Mending Through Winters

WOCAR Week 4: Seeing patterns in stitching

The idea of winter, both metaphorically and meteorologically, conjures concepts of darkness and chill, of holing up and hunkering down, of austerity and making do with dwindling resources while awaiting better times. “Wintering” carries implications of turning inward - whether that’s physically locating oneself indoors or mentally orienting oneself towards a position of self-reflection - to endure a challenge.

Should we be so fortunate as to be able to choose to shift our lives into winter-mode during the season, we can embrace the cozy by bundling up in layers and sipping warming beverages. We might follow the darkness to bed a little earlier than other times of the year, or perhaps embrace the fleeting weather of the season by skiing, skating, or sledding. Lighting candles and fires, baking warming desserts and cooking hearty stews, we share the surplus food and warmth with our friends and neighbors. We grumble about ice, rain, and snow, but know that in a few months the season will cycle ‘round again and warmth and light will return. We see the glimmer at the end of the tunnel.

Personal winters, however, can have a decidedly different flavor. These are the winters imposed on us by our own or our loved ones’ fragile human bodies, our delicate human minds, political or social upheaval, loss, grief, life transitions, or any collection of other circumstances outside our control. These winters are decidedly less comforting to lean into, and may likely carry on much longer than a calendar season, but they are no less avoidable than the cycle of the calendar. Sometimes, we get hit with both a personal and meteorological winter at the same time, which can feel nearly impossible to endure.

This past week I’ve been reflecting on how throughout most of my life I’ve turned to stitching and creating during my own personal winters. The first year of college, I relearned to knit while staying in the dorm during Thanksgiving break. I was alone, away from my family during that holiday for the first time, and I knit constantly and called my mom every day - dialing the dozens of digits on the calling card required to make a long-distance call from my dorm landline.

A few years later while in the throes of graduate school, I decided I needed to learn to quilt and my mom and aunt taught me on various semester breaks.

After moving to a new state as an adult, I dove into sewing bags from wool garments which turned into a whole little creative business that taught me so much about sewing and myself.

While in lockdown of the covid pandemic, I constructed and hand embroidered a 12 foot square community quilt made entirely from scraps leftover from making fabric masks. As you well know, later that year, I started Winter of Care and Repair.

Last February while caring for my aunt during her terminal illness, I looped back to knitting; hand stitching felt too chaotic, and I craved the soothing predictability of round after round of stockinette stitch in the midst of moment-to-moment uncertainty.

Just a couple months ago when visiting my mom, she commented that when I went home for Christmas break during my first year of college, I bought a Beauty and The Beast coloring book and immersed myself in it for the next two weeks.

In high school, its own special sort of a never-ending emotional winter, I spent hours cutting up magazines and making collages across my bedroom walls. There’s definitely a pattern, and if I have a stress “tell,” it’s immersing myself in something that engrosses my hands, eyes, and brain.

While initially it may seem counterintuitive to “add in” something else when life and everything feels out of your control, sometimes that little something extra can be a lifeline. That addition can provide an opportunity for control and decision-making during chaos, something that is just for you and has no bearing on the other important things in life. Contemplating my continual orientation towards stitching has reminded me that I know myself better than I sometimes think, and that is as much a comfort as the stitching that I settle into periods of chaos. Recent research into hand stitching and knitting document that the stress-relieving, mood-boosting, calming effects you, I, and millenia of hand sewists already intuit do indeed have measurable positive impacts on mental health. There’s some particular neurological magic that happens when the hands, brain, and eyes work together, and humans have just… known that… because we do repeatedly what makes us feel good. Fortunately, in the case of hand stitching, knitting, whittling, tying fishing flies, building model trains, woodworking, whatever we choose to do with our hands, eyes, and brains together, we are getting our dopamine bump from something undeniably positive and creative, rather than seeking that boost from something less healthy, like substances, shopping, gambling.

So, this week, this season, I’ve tried to support myself with easily accessible, straightforward repairs that don’t require planning or decision-making in the moment. As I mentioned last week, one of my tasks in preparation for this phase was to gather supplies in order to do the thinking ahead of time. I did this because, of course, it’s important to me to carry on with this project of caring for my things, but also because I know that caring for myself while caring for my things helps me… care for myself. That self-perpetuating cycle of care is part of the alchemy of mending that propels me through each winter day, week, and season (when I don’t crash out and take a nap with my pets instead - which is also important care!)

And now, what you’re all actually for: the Winter of Care and Repair Week Four rundown!

Clockwise from top left: bias darning in progress on the tram, whip stitching binding over whiskey brand names on tote bag handles, the first 4 rows of a test swatch in preparation for reconstructing this terribly destroyed sweater, loose zipper tape before repair, cleanly stitched down zipper tape

• Bias darned one pair of lightweight wool socks, mostly on the tram on my class commute, over several days

• Finished sewing binding strips over alcohol brand logos on the handles of a cotton canvas tote bag, over multiple days

• Sewed the zipper tape down on the inside of the bag I’ve used for mending supplies with a consistently stuck zipper for the past 6 years (mending supplies LIVE in this bag. I do not know why it hadn’t previously occurred to me to fix it after fighting the zipper tape out of the teeth for the umpteenth time)

• Started knitting a test swatch to plan the repair of a very damaged sweater

• Started darning another lightweight sock

• Rode my bike to/from the tram each class day

• Attended a Mendship mending meet-up on Zoom, hosted by Suzie Ellis

• Attended an in-person mending meet-up with my Stitch Cafe Cádiz sewing friends