#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

August 21, 2018 Kelly DuMar

Meadow Morning

Charleston barked me awake this morning; deer in the field needed chasing. But our walk was later. I opened my new piece, "Lake of Laurel and Ash," that I brought to my group for feedback last night and started revising, integrating comments while they're fresh. It's a hybrid form - a lyrical essay or a prose poem - I haven't finished clarifying the structure. I find a blog by Sarah Minor, What Quilting andEmbroidery Can Teach Us About Narrative Form and applying her ideas, such as the metaphor of threading, is helping me make some decisions.

For a knit object to appear to be made of one continuous piece of yarn, the artist has to hide the loose ends. This technique, which is especially useful in finishing a sleeve or an infinity scarf, is called 'weaving the ends back into the body.' As a reader of nonfiction, one of the sensations I’m always coming back for is that feeling, at the end of a piece, of wanting to start again. I relish revisiting openings that seem like they were preparing me for the conclusion from the start. If writers thought more often, as knitters do, about hiding their ends in their beginnings, they might find more useful ways of troubleshooting both techniques. Someday, when I’m really stuck, I might end up thinking to myself, 'This opening feels lumpy. I’ll try weaving in my ends.'

Sarah Minor

Charlie gets his walk soon enough, into the glorious meadow where we thread our way through all the Queen Anne's Lace blooming wildly along our path.