I learned, a few years ago now, that I don't translate 2D to 3D very well. Three-dimensional space makes sense to me as I move around in it, but as it's represented on paper, my brain just doesn't follow. I am able to read maps now, but it took a lot of practice and concentration - and, frankly, a highlighter pen. I suppose this is a good thing, since I am good at navigation now and actually prefer a good map to a GPS unit, since a map gives you context that a tiny screen ordering you to turn right or left can't match.
I finally put two-and-two together when I gave up trying to teach myself knitting from a book, (albeit, it was a good book), and went to knitting class. I loved it. My instructor was phenomenal and I had a ball. I loved my first swatch so much that I went back and bought a second pair of needles and more yarn just so I didn't have to unravel what I'd started. My little four-inch square turned into my first scarf.
As I've done the Artist's Way more and more, (if you're not familiar with it, check out Julia Cameron's amazing book, The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity), I've learned that there are many ways to express our creativity and that one method of expression enhances and informs others. In my journey to becoming a knitter, I started a blog to share my progress into learning different crafts - not just knitting, but crochet, Tunisian crochet, Pysanky, etc. Thus, Knoontime Knitting was born.
Blogging, for me, is a way of paying attention: through words and pictures, we are able to name our world and our place in it. As I paid attention, I realized that my love of craft is as long-standing as my love of writing: I first learned needlepoint around age 7 and latch-hooked rugs a short time later. Reclaiming that creativity has helped me remember my earlier stories, thus deepening the synergy.
Along the way, I've written several articles discussing my thoughts about the intersections - synergy, really - of knitting, craft, and writing. I share them here in the hopes that you, like me, will be inspired to create something with your hands just like you create things with your mind.
As a change from the literary, I thought I'd share some of my passion for textiles in the context of our topic this month, dragons.
After all, dragons are great knitters.
Er...
In all seriousness, though, for those of us who have had a lifelong affair with dragons, it's natural to want to expand on that love into other areas. I stumbled onto cross-stitch back in high school when a friend taught me the art after I had learned embroidery. I found it appealing: the simplicity of "X's" all over the canvas and voila, art. The artist can vary the appearance of the image by placing the cross-hatches of the "X's" in a certain order and by using half-crosses and varied thicknesses of floss. The resultant variety of expression is spectacular. more>>
Many people I meet who want to write are stymied by the idea that the writer must be someone who always knows where the story is, and how to get it out onto the keyboard or paper. Maybe this is true for some writers, but not always; and sometimes, for writers for whom it is true, it's not always true.
Which means, there is hope.
So what can a person do when they want to tell a story, but don't quite know how to bridge the gap between the blank page and a finished story? more>>