Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Think you know how to say my last name - Druchunas? Even if you don't, record your best guess and send it to me at donna AT sheeptoshawl DOT com and you'll be entered to win a copy of my next book Successful Lace Knitting from Martingale & Co.! Contest ends Marcy 31, 2010! Check it out on KnitPicks.
Monday, March 08, 2010
This is a blog post from The Art of Non-Conformity with my personal notes added.
That's it, that's how I feel today. I hope you may be inspired to interview yourself as well.
From time to time, it’s good to have a conversation with yourself—maybe even an interview. This is how you do it. First, sit yourself down wherever you like to sit. Get coffee or your drink of choice. Turn off the distractions and take it seriously. (Wouldn’t you take another interview seriously?)
Then you open the conversation like this:
Dear self, you are x years old. What do you have to show for it? Are you living the dream?
I am 47 years old. I have a lot to show for it, and am very happy with my life so far. I've had great experiences, I have a wonderful family, good friends, I've written 6 books, I've been successful at work, I'm fairly secure financially, and I have a husband, friends, and cats who love me. What more could I ask for?
What is the dream? I have to answer that before I can say if I'm living the dream. The only dream I've had for my entire life is to live in a house on the beach. I am not living that dream, and I probably never will. But that's OK because I have new dreams, dreams that are more important to me.
What are my new dreams? To spend at least six months a year in Europe, perhaps even to live there for a year or two.To spend a lot of time with my friends, relaxing, enjoying each other's company, and not thinking about work. To spend more time on creative endeavors and less time on drudge work. To honor my creative work and my relationships and consistently make them first priority in my life. To live my dreams now instead of waiting for later.
As you look back on your life, what are you most proud of, what do you regret, and how do you feel about each of those things?
I'm most proud of my books, especially Arctic Lace. And I only have one regret that I'm willing to admit, and I've written about that recently, so I won't harp on it any more.
Here are a few follow-ups:
What’s next, self?
EUROPE! Fiction. Creativity. Relaxation. Less thinking and more feeling.
Why do you do the things you do every day?
Habit. Deadlines. Obsession. I would like to be more thoughtful about how I fill my hours. In the long-term I am quite happy with the way I live, but on a daily basis, I sometimes let fluff fill hours that could be more satisfying if I was living more intentionally.
What do you really believe in? (What do you know to be true?)
Life and love. The here and now. Being present, but having hope for the future. Planning but leaving room for fate. That people are the most important thing in life and should always come before anything else.
Where do you find your security?
In Dom. In my own competence. In knowledge.
What bothers you, and what are you doing about it?
Republicans. What can be done about it? I try to talk to my Republican friends and get them to look deeper into the issues instead of just repeating the talking points they hear on TV or talk radio. I try to promote peaceful, liberal ideas in my writing. That's all I can do. If I pay too much attention to politics, it gives me a headache or, worse, it turns me into The Hulk.
What worries you?
That life is slipping away too quickly and I will continue to do the same thing I've regretted in the past again in the future. That life will be over, and I will not have spent enough time with my friends.
If you had one year left to live, how would you spend it?
In Europe, learning, meeting people, talking talking talking talking with my friends, and creating one beautiful masterpiece to leave behind as a legacy.
That's it, that's how I feel today. I hope you may be inspired to interview yourself as well.
Sunday, March 07, 2010
Are you tired of these topics yet? I hope not, because I will probably be writing about them all year, with a few diversions into other parts of Europe, the joys and pains of friendship and love, the writing process, and odds and ends that latch onto my brain and won't let go if I don't give them space on the page somewhere.
But today I will stick to three of my most pressing obsessions: England, Lithuania, and Knitting.
The best things, they say, come in small packages. For me that's definitely been true lately. I've received two packages of knitting treasures in the mail. And you can guess from whence they came.
From Lithuania I received a packet with a skein of hand-spun wool yarn and a pair of hand-knit beaded wrist warmers, or riešinės. Both were made by Aldona Suneviciene, who runs a lovely shop on etsy.com.
Riešinės have been popular in Lithuania for a long time, at least since the mid-19th century. They've had a recent surge in popularity due to the publication of a book of patterns by designer Irena Juškienės. A quick google search for images shows up pages and pages of lovely photos.
