January 25, 2016. In a dark, dark box.
There’s this trunk I have that has been kept in many places, used for a “table” for my printer or books since somewhere around 1991-1993 when I quit knitting and left the home I thought I would always live in.
I had it in David Berry’s apartment on the Post Road for 5 years, in Mount Vernon when I thought I would live with Jack more than nine months, in the cellar in my new house back in Bowdoinham for 10 years, upstairs in my Bowdoinham house for 3 more years, in storage on the Merrymeeting Bay farm for two years, in Port Townsend now for almost two years.
So does that add up to 23 years? 5 + 1 + 13 + 2 + 2 = 23. Yep. That’s how long the box has remained unopened. 2016-1993=23 years
So, in that dark, dark, box are all the left over knitted swatches I had saved over the 13 years I sort of made my living with knitting. I know I said I wanted to ditch the past and not wallow in it. And maybe I won’t, but I’ve always said I was saving these swatches to make something. I was thinking it would be a blanket. There’s enough for a few blankets. But, who wants a blanket these days? Not me. I prefer down.
This is what I want to do, photograph, think about, wallow in, write about, pick over and sew up a sweater with what I think is in that box.