thinking. You were blindsided by the attention, excitement and newness of it all.

Then comes the end. You know it is over, but you just want to give it another week to see if it works out. There is no one else waiting in the sidelines, but you are starting to consider that you would be better off alone than with this person (or the knitting). The attention that one has from being in a new relationship is now over and people have started to accept that you are together (or that you will take your knitting everywhere), you will arrive together, leave together, be invited to parties together, but you want to once again be an individual.

I guess the point of this post is that it’s so easy to get caught up in the excitement of something new. But everything tires. Hopefully a stint in Paris will inspire me to be enthusiastic again.

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MAEVE, Unplugged |My Month Without Internet

The last time I wrote here, I vowed to make more of my unplugged evenings, tackling a list of items I’d always wanted to accomplish, but claimed I never had time to do. I haven’t actually started on the list, but I’ve done one better than that, I haven’t been on the Internet or watched much TV for three weeks now.

A few weeks back, I travelled across the United States to visit my parents’ and my in-laws’ families. Since my computer was busted, I left home without a computer. Their homes are with limited computer access, but there wasn’t time to do so much as sit down and check my email. Instead, I’ve been visiting with long lost relatives, getting three shades darker in the North American summer sun, watching my boys go swimming and run through sprinklers and consume more popsicles than they previously ate in their entire lives, combined. It’s been a nice vacation.

Maybe it’s been a bit too nice. I’ve barely checked in with friends I’m normally in contact with through instant messenger or email or video chat or phone calls. I haven’t wished anyone a happy birthday on Facebook, which is usually the only time I wish anyone a happy birthday anymore that doesn’t live with me. I didn’t even remember to write this blog post last week, even though I pride myself on my reliability. I hate people who don’t follow through, who drop all contact with others without so much as a goodbye, and yet here I am, doing the same.

I think that’s what’s so difficult about this project—I don’t just want to stop checking email so much and stop communicating through technology. I want the entire world to change with me. When I vowed to spend less time on chat, I felt better. My eyes weren’t red and strained, the kitchen was cleaner every evening, I spent more time exercising and reading and pursuing creative endeavors instead of shooting the shit with friends over instant messenger. But I also missed out. I didn’t know when a friend was having a bad day and wanted me on instant messenger. I didn’t share with anyone else how anxious and worried I was when we thought my six-year-old went missing at his aunt’s house (he was fine, hiding with his uncle and cousin, reading a book). So while in some ways, life without Internet has been better, in some ways it’s been worse. Who knew technology could improve lives? You heard it here first!

I don’t know where this brings me with this project. I still intend on tackling my list but I also want to engage more. I’m going to vow to get up a little earlier to send emails, to send out some postcards to friends and let them know to pick up the phone and call me when they can.

I guess, like every other post here, I struggle with how to incorporate the right amount of Internet with the right amount of living in real life. I suppose this is something I will always struggle with, so long as I have open and free access to a computer or a smart phone or a TV. I don’t have any easy answers, or experiments with hypotheses to test out this week. There aren’t any Oprah A Ha! moments to share at the end of this post. I just have more living, more experimenting, more figuring out what works and what doesn’t.

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MAEVE |Raising Autism by Danielle Quarmby

I don’t feel like a particularly responsible person. At the same time, I realise that I appear incredibly capable. I have quite a lot of responsibilities, I suppose. Perhaps I don’t think about them unless it is in the context of my inadequacy. You just do what you’ve gotta do. You know?

Autism Spectrum Disorder, oh, so that is the answer. Three words which are the culmination of an investigation into my daughter that I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to explore. It wasn’t really sudden, a suggestion out of the blue, and I think that helped. What, exactly, I’m not sure, but we were already on a journey to discover “how her mind works”, reasons for her reactions to things and understanding of her perspective on things. From the start of discussing my daughter with her teacher, I was clear that my goal was not to change her. Nor was it to define her, for the sake of a definition. Primarily, as with most parents I imagine, I just wanted to understand her. To see how she saw things, to look at the world through her eyes so that I could help her to cope better. So that her school could help her. So that we could react to her in such a way that situations didn’t get worse. And if she stopped running away and hiding, or melting down and needing to be put in the car kicking and screaming (or if I didn’t have the car with me, as was more often the case, being carried home), you know, that would be nice.

