A few days ago I mentioned that the Hebrew greeting, Shalom.   Shalom has its roots in wholeness and completeness plus it tends to be tied to perfection.  For now we won’t focus on the perfection because perfection doesn’t usually get attained when we are aiming at it.  Its one of those things that sneaks up on you and then you realize things are “just perfect” and you hadn’t even tried or realized how good things were.

Shalom is a blessing (divine blessing and grace), a state of affairs and so much more.  Its one of those powerful words that seem simple but in reality is this huge iceberg submerged below the initial glance.  One who is experiencing shalom should be living in  harmony, tranquility, and prosperity.   Through this place of being flows the ability to overcomes discord and hatred in family, community, national life, and the prevention of war.  But all this peace first has to flow through these things before it ends at prevention of war.  If you can’t be at peace with your family, community or national life then how do you expect war to end.  It starts at home within our hearts and souls.  This is my main reason for focusing on the relational interpersonal side of peace.  Some times we think PEACE and that its this huge unattainable thing that can’t be budged.  It can if we focus on our inner selves.

As soon as I started thinking Peace/Shalom, I stumbled across this pattern called the Shalom Cardigan(pdf).  It has slowly grown on me to the point that I intend to join a knit-a-long being lead by my friend Tricia (SFCorgi).

This is a bulky weight knit so it will be speedy which should give me some resolve since the rest of my projects are currently being knit on small needles.  The Shalom KAL is part of Malabrigo March Madness over on the Malabrigo Junkie group on ravelry.  Just over a year ago, I stumbled across the group and now I have the honor of being an admin in the group.  I love this group of gals and gents.  Our love of yarn has spread to a love and acceptance of each other.  A peace within our differences.  Even through a rather stressful and emotionally charged election season, we continued to encourage each other even if that other person was campaigning for the other side than you were.  It was/is an awesome group to be part of.  They are where I go when things are hard.  I can spill my troubles and they listen, give hugs and if needed hand out advise or offer to shoot the person who offended you.  Plus we share our laughs and talk about how malabrigo may or may not be better than sex.

Look forward to a bright orange cardigan OTN after March 1st.  I will be at Stitches West (thursday – sunday) leading a group of gals in Malabrigo March Mass cast-on.  Look for me there or follow me on twitter (FYI I’m very careful of who I add over there so if I deny you, PM me on ravelry and let me know you want to follow me.)

Peace is largely referred to as WORLD peace, but I want to focus on personal peace because once personal peace is attained, all other forms of relational peace will follow.   Peace has many definitions and I hope to crack open the last on the list.  Inner peace, tranquility, serenity.  These things seem so hard to attain even in our daily life if we block out our nation or even the world.   We rarely feel truly at peace.  Well follow me through my journey of finding peace.  And then see how I express this piece using fiber.  The yarn that screamed, I AM PEACE is what made the picture above.  Its Habu a-60 Linen Paper.  I’ve lusted after this yarn since I was in art school thinking its just too pricey, so maybe I should cut my washi paper into strips and create yarn.  Well as I wandered around an LYS with Sheepie in Seattle, this yarn practically threw itself at me.  I mean come on, I had 100% yak in my hands and it refused to come home with me because the Paper was being an excellent orator of why it was better for my budget and my next project.

In addition, today while I got the girls their 3 month check up since their mammogram in November,  I stopped at Uwajimaya today because I was in NEED of an awesome Japanese stitch dictionary.  I was limiting myself to a stitch dictionary and possibly a cool pattern drafting book if I could find it.  I was sorely tempted to purchase this book but realized I love the pattern but probably won’t  ever knit stuff from it, so I put it back on the shelf.  I did get lucky and find a copy of the pattern drafting book that I wanted.  I used extreme restrain and only bought volume 1 (volume 2 is just as fabu) because it had something that would work to complete a bit of my idea for PEACE.  This outfit is starting to be very japanese, which is no suprise since I adore Issey Miyake (check out the FETE collection).

Contest Winners:  Please comment which prize you are interested in.  It will be first come first serve.

CDaniele
Hilary of the Yarniad – I will deliver your prize in person
Jess of Knit One Blog Too
Jackie of Jackie’s Stitches
Jodi of A caffeinated Yarn
Cici of 2 sistahs knit together
Knittymuggins
Monica who is blogless but had the great pleasure of slipping in right before I closed comments.

If you will be at Stitches West, please let me know and I will hand deliver your package.   Otherwise, I will email you back and ask for your snail mail address.

I’m sure many of ya’ll have heard the buzz about Handknit Heroes.  I’m here to say its worth the lovely buzz its getting.

The comic is well written and drawn.  The story line flowed and lead you to continue turning each page wondering what is up.  The characters seem to grow with the story.  The pattern is a simple scarf with a twist (rav link), which will draw the intended audience into the knitting world.  I look forward to seeing how the comic and its storyline continue.  I want to thank the publishers for allowing me to have a pre-release copy of the Handknit Heroes and for letting me give it away to you my lucky readers.

I know the ravelympics is either months away or months past.  I was proud to be one of the moderators and bobicii for the Ravelympics.  It was a whirlwind of fun and I made a few friends through it all.  I happened to recieve two pins as a thank you for a job well done from the rav crew and Kimberli, the brain child of the Ravelympics success.  Ya’ll get to have one.

Going to live with Knittymuggins

My next love is Malabrigo. Tis a sad state of affairs. I’ve fallen for this temptress and its soft merino ways. Whether you already love it or are mal curious, I’ve got 2 skeins of Malabrigo lace in Continental. You can knit practically any size shawl with two skeins. There are many projects that only take one skein.

Going to live with CDaniele

My next love is knitting sweaters. Oh yes. I adore being able to curl up in a perfectly fit sweater. Right here I have 1,000 yds of rustic heavy worsted weight yarn that would make a nice outdoors sweater in a rich red. Its an older discontinued yarn that was spun by Harrisville Designs, which is located in the town adjacent to my High School in New Hampshire.

One summer, I drove up back from my college in South Carolina to attend the Harrisville Summer school so that I could learn to spin. I went a bit hog wild buying fiber and the cotton fiber in the bag is from that shopping spree through the LYSes of New Hampshire. The other little bag is handpainted fiber locks from Blue Moon Fiber Arts before Tina became so well known. I’ve packaged them together as one prize since they were part of my attempt to fall in love with spinning and felting. Alas I love handspun, but not the process.

Going to live with Jess in the snowy white.

This lovely 4 oz bump of autumnal colored wool was given to me by a swap pal before I realized I probably would never spin again. I might give spinning the good old boy scout try but I just get so bored so easily that I would much rather be knitting away furious.y. The color is one of my favorite color mixtures and I so want to keep it and hoard it for that time when I will spin, but realize its fruitless.

Going to live with Hilary – the yarniad

Once I reached art school in 2001, I discovered the joy that is Habu yarns. My weaving teacher encouraged us to play with and experience the things that make habu yarn unique. We had a session on distorted weaves and how a specific yarn can enhance or detract from the final product. I had lots of fun playing with the Habu yarns. I still have a rubbermaid tub under the bed in my studio full of Habu. Its all laceweight (aka weaving weight) so I don’t use it that often since I haven’t woven in almost 5 years. I’m planning to rectify that very soon. The yarn is 1 oz (265 yards) of A-1 Tsumugi Silk in color 38. I’m sure you could come up with something for this lovely crisp silk yarn, which blocks beautifully.

Lastly I’ve fallen in love with sock yarn. The only problem is I don’t really knit socks all that often and definitely not that often for myself. This yarn is the most popular color that Trekking XXL comes in colorway 100 which is a rainbow of colors that stripes nicely. So I want to share the sock yarn indulgence with ya’ll.

All that adds up to 8 prizes that meets many different people’s interests, so spread the word and encourage people to vote on which of the 6 words, I will be using.  Contest is here.

As the United States of America rings in a new president,  all are watching and waiting with batted breath what the future holds.  I have hopes and dreams for this administration as many of ya’ll do too.

For me, I’ve reached and passed my Second Blogiversary.  I’m so happy.  I started this blog so that I could focus on my art work again, instead of sitting around the house letting life pass me down.  Well I have kicked started my work and the creative juices are flowing.  I designed 5 items last year and proposed many more.  I have lots to do this year, but I will take it in pieces because if I look at all of it at once, I will get overwhelemed and just pack up shop.  I also finally pulled out my thesis and have shared with ya’ll what I accomplished in that stress induced year.  Well I’m ready to forge ahead and start researching and working on designing a new piece.  I eventually hope to display these in an art show.

