Knotty Honu, Learning to Knot, or Looking Back at My Brain Over Under Over Yonder
Auntie Tina, the stalwart leader of the Hawaiian Civic Club in West Valley here in Utah, recently hosted a pop-up event, and invited anybody who wanted to come sell stuff to bring their goodies and lay out their five square feet of crafter real estate.
I told my kids-- we were excited. They are selling masters. They've raised hundreds of dollars through applesauce and lemonade and rice krispie bars, and spent it all gleefully at American Girl stores. We brainstormed what we could sell-- the kids are great at making pretty little satin ribbon lei, and magical little bottles of pa'akai-- Hawaiian salt. And I've got all this old Knotty Honu stuff that's been sitting in my craft corner for ages. I was excited to dust it off and move some of it out into the world. I dug out my t-shirt stencils and blank onesies, my stacks of glossy photos of ginger and plumeria and hibiscus and lilikoi and bird of paradise and bananas and chili peppers, the slightly wilted envelopes, and my heaps of sketchbooks.
Those books are little time-machines. They're a little gritty and ant-eaten around the corners after 8 years in a dusty humid Hawaiian farmhut, but still potent vessels.
I got lost in my sketches from 2010 and 2011. I'd just had my second baby in Koloa. Looking through the books, that feeling came right back.
It was time of big transformations. Two years earlier, our life on the Big Island had been very simple: we had one sweet little baby, and we lived in the wide open plain below Mauna Kea in a small and not particularly welcoming community. We tried making friends, but mostly our efforts limped along. People were tired, saturated with their own family lives, and suspicious of outsiders, even ones as well-intentioned and nominally connected as we were. Matt's family is from Maui, after all. But that got me about as much Islander cred as telling a Scottish person that your mum is English. The Japanese plantation culture of Maui is worlds away from the Hawaiian Cowboy culture of the Big Island. So we were isolated, but happily so. Matt, in his shiny new cowboy boots, walked home for lunch every day, I cooked my way through Joy of Cooking, read everything at the local library, planted a big garden, raised our first ever batch of chickens, and doted on our fluffy little blond baby.
Then everything went into the blender. We were threatened with excommunication from the LDS church for writing letters questioning the church's support of Prop 8, Matt was offered a job on Kaua'i, the economy crashed and he signed his new contract on the day of the state-wide hiring freeze, just squeaking into the tenure-track hire in Hawaii for years. In a flurry and a scramble we were in a new place, our life on the Big Island suddenly dissipated behind us like sulphuric steam from the volcanic vents into vog.
Kaua'i immediately won me over. People-- Hawaiian, Local, Haole and all the various permutations thereof-- were welcoming and friendly. There were playgroups and social nets ready to accept and support us. We were only a mile from the most beautiful beaches in the world. Unlike the cold and misty cowboy country of Waimea on the Big Island, Po'ipu looked like postcard Hawaii.
Matt's job changed-- it was a real job. He bought a truck and couldn't spare time to come home for lunch any more. He began traveling more often. And we were in a faith crisis-- me at home with a toddler and books and integrating into playgroups with other moms, and Matt on the road with hard-riding men. Our paths diverged.
But overall, we loved our little kid, explored beaches and mountain trails, traveled around the islands and even to Holland and France, eating and drinking and going gaga over the great art of the Western World. And it was a good life, solid enough.
And then we had our next little baby! I always say that going from zero to one kid is life-shatteringly hard, because your life goes from being all about you, to being all about someone else. It was a much smoother transition from one to two kids. And the new baby was the sweetest, sleepiest, snuggliest little bean. I had a burst of creative energy. It was fueled by restlessness, a little. Anxiety, too-- about money, anxiety about my role as a housewife and stay-at-home-mom, and existential crisis about my identity as an artist and creative person who could contribute to the world.
My brain was on fire. With all of that wonderful postpartum new brain growth (to make up for the very real phenomenon of pregnancy brain shrinkage as our little parasitic freeloaders reap the benefits of all of our deliciously soluble brain fats), I sat up late nursing the little new baby, after the toddler was in bed and Matt was in front of Netflix with a new variety of beer (making up for lost time as a teetotalling Mormon boy), and balanced my sketchbooks and rulers and trays of clattering pencils, pens, and eraser crumbs on the baby's chubby legs.
The thing that caught my heated brain was celtic knots. Their methodical form, their difficulty. They are hard. It hurts your head to peer at them, and try and figure them out. There was a knot on my wedding ring and it took me hours and hours to try and decode it-- it was like trying to memorize and pronounce a new foreign language with no cognates. One syllable, one strange counterintuitive line at a time. But gradually, order emerges. Rules materialize out of the fog of randomness. And then, with a click, like mastering a language, suddenly the forms make sense. You can suddenly decode what you see. My baffling wedding-ring knot became simple-- just one broken connection on a grid and an odd number displacement in relief. (Seeing that in writing gives me pause- this may in fact be a fairly accurate found-poem for my marriage as a whole...)