It is now a year since her diagnosis and she is 7, my 5 year old son has also been diagnosed with ASD and we are keeping an eye on number 3, at 1 year old. And, at the moment, I’m a bit tired. But that’s ok.

On Ash’s report from the psychologist, one of the features he was listed as displaying was that “The general impression is one of autism”. That was a statement to stop me in my tracks. Even though I already knew that. I had suggested the possibility, another psychologist had indicated it, his pre-school teacher had been surprised that he wasn’t diagnosed and that was the reason for the assessment. But still, this seemed so stark, so black and white. I don’t see my children that way, I see them in glorious shades and colours. To realise how others might see them can be a bit disconcerting.

More than that, I was suddenly confronted with how I identify myself. The mum with the autistic kids… Well, you know, that’s ok. But when I still struggle, at times, to get my head around being viewed as a mum first, regardless of the other layers of my identity, this just added a whole new layer to that conflict.

I don’t like whinging. But I don’t like glossing over, either. The internal dialogue that goes on is incredible, every scrap of patience and gentle voice, every exercise of self-control and mental gymnastics working out what is likely to overwhelm one, or both, of my children, every moment is an internal conversation with myself, and a censorship of my thoughts. The complete opposite of their entire way of being, in fact. My children have virtually no filter, for things going in or coming out, and so I need to filter all the more.

On the other hand, I have no basis for comparison. Often, our days seem so normal to me that any kind of diagnosis is a surprise. Admittedly, both Sienna and Ash have mild autism, not severe, so the more dramatic stuff that happens is not always happening every day, and I feel genuinely blessed that I can connect with my children on a daily basis. As I’ve yet to raise a neuro-typical child to pre-school age, I’ve no concrete idea of what that experience feels like. Our family is my world, and that world is on the Autism spectrum. Times two. Or more, possibly (my husband is mid-way through the diagnostic process himself).

I have a lot to learn. My daughter likes to be wrapped in a light green blanket, underneath her regular quilt, every night. I really had linked this with her love of routine and only a couple of nights ago connected the habit with a sensory need to be enclosed. Lightbulb moment number three hundred and forty six. I have no doubt there will be many more.

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Born to Knit, MAEVE |Tension

I am so frustrated. I can not seem to get the tension right on my knitting needles. It is driving me insane. I am trying to learn, but for some reason, the earlier mentioned part of my brain which completely lacks the ability to learn how to knit, is taking over. I have tried to loosen up, holding the wool a different way. Mum has even knitted a row in the correct tension for me, BUT NO LUCK.

I guess this is part of the journey? A way to learn patience. Not everything is going to come at once I suppose. Knitting is not mastered easily, if it was, everyone would do it. It is also not for the faint hearted. You have to stick with it. It has been over a week and already I’ve forgotten how to cast on. It is something you have to do over and over and over again to remember and then perfect. I may need to cast on like 200 times in a row to remember how to do it for the rest of my life. It’s not like the bicycle saying. What is that saying – It is like riding a bike….. Whatever.

So I have made some realisations.

1. I am not patient.

2. I am stubborn – I will not let this wool and needle get the better of me.

3. I am a perfectionist. What I am knitting is still not good enough.

4. I am getting better slowly, and faster. I like being fast at knitting.

5. Knitting is a great conversation starter. A great distraction from work and life.

6. I enjoy knitting – on the train, half time at the football, during lunch at work. It makes it easy to forget all the other rubbish around me. I can focus on something tangible and it’s in my control.

I’ve learnt a valuable lesson – do not knit when tired. It’s not a good use of time. And you ruin the tension….

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MAEVE, Unplugged |The Crash and The List

My unplugged evening started out with a bang, literally. The shelf where we keep our laptops came crashing down to the ground, and my poor little computer fell, hard. Besides a few scratches and bruises, it’s….oh, who am I kidding, it’s looking fatal. The screen is cracked, the battery is pretty much gone and the “M” key only works if I hit it with hammer-force. But it’s still working, for now.

In its condition, I can’t exactly use it for watching movies, or take it into a cozy chair to blog-surf. No, it does exactly what it needs to (email, write in Word, and…yeah, that’s it), but nothing more. And it’s alright. I’m getting used to more days without screen time, and my boys seem to watch less TV each day. It seems without me pushing them to keep busy by watching a cartoon, they don’t ask for it themselves. Huh. Maybe it was only me who was addicted this whole time.

