The Holding Shape Five
The Friday Five: Vol. 1, No. 4
Week Four • Spring • Year One
Each Friday, I publish The Friday Five, a weekly ledger drawn from the shop floor, the windshield, and the workbench.
The structure borrows its language from the old farmer’s almanacs, those annual guides that combined observation, wisdom, tools, and seasonal preparation in one place.
There’s a difference between holding on and holding shape.
One resists; the other adapts.
In certain stretches, the work isn’t to push through, only harder, or start over from scratch. It’s to stay with something long enough to understand what’s required to keep it intact.
This week’s entries emanate from that notion.
Proverb
“The safest thing you can do is take a risk.”
— Nathan Lane
as shared on Working It Out with Mike Birbiglia
Tool
A study in what fits and what may only appear to: a keener eye for fit.
This week, I found myself in the middle of a custom clothier’s fit training when I came to a key insight for myself: the instruction wasn’t about measurements as much as it was about learning to see clearer, listen more closely and anticipate more quickly: what an old theater professor referred to as “washing clean the senses to experience the world anew.”
In addition to note-taking on posture and balance, those small corrections that determine whether something fits or simply sits, the role of the fitter is also to glean from his customer in their time together where that individual has been, where they are and where they’re going.
Most of it comes down to intention attention: learning to improve with each fitting, to see what’s working and anticipating that which could potentially become slightly off-balance and correcting it before it becomes visible.
It’s a slower process than I remembered from my early days on the road measuring necks and sleeves as a custom shirt- and tie-maker… and more precise.
Text
“… or do you not think so far ahead? /… 'cause I been thinkin' 'bout forever….”
— from “Thinkin’ Bout You” by Frank Ocean
Since its release, I’ve found myself captivated by this cover of Frank Ocean’s beautiful tune, revisited by The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea.
A familiar song, stripped down to something quieter: less performative; more attentive.
In a recent interview with NPR’s A Martínez, Flea described returning to the trumpet—his first instrument—as a way back into the music itself. Not a departure, but a re-entry.
“I never abandoned it. It was always there for me…
something that one day I’ll nurture this love and do my best to express it.”
– Flea
That shows up here. The song isn’t reinvented. It’s reconsidered.
Signal
Image c/o Ad Age
Jen Markham’s video on the Mary Maxim fox-modified wolf-pattern Cowichan sweater and its original—and its unexpected tie to the new film starring Ryan Gosling, Project Hail Mary.
Earlier this winter, I found myself down a deep rabbit hole of Mary Maxim patterns, hoping to one day combine my beloved cardinals and dogwood flowers and tigers and falcons–elements of past mementos–in knit form. Maxim’s cardigans share a geometry and a repetition. The way they carry both utility and story align closely with my ethic: considered clothing, imbued with a story.
The deeper into the company’s seemingly endless catalogue of sweaters I got, the more I came to understand that what most of us recognize as the brand’s “patterns” is already a translation—an interpretation of something older, more personal, and built to last.
It brought to mind this mini-mea culpa from Michael Kristy, The Iron Snail, whose deeply considered videos always delight and this, on the cowichan sweaters, whose patterns inspired the cardigans of Mary Maxim.
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Seeing Mary Maxim surface thanks to the box-office-topping Project Hail Mary felt less like coincidence and more like confirmation.
That certain things endure—not by staying the same, but by holding their shape through reinterpretation.
Have you seen the film? What’d you think of it?
Weather Advisory
A week for noticing what’s slightly off… in your work… in your habits… in the way things fit. It may not need fixing… just a closer look.
On the Workbench
A downed branch from a recent storm in my front yard.
I’ve been thinking about what to do with it—how to break it down, cure the wood, and turn it into something useful. Maybe a set of small spoons for Christmas gifts. Something simple, made slowly.
Not everything that falls is lost. Some things just need to be worked into a different shape.