My Sister Sylvia's December 2016 Office Project

My sister Sylvia's December 2016 office project in Sydney, Australia:

What You Cannot See, You Can Feel

I've been knitting for more than 30 years now. While working on projects I noted that the yarn I used had a unique texture depending on what color it was. Pink yarn, for example, feels sticky to me, while red yarn feels rough and sandy. I asked my mother and my sisters if they noticed the same thing, but they said that they did not, or that they did not bother to, and so I kept quiet about it for some time.

In 2013, while I was teaching creative writing in my "Writing from The Heart" workshop at the Philippine National School for the Blind, I remembered my knitting and introduced a new exercise. I asked the participants to peel the paper covers off every crayon in their boxed sets. I then placed one crayon of the same color in their hands, a color at a time, and asked them to feel it while thinking of specific associations. I even allowed them to smell and lick each crayon.

At the end of the exercise I asked the class to raise the crayons that corresponded to my words--Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Green, and so on. NINETY-FIVE PERCENT of the participants successfully completed the exercise. The teacher-monitor who was observing the workshop was shocked speechless.

Try this exercise with crayons and with yarn. It heightens your powers of observation.

My Wuxia Scarf

Finished my wuxia scarf in December 2015 but couldn't find the right model to photograph it on. This full-length piece with a shaped hood was inspired by my viewing of The Return of the Condor Heroes a.k.a. The Romance of the Condor Heroes on Taiwan's GTV. This part of the trilogy is about the life (childhood through old age) of the wayward, maverick, and rebellious Yang Guo, a warrior who falls in love with his mentor, an enchantress, and marries her. He becomes an old man while the enchantress remains young forever.

The scarf I made looks nowhere near that worn by the character in the wuxia, but I definitely had him in mind while knitting it.

Photos by Jefferson Solayao

Never snap up new yarn and then frenziedly produce something with it to show others. You will end up looking at others' knitting like a housewife on a house-hunting show who enters a modest kitchen and whines, "I don't like it!" "I want modern!" "I want the appliances updated!" "I want stainless steel!" "I want granite!"--not realizing that stainless steel makes any kitchen look like a morgue and that "granite" is really liquid polymer fiberglass. Unbeknownst to the housewife, she is at the mercy of the house agent. The agent could walk her into ANY kitchen and either say "This was built in the 1970s" (and you can hear the housewife immediately reply "I want modern!" without thinking) OR say "This was recently renovated" (and you can hear the housewife immediately reply "Wow!" without thinking). Yarn promoters are like that real-estate agent.

Any housewife with character will want and need only appliances that WORK.

Therefore, when buying yarn, discern and discriminate. Don't ride on trends. Never fall for fancy names; such names could be disguising old yarn with new labels. Buy your yarn like buying exquisite textile. Consider setting it aside for several years. And then use it to create something after the yarn is no longer in stock and is no longer available to anyone. That way, no one else can copy your work.

Don't make your knitting timely. Make it TIMELESS.