One Stitch At A Time: Knitting For Peace

Teddy Bears for African kids

A piece of knitting is, with few exceptions, one long strand of yarn, looped back on itself. Every part of it is connected, and if one pulls the loose end, one can unravel the entire piece of fabric. That’s the philosophical aspect of knitting.

Knitting creates communities, and every knitter has stories of personal connections. I learned to knit as a child. My mother taught me, as her mother had taught her. This is a lineage of love, of people, mostly women, sitting together and passing on stories as well as stitches. Later I learned to hold the yarn in my left hand from a college friend who had learned it from her German host family when she was an exchange student.

My collection of needles is a potpourri of stories. A few I have bought new, including the beautiful set of rosewood double-pointed needles on which I knit a pair of bamboo-silk socks for my sister to comfort her feet after surgery. Some have come to me from my mother, so lovingly used over the years that the printed sizes have worn off. Others appeared in the boxes of yarn from my first mother-in-law, most likely from the senior center she frequented, so I will never know the women--or possibly the men--who began projects on these needles, only to leave them half-finished. I love these untold stories, even as I add my own and pass them on.

Over the years, I knitted many sweaters, scarves, hats, even an afghan or two, mostly for family and friends. Then about 4 years ago, I came across Betty Christiansen’s Knitting for Peace: Make the World a Better Place, One Stitch at a Time. I read about the history of wartime knitting, the Revolutionary Knitting Circle, Peace Fleece, and programs that teach knitting to prisoners.

My projects shifted to a different focus: I knit a prayer shawl for a dying friend and a lap robe for my second mother-in-law during her final illness. With each stitch, I held in my mind wishes for peace, for love, for understanding.

The Feathered Edge: Swords, Souls, and Editing Tanith Lee

What is there to say about editing a Tanith Lee story? You sit there, holding the typewritten manuscript that she sent you, and something in your brain turns itself into total fan-girl jelly. But you already knew that.

To begin with, the first Tanith Lee story I worked on was for Lace and Blade (Norilana Books, 2008). She'd agreed to submit a story in the very early planning stages of the project, before I came onboard as editor. And it was my first gig as editor. Over the years, I'd worked with a bunch of different editors, and had ideas about what worked for me, what didn't, and how I wanted to interact with writers "from the other side of the desk." Marion Zimmer Bradley had been a role model and inspiration about how to encourage new writers. After years of participating in writer's workshops and teaching adult education classes in writing, I was all set to instruct and guide.

None of this prepared me for the experience of holding in my hands an original typewritten Tanith Lee manuscript.

The first, and most important thing, I had to do was to take off my fangirl hat and my fellow-writer hat and affix my editor hat firmly to my head. This involved an excruciating change of gears. I made mistakes. Of course, I made mistakes. (And learned how to clean them up.) I wasn't born knowing how to edit, let alone how to edit iconic authors in whose shadows I have long stood. Tanith herself encouraged me. She wrote to me, "On editing though - like writing, I feel strongly one must do what one feels is right. In me, of course, you run into an old war-horse, 40 years in the field, covered in armour and neighing like a trumpet." Which was a most gracious way of acknowledging that the relationship between an author and an editor is an organic process, when at its best rooted in clear communication, deep listening, and respect. Not intimidation (in either direction), but a partnership in which both people have the same goal -- to make the story the best representation of the author's vision.

Book Review Kit -- Just Add Adjectives and Mix!

In case you missed this blog post on Book View Cafe, here it is to enjoy. Feel free to post your own book reviews under Comments!

Have you noticed how alike many book reviews are? Aside from recapitulations of the plot, the same words might apply to almost any book. Therefore, as a service to discerning readers (and a hoot and a holler, besides), Book View Café presents the newest innovation in book reviews. Design your own inimitable personalized reviews using this cutting-edge technique!

First, you will need to assemble a number of words. The exact order doesn't matter, so long as you match nouns with nouns, adjectives with adjectives, and so forth. By mixing up the order, you can create even more variations, so you can use the same basic review for almost any book!

Book View Cafe Wild Rumpus... er, New Bookstore Launch

For lo, these many months, the elves at Book View Café, beloved spouse among them, have been laboring to transform the ebookstore into something elegant and user-friendly, in which browsing means discovered very cool new books as well as old out-of-print favorites. Now it's done and up and we want all our friends/n/relations to celebrate with us.

To that end, we're giving our readers a chance to win the book of their choice free. There's a lot of hoopla about whether such events are helpful, but I hope this one will be fun. The point is to invite you to check things out. Who knows, you might find something you want. (And such a deal - 95% of the price goes to the author.) So here's the skinny: