self care

Knitted swatch of the moss stitch in yellow cotton yarn.

Moss Stitch: An inventory of things I need to deal with

Erica, Free

After the linen stitch, I decided to stick with easy and repetitive stitches and learned the moss stitch. This was pretty easy to get into. It’s almost the same as the linen stitch. And I’m still in the stage of not-New-Year’s Resolutions that I’m pretty motivated. I don’t know how long it will last, though. I’ve dealt with some of the easier stuff I’ve been facing, but there are lots I need to deal with that will take a lot of time and energy. Here’s a rough inventory of everything I have to deal with in the hopes it will make me actually do what I need to:

  1. Health Issues –  Both physical and mental. There’s the chronic fatigue and the constant sense of anxiety and inability to focus or accomplish a single simple task. These are probably separate issues but seem to have a symbiotic relationship and are both feeding off each other. I have a doctor’s appointment coming up and I’m definitely going to bring it up. 
  2. Money issues – Ah, the ever-present money issues. My job doesn’t pay me enough, but I can’t get a new job because I’m too tired and too burnt out to feign enthusiasm over another stupid admin job at a stupid company selling things people don’t need. I’m lucky enough that I can ask my parents for help when I need it, but that doesn’t feel good when you’re approaching thirty. 
  3. Car problems –  see above entries on money and lack of executive function 
  4. Family stuff: My mom broke her shoulder recently. She needs surgery. She’ll be fine, but she likes to keep busy and now she can’t do anything for a couple months. It just sucks that I can’t do more than call her every couple days. 

Anyway, moss stitch. It looks cool. Maybe I’ll make something with this stitch someday. 

-Erica 

Ribbed Stitch: When You Can’t Follow Instructions 

Erica, Free

This is just a simple combination of stitches I already know. Why did I choose to knit a 2×2 ribbing in a cotton yarn that has very little flexibility? Because I wanted to start a new swatch but I didn’t want to follow instructions. The first two swatches were more like a warm up, a very basic reintroduction to knitting, which was nice. I feel ready to move on to something more advanced, something that keeps my hands busy while I watch TV, but I don’t have enough energy to read instructions. 

Work has been such a drain on me lately. I had to deal with a particularly ornery customer today. They wanted an update on their order status, which I can understand, but we just didn’t have the items in stock. We should have had the items in stock and we should have notified the customer that the items were delayed. I also should have known the items were delayed as the person designated to answer customer calls. But no one tells me anything AND I’m not allowed to pass calls on to anyone who is actually responsible. 

It’s worth clarifying, by the time someone calls, there’s nothing anyone can actually do unless we somehow have their items in the building to be screenprinted or embroidered. I can check to see if we have the items in the building, but chances are we have the base item for a different order. If we do have the items, I can find out where they are in the queue but I can’t change the queue. And I can’t do anything about who ordered them and why they were ordered so late because I don’t do the ordering, and I’m not allowed to forward calls to the person who does. I tried to put together a report showing the correlation between the orders we are getting complaints on and the time it took us to order for our supplier, but my boss does not care at all. 

That’s why I come home from work and, instead of working on a new stitch, I am knitting a small sample swatch out of yarn that has no elasticity. It’s not really what I want to be doing, but it is what it is.

-Erica

Starting Simple with the Garter Stitch

Erica, Free

Sometimes it’s good to start out with something familiar. I began this project to learn new stitches, but I also haven’t knitted for a long time. Beginning with a stitch I already know, the most basic knitting stitch, helped me regain the feeling of the needles in my hands, the yarn tension, and the feeling of relaxation knitting brings me. 

I originally assumed I could make one swatch per night, but it ended up taking me a couple days to finish this one and that’s okay. I remind myself that I’m also trying to take better care of myself too. Sometimes it’s all I can do when I get home from work to eat dinner and go to bed. 

