God Called. Your Sweater's Ready.

People ask me where it comes from, the idea, the image of the garment. It feels as if at 6am you've got a sweater dropped into your head. Actually dropped may not be the right word. Congealed maybe.

Usually I see something. Maybe it's a garment, but more often it's tree, a car, a baby, a rock or a chicken. Or even my sushi last night. I think "You know, that'd be a cute sweater..." Sometimes I say that out loud and the people around me (husband, daughter, dog) look at me as if my cheese is slipping and they need to get me into the home with the fenced yard, pronto. More often I keep my mouth shut to avoid the funny looks, and continue on with what I am doing; shopping, having dinner, hiking. But somewhere in my dim little brain the seeds are planted. That rock/baby/chicken/car would be a great sweater, I just know it. Sometimes it's the color of the object, or the shape, or the line. It varies. And it's not always a sweater, but more often than not it is one. Time passes, days sometimes, during which I remember the thing, but there's no time spent on it. I may bring it to the front and turn it around a little, maybe change something, then growl inwardly at the lack of form or function and shove it back into my subconscious. Sometimes I forget about it completely for days on end.

Then, all of a sudden, usually between 4 and 6 am, it's as if my internal answering machine is blinking. I press play. "God called, your sweater is ready...". There it is! My sweater!! I lay there asking if this is for real. Then I start to see the method of construction and I can see it being knitted. I have to get up and scribble it down right now. So I come downstairs in the darkness, grab a pencil and start to scribble. I get a wretched rough scrawl, sometimes with notes about yarn type , method of construction, etc on the side; a thing that looks nothing like the finished sweater God delivered to my inbox, but enough that I can remember what it's supposed to be.

It gets added to the pile. (There's a pile!) Backs of grocery lists. Note pad from a hotel in Portland, ME. Reverse side of a photo I tried to print that was too dark. Graph paper. There's even a couple in crayon. Most are pen or pencil. There's scarves, sweaters, vests. Someday maybe some of them will see daylight.

The whole thing is rather cool, and today reassuring. I had been struggling to "come up with something" and was really blocked. Nothing was coming and I was beginning to think it was all an illusion. Then suddenly at 6am on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, when my mind should be running to pies and in-laws, there's a sweater in my brain.