Comfort Blanket

There's been a lacuna in my output, which is absolutely fine, and I think sensible - nothing much to say, and also, reader, I have felt low-ish, and not in the right frame of mind to write. Instead I become a hunter-gatherer, observing and collecting moments, vignettes, and saving them up for when I can write.

I don't subscribe to the "need to publish every day" protocol, and right now there is, literally, no one reading this blog. And I'm fine with that, because I'm doing this writing to get myself into good habits of exercising all my mental muscles, not just the hand-eye ones of sewing — and, indeed, because I want to eventually do some serious scholarly work in the world of material encounters through struggle. If I don't have a daily writing practice on the same theme, I can't, these days, see how any professor would take me seriously.

I am a living, breathing example of someone who intentionally encounters material as a way of moving through — or perhaps staying with — struggle. It's arguably always preferable to move through struggle. But making that movement the sole valid outcome of a textile or material encounter raises a question: what about the people who simply can't move out of the storm system? This modern-ish idea, that you have to emerge out the other side free of pain and "healed," isn't one I can gladly embrace.

For the last four years or so, I've been in an almost constant state of encountering a spicy, varied, and often frightening series of struggles, with virtually no real-world, proximate support — my family are all overseas, and I'm intentionally without a significant other. I have yet to "move out" or "move through it," but I want instead to be celebrated for creating the environment and the rituals that help me stay present with the struggle, accepting that 'it' isn't going anywhere particularly soon. For me — despite investing heavily in PTSD therapy, and other forms of help — nothing has worked like the soothing contact I prioritise, daily, with all and any forms of textiles.

Often this isn't about an end result — it's about the encounter itself. I still can't pin down the how or the what: the somatic, the cerebral, the neuromuscular, the visual, and so on. But that's what PhDs are for. I have, however, noticed that my encounters need to be tied, albeit loosely, to some kind of useful object or artifact. When it's just aimless doodling, I lose all interest. I was never much good at free play, or board games. Utility is a subjective assessment, of course — for me, it seems to be emerging as something worn, something to comfort or wrap, or something to carry things in. I struggle with "just" making pieces for display.

Anyway, all that to say: the last few days have been hard, verging on unpleasant, for the unremitting barking and bleating of things to handle that are scary, challenging, or austere. In the face of that, I've deliberately leaned into both the scary stuff and the textiles, with an oversized reliance on wool and embroidery for being so snackable — easy to pick up, easy to put down — although the wool side of things, aka knitting, has been tricking me into thinking I'm incompetent. The embroidery, less so.

I'm delighted to have found a new method — sewing with a looooong, bendy sashiko needle (I LOVE THEM) — blocks of highly random running stitch, varying in size and colour but not trajectory, which I think, collectively, form a sort of kintsugi-like pattern on the cheesecloth. And with again, totally random, convergence and intensities, where I feel like having them. I'm thinking of naming this piece, 'morse' or 'binary'. I've of course broken my own rule - what is the utility here? Well, actually they belong in my book club book of offerings for discussion tomorrow, so yes, utility.

Seeing is believing - see the photo.

The yarn work — I was apparently being taught to knit via "50 squares" (it's a reference to a book) — but I just couldn't get along with the instructions, and found I was regressing, losing confidence, unpicking and unravelling, at a time when — well, let's say I'm doing a lot of unpicking and unravelling in my actual life too. I also object to books in the textile arts, and I've come across very few that are didactic: but this one is, and I didn't love it: 'there are no knots in knitting' was one command I encountered and NGL it got my back up.

So what did I do? Watched about five minutes of a how-to video on making a woolen beanie, decided I was nowhere near ready for those kinds of antics, and instead said to myself: enjoy all your wool, knit comforting, lovely, random rectangles, which you will then use to... and then it came to me... you will use them to make a beautiful, you-styled comfort blanket, with all the dropped stitches, holes, and imperfections there to remind you of your struggles — because you are staying with them, and wrapping yourself in them, and, guess what, they can be soothing too.

Comfort blanket components

—

A MATERIAL COLLOQUIUM, QUIET, AMONG THE RECTANGLES-IN-WAITING

RECTANGLE ONE (a dropped stitch near the corner): I have a hole. I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

RECTANGLE TWO (slightly too tight, slightly too small): I'm not the same size as the others. I was made on a different night.

RECTANGLE ONE: Does that bother you?

RECTANGLE TWO: It did. Less now.

RECTANGLE THREE (the newest, still on the needles): What happens to us?

RECTANGLE ONE: We get joined. Badly, probably. Along seams that won't quite match.

RECTANGLE THREE: And then?

RECTANGLE TWO: And then someone gets wrapped in all of us at once. Holes and all. Nobody asked us to be fixed. Just finished.

RECTANGLE ONE: There's a difference.

—

What was it that Nirvana song claimed — something about the comfort in being sad? Don't get me wrong: I'm not pathologically sad. I'm not even sad, particularly — not too deeply, anyway. Rather, I'm just alone, in a forest, trying to rebuild my career and help my son rebuild his, with financial pressure and some paperwork issues thrown in.

Last observation: the screw arrived. It's shiny, and it fits, and I began overlocking the famous wedding dress tonight.