Alive & Knitting

When something isn’t working, we often have a tendency to toss out the whole thing and start over again. It’s maybe our nature to like dramatic statements and bold moves, but that’s often not necessary.

For example, once upon a time, I delivered a book. It was the first book of the first deal with a new house for me and the acquiring editor had left the company after buying my trilogy on proposal. (EEK!) The editor who inherited the work wasn’t very excited about my proposal – she even told me that she wouldn’t have bought it. (Double EEK!) So, I wasn’t enormously surprised when I delivered the book and she didn’t like it.

I was surprised that she hated the hero and wanted me to rewrite the whole book, essentially giving him a personality transplant. That’s because I like my heroes. I always fall for them a little bit and I couldn’t imagine how this particular hero could be better (mostly because I hadn’t fallen for the next one yet, but that’s another issue!)

So, I asked a lot of questions. It turned out that she didn’t like one thing he said early in the book – she said “only a complete jerk would say that to a woman”. I got off the phone and I looked at the scene and I realized that I could take out that one line of dialogue from the hero and the one above it from the heroine that led into it, and not really affect the scene otherwise. That’s what I did and my editor loved the “revision”. Yup. “the revision” was removing two lines, not rewriting the whole book.

As with writing, so with knitting. (You knew that was coming.)
I may have mentioned a few (hundred) times that Mr. C. travelled extensively in South America before I met him, and acquired a lot of yummy sweaters when he did so. Last week, he offered me one of those sweaters, suggesting that I frog it and knit something else. This particular sweater is a wonderful charcoal grey cabled sweater, knit in pure alpaca. He noted that he never wears it and thought I should make something else, maybe something for myself.

As excited as I was at the prospect of free alpaca yarn, I quite like this sweater, and I quite like the story he tells whenever he pulls out the sweater – it’s about spending Christmas Eve in Chile one year and is wonderfully evocative. The sweater truly is a souvenir – it brings back a memory that he then shares.

I was reluctant to frog it back. I wondered whether I could reshape the sweater somehow, but there’s a stitch in it that I’ve never managed to identify and couldn’t replicate. So, I asked a lot of questions about why he didn’t wear it – I always thought it looked good on him – and he acknowledged that it was soft, warm, beautiful…

But too long. Well, that I can fix! He tugged it on to show me, and the end result is that I’m going to shorten it, and he’ll wear it more happily. Instead of a dramatic solution, a small adjustment will do the trick.

My thought for the day is that when you think something needs a sweeping revision, maybe it just needs a tweak. Ask questions. Identify the precise nature of the problem and the solution might take only a few minutes to implement. Sometimes, when all seems irretrievable, it’s just a question of perspective. Making an adjustment to your view – either in knitting or writing – is a whole lot better than chucking/frogging the whole project and starting over again.

So, tell me – have you had similar experiences? Or am I the only one looking for the easy way out?

I’m a bit behind on replying to posts, so here’s hoping I don’t miss anybody!

First off, thanks to everyone who took a chance on a new book, bought KISS OF FIRE and liked it enough to say so here. Thanks Sheridan and Shari C, Teresa and Corinne and Karen. Corinne and Karen, I’m always happy to find more knitters who are readers and/or writers.

As for Ravelry, oh my. It’s brilliant – and a dangerous time sink. I hope Casey and Jesse become outrageously rich in reward for building their (and our) dream.
Also, I’m glad to hear that you got your postcards, Hazel!

Thanks Teresa for your good wishes about spring (it’s still not here) and Audra, your fruit tree blossoms sound just beautiful. I do have a few valiant snowdrops trying to push their way through, so spring is getting closer.

Diana, as always, has the tough questions. (Maybe it’s a knitter thing.) She wrote: “I find I enjoy character-driven books more than event-driven books. When writing, my characters seem to appear first, but I ’see’ them taking an action which I need to build the story around, somehow…I guess that means my stories start with the people. Do you find that to be true also? Or does the arc of story appear, and become populated a bit down the road?”

