Before I start the coffee, before I open the curtains, before I do anything, I open my laptop. I have been known to send email before my bloodstream is fully caffeinated. I hit the keyboard first thing in the morning and don’t generally stop until right before I fall into bed. I am one of those people who lives far too much of her life online.
I like it that way. And, yeah, this is all going to make sense real soon.
Still, sometimes I need to remind my hands that there’s more to life than touch-typing. I can exercise my brain in ways that doesn’t involve following endless links. I’ve even heard that it’s okay to just not blog every once in a while. And, scary as it sounds, living in an analog world doesn’t kill a person. In fact, it can make you stronger.
Provided your living is done at the gym.
When I need to get away, I pick up my knitting needles. With both hands fully occupied, there’s no way I can check email. With my mind fully engaged — the project I’m currently working on is especially notable for its complex pattern — there’s no thoughts of reviews that have to be written, articles that need to be researched, or comments that need commenting upon. Knitting is my way of having a zen experience. The cadence of knit one, purl one is one of the best ways I know to leave the world behind. Weeding is another, but that’s the topic of another post.
If I remember my childhood accurately, I have been knitting since the age of seven. I took up crochet first, but somehow ended up in a knitting class in summer school. Hmm, that seems almost odd, doesn’t it? But I am sure I recall this correctly. There was a time, at least in Lompoc, where summer school was a chance to have fun.
Oddly, knitting was hard for me to learn. I mean, I have been able to thread a needle on the first try my entire life. I grasp most of the so-called domestic arts very quickly. I’ve carried my favorite crochet hook from home to home for, well, a very long time. I love that crochet hook. It’s just the right size for so many things. For someone with little to no grace or elegance or even coordination, doing various types of needlework is easy for me.
So it was frustrating when I couldn’t quite make the whole knitting thing work. That may have been the hardest class I’ve ever taken, mostly because I wanted to succeed so much that failing killed me. I couldn’t knit. I couldn’t even purl, and I’m the one who can only ice skate backwards. How people face forward, I’ll never know.
Then one day, it just clicked. I could knit. Whatever had been blocking my success was gone. I picked up my needles, grasped my yarn and knit a rather lopsided square thing. Straight knit across, back and forth. The fancy stuff was years away. Once I mastered whatever it was that needed mastering, I went back to crocheting. I’m not one for living up to the big challenges in life.
I always knit on and off over the years. Nothing of note, nothing that had shape, nothing that could be worn on the human body. I mastered knitting, purling, and even managed a fairly decent cable. Still, I never quite believed I was good at this activity. In the back of my mind, I always thought my ability was a fluke. Seriously, how else do you explain waking up one day and just knowing how to do something? I spent far too much of my life convinced that my knitting mojo would evaporate and I’d be working the needles with the same skill level that marked my sad and pathetic foray in the mystical, magical world of making things out of clay.
Yes, it took only one misshapen bowl-ashtray-flying saucer thing to convince me that visual arts are not for me. That’s fine. I’m a writer. I can imagine that I’m highly creative. I don’t need to actually do stuff like manage a kiln or mix pigments or whatever it is that people do.
A while back, I had an urge. It was a vague niggling at first. “Maybe you should buy some yarn. You like to buy yarn,” the niggle reminded me, mostly at the most inconvenient of times. You know, the middle of the night or while I was sitting in the middle of a crowded freeway. I imagined my hands holding two needles. I could almost hear the rhythm of the stitches — when you’re in the zone, there’s definitely a beat happening. It’s just another way to march to your own drummer.
I went and bought a whole bunch of yarn, some circular needles, and the toughest pattern I could find (toughest pattern that matched my skills, that is). I went knit-wild for the next week or so, only to discover that the pattern was beyond me. Or I wasn’t up to the task. I ripped out stitches and started again. The pattern, which I followed with almost religious zeal, didn’t work. I went online, searching for errata, corrections, something that would assure me that it was all the pattern’s fault, not mine.
On my third attempt, just as it had when I was seven, something clicked. I could see what I needed to do. Still, I was doing it all wrong, but now I knew what I was doing wrong. So I started over a fourth time. I’m still working from that point. I’ve gone a long way, and the little diagonal stripes are leaning in the same direction. The exacting pattern is falling into place just like the picture. I understand it all now. I know how to do this.
Sure, I’ve made mistakes in this project. There were two rows where I must have been on drugs or knitting-while-sleeping (not recommended). A better person would go back and fix her mistakes. I’ve decided that for this project, it’s just fine for them to remain. They remind me that it doesn’t have to be perfect — something that sometimes torpedoes me when I’m writing — and they remind me of the hard work I’m putting into this thing that will be a really cool wrap when it’s done. Yeah, it’ll be the middle of summer, but there’s always another winter around the corner. It’s not like I have a deadline for completing this project.
It’s very cool, knowing that each and every stitch is done by me. Nobody else can do this for me. They can comment and bat at the yarn (at least the felines can do that — if the human takes up yarn-batting, we’ll have to have a special talk). Even though I’m following someone else’s pattern, it’s my own creation. Nobody has my rhythm, my style. There could be a dozen variations of this pattern done by a dozen different people, but mine will always be mine. I’m selfish that way.
I’m not alone out there in my little knitting world. You can’t knit on the Internet, but you can find and interact with fellow knitters. Problem with a pattern? There’s someone out there ready to listen and willing to help. Looking for a particular dye lot of yarn? It’s the Internet, baby, if you can’t find it there, you won’t find it anywhere. Confused about what it takes to get started? Resources for beginners abound.
Finding knitting blogs and knitting websites and online knitting communities takes about zero effort — just a moment or two at Google. A lot of people knit and then go online to delve deeper into their craft. The lovely 9rules network has the blog Knit Like a Man as part of the family. Knitty, an online magazine and blog is a great way to waste time. Knitters organize knitting parties. You can knit to cure breast cancer. Knitting has its own subcategory at Meetup. For a solitary act, knitting is a powerful niche in the social networking sphere.
When I’m knitting, nothing else seems important. Email can wait. It really can. Heck, Medialoper can wait. At least for a little while.