Not the art I wanted, But the Art I needed.

How I keep coming back to the making of a sweater.

- From my Apple barn talk at Craigardan Artist Residency.

I came here with the intention of working on my punch needle tarot project. I put up tiny balls of yarn with minimum yardage, dyed canvases, packed them into a box that I shipped weeks ago. When I got here, I set to work on a project with a due date, just to get it done, out of my head, and make room for creativity to move in.

The nights here are cold, very cold. I’m still not sure the heater in my cabin works and I didn’t bring a jacket. I’m from Wisconsin after all! I thought I could handle any early October weather. But something about the way the chill settles in over the mountain side a couple of hours past sunset is more abrupt than Wisconsin’s constant day and night cold. Here, it’s sudden, and urgent.

In a place where the time is almost entirely my own,  (I have some work-share hours to complete.) I find myself waking up thinking about how I wish I had a nice wool sweater. I know, “What were you thinking?! as a knitwear designer you have a closet full to choose from”. Get this, I barely even brought the tools I need to make one! If I was home, I’d have chosen a circular needle and whipped up a seamless top down raglan. Here, all I have is a set of 10 DPNS and a size J crochet hook. I have to think more creatively about construction.

My days here are filled with meditation, reading, walking in the woods, community care, eating elaborate farm sourced meals with my fellow artists.

and shivering up at the stars.

It’s not unlike Wisconsin. The plants are the same, and I feel blessed to have a sense of familiarity on the banks of a clear mountain stream. We can even see the milky way galaxy across the sky, just like at home on the outskirts of town.

On day 3 of my 14 days stay I finally got my hands on some farm yarn. An undyed Sheep’s wool that has plenty of lanolin and smells like I often do on a dye day. They had it milled into a 2 ply fingering weight that I am holding double to match the gauge of a size J hook.

I am working my way from the heart’s center, in an 8 petalled flower, 8 spokes on a wheel and reminding myself to stay at the center of the experience.

To laugh, to be in service, and to live each moment fully, accepting what arises.

On our fist night together we did intros about who we are and what we’re working on and I remember saying that my intentions in being here were to allow what wants to come though and be created to move though me. Here’s the practice. Even though it’s not the work I planned to do, it’s the work I need.

I’ll be warm in a few days, just in time for forecasted snow and highs of 40 degrees. Then maybe I’ll start on a cowl and wait for inspiration on my punch needle project, if it ever comes.

I have to be where I am now, on the side of a mountain with hills already ablaze in autumn color and changing daily. Off in the distance a mountain peak sings with clouds surrounding in harmony “someday”.

The emergence of it all, exactly what I asked for, though I didn’t know it at the time. Reminding me of why I do this making of a sweater, again, and again. To keep warm. That there’s no separation, all things need to exist in order for what I call “I” and what I call “a sweater” to exist.

Today I crochet, just like the day before, tomorrow I knit the cuffs and the collar, like the day before that, and my lofty dreams of spiritual insight lay clustered on my desk in colorful piles of wool scraps waiting for their turn to sing together.

It’s out of necessity that I am making this sweater, and I am grateful that I know how. My hands know what they’re meant to do. This time it’s less, alone… It never is, but here, looking at the sheep who made this wool,

the chain of folks it had to move through to get to me, and in community, where we pass around this sacredness, strand by strand hand winding it into a usable shape. We all keep each other warm, each weaving together the web of our lives, our stories, our songs, our gifts making meaning around the table of a home cooked meal.