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| Beverley wearing one of her knitted sweaters while clinging to a large globe in Nuuk, Greenland |
“The rhythm of life is a powerful thing….”
Just recently I was transported back to my old school drama days by the lyrics
of this old song I heard on the radio as I was driving to teach a writing class
in the centre of Melbourne.
Though I couldn’t remember how it
continued, I definitely remembered the way the words and music fired me up when
I was a15-year-old drama student.
The rhythm of life really is a very powerful thing and of course there
are so many more ways it can inspire us than through music.
Such as knitting.
When I am overburdened, I find the soothing
rhythm of Continental knitting, which my Norwegian mother-in-law, Elsa, taught
me, calms my mind.
I was twenty-nine and a disinterested
knitter who’d learned the “English” method when I arrived in Norway for the
first time, having met my husband-to-be, Eivind, a few months previously when I
was running a safari lodge in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. He was a bush pilot
whose job was to fly tourists around the many safari lodges dotted around the
area that were only accessible by small plane during the tourist season when
the floods arrived, attracting the game.
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| My current project, a kofte I'm knitting for my ten-year-old (based on a traditional Norwegian sweater.) |
After a whirlwind long-distance romance I
went to live with Eivind in his thatched cottage by a flood plain before Eivind
was offered an airborne geophysical survey job in Namibia. Having spent five
years in Botswana he accepted as he was ready for a change, so a couple of weeks
holidaying with his parents in Norway while we waited for our one-year survey
flying contract to begin in Namibia seemed like fun.
Unfortunately things didn’t work out as
planned and as the weeks stretched into months of delay I found the frustration
of waiting was eased by my mother-in-law’s endless patience in teaching me to
learn to knit and how to speak Norwegian. The calm, repetitive method of
working two colours per line to create the seemingly complicated patterns of
the Norwegian sweaters I started making was really soothing as we became
increasingly worried by the fact that months of no earnings had depleted our
savings, forcing us to cancel our wedding in Australia.
Thankfully just before Christmas at the end
of ten months of waiting our contract eventuated and after marrying on very
short notice in the beautiful Akershus Festning, the chapel at Oslo castle, Eivind
and I flew to Windhoek, Namibia, to spend the next year of our lives.
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| My "office," a Cessna 404 |
I was known as the ‘knitting operator’ due
to the many fairisle sweaters I created in between working the computer in the
back of the low flying aircraft; for after setting up the coordinates for the
pilot to fly each line, I could knit while monitoring the survey data during
long straight lines of more than 100km. It was a wonderful opportunity to knit
– and to plot.
The twenty years since my marriage have
been filled with change and new challenges as we’ve worked in aviation in more
than a dozen countries.
While it can take time to make friends in
new places, writing and knitting are always at hand to satisfy my need for
company and to keep my mind occupied.
Perhaps I’ve been overstimulated by so much
moving about the world, but I find I’m happiest when I’m writing in two or
three genres at a time, and working on at least two knitting projects.
At the moment my hot Regency romance, Cressida’s Dilemma has just been
published under my Beverley Oakley name, while the next is a Georgian-set
‘dangerous liaisons-esque intrigue called Wicked
Wager under my Beverley Eikli name. It’s about to be released by Harlequin’s
Escape Publishing while my 1960’s set illegal diamond-buying romance with lots
of suspense set in the mountainous African kingdom of Lesotho, where I was
born, is about to make its way into the hands of my editor.
Mixing up the genres might not be a
sensible strategy in that it no doubt dilutes my readership but it’s wonderful
to have three different types of story to throw myself into, depending on my
mood at the time.
Just as it is to be able to knit a calming,
repetitive pattern when I’m in a meditative mood and wanting to pot-boil my
story, or whip out the double pointed needles for a challenging pair of
reindeer-emblazoned socks, it’s great to have the first draft of a roller-coaster
thrilling ending to throw myself into if I’m feeling edgier with my writing, or
to make the most of the quiet when the children are asleep to do some serious
editing.
The rhythm of such things really is a
powerful thing and, as the words of the song go on, “puts a tingle in your
fingers….” Unfortunately, I’m unable to Google the rest of the lyrics as I’m at
the family cabin in South Australia’s beautiful Clare Valley with no wifi but
I’m with my Norwegian sisters-in-law and you can guess what our chief
occupation is: knitting, chatting and drinking coffee which Norwegians love to
do.
And every time there’s a lull in the
conversation my mind darts off to poor Cressida in Cressida’s Dilemma who is going to unusual lengths to discover if
the rumours are true that her husband is having an affair; or to Celeste who
has just discovered that her virtue is at the heart of a Wicked Wager; or to Phillipa in 1960s Lesotho who has discovered
she really is in love with the bush pilot she rejected but who has now gone off
to marry someone else.
What fires you up with the rhythm of life
or soothes you when you need it?
