Monday, October 14, 2019

Crafting A Sentence or Making A Bobble

31 Days In October



My guiding words for 2019 are 'Live All In'.
I can stand erect and tall because I am yoked to my Savior, Jesus Christ. He will pull what is lost back on the needle. He can take a small gift and magnify it. He doesn't want perfection. He needs me to give Him my heart. 


Day14-
The Striped Bobble Cowl was one of my favorite projects. I had some drama trying to get the stitches to go in the right direction but I ended up loving the look of a bobble.


    "You make bobbles by increasing several stitches in a single stitch and then knitting back and forth on them before binding off, creating a knob on the surface of the fabric."

Knitting For Dummies 

There are approximately 50 bobbles on each side. As I was knitting back and forth creating this raised surface on the edge of the cowl I thought how I often go back and forth through the words of a single sentence.



My character Al, Alexander Pattchett, is a complicated older man who at first glance seems to be unkempt and judgmental. In the first draft I described him like this.

His robe covered black sweatpants and a yellowed t-shirt.

This sentence contains the facts but I wanted my reader to have an emotional response to him. The sentence re-write begins. What details could I add. Slowly I went back and forth looking for just the right word and adding it to the sentence. Sometimes the word was wrong so I deleted and searched again. Finally I had a sentence that stood on its own. It did it's job of giving a picture of the neighbor of my murder victim. Now my detectives who were interviewing him at his home could react and make their own judgements about his credibility. 



His long blue velour robe, matted and crusty, covered black sweatpants and a yellowed white t-shirt with what looked like egg yolk splattered on the front. 

Wow! I hope my detectives are open minded because that could be a description of me on a bad day. 

Crafting a good sentence means going back through and finding just the right words. The making of a bobble demands the same care and attention.

Go to the next day




1 comment:

  1. Your knitting project is beautiful, and I love how you demonstrate the difference it can make when you work on a sentence to make it more interesting. I've been away the last couple of days so haven't had much time to read but I look forward to catching up on your other posts.

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