I produced pages and pages of complicated celtic mandalas. I saw knots everywhere I looked. I could allow my gaze to drift and the branches of trees would begin to interweave, and the crest of waves would foam into convoluted and ephemeral knotwork. I spent hours and hours cutting them into stencils to try and print on t-shirts or cards. I was thrilled by the strange freshness my knots had-- this ancient medieval artform, filling up Hawaiian negative spaces. I made celtic whales, celtic myna birds, celtic fish, celtic turtles. That last inspired me with my own little business name, "Knotty Honu," after the knotwork turtles that swam through my sketchbooks, and also the little blue turtle rug that my occasionally naughty 3 year old had to sit on for time out. I thought it was very funny. Nobody else really did; that was fine with me. I've always been the type to laugh at my own jokes. I always hope people will join in with me, but I can't really expect it.
I went to a few craft fairs at local churches and holiday fairs, and in a burst of focus set up an Etsy shop. I sold a few postcards to a local internet café and a few t-shirts to sympathetic friends in playgroups, and even a couple of acrylic paintings of Hawaiian plants in bright colors in high contrast, but then the baby got bigger and wigglier, and Matt traveled more, and I couldn't figure out how to charge enough to pay for the hours I spent creating. I realized that I could make more money by getting my Hawaii Teaching License than paying myself a dollar an hour for creating art. I didn't sustain the project, and it went idle. I kept drawing of course, and saved the materials, but let the Etsy shop stay shuttered.
Until last weekend for the West Valley pop-up event! I got out a length of Big Island red Palaka-print cloth (Hawaiian cowboy plaid) and set up my postcards and a stack of shirts in front of a fake Orchid I found at a thrift shop. Best of all, my oldest is now an unbelievably skilled crafter and artist, and laid out dozens of pairs of beautiful beaded earrings.
It was snowing outside the condominium clubhouse where we had our cozy little pop-up potluck.
The woman at the table next to me did beautiful ornate Hawaiian woodburning, and her mom did hand-stitched and appliqued Hawaiian quilts. She showed me her little book of artwork-- lovely page after page of warm wood colors decorated, like tattooes, in triangles and botanicals. And then, an enormous celtic knot. I gasped. I blurted, "Hawaiian Celtic Knots!!!" I told her about Knotty Honu. "Knotty Honu?? I love it!" She laughed and laughed. "That's a good one, that's so good. I'm gonna tell my mom. Knotty Honu!"
I told my kids-- we were excited. They are selling masters. They've raised hundreds of dollars through applesauce and lemonade and rice krispie bars, and spent it all gleefully at American Girl stores. We brainstormed what we could sell-- the kids are great at making pretty little satin ribbon lei, and magical little bottles of pa'akai-- Hawaiian salt. And I've got all this old Knotty Honu stuff that's been sitting in my craft corner for ages. I was excited to dust it off and move some of it out into the world. I dug out my t-shirt stencils and blank onesies, my stacks of glossy photos of ginger and plumeria and hibiscus and lilikoi and bird of paradise and bananas and chili peppers, the slightly wilted envelopes, and my heaps of sketchbooks.
Those books are little time-machines. They're a little gritty and ant-eaten around the corners after 8 years in a dusty humid Hawaiian farmhut, but still potent vessels.
I got lost in my sketches from 2010 and 2011. I'd just had my second baby in Koloa. Looking through the books, that feeling came right back.
It was time of big transformations. Two years earlier, our life on the Big Island had been very simple: we had one sweet little baby, and we lived in the wide open plain below Mauna Kea in a small and not particularly welcoming community. We tried making friends, but mostly our efforts limped along. People were tired, saturated with their own family lives, and suspicious of outsiders, even ones as well-intentioned and nominally connected as we were. Matt's family is from Maui, after all. But that got me about as much Islander cred as telling a Scottish person that your mum is English. The Japanese plantation culture of Maui is worlds away from the Hawaiian Cowboy culture of the Big Island. So we were isolated, but happily so. Matt, in his shiny new cowboy boots, walked home for lunch every day, I cooked my way through Joy of Cooking, read everything at the local library, planted a big garden, raised our first ever batch of chickens, and doted on our fluffy little blond baby.
Then everything went into the blender. We were threatened with excommunication from the LDS church for writing letters questioning the church's support of Prop 8, Matt was offered a job on Kaua'i, the economy crashed and he signed his new contract on the day of the state-wide hiring freeze, just squeaking into the tenure-track hire in Hawaii for years. In a flurry and a scramble we were in a new place, our life on the Big Island suddenly dissipated behind us like sulphuric steam from the volcanic vents into vog.