Since this is a Blogiversary post, I’m going to let ya’ll in on the guessing of where I will be heading.  I thought about letting ya’ll pick the next word for me to focus on but there is one word that hasn’t left me alone for the past year.  It needs to be heard and seen and felt.

I have a collection of prizes that I will share with ya’ll over the next 2 weeks as the contest runs.  There is Habu yarn, spinning/felting fibers, knitting stuff and a brand new preview copy of a very cool concept knitting magazine.

There will be 3 ways to get into the drawing.  So leave me a comment, share with others on your blogs about my contest and those who pick the same word that I’m feeling will be thrown into the pot for prizes.  You will get a point for your comment.  Your blog post or ravelry mention will double your comment point (please let me know where you post about this).  If your friends who comment mention your name, you will get a point that matches their vote so you could vote for a word I don’t pick but still get into the prize drawing.

This contest is closed and the winners have been announced.

Your choices are:

Joy
Peace
Goodness
Kindness
Gentleness
Faithfulness

Hint:  I already have the yarn purchased, just not uploaded into my stash yet.

When I finally landed on self-control as the 3rd and final dress, my advisers were shocking and unsure that a dress about control would be beautiful. They imagined a dress resembling a straight-jacket not allowing freedom at all, because being “self-control” is a negative idea for many.

I felt something would come of my research.  How often do we feel out of control in our lives?  Too much to do in the day? week? month? or even the year?  A stash that seems just too large to ever get through but that you have no love for?  Too many patterns in queue?  Too much to do at work?  Never enough time to do it all in?  Your weight spiraling out of control?  Children who won’t listen?  stuff all over your house cluttering so that you just can’t seem to have others over?

So what do we do with these things?  How do we control them or do we just let those parts of us be controlled by others?  Many people grab different things to control so that they can feel in control.  Keeping a planner full with no time to put up their feet and rest except to drop into bed late at night to fall asleep instantly.  Controlling their emotional pain by cutting or developing anorexia or bulimia.  Following an addiction which seems to allow the person to control things but in fact grips them into a lack of control, because you are no longer personally in control of your destiny.  You have been snared by your surroundings.

In your search for control, you have in a sense lost control. Its a weird balance to control but not to be controlled by the act of controlling. A true sense of freedom. This freedom and control means that we need to own up to our choices, the choices that ensnare and trap us into lacking freedom.  Some of these choices aren’t physical choices but are mental lies that need to be broken.  When you face these things, you most be strong and use the principles of patience and love.  Through facing your life struggles, you gain control, an inner control – true self-control.

In my search for definitions of self-control, I ran across one that mentioned wrapping one’s arms around oneself to hold ones self up. I imagined long arms wrapping around and around the body to control. I created long delicate gloves to be these arms that could be wrapped or rearranged in such a manner to control a delicate control that even when wrapped tightly do not bind.

This was to contrast the unstructured dress which covered simply the body but did nothing to hide or control.  The gloves were useful for control but they also symbolized their ability to get tangled up into the surroundings – the outside world.  At the core of the dress is a “corset” of gauzy silk.  This girds the inner core of the dress.  It strengthens and reminds the wearer to not become entangled by facing your struggles, admitting them and placing them behind you.  Once you confront those things controlling you, you will become truly free because you are starting to exert self-control.

Patience was in reality the first virtue I tackled since I felt patience took time. I had always hoped for, strove for, prayed for patience in my own life but never seemed to attain it. I was always angry and frustrated, but not outwardly showing these emotions to the point that I drove myself deeper and deeper into depression.  The only way I could come up for air and be released from this grip of depression was to release each and every emotion that surrounded my depression.  While I was working on my thesis, I finally was released from my last vestiges of depression.  Now don’t think that I don’t struggle occasionally with feelings of being blue or thinking that life isn’t worth living.  Those will never leave me, but I now know the secret to release my burdens.  I must patiently release them to God, you might release them to a higher power of your choosing or use knittymuggin’s mother’s advice and give it all to a potato and bury it.  Its a regular daily thing that most be done slowly and steady every day.

Instead its better to delay the anger and thus allow the virtue of patience to control and temper it into something less dangerous often times helpful.  The old etymology of patience is long-suffering.  You are to endure with fortitude and character building qualities through whatever it is going on in your life.  So instead of directing my anger inward, I should have been controlling it and using it to shape my surroundings with that passion and frustration.  I’ve since learned how to funnel that anger away and into things.  Sometimes its my knitting, sometimes I need to just organize stuff.

