Making Peace with Unfinished Projects

On making a home when you're moving from house to house to house...

Two years into our home-of-our-own and perhaps there is a fledgling permission to resolve my lifetime of wanderings into some sort of a rooted habitation. Decades of military brathood and relocation followed by decades of marital insecurities over where is home, what is home, what kind of home, and are we at home yet. Quite frankly, I am exhausted by all of the moving I’ve done in my life, and even now, I am so far from feeling settled I wonder if I ever will be, this side of heaven. When asked, I never commit to being in this house forever (I’m awed that anyone could ever do that about their own house).

I’ve tried in every house we’ve lived in to make it a “home”, a place for raising children and for practicing hospitality. We’ve lived in McMansions, we’ve lived in uninsulated cabins (including our current one). In every place, I’ve welcomed babies, planted gardens, painted walls, and cooked from scratch. In every place, I’ve embraced the quirks and challenges and worked hard to “make it work”. In every place, I’ve had to fight to keep reminding myself to stay on the vine, my Most True abiding place.

But I’m tired. I’m battle worn and tired from making it work. I want it to simply…work. But I suppose that is the predicament we find ourselves in at present, post Genesis 3. I suppose that’s why John 15 is necessary.

Today, I looked at our living room and the furniture in it. If this is our house-to-home now, what’s there isn’t really great. I can’t get the stains out. I dislike the frayed threads. The sagging springs don’t feel good on my tush. Furthermore, the colors match all of the wood, which is all over the walls, ceiling, and floors. All I see are brown and orange tints. The whole room was reflecting my worn out mood.

I decided to remove the most obvious annoyances while leaving enough seating for at least half a dozen people, which laughably isn’t even enough for our entire family. I figured chairs from other rooms were portable until we could procure better furniture.

One of those removals was a 30” diameter foot stool, in which the (completely cat claw punctured) top could be removed for storage. So of course, I removed the top to confirm and empty what I thought was inside.

Yup. Unfinished projects. Projects I had begun in various other houses in order to make those houses a “home” but had to up and leave before the particular projects appropriate to each home were finished. After packing, cleaning, moving, unpacking, and setting up a new house-not-yet-a-home (followed by further cleaning), my enthusiasm for such-n-such projects would wane considerably. But the time was already put in, and it didn’t feel right to simply put them in the garbage. So I put them into the footstool, instead.

For someday.

A felted wool “crazy quilt” ready to sew together and applique upon.

Except, as perhaps you may have heard before (I believe attributed to Tony Robbins), Someday is a road that leads to a town called Nowhere. So I’ve gotten Nowhere with any of these Someday projects, and furthermore, they don’t even appeal to me anymore. I don’t like living in Nowhere.

But here they stay, inviting me to finish. Or daring me to compost them. Either way, I feel stranded in indecision and now that the footstool is gone, a conclusion of the matter is forced.

Handwoven on my floor loom (now sold), with unfinished scarlet thread stitching.

These little bits and pieces remind me of my creative spirit, the one that is restless unless it is learning something new, discovering how the thing is done. And in the doing of the thing, how I find a respite from the day, the season, the hormonal fluctuation, the husband, the kids, the dishes and the noise. Stitch stitch stitch….purl purl purl…throwing the shuttle back and forth…all of it tempers my fidgety fingers and gives my mind a time of tranquility as my thoughts untangle and ease. Even if the unfolded laundry on the couch is yelling at me and promising me that *this time* I can really reach the peak of Mt. Never Finish and plant my flag of triumph.

Bah. I know better. So, I quietly work with my hands to quiet the shouting in my head.

Botanical dyeing was fascinating, and I took a special interest in Shibori.

But there’s always more to learn, yes? Why only knit when you can buy your own fleece, spin your own yarn, dye it with your own botanicals grown from your own garden, and THEN knit? I really did almost buy a flock of sheep, and actually I’m not opposed to revisiting all of that someday (on the way, probably, to Nowhere once again). But we kept moving before all of the carts were ready, so the horse never showed up (that’s the joke that keeps on giving). Along the way, I’ve learned to quilt, weave (baskets, tapestry, and textiles), sew my own clothing, and milk goats (soap, you know). I kept bees for honey and used the wax in my homemade herbal salves. My curiosity was insatiable, and because we were homeschooling, I encouraged my children to stoke their own. They learned to disbud goats, pull blackberries, and take care of baby rabbits. They made rag rugs and forts in the woods, and my sons graduated from paper directions to MOC (“My Own Creation”) LEGO. Of course they did.

It all sounds amazing but it doesn’t feel that way looking at all of these incomplete projects. It feels more like a spasmodic woman who can’t find where to put her head down and park for a measly patch of time long enough to master anything, finish great projects, and Complete A House. It’s like a woman who doesn’t know where she belongs, where home is, and how to recognize it even if it were to shake her shoulders and look her straight in the eye. She just goes from house to house to house, from project to project to project…

A nine patch mini quilt with only two more squares to go.

To be fair, I don’t think anyone really has a “completed” house, and most folks probably have their own stashes of unfinished projects. But for me, each of them reminds me of a different time of life and a different home environment, and all of the hopes and disappointments are somehow blended and woven into the warp and weft of everything there (you can take the woman out of weaving, but the vocabulary will forever remain).

I carefully wrapped up each project in individual bags, and found a place for them in my side cabinet, the one that also houses dozens of knitting needles, my little copper table top loom, a flower press, and sewing patterns I can’t let go of yet. My Featherweight sewing machine sits on top of the cabinet, another friend I can’t yet part with, but is probably doing no good simply taking up space when someone else might have a turn loving it. My guess is that the entire cabinet with its contents could probably find more comfortable homes, but if it all disappears, would any of it ever have counted for anything?

Dear Spindle, I miss you.

Lest it all sound woeful, I did find a bit of pleasure in going through these unfinished projects. Simply seeing my roving made me bury my hands into it and bring it up to my nose to inhale deeply the musty smell of fleece and fiber animals (if you know, you know). I took out my travel bag with my favorite spindle and put it by my purse to take with me next time I headed out somewhere. Because in my world, spinning is far more profitable than scrolling.

Future Sweater No. 3

I also brought out the bag of yarns I had saved from the Great Purge. These yarns I had intended to knit up a third sweater for myself, one with a variation of yarns and perhaps a stripe of ochre or two. There is no pattern for it; I learned from the (DVD) feet of Elizabeth Zimmermann, who spoke to creatives like me who don’t have the patience, intelligence, or interest to learn things in lockstep instructions. Her view seems to be: learn the basics, measure your body, embrace the mistakes, and just get knitting. So I did. And now I have two sweaters I love to wear. Methinks the third is coming this winter.

A cover from one of my many art journals

Two years in, and another start to crafting a home, ready or not. This is our house, today, even with boxes still unpacked in the basement. I pray for the grace to make it a home, to do far better than simply to “make it work”. I pray to wholeheartedly embrace this place in time. I don’t really know how to do that, as my brain keeps expecting the call that it’s time to move again. Clearing old furniture and making peace with unfinished projects seems like a good start.