Juškienės's book focuses on the garter-stitch beaded style of wrist warmer, but may other knitting techniques were used to create these little accessories in the past, including lace, colorwork, cables, and simple knitted ribbing, as well as crochet. Today, felting is incredibly popular in Lithuania, and there are many designers creating gorgeous felted riešinės.
If you want to make a pair of riešinės, I'll be re-starting my Lithuanian Wrist Warmers Twitter-Knit-a-Long this week! You don't need to be a member of Twitter to follow along. I'll post a direct link when I restart the KAL which was put on hold because of the Knitting Olympics.
I didn't receive a package from England, but a package that came to me from Portland, Oregon contained a collection of Victorian knitting books that had been owned by Dorothy Reade. (Two of the books are German, the rest are English.)
Dorothy Reade, who is the subject of my upcoming book, Successful Lace Knitting, was charting Victorian knitting patterns in the 1950s and 60s. Today, with the publication of Victorian Lace Today by Jane Sowerby, the new editions of the Weldon's Practical Needlework books by Interweave Press, and popular workshops on reading and knitting from Victorian patterns, it seems like everyone is interested in this esoteric topic. But in the middle of the twentieth century, Dorothy Reade was perhaps the only designer interested in updating these beautiful, but cryptic, patters for contemporary American knitters.
I would like to give my sincere thanks to Dorothy Reade's daughter, Donna Nixon, for her amazing generosity in sharing her time, information, and photos with me for my upcoming book, and for trusting these vintage books into my care.
That's it for today. I have a list of things to blog about, but if you want to hear from me more frequently, follow me on Twitter or facebook.
But today I will stick to three of my most pressing obsessions: England, Lithuania, and Knitting.
The best things, they say, come in small packages. For me that's definitely been true lately. I've received two packages of knitting treasures in the mail. And you can guess from whence they came.
From Lithuania I received a packet with a skein of hand-spun wool yarn and a pair of hand-knit beaded wrist warmers, or riešinės. Both were made by Aldona Suneviciene, who runs a lovely shop on etsy.com.
Riešinės have been popular in Lithuania for a long time, at least since the mid-19th century. They've had a recent surge in popularity due to the publication of a book of patterns by designer Irena Juškienės. A quick google search for images shows up pages and pages of lovely photos.
Juškienės's book focuses on the garter-stitch beaded style of wrist warmer, but may other knitting techniques were used to create these little accessories in the past, including lace, colorwork, cables, and simple knitted ribbing, as well as crochet. Today, felting is incredibly popular in Lithuania, and there are many designers creating gorgeous felted riešinės.
If you want to make a pair of riešinės, I'll be re-starting my Lithuanian Wrist Warmers Twitter-Knit-a-Long this week! You don't need to be a member of Twitter to follow along. I'll post a direct link when I restart the KAL which was put on hold because of the Knitting Olympics.
I didn't receive a package from England, but a package that came to me from Portland, Oregon contained a collection of Victorian knitting books that had been owned by Dorothy Reade. (Two of the books are German, the rest are English.)
Dorothy Reade, who is the subject of my upcoming book, Successful Lace Knitting, was charting Victorian knitting patterns in the 1950s and 60s. Today, with the publication of Victorian Lace Today by Jane Sowerby, the new editions of the Weldon's Practical Needlework books by Interweave Press, and popular workshops on reading and knitting from Victorian patterns, it seems like everyone is interested in this esoteric topic. But in the middle of the twentieth century, Dorothy Reade was perhaps the only designer interested in updating these beautiful, but cryptic, patters for contemporary American knitters.
I would like to give my sincere thanks to Dorothy Reade's daughter, Donna Nixon, for her amazing generosity in sharing her time, information, and photos with me for my upcoming book, and for trusting these vintage books into my care.
That's it for today. I have a list of things to blog about, but if you want to hear from me more frequently, follow me on Twitter or facebook.
Monday, March 01, 2010
I’ve been reading Frances Mayes’s A Year in the World for several weeks. A slow tour of Europe. In my mind I travel with the author around the continent, the Mediterranean sea, and a few scattered islands, all the while making plans for my own future journeys.
