Openness, Trains, Flaking, Knitting
Plus a comic about novelty
Hello, I’m Edith, formerly of The Cut and The Hairpin, and this is a newsletter with links, personal writing, illustration, and comics. It’s a work in progress, and I’d love to know what you think. (Please feel free to reply to this email!)
Kay Gardiner (guest): The psychological urge to rush is very strong in me.
Michael Ruhlman (host): So knitting slows you down?
KG: Knitting totally slows me down.
From Scratch. This is from a podcast that pairs a cooking-related concept with a non-cooking-related concept and then explores where they overlap. This time the adjacent concept was knitting.
I enjoy listening to people talk about the world’s greatest hobby (knitting), and it was especially nice to hear the featured guest here (Kay Gardiner of Mason Dixon Knitting) describe what’s drawn her to knitting and what keeps her knitting. (The way it allows your brain to sort through its own problems in a more orderly way, basically, while your hands are busy making something that feels good.) But then she also described, at one point, why she likes knitting easy projects in particular: Sometimes you just want to do the thing and not use all, or any, of your more sophisticated powers. Sometimes you just want to get your hands going and let your mind wander. This resonated with me.
Sometimes it feels like there’s some kind of perfect ratio when it comes to effort and mindlessness. I like to make a burst of creativity and then coast on routine for the rest of the cycle. One part effort, five parts drifting?
It was also nice, on this episode, to hear about where the impulse toward simplicity can overlap with food preparation. (Later I wondered where knitting and cooking overlap more explicitly, and so I googled “knitting cake” and found this cabled wedding cake, this basket cake, and this simple and yet supremely satisfying swatch cake.) Anyway, I could go on and on about knitting, and I probably will in later installments of this newsletter (?). What I’d really like is a knitting podcast where instead of talking about knitting, everyone just shares fantastic gossip about people I know in real life.
…[T]here are ways to tactfully respond “maybe” in advance. “Hey, I know that’s going to be a really busy time. I really would love to come, but I’ve got to tell you, I can’t totally commit” is how Bonior would do it.
The Atlantic. Olga Khazan on “How to Flake Gracefully.”
therapy is great but i don't need a therapist to tell me that all of my body image issues and sexual insecurities were caused by this christmas decoration that my grandmother gave my parents in 1983
Twitter/LV_Anderson. I can’t stop thinking about this.
I couldn’t see inside, to sun-filled atriums for romantic, new-engagement-ring sex or to hidden nooks and crannies for the illicit extramarital kind, but I’d seen enough episodes of Footballers’ Wives to know they were there.
The Cut. Sarah Miller on an unexpected British adventure.
I don’t doubt that you love him very much, but it is hard to continue loving someone who thinks you are stupid.
The Outline. This is from the most recent installment of Brandy Jensen’s “Ask a Fuckup” column, which I love. Here is another good installment.
He was tall with black hair and a beard. Big hands. He listened to music. He read. He was never with another woman.
Seven years passed. Sometimes months would go by and he would disappear. Occasionally I would ride the train with some other guy and hope to see him so he would see me with this other guy.
What I learned, those first days of college so long ago ... was the power of feedback, the importance of throwing yourself open to being corrected in public.
Jason Zweig. This was a sort of painful story in which the author reflects on being an obnoxious student. I really liked the part about throwing yourself open to correction.
… But then he’d revert, or get worse in a new way.
TNY. Maybe I’m fine never having children. God bless Keith Gessen.
The head is carved out of bloodstone...
Dearest. The Bacchus-head bloodstone ring is the least of it…
