About New Day Knits
Progress, not perfection, is the goal.
— Somebody said
I love cold weather but hate being cold — it’s a good thing I found knitting. Good coffee, hugs, giggle fits, quiet solitude, waking up warm and pausing just a moment to tell the universe, ‘Thank you’.
I am a seeker. Of truths, of joys, of love, of challenge and knowledge but most importantly, a seeker of the person I am intended to be. This last thing is a life-long effort that has taken me decades just to realize it is the primary reason I exist.
Here I will share all those things with you. And then some.
My monkey mind may annoy at times. It annoys me.
Being naturally curious about most things means I can lose focus on the goals and divert my attention to what has recently crossed my path. I’ll manage this mostly through edits, but it is a part of who I am.
I came to knitting via a long and bumpy path. At 8 after a few rows and a lumpy swatch, my first teacher told me I wasn’t ever going to be a good knitter and I should try something else.
Interestingly, I did try other things, my grandma then taught me to crochet, she wasn’t a knitter. I taught myself crewel work and embroidery. It never occurred to me to use the same process for knitting until about 35 years later. I had always preferred the look and texture of knitted fabric and once my son was born I wanted to knit things for him.
I went to the yarn store, explained my problem and got set up with a simple book, needles and two skeins of Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride. I’d like to say the rest was history, but no…the naysayers in my head were still at work.
Stepping through the instructions I got started on a scarf. My goal was to knit about six inches in one pattern and color and then change both. Somewhere in the second section I got frustrated and set my knitting down. I left it where I could walk past it regularly because I wasn’t quite ready to walk away completely.
About 10 days later, while walking past my poor, abandoned scarf, I heard a voice in my head say, “You are getting your a** kicked by simple sticks and string!”
There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.
– Brene Brown
Oh, hell no.
At that point, the rest is history. That scarf — long since lost — was finished and from there I have not only continued, but I found my art. And that is a good thing.
Knitting brings me joy and I’m all about the joy. Maybe too much at times.
If joy must be sacrificed — and sometimes it has to be — to make progress or reach completion of a task or goal, I struggle. It is an internal conflict I deal with regularly. That leads to its own issues of self-doubt and deprecation but the full discussion on that is probably better for a blog post than here.
If I had a style, it might be called ‘Industrial Vagabond’. I love the wood and wires, metals and naked elements of the Industrial style, but I need color. Lots and lots of colors. Colors in a riot, colors that don’t ‘go together’, colors that swim in a choir of visual symphony. It can get messy.
Thanks for stopping in. Thanks for reading. If you identify with my experiences or anything else on these pages and it sheds some light on your own, I am grateful. I look forward to walking with you on these paths.
Please send me a message! I love to hear from people. This site is starting in early 2021, in the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic. We are all exercising new ways to connect with each other. We need connection and community. I’m here. Talk to me.