Do You Eavesdrop With Your Hands?

Last year, a friend of mine was mocked, mocked, I say, for knitting during a conference. Another friend, an attorney, learns which judges don't mind if she knits in their courtrooms while waiting for her cases to be called. A friend who manages a group home for recovering alcoholics and addicts does beadwork, and says residents feel more comfortable talking about difficult subjects when her eyes are focused on her own hands instead of their face.

Many people I know listen better with their hands stitching. I might go so far to say they listen better with their hands busy than people who are fiddling with their phones, making mental grocery lists, or otherwise there but not there.

Donna Kallner's Emergency Looping Kit

I've been known to stitch during public comment hearings. You can usually tell how stressful an event was by the tension of my stitches. I've stitched while waiting in the hospital, at canoe landings waiting for a shuttle, at the service garage, and in the jury waiting room (though not during deliberations).

Looping is generally my handwork of choice for keeping my hands busy and thus keeping myself sane. This ancient technique is so intuitive you don't have to follow a pattern, which is ideal for times when you expect interruptions. Because it can't unravel, you can quickly tuck it away with no worries about dropped stitches or losing your place. 

Looping is great camouflage for eavesdropping. Now that more people text, airport eavesdropping isn't as rich as it was a few years ago, and that's OK. I'm not really all that interested in he said/she said, plans to murder teenage children, or the results of strangers' colonoscopies. I'm more inclined to tune into questions kids ask their parents and each other, did-you-notice exchanges, and conversations between erstwhile strangers.

For me, looping is a great reminder to look for the positive ways all things are connected. With so much conflict and uncertainty in the world around, the world within requires some careful curation.

Feng Shui, Wisconsin-Style

How much does what's going on around you show up in your work? For me, it's a lot. Whatever my intentions, at time it feels like my hands aren't so much stitching as they are are on an invisible Ouija board. But I wouldn't say I'm channeling into my work messages from the Great Beyond. Mostly, it feels much closer.

I'll back up. If you haven't previously been subjected to me poetic waxing that looping celebrates connections between what came before and what is yet to come, consider yourself caught up. So an image I posted earlier this week on the New Age Looping Study Group Facebook page got me to thinking about those connections.

I made the piece in 1996 or '97 during football games. The Green Bay Packer defense, led by the late, great Reggie White, was legendary. That piece hangs near the back door in my studio. It's been there so long I hardly even register it any more. But when I do, it makes me smile to think that some spark of energy from the Minister of Defense is protecting a place where I can be pretty vulnerable. That's feng shui Wisconsin-style.

This week I've been thinking a lot about how the energy around me shows up in my work. I'll show a few more examples from past work in my next posts.

In the meantime, I'll share this. I've been preparing for a show coming up in June where my intention was to celebrate renewal, using techniques and colors inspired by Japanese boro as a starting point. This week, studio work came to a halt. I needed to prep for teaching but also to reflect on how my intentions feel in light of recent events.

Japan has been rocked by devastating earthquakes and aftershocks, tsunami, and nuclear disaster. It feels presumptuous to reference techniques from a culture that is not my own in a celebratory way when that culture is in mourning and in fear of what tomorrow might bring.

I'm sure you've seen plenty of video of the disaster and its aftermath. If you haven't seen this video on boro, you may want to watch it, as well, then tell me what you think.