But instead of just telling you how last night I reread some Pride and Prejudice and washed the dishes, I think I need to do more with my unplugged evenings. It’s not enough for me to stay away from the computer and the TV screen. I want to make more of my time, to see what I’ve been missing by spending my evenings chained to a screen.

So, what to do?

I talked a few weeks ago about doing more away from the computer, and that’s what I want to do, but with more purpose. I sat down last night and thought of some things I’d like to do, but have been avoiding because either I’m too scared, or I don’t think I have time, or because I couldn’t think of a better excuse, so I avoid talking about my wishes at all.

Here’s what I came up with:

Sew my own dress
Take a photo of 10 strangers whose style I love and post them to the Internet
Take a self-portrait in front of a Seattle mural
Bake a pie for my neighbors
Go thrift store shopping
Get a pedicure (I have a thing with feet, but…I want to do this!)
Buy nice makeup from a department store makeup counter without being intimidated by the beautiful-perfect-polished women behind it
Create an oil painting on canvas for my house
Improve my photography skills
Go to a Farmers’ Market
Listen to live music with my kids
Go to a beach bonfire with my kids
Give 5 strangers on the street compliments
Hand out my business cards to 10 people

I know this is a short list, and I’m still working on what I want to do next, but I’m excited. My unplugged evening isn’t just going to be about the absence of my computer, but also about doing something even better with my time, like living my life.

Do you want to join me? Take one evening out a week to do something for yourself that you’ve always wanted to do, but didn’t think you could.

See you next week, with something incredibly fun!

The Unplugged blog post series are written by Shalini Miskelly. Shalini is a librarian and writer in Seattle. You can find her at http://readingandchickens.blogspot.com and on twitter @booksnchickens

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Born to Knit, MAEVE |Square One

I’ve finished my first square of the blanket. Fifteen more squares to go! As this post is called Square One. I have meant that in an ironic way. I like things that have two meanings. Knitting to Save has two meanings. Knitting for Save the Children and knitting to try to save money for my overseas adventures later in the year.

So back to square one. Learning to knit, is like starting all over again, being back at square one. Trying to learn something from scratch and not having the acquired skill already technically perfect, is frustrating. Very frustrating for the perfectionist Virgo in me. It feels like I am ten years old again, in a tennis lesson, having to do slice backhand drills (my most hated shot, give me a solid cross court forehand any day).

I find it hard to articulate how small and humbled I’ve felt over the past week which sounds very patronising, but the realisation that I didn’t know everything, still having so much to learn, became overwhelming. I checked each row as I finished it, checking that I had not made any mistakes or dropped a stitch. I ran to Mum for her expert help on the occasion when I had no idea what had unfolded in front of me, somehow I added a stitch onto the end (I still don’t understand what I did).

Finally I feel as though I am participating in something creative. Working for a long time in a commercial world, this is something that is more community minded. Strangely my time now has a sense of purpose. I have a great sense of achievement.

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Born to Knit, MAEVE |World Wide Knit In Public Day

Last Saturday I headed over to Federation Square in Melbourne to participate in the World Wide Knit in Public Day. It was fantastic. There was such a sense of community. The Born to Knit campaign was in full swing. So many people came along to donate their time for the cause. Free wool, knitting needles and pattern books were handed out to encourage people to knit squares to create a blanket. People from all walks of life and all age groups joined in for a fun time. It’s a lovely idea to think that the squares that were knitted by so many people, will be joined at some point. Random people will be joined forever without even realising it. I like that idea.

We sat down, ordered some coffee and knitted for an hour. I am terribly slow at knitting at the moment, hopefully I will get faster otherwise I’ll be knitting this blanket for years, last weekend was amazing. I feel like I’ve achieved something and participated in something that is bigger than me and will go on further.

I think at the end of the day, we all want to feel like we are part of something bigger than just ourselves. During our everyday lives, we forget this, but I was reminded of this last weekend.

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MAEVE, Unplugged |We Fight Back With Art

A few weeks ago I mentioned that one of my problems with giving up Internet for one night was that I more than made up for it the next day, logging on extra hours. It’s hard to live without Internet. So my plan was to try and find more real life experiences to fill the void of computer and TV time.

I had a lot of ideas for what to start with: buy vegetables from the farmers’ market, go thrifting at a consignment shop, or maybe go out to dinner with my family?

But life had other plans for me. Someone vandalized the door of our garage with graffiti on Saturday night. I know this isn’t a big problem: no one was hurt, nothing was even stolen, and likely the paint will come off with either a lot of acetone and scrubbing, or maybe a nice new coat of paint. The garage needs it anyway.

I couldn’t help but feel hurt, though, that an individual (likely a young, inebriated, possibly remorseful of the act in his later years) would damage private property like that with no thought as to how it would affect the owners. And how did it affect me? Negatively. I sobbed and sobbed. I felt unsafe, and unwelcome, and instantly wanted to move from our neighborhood and our lovely city. I wanted to retreat.

Let me spoil the end of this story to tell you that we didn’t retreat, even if we could move at a moment’s notice (we can’t, we own our house). We’re still here, graffitied garage and all.

And instead of retreating, I decided to fight back in one of the most peaceful and effective ways I know: with art. I am going to show the vandalizer that he can’t bring me down, and we won’t run. We’re going to make our home more beautiful than before. How, you ask, can someone fight back with art?

We’re making mosaics. The front of our house, garage included, leave a little bit (fine, a LOT) to be desired. It’s…rustic. No, I can’t fool even myself with that. It’s just plain ugly. The garage is moss-encrusted, the sidewalk is dirty, and the little strip of garden nearby is overgrown with weeds and leaves. The whole place needs at the very least a good scrubbing.

So my boys and I visited Seattle Mosaic Arts, picked a project (garden stones), picked out lots of glass, and went home and got to work.

What does all of this have to do with unplugging? That’s what we worked on as our back to real life project. We didn’t go out to dinner or to the park. We sat at our dining room table together with hundreds of little pieces of glass, carefully placing them where they would soon be grouted into place forever. We sat and we talked, and my older boy helped my younger boy, and I mostly watched. I told them how beautiful it was going to look out front, how people would stop and see and wonder about the mosaics.

It was much, much more rewarding than television or YouTube or even one of my favorite hobbies of all, blog reading. I got to be with my boys—I mean really BE with them–and I saw them create. Screen time makes me feel numb, which can be helpful when I’m overwhelmed or stressed, but I don’t want to numb out through my children’s entire childhoods. And now I know, if nothing else, I will remember this. I will remember sitting there with them, bursting with pride over what they could do.

I didn’t know it was possible for my three-year-old to be so creative, so organized, and so patient with this project. But he was. I didn’t know my six-year-old could be so determined (he worked for hours without a break!). They both were brilliant. I’m so proud.

And I’m happy that not only are we beautifying the front of our house with love and art, but also that we’re doing something together, something that will be at our house as long as we are, and something that says: you can vandalize our property, but we’re not going to run. We’re here to stay.

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Born to Knit, MAEVE |Born to Knit

Driving to work this morning, my 11th day in a row, I heard on the radio an advertisement for the Born to Knit campaign.

Save the Children (an organisation focused on securing a child’s right to health, education and protection) are looking for 15,000 knitted blankets to send to children in third world countries. I’ve wanted to knit for years. I’ve even attempted to knit a scarf in the past. It’s still going, 7 years later. It’s like the side of my brain which learns how to knit, doesn’t work. I just do not understand how to knit one, pearl one, let alone cast on and off. Oh dear…

I first wanted to knit when I was about 17 years old. After my grandmother died, one of the only things that I had left from her was some yarn we found when we were cleaning out her house. Nanna had used the wool to knit clothes for my brother when he was a baby, I wanted to create something I could keep from that memory.

I found knitting so difficult and so slow as I was learning. It tested my patience and that of my mother’s. Mum attempted to teach me but it was stressful, she was frustrated with me, as I was with her teaching style.

I’ve now committed myself to completing this project of knitting a blanket. I’m hoping that this time around, I will have more determination, focus and patience. It will most likely be more symbolic rather than productive. I believe the unfinished scarf is haunting me; unfinished and full of memories of abandoning something that was too hard to complete and too hard emotionally.

So the challenge is on. 16 knitted squares = one blanket.

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