So how did I portray all of this into my finished object, well I took pieces.  Pieces of me of who I am in many different shapes, since there are so many varying bits of me that don’t always fit together.  I took them and laid them out.  I decided to let the process lead me rather than striving for the item itself.  I knit bits, I cut bits, I lined bits and finally they all fell together into what you see on this page.  Not necessarily an easy process to get them all to talk to each other and agree to live in one cohesive space but each piece shows how it plays nice while defining itself.  Its individuality.  I learned patience through the process.  I learned that you can’t just shove it and its all going to work.  You have to sometimes cajole it into working, tweaking this or jostling that.  The pieces will work but sometimes you need to take something off the pieces before they fully fit.

The lace over the stomach is a super fine merino laceweight from habu.  I used it because it was the thinnest yarn in my stash and I knit it with my smallest needles -  US size 0 bamboo needles.  I hated every minute I had to knit this piece.  I didn’t want to do it, but I took that and pushed past that to create a delicate filmy layer.   The body of the garment is hemp/silk fabric that has a definite grain line.  It only likes to bend between hemp threads other wise its crisp and hard.  Many things are like that in that you have to have the time and where with all to find that spot where you can bend something to your will.  Some are harder than others.  Lastly the sleeves are Habu hemp yarn that is knit into a random mesh starting at the wrist and organically expanding to fit the shoulder.  The dress felt incomplete as if it wasn’t finished telling me its story without them.  Once on, I fell in love with the simple beauty of rustic lace over the skin.

I think life is like that things happen that we know have a meaning but we’re not sure what till its almost too late and then you realize how special that frustration or what originally was annoying has become to your central core.  Do you treasure those diamond creating circumstances in your life?  Don’t they occasionally break off bits of you to expose something beautiful, truly stunning that shocks people with how great things are for you.   Can you see the through the darkness enough to know that this too will end and on the other side will be something even better, nay something wonderful?  It might take days, months, years, decades, but it will come.  Mine took 10 hard years of thinking life was finished but now I can’t even believe I felt that way.  I can’t give you the buck up speech or expect you to believe that you will get through, because I wouldn’t have believed me.  Just patiently work through your trials and take one day, one stitch, one thought at a time and once you’re done something will have appeared.  Something that might amaze you.

Love is the first virtue in the list.  I chose it simply because I thought it would be easy to represent.  Its not necessarily the easiest word to find a definition of exactly what a virtue of love composes.   Since most virtues deal with interpersonal relationships, we can eliminate a direct relationship to sexual love even though it might in the end be hinted at.

Since I was using passages from the Bible, I used it to define itself in addition to other resources.  While doing my word study of the book, I saw the following passage that shaped my whole idea for the dress.

Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.  Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony.

Love covers mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  Six complete layers to express this total idea.

Those layers are all exposed in the kicky pleat and the neckline since there are 6 necklines each with a different shape.  Also each layer was dyed in a manner in show a heart, the universal symbol of love, right over the heart the supposed source of love.

We also feel love based on simple touch.  It gives us those warm fuzzies just by the simple act of being hugged when things are blue, happy, anxious, grieving, surprising, caring, and painful, especially by someone we love dearly or are friends.  Too express this idea, I ruched the back of the dress to give the impression of being hugged by that person you most desire receiving that feeling of love from.

The tissue weight silk has a light and graceful feeling.  Just slipping into LOVE makes me feel sexy and beautiful.  It also expresses each of the other virtues of the fruits.  Can you see joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control?

Just over 4 years I ago, I had presented my thesis and graduated from art school and 5 years ago, I was in the midst of deciphering what and how I was going to express this grand idea.

My thesis centered around the idea of the Fruit of the Spirit – these virtues that all people strive for in life.  Could these ideas be expressed in garment form or were they too intangible?

There are a total of nine virtues are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Whether you have a spiritual faith or not, many of these virtues are what you hope other people have.

I chose 3 of these virtues, because 9 months of work and study would not give me 9 dresses.  I wasn’t that crazy even if there were a few times where I felt at the end of my tether.

The 3 virtues that I landed on were the ones that spoke to me the most: Love, Patience and Self-Control.

I hope to share with ya’ll over the next 4 weeks about each dress and what I plan on doing after this review.