author as gardener

renewing love each day through small touch points

To ground us in a process of delight, I would like to invite you into a garden like space. Public, open, and nurtured for the pleasure of experiencing creation. There are always new beginnings. The endings usher in dawns blazing with renewed possibility. Our bookshelves mirage into rows and rows of vibrant plots all on their own cycle. Author as gardener. Garden as book.

Photo by Alison Beshai

Our garden regularly ruptures my sense of progress and process and time. There is the forward trajectory of days into months, seasons into years. June’s tight rosebuds will lead to July’s full-crowned blooms. Evident and irreversible change, straight forward as an arrow toward its mark. But there is revolution in the garden as well. And reversals. Months and seasons and days turning so far forward they bend backward. I stand in the past and in the future when I stand in the present of our garden. - Camille T. Dungy, Soil (2024)

The end of 2024 marks 6 months of writing my book about knitting as a form of ancestral technology binding us through the generations. An indigenous centered tendril I added to my thread dictionary during a beautiful dinner-based conversation lab entitled The Science of Community Building I went to in November featuring the brilliant mind of my dear friend Ravon Ruffin Feliz.

I have given myself one year to produce the first draft of this new body of work. It is 8:42 am on the eve of the 25th. This is my last newsletter of the year to be published the afternoon of January 1st. In the next 7 days, I’ll touch base with my Table of Contents, create a digital layout to combine all book elements, and report the updates here with you throughout the week.

Design and Material Layout. Photo by Brandi Cheyenne.

We can’t always let the mind tell the story of our efforts. It can be an unreliable manager demanding more for less, scheduling unnecessary meetings after 5pm, and working days to create what can be completed in hours with sustained rest. Revel in what you have already accomplished. Give yourself more credit.

If you are where I am: resolute in finishing a big project, to start one, to set one down for a while, perhaps in order to begin another, or simply to understand the behind the scenes of book writing I hope this essay shows you a pathway forward, back, through, and into the deep.

Sojourner in Progress. Photo by Brandi Cheyenne.

There are 4 main components to creating my manuscript:

1. Knitting Patterns (line-by-line instruction for original and hand knit designs)

2. Community-oriented essays (poems, prose, and citations)

3. Photographs (how-to and editorial)

4. Video support (individual techniques and garment specific)

I am aiming for 30 patterns, 10 essays, 250 photographs, and a video for each technique and design.

Notion allows you to create and hide properties to organize materials. I hid the design names and chapter titles.

I created this book layout in Notion to gather everything in one place. Each design is its own project with a different timeline, material, mood board, list of to-dos, editors, test knitters, and budget. To create and organize my designs and research, I use:

• iNotes: random ideas and stream of consciousness, links, quotes.

• Adobe Design Suite: editing photos and video.

• External hard drives: storing photos and video.

• Microsoft Word: how-to instructions with tracked changes and comments.

• Instagram: design and wardrobe mood boards, marketing ideas, bookstores, community spaces, Black feminist resources.

• Google Sheets: test knitting applications.

• Google Docs: word doc backup and thread dictionary.

• Ar.ena: open source self-publishing resources.

I was reluctant to learn and sign up for more tech at $10/mo, but Notion is shaping up to be the most dynamic way to pull everything together through embeds and app integration.

Yesterday, I weeded 3 projects opening space to knit the shapes I’ve never designed before namely the booty shorts and carry on. Each will take weeks to design. I haven’t swatched the yarns or sketched the silhouettes or done the math. I have gathered yarns for the bag prototype and I love this cotton yarn produced by Black farmers! I made a bunch of one-of-a-kind granny square hats for my December fundraising market and instantly began ideating how to incorporate an introduction to crochet. THE MOST. I set that seed aside for another season, another harvest.

Taking hi-res DSLR photos for the Notion workspace reminds me winter is the worst time to shoot in natural light. The extra time it took to upload the images to Lightroom and resize them in Photoshop generated a revived sense of urgency to have samples roll in ocean salt and pop in summer sun.

Photography Tips & Best Practices

1. Create a detailed shot / angle / pose list for each design and print it out.

2. Shoot on cloudy days, at dawn and dusk.

3. Remember you need more empty space around the object than you think.

4. Take vertical, horizontal, and video shots for different platforms: 16:9, 1:1, 5:7.

Color and Texture for Emotional Support.

The Aquarian, Tauruses, Virgos, and Capricorns of my life support the structure for this harvest born from years of sowing seeds while preventing too much self-isolation. A tea date replaces the full day feast, the long weekend comes together in a few text messages, and finding a therapist is no longer the last task on my list.

Author as you would garden.

Refuse to feel behind.

Embrace the truth of having done enough.

What was possible?

What came and went?

What stayed and flourished?

What lays dormant patiently in wait?

There are seasons of rest and seasons of rigor. You can slow down and speed up. Place your fingertips on keys soft as flower petals and witness your words in bloom.

To renewed possibilities, deep gratitude, and so much love to you.