Brain Corals
This afghan typically hangs over my bed, which for reasons, means that it is on view during almost all Zoom sessions I have at work. As a result, it’s been on display at my work twice now for people to see. I always explain to them that I did all of the crocheting and knitting while working on the phones, mostly during the first few months that I was at my current financial institution. This is less because I was bored (though one could argue it was a portion of that) and more because it turns out that I desperately need a stim.
As a child, I was a thumb sucker. I was extremely disinterested in the attempts by my siblings and parents to get me to stop. This included an epic session with my older brothers in the locked attic, where they put various concoctions on my thumb, including hot sauce, deodorant, and then gasoline (this is how I know what gasoline tastes like). Nothing worked in the least to deter my thumb sucking, no, not even the gasoline. I just popped it right back into my mouth and ignored my brothers. I did eventually stop sucking my thumb on my own time table—and when my father promised to give me $20, which I promptly spent on a Christmas present for the one older brother who did NOT try to get me to stop sucking my thumb. Take that, mean older brothers!
My parents taught me how important it was to be grown up. I stopped getting hugs at night when I was about three. Actually, I stopped getting hugs at any time at that age. I also stopped snuggling stuffed animals. I was very proud of myself for being such a grown up at such a young age.
But when the divorce hit and my life turned upside down and I spent all day working at an entirely new and unexpected job, I found myself knitting and crocheting 8-10 hours a day every day. The calming and simple, repetitive process, helped me enormously. I have always struggled with phone calls. I would have said a customer service job on the phone all day would have been at the very bottom of my choices for a full-time job And yet, here we are. So keeping my hands busy doing a simple stitch is very helpful for complex calls and angry customer management.
It may seem like this afghan is complex, but the back (entirely made by hand) is a knit stockinette stitch done in two pieces and then knit together. The individual brain corals (titled thus by my friend Neca, who has a PhD from Princeton in microbiology, and who assures me they look very much like a colorful version of a real sea creature) are also simple, a round of double crochets with each subsequent round crocheted into twice. The color changes were done entirely by the variegated yarns that I picked.
I suppose it is true that the real artistic work in this piece is how I put the brain corals together in a swirling pattern that accentuates the sense of movement from one color to the next. This was not planned in advance, or at least only partially, as is often the case with my pieces. I started putting a few brain corals on, realized that I had vastly underestimated how much yarn I needed (another common problem with my pieces) and ordered a LOT more yarn. Then I just kept placing more brain corals on until it felt “finished.” As someone who used to think that she had a very bad sense of color, it is kind of miraculous that I had the courage to feel my way toward this piece.
A friend of mine who has owned a gallery and now works at my financial institution came over to see my piece displayed at the most recent event and enjoyed touching it. He and I had a conversation about a nearby quilt (which was truly amazing and nearly perfect).
Do you ever think about making quilts? He asked.
No, not really. I’ve tried it, but I’m not precise enough.
He tilted his head and suggested this was not the way to describe the way I do my art, that maybe normal quilting simply doesn’t suit me.
He was entirely right. The more I think about it, the more I see that the art forms I do best are the ones that allow me to flout convention, to disobey all the rules. This is exactly how I write novels (find a rule and see how much I can break it or how many total rules I can break or what challenge someone sets me that I can meet superbly). It is also how I make my afghans. I get an idea and play with it in my head, or I see a quilt or another piece of art that I like and decide to make it my own by finding the part of it that matters most to me and then amping that part up. So that is what brain corals is all about. Breaking rules and feeling my way to a finish.