Things have been especially crazy lately. We took on a contract for a large company and we are not able to fulfill the orders as they come in. My boss has put it on me to assuage all the customer complaints even though I don’t have the power to move their orders through faster or give them a discount or anything. And my boss has instituted an inbox zero policy for customer service complaints, which means I have to answer every single complaint email and voicemail by the end of the day. 

All I want to do at the end of the day is sit catatonically on the couch with tv playing in the background, but then work wins, right? So instead, I’m sitting catatonically on the couch knitting like a zombie while the tv plays in the background. Progress. 

-Erica

Beat toxic productivity with a knitting swatchbook

Erica, Free

I don’t do well in between projects. So much of my self-worth is rooted in my creativity and when I don’t have a project to focus on, all I have left to focus on is work. Which no one should have to go through. 

So what can I do when I don’t have the energy, or honestly the skills, to complete some of the more ambitious projects in my queue? I turn learning the skills into my new project. A few years ago, I made a crochet swatchbook as a way to get back into that craft. Now, I’m going to do the same with knitting. 

I purchased three skeins of cotton yarn (it’s going to be the worst to work with, I know) and a “learn to knit” kit with all the necessary tools. I have a bunch of tutorials bookmarked in my computer and my phone and I’m ready to go!

My hope is that this project will be challenging enough to be creatively fulfilling, but simple enough that it won’t add any extra stress to my life. My boss is already up my butt about all the problems at work even though he is the one who took on a contract we could not fulfill and honestly I’m just exhausted. Then, once I learn how to knit different stitches, the sweaters I want to make won’t seem so daunting. Here’s hoping!

-Erica

Embroidery Pattern of Ginkgo Leaves

Curtains and Quiet Time: My Nightly Wind Down Routine

Erica, Free

Embroidery is my preferred creative outlet. I like to make everyday objects a little more interesting and personal. At the beginning of quarantine, when there seemed nothing else to do and I was spending all my time at home, I decided to make some curtains from old sheets and embroider them. I’ll save the process of making the curtains for a later post. Right now I just want to write about how it has given me a greater appreciation for quiet time.

Embroidery is a very time-consuming craft. The repetition can be relaxing, even meditative, but it can also cause a serious underestimation of the time needed to complete a project. I’ve been working on my curtains for over a year and I’m less than halfway finished. Three of nine curtains are serving their purpose while the fourth through ninth languish in project limbo.

When I realized the project would take much longer than anticipated, I got overwhelmed. Ideas for new projects kept adding themselves to my mental queue. I was working on my curtains almost obsessively so I could start something new. I was watching more TV than normal because I was working longer. The late-night screen time began to interfere with my sleep, and was the lack of sleep was driving me crazy. I reached a point where I realized how important it is to slow down and wind down.

I started by allowing myself to work on the curtains in smaller sessions. They were going to take forever whether I decided to race to the finish line or not. Breaking the project up also meant I could work on smaller projects in the meantime, chipping away at my queue. I spent some portion of each session, if not all of it, in silence. With no screens or audiobooks to distract me, I was able to focus more on my embroidery and achieve that meditative aspect. Falling asleep was much easier when the last half-hour before bed was not spent wrestling with the decision to watch one more episode.

That is not to say that I magically developed the ability to laser focus. I still get distracted easily. Sometimes it’s my own thoughts and worries for the coming workday. Sometimes it’s my cats’ strange obsession with the peeling paint bubble in the corner of my living room ceiling. They’re always staring up at it even though the only thing up there is the ugly off-white paint some previous tenant had to contend with.  Other times my bedroom door will move opposite the direction the floor tilts. I normally would have assumed this was the cats, but now I know one is on the couch with me and one on the chair across from me.

Sometimes I listen for the sound of my neighbors. Not always to eavesdrop, but just to know that there are other people aimlessly puttering around their apartments in the evening. The sounds comforted me during the worst of quarantine. Letting them creep me out would only make me feel more alone. I find myself imagining them in my own kitchen, my own bedroom, to the point it almost feels like someone is there, if only in the other room.

-Erica