Six shades of red

Could there be a better way celebrating Trouble 1 turning 28 than going for a fika at his grandpa’s coffeeshop?!

They say it’s hard to figure out what’s happening when you are in the middle of it. It’ s not until you are on the other side you can really see it. I have spent this long bedridden winter on my couch. During the days I am working. Kind of. I am doing what’s possible for me when it comes to my profession. At dinner time I am allowed to put the TV on. Watching the news, favorite TV series and films. While I am knitting.

I took up knitting again some years ago. I love the yarn running over my fingers. The clicking sound of the needles. The creative process. The meditative state of mind I am entering when my hands are doing their dance. The sweaters, tops, hats and handkerchiefs becoming the result of my evening hobby.

I have this big wicker basket filled with yarn since earlier days. I’ve been very close to throwing it all away, when would I ever knit again? Last fall I decided I wasn’t allowed (that word again, I am very strict with myself as you can tell) to buy new yarn before I’ve knitted up what was in that basket. And that’s how it came I spent all this winter making a sweater out of wool yarn I tinted myself in the seventies.

Six shades of red wool. What would I make from it? I was thinking a sweater. A seventies sweater. Striped in six shades of red. Not me at all. But maybe Fay? Fay is Trouble 1’s girlfriend, and I was thinking she might be the right person for a hand tinted six shades of red seventies sweater.

Now, I didn’t really have a pattern. And I had no idea if the yarn would be enough for the sweater I had in mind. So I made a pilot. I knitted the back, the two fronts and one arm before I could tell. Then I unpicked it (is that the right word, my vocabulary is limited in this area?) and did the whole thing over again plus one more arm. Yeah, that’s how I do it.

As I am only knitting in the evening, the light hasn’t been working with me. It’s been really hard to tell the shades from each other. So, I’ve been unpicking and unpicking (if that’s the word) over and over again when realizing the shades didn’t come in the right order. And it’s been impossible to tell if my creation would look any good at all. The whole project turned out to be very difficult, and to be honest, not even fun.

And then, there was the pain. This sunny Easter Day afternoon, closing my eyes, sensing the now gone winter, I see a dark mess of immobile unbearable pain and six shades of tangled red yarn. No, it hasn’t been a fun winter.

This week I stitched the parts together. Well, maybe it might work after all. I found some buttons in my special button box, inherited from my moms aunt. The buttons were reddish, and seven, that’s what I needed. I have been on these buttons many times before. I even remember them from my childhood, they used to be in moms very special button box (does all women have button boxes, or is it just a me kind of thing?), but they never worked for me before. Now, finally, they were exactly what I needed. They found their purpose. They lit the whole seventies up, and the sweater was suddenly…perfect! What about the size then? Audrey became my manikin (Audrey and Fay are the same size, very petit), and yes, it was a good fit!

So, Trouble 1 turned 28 yesterday. The plan was we would all go for a fika at my dad’s coffee shop in Nordmaling, the small town south of Umeå were I grew up. My dad is gone but the coffee shop is still there. Oh how I wanted to do this! I have been having some better days the last two weeks, so I was hoping badly for one of those matching Trouble 1’s birthday.

And it did! Well, it wasn’t like a good day, but it was a day possible to be in the car for a while and sit at a table for a short fika. And I am so happy and grateful. Since I had to drop the Capital of Culture inauguration I have had to drop everything being in my calendar. It’s been more than 2,5 months in my dark mess of hopeless pain and red yarn.

So, it’s Trouble 1’s birthday. I finished the sweater the day before though, and Fay was presented with a gift too. It felt good. And I felt good watching her picking up the unexpected present.

Then of course I couldn’t help myself. I started babbling. Went on about all the pain and dark knitted into that sweater. Which of course was the wrong thing to do, and I tried to save my bad behavior with the “you can’t see what you are doing until you are out of it, and this turned out to be pretty”, and hoping the sweater would work like a warm shield for her.

This is so me. I don’t know why I am doing these things. It’s like I have to tell the full story which is totally unnecessary and often out of place. 

I woke up this morning wanting to call Fay and make it right. At that minute, she called me! On a complete different subject. And it gave me the chance to apologize at once, letting go. Very grateful for that.

So the mess of yarn became a pretty sweater. And there was no way to tell before it was all done. I have stopped looking for purpose of my periods of unbearable pain though, they have been too many and too long. During this winter I have felt like that knitting project and me being tied to the couch would have the same duration. I really hope I was right. And that the Trouble 1 birthday fika at my dad’s coffee shop was the start for me being a little bit a part of the world again.