This afghan was made during a very good time in my life, right after the Hawaii Ironman, when I went to visit my brother and his wife serving a Mormon mission in Alaska. There are sometimes tricky interactions with people in my life who remain Mormon. I suspect they are doing some work behind the scenes, but I’m not sure that they can see how much work I am also doing behind the scenes to try not to offend them and also not to be offended by them.
My brother has been wonderful to me, not just since the divorce, but definitely that was one of the big things that made a difference. When I went to grad school at Princeton, my brother invited me to stay with him and drove me to my dorm from the airport numerous times. He gave me one of his old cars for free as a wedding gift, and invited me and my then husband on many weekend dates (which he paid for entirely).
Later, when he started running 50 marathons in 50 states, he noticed I’d run a marathon and offered to pay for me to fly out and run one with him. Which I did, but I admit that I got tired of running at his speed and took off for the last 8 miles without him and beat him by a lot. Later, he used to tell friends that I was “the sister I hate” (as a joke) and when they asked why, he’d explain that I’d had the courage not to run in the rat race and instead dedicated myself to writing, which he envied a bit, and also that I did Ironman races, which he admired enormously. I was a lot faster than he was and sometimes I believed that I was never going to slow down.
Last year, we ran a half marathon together and I was extremely slow and he never took off without me and, in fact, kept encouraging me to just walk whenever I wanted. He never brought up that I used to say I wasn’t going to slow down like him (he is thirteen years older than me), but he did say that he shook his head and said—she will learn. I did learn.
In the midst of the divorce, he kept insisting he was on my side, though he had been friends with my now ex and they had also run a number of marathons together. When I went to Alaska, I released him from his need to be on my side and told him I didn’t mind if he was friends with my ex again. I was in such a good space at the time that I didn’t feel like I needed to have people on my side. But he has stubbornly maintained his position as “on Mette’s side.”
I worked on this afghan in pieces at his house, adding yarn to it that he bought for me at a yarn co-op that he found and drove me to, insisting that he would buy however much yarn I wanted. I bought a lot (it was very cheap), but the problem was trying to get it home. I also had to buy a new bag to put the yarn in, which I checked at the airport on the way back. This is a problem that happens often enough (me buying too much yarn at whatever vacation spot I’m at to fit it into my small bags) that you’d think that I’d start remembering to bring an extra bag. I try to!
I laid out the circles as I tried to figure out how I was going to place them. I do my afghans a lot more like I write books than you might think, given how many times I have to rewrite my books because I didn’t do an outline at first. But the problem with outlines for my books has always been that they don’t turn out as interesting as if I write without an outline. And the same is true for my afghans. I like playing with the yarn and with the shape of the pieces that come out of it. Yes, I often end up having to undo pieces and try another shape. I also often take photos of multiple different layouts of the same pieces, as I did with this one. I stare at them over a period of days. I’m not sure how I make a decision, but eventually, one of them appeals to me more than the others.
When I was on my way home from Alaska, I ended up getting kicked off of my flight and stood around at the airport after midnight, trying to get another one. I was confused and frustrated about what had happened (while my brother kept trying to pay for another ticket for me instead of figuring out what happened). I wanted to be independent and a grown-up rather than have someone else solve the problem for me. And I could have taken it as a sign that God or the universe was punishing me. But I felt so safe and supported that I told myself that the universe had shown me great kindness that year and that I had faced much harder challenges than this one. So I kept repeating the mantra, “the universe will make me whole.”
This particular piece had a third stage of development, because when I was considering where to put it up, there was a spot in my dining area that wasn’t as big as the piece itself, so I decided to hang it differently, using the ceiling as well. Gravity meant that it wouldn’t drape evenly so I let it kind of hang. I like the effect of it now, dropping over like a concerned mother. I like that I found a new way to place it that none of my other pieces has. I like how it has negative space that is every bit as important as the positive space
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The afghan is gorgeous! And I’m glad you have this brother in your life.