Pens and Needles

Yes. I do needlework and I write. They are much more similar than they might seem. Gramps used to call storytelling “spinning a yarn” or “weaving a tale”. Different plot lines in a story are called “threads”. My cats love to bat at the computer keys as much as they love attacking balls of yarn. Okay, that one is a stretch.

But imagine a sweater. Once you have decided on knitting a sweater, you have to determine the size, gauge, color, texture and pattern, keeping in mind who you are knitting it for. Writing a story is the same. You have to determine the size. Will you write a novel or short story? In knitting, gauge is the number of stitches per inch. So do you want large stitches or small? Are you writing for adults, and therefore can use large words? Or for children with simpler language?

Changing the color or texture of the yarn in a sweater can drastically change it’s appearance from a bulky natural-colored wool fishermans knit to a lightweight dark-colored smooth cardigan. Changing the color and texture of writing can mean the difference between a sorta creepy ghost story or a disturbingly graphic murder mystery.

The same consideration is put into designing the pattern for a sweater as for determining the outline of a story. How wide do you want the sweater? What is the scope of the story? How long? How are you going to close it? Buttons? Zipper? The hero wins the girl? Tangled plot lines and twisted cables? Multiple plots and intarsia? You can’t knit a stitch or write a word until you know.

Stitch by stitch, word by word, you plod along. And just when you think you are done, the hard part begins. Tying up all the loose ends. That applies to both knitting and writing.

And you have to do all that while keeping in mind who is going to wear the sweater. Who is you intended reader?

This is one major difference worth noting. When you are editing a book and decide a section doesn’t fit the whole, you can cut it. It’s nearly impossible to cut out a section of a sweater and replace it.

Still, there are so many similarities that I think about knitting when I am writing and I think about writing when I am knitting. And often I think about writing about knitting.

Hmmm…. I wonder if I can knit about writing?



And for those who asked, Wiggle-Butt has pulled through his ordeal from eating a box of raisins, although he now needs several medications daily. That Dog and I thank you all for your concern.

Egg Decorating

The theme for this year’s egg decorating contest was Dr. Seuss. As usual, the entries were amazing. I had expected a dozen Lorax eggs since that movie just came out, but only one person made a Lorax. I suggested, and was very vocally voted down, that half the entries should be disqualified since they weren’t actually characters from Dr. Seuss books. But the majority said it was the spirit of the theme that was important, not the author. So P. D. Eastman, Maurice Sendak and forgive me but the guy who wrote Make Way For Ducklings were represented. There was a Star-Bellied Sneech, Yertle the Turtle, Horton and a clover flower with a fuzzy white spot on it for the Who that Horton heard. There were two Thing Ones but no Thing Twos. The winner was one of the non-Seuss characters, a dog in an egg car from Go, Dog, Go!

I suppose I should mention that all those crazy egg decorators are related to me. And this year, none is under the age of eleven. Even the eleven-year-old will turn twelve in a few weeks. Every holiday that a lot of the family gets together we have some sort of themed contest. One Christmas the theme was Gingerbread House. My daughter, who was working construction at the time, actually built a gingerbread house complete with plumbing and electrical fixtures. Another year the theme was snowmen. My brother cheated. He came down from the mountains with actual snowmen in an ice chest.

Halloween pumpkin contests are usually fun as the contest is different. Where all other contests have a theme and you can use any material, for Halloween, there is no theme, but you have to use an actual pumpkin. Mom won one year by making a pumpkin pie but we stopped that by having a pumpkin chunkin’ contest the day after. We climb on the roof and see who can chuck their creation the farthest. Gotta love the sound when they hit the driveway.

You might think that our family is very competitive, but in fact, these contests are really the only time we compete. It is simply our break from the very cooperative way we live the rest of the time. We are so close that our kids don’t refer to themselves as this family or that family, but simply as “the cousins”. As in “Me and some of the cousins are going skateboarding.” As much as we cringe at how they mangle the language, we have to smile at how close they all are.