I don’t think I’ve ever highlighted so many passages in one book since my first Bible, when I still thought the words in that book were written by the hand of God directly to me. This book feels the same, the words a lamp, lighting a path to unknown destinations.
“OMG,” I wrote to a friend after reading the introduction, “this book I am reading is so amazing. It's like the author is in my soul. I hope the rest is as good as the beginning. I wish I could explain what being away from America has done--and I hope will continue to do--to me. I wish you could understand how relationships with places change me. Of course people are so much of what makes a place, but there is also so much more. It is the land the sea the air the history the architecture the food the birds the flowers the ghosts. It is so much so big. I have never had a longing for any place the way I long for Europe. It is Vilnius. It is England. It is Paris. It is Geneva. It is places I haven't yet seen. It has hooked onto something deep inside me and it is pulling me across the ocean. Of course there are a few special people I've met that I want to see again, to spend time with, to talk forever. But it's much more than that as well. It's how I open up when I leave this country. I open my heart. I breathe more freely. The muscles in my neck, my shoulders, my calves loosen. I sing. I dance. I am in a dream. I never want to come home and awaken.”
I wasn’t disappointed as I continued reading the book. Although the writing is uneven and it seems more like a collection of essays than a single narrative (there’s no story, really, it’s a stream of the author's impressions of the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells in each place she visits with her husband), I stayed completely enthralled through ten chapters. In fact, I bought a paperback copy of the book in addition to the Kindle edition I’ve been reading on my iPhone, so I could mark all of the pertinent passages with a highlighter and post-it notes for easy access and inspiration as I finish up my book about Lithuanian knitting.
Then I stopped reading for a while, called a way by a few novels and a couple of weeks of not reading anything much at all. I picked the book(s) up again this afternoon to transfer my highlights from the Kindle version to the paperback. Then I continued on to chapter 11.
Almost immediately, I found myself having to stop again, to highlight, think, and dream, as I came across this paragraph:
I’ve been obsessed with the topic of friendship since I was a little girl, and the only big regret I have (or will admit to!) in life is that I haven’t always kept in touch with old friends. Just like Mayes, every time I moved, old friends somehow slipped away. We all got busy with our lives. Some got married. Some had children. Some moved across the country or across the world. Some started (or ended) careers. Whatever the cause, time slipped away and connections came undone. We lost each other’s phone numbers and addresses. Christmas cards came back unopened. Life went on.
Over the past few years, I’ve reconnected with many of my old friends on the internet. I’ve also found it to be an excellent way to keep in touch with new friends overseas and with family members. I love the internet. It expands my boundaries from a small corner of Colorado to reach around the whole world. Sometimes I worry that I am online too much. But it’s not a matter of quantity, it’s a matter of quality. If I’m spending my time talking to friends and family, getting work done, and accomplishing things that make me feel happy and fulfilled, it’s a great thing. If I find that the day is gone, I’ve been sitting at the computer all day, and I don’t know what I’ve done, it sucks.
And there I’ve gone off rambling again. Thanks for tuning in. I hope this gives you a few things to to think about.
I don’t think I’ve ever highlighted so many passages in one book since my first Bible, when I still thought the words in that book were written by the hand of God directly to me. This book feels the same, the words a lamp, lighting a path to unknown destinations.
“OMG,” I wrote to a friend after reading the introduction, “this book I am reading is so amazing. It's like the author is in my soul. I hope the rest is as good as the beginning. I wish I could explain what being away from America has done--and I hope will continue to do--to me. I wish you could understand how relationships with places change me. Of course people are so much of what makes a place, but there is also so much more. It is the land the sea the air the history the architecture the food the birds the flowers the ghosts. It is so much so big. I have never had a longing for any place the way I long for Europe. It is Vilnius. It is England. It is Paris. It is Geneva. It is places I haven't yet seen. It has hooked onto something deep inside me and it is pulling me across the ocean. Of course there are a few special people I've met that I want to see again, to spend time with, to talk forever. But it's much more than that as well. It's how I open up when I leave this country. I open my heart. I breathe more freely. The muscles in my neck, my shoulders, my calves loosen. I sing. I dance. I am in a dream. I never want to come home and awaken.”