Well. These kinds of questions are a challenge for me, because I don’t think of any story as being character-driven or plot-driven. My stories are always both, and they come to me as both, at least one of the protagonists and the plot all knotted up together when the idea first comes to me. I can’t ever separate the two. Quinn is the loner and the Smith, a key player in a society he doesn’t want to join, and the journey of his engagement with the Pyr again after many centuries of separation was always his story. It couldn’t be anyone else’s. From that kernal, I do flesh out the details, but the core plot and characterization was always the same. I hope that makes sense to you. I don’t know how or why ideas come to me – they just do, and they come like this!

Ah, Gina, I don’t share your skepticism about the 100-mile yarn diet. The hills of California must be full of spinner and dyers, at least, if not the hum of alpacas and the trotting hooves of merino sheep! Since I started looking around here, I’ve found three alpaca farms that sell wool and seen two more that I have to check out. I’ve discovered a cashmere goat farm in the Maritimes that sells their mohair undyed, and another in Alberta that does the same. Several yarns I like already are local (who knew?) and I have a notebook of mills and farms to check out this summer on mini-road-trips. Look! You might be surprised.

And finally, I have an idea about postcards. If you want a postcard of KISS OF FURY, I’ll send you a dozen of them, on the condition that you help me distribute them. Give the others to your friends or take them to your local bookstore that stocks paranormal romance. That solves the postage and SASE issue! Just reply in the comments on this post, and I’ll email you privately. Leave a real email addy, please and look for an email from Chestwick.

That’s it for today! Have a good weekend, everyone.

I finally surrendered to the allure of Malabrigo Yarn and have been knitting a sweater with it. It’s pretty and it’s soft and I’m enjoying the pattern.

The thing is, it smells like vinegar. Dropping the sweater into my lap launches this aroma of white vinegar, one so vehement that it makes me think of making pickles in the summertime. I had heard that there were people that loved sniffing Malabrigo, and knew that vinegar can be used to fix the colour of a dye. It’s more natural than other fixes. But I’ve knit with Malabrigo lace weight before and never noticed the smell.

With the worsted, it’s unmistakable and inescapable.

And it’s evocative. Strong smells conjure strong memories. I knit and I think about pickles. I remember about slicing cucumbers for bread and butter pickles with my mother, I remember the crunch of my grandmother’s chili sauce, I remember dicing vegetables for chow chow and peeling peaches for the canner. I remember wondering when any of the work would end, those bushel baskets lined up along the way seeming to be magic in their lack of a bottom.

And I laugh that I still make pickles, of my own volition.

All of this work was done (and is done) while the vinegar and spices simmered, filling the air with the pungency of vinegar. It’s done when August’s golden sun beats against the windows, when the humidity of rain coming soon makes the sweat bead on the back of your neck. As I knit, I think about the way the vinegar fills the air in the kitchen, maybe even replacing the oxygen with vinegar molecules, how it fills your senses along with the sultry heat of August.

I associate pickle-making with very hot and humid weather, with sunshine so bright it makes you squint, with nights carrying the first chill of autumn. August gardens turn golden and olive, losing that vibrancy of June greens, as vegetables ripen and flowers start to fall, as the sunflowers get heavier and the clouds get more blue. The clock that slows in the lazy days of July starts running with a vengeance again in August. How many days until school starts? How many nights before the first frost? How many more tomatoes in the garden to can?

I sit and I knit, I smell vinegar and think about hot August days, about canning until sitting down feels like the best treat in the world, about how good those pickles taste in the following winter. It makes me smile, in remembrance of everyone I’ve stood alongside to can, everyone who has taught me a recipe or shared their pickles or otherwise participated in this annual ritual.

There’s still a jar of homemade dills in the basement. Maybe I’ll pop them open, have a pickle and smell vinegar all over again.