Kaua'i immediately won me over. People-- Hawaiian, Local, Haole and all the various permutations thereof-- were welcoming and friendly. There were playgroups and social nets ready to accept and support us. We were only a mile from the most beautiful beaches in the world. Unlike the cold and misty cowboy country of Waimea on the Big Island, Po'ipu looked like postcard Hawaii.
Matt's job changed-- it was a real job. He bought a truck and couldn't spare time to come home for lunch any more. He began traveling more often. And we were in a faith crisis-- me at home with a toddler and books and integrating into playgroups with other moms, and Matt on the road with hard-riding men. Our paths diverged.
But overall, we loved our little kid, explored beaches and mountain trails, traveled around the islands and even to Holland and France, eating and drinking and going gaga over the great art of the Western World. And it was a good life, solid enough.
And then we had our next little baby! I always say that going from zero to one kid is life-shatteringly hard, because your life goes from being all about you, to being all about someone else. It was a much smoother transition from one to two kids. And the new baby was the sweetest, sleepiest, snuggliest little bean. I had a burst of creative energy. It was fueled by restlessness, a little. Anxiety, too-- about money, anxiety about my role as a housewife and stay-at-home-mom, and existential crisis about my identity as an artist and creative person who could contribute to the world.
My brain was on fire. With all of that wonderful postpartum new brain growth (to make up for the very real phenomenon of pregnancy brain shrinkage as our little parasitic freeloaders reap the benefits of all of our deliciously soluble brain fats), I sat up late nursing the little new baby, after the toddler was in bed and Matt was in front of Netflix with a new variety of beer (making up for lost time as a teetotalling Mormon boy), and balanced my sketchbooks and rulers and trays of clattering pencils, pens, and eraser crumbs on the baby's chubby legs.
The thing that caught my heated brain was celtic knots. Their methodical form, their difficulty. They are hard. It hurts your head to peer at them, and try and figure them out. There was a knot on my wedding ring and it took me hours and hours to try and decode it-- it was like trying to memorize and pronounce a new foreign language with no cognates. One syllable, one strange counterintuitive line at a time. But gradually, order emerges. Rules materialize out of the fog of randomness. And then, with a click, like mastering a language, suddenly the forms make sense. You can suddenly decode what you see. My baffling wedding-ring knot became simple-- just one broken connection on a grid and an odd number displacement in relief. (Seeing that in writing gives me pause- this may in fact be a fairly accurate found-poem for my marriage as a whole...)
I produced pages and pages of complicated celtic mandalas. I saw knots everywhere I looked. I could allow my gaze to drift and the branches of trees would begin to interweave, and the crest of waves would foam into convoluted and ephemeral knotwork. I spent hours and hours cutting them into stencils to try and print on t-shirts or cards. I was thrilled by the strange freshness my knots had-- this ancient medieval artform, filling up Hawaiian negative spaces. I made celtic whales, celtic myna birds, celtic fish, celtic turtles. That last inspired me with my own little business name, "Knotty Honu," after the knotwork turtles that swam through my sketchbooks, and also the little blue turtle rug that my occasionally naughty 3 year old had to sit on for time out. I thought it was very funny. Nobody else really did; that was fine with me. I've always been the type to laugh at my own jokes. I always hope people will join in with me, but I can't really expect it.
I went to a few craft fairs at local churches and holiday fairs, and in a burst of focus set up an Etsy shop. I sold a few postcards to a local internet café and a few t-shirts to sympathetic friends in playgroups, and even a couple of acrylic paintings of Hawaiian plants in bright colors in high contrast, but then the baby got bigger and wigglier, and Matt traveled more, and I couldn't figure out how to charge enough to pay for the hours I spent creating. I realized that I could make more money by getting my Hawaii Teaching License than paying myself a dollar an hour for creating art. I didn't sustain the project, and it went idle. I kept drawing of course, and saved the materials, but let the Etsy shop stay shuttered.
Until last weekend for the West Valley pop-up event! I got out a length of Big Island red Palaka-print cloth (Hawaiian cowboy plaid) and set up my postcards and a stack of shirts in front of a fake Orchid I found at a thrift shop. Best of all, my oldest is now an unbelievably skilled crafter and artist, and laid out dozens of pairs of beautiful beaded earrings.
It was snowing outside the condominium clubhouse where we had our cozy little pop-up potluck.
The woman at the table next to me did beautiful ornate Hawaiian woodburning, and her mom did hand-stitched and appliqued Hawaiian quilts. She showed me her little book of artwork-- lovely page after page of warm wood colors decorated, like tattooes, in triangles and botanicals. And then, an enormous celtic knot. I gasped. I blurted, "Hawaiian Celtic Knots!!!" I told her about Knotty Honu. "Knotty Honu?? I love it!" She laughed and laughed. "That's a good one, that's so good. I'm gonna tell my mom. Knotty Honu!"
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