I wasn’t disappointed as I continued reading the book. Although the writing is uneven and it seems more like a collection of essays than a single narrative (there’s no story, really, it’s a stream of the author's impressions of the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells in each place she visits with her husband), I stayed completely enthralled through ten chapters. In fact, I bought a paperback copy of the book in addition to the Kindle edition I’ve been reading on my iPhone, so I could mark all of the pertinent passages with a highlighter and post-it notes for easy access and inspiration as I finish up my book about Lithuanian knitting.
Then I stopped reading for a while, called a way by a few novels and a couple of weeks of not reading anything much at all. I picked the book(s) up again this afternoon to transfer my highlights from the Kindle version to the paperback. Then I continued on to chapter 11.
Almost immediately, I found myself having to stop again, to highlight, think, and dream, as I came across this paragraph:
From a crack in the house, two yellow beaks open and the mother sparrow flits over our heads, to and fro from the grove. Her angry chirp warns us that she might dive-bomb our reclining forms. A visiting gray cat stretches on the warm stone terrace, purring at her reflection in the door. She ignores the sparrow. Under my pulled-down hat, I begin to think of old attachments, friends, those I have failed, those who failed me. The elemental nature of Greece, I suppose. Or sometimes travel just unlocks Pandora’s box. What I’ve put off considering in my quotidian life rushes forward when the body and mind achieve a quiet level of receptivity. What has been lost comes looking. Problems overly suppressed can erupt as a full-blown crisis. I start with the drifty thought, Mother would love this, followed by the petulant, childish (but true) thought, She failed me, no? Then and old friendship I bluntly broke off. My mind jumps to Bill D. Oh he let you down, big time, then the tidal rush of how he would have loved Greece, how funny he was, and what a good poet. Drunk, he lurches over the hors d’oeuvres table, I reach to catch him, but he crashes into the bowls and plates. Hardest to understand, the friends who recede, become vague, their names in the address book but their numbers forgotten. Friends from college stay fixed. I pick up with Anne and Rena immediately, out of such long connections. As an adult, I moved six times, and for the most part the intense friendships of each place gradually faded, replaced by the next set. And yet I still care about Ralph and Mitra and Gabby and Hunter and Alan and, and, and. That conference when I shared a room with Karen and we talked late. In the dark, her voice sounded so familiar, a little sister whispering from the other twin bed, kicking off the quilt. We lost touch. I always mean to go back, pick up the dropped stitch, continue the round hem. But the present grounds me--I first wrote grinds me--so firmly. A tidal wash of losses, all under the big energy sun. I gather Ed’s shirt, dried over a chairback in the sun, the blue cotton warming my hands.
I’ve been obsessed with the topic of friendship since I was a little girl, and the only big regret I have (or will admit to!) in life is that I haven’t always kept in touch with old friends. Just like Mayes, every time I moved, old friends somehow slipped away. We all got busy with our lives. Some got married. Some had children. Some moved across the country or across the world. Some started (or ended) careers. Whatever the cause, time slipped away and connections came undone. We lost each other’s phone numbers and addresses. Christmas cards came back unopened. Life went on.
Over the past few years, I’ve reconnected with many of my old friends on the internet. I’ve also found it to be an excellent way to keep in touch with new friends overseas and with family members. I love the internet. It expands my boundaries from a small corner of Colorado to reach around the whole world. Sometimes I worry that I am online too much. But it’s not a matter of quantity, it’s a matter of quality. If I’m spending my time talking to friends and family, getting work done, and accomplishing things that make me feel happy and fulfilled, it’s a great thing. If I find that the day is gone, I’ve been sitting at the computer all day, and I don’t know what I’ve done, it sucks.
And there I’ve gone off rambling again. Thanks for tuning in. I hope this gives you a few things to to think about.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
If you've been waiting for the Arctic Lace audio book to come out, I have a present for you: The introduction! I hope it makes you want to hear the rest...
We have a lot of exciting things in the pipeline this year, with several new audiobooks coming out in the next few months. One of those will be Arctic Knits by Donna Druchnas, which is set to be released later this spring. The book tells the story of Donna’s trip to Alaska to research the history and use of quiviut, otherwise known as the most deliciously soft and warm musk ox down, and also tells stories of and from the Yup’ik and Inupiat women that she encountered. It’s just lovely.
