What I Learn From Knitting

I have been surprised by this knitting thing.

Although I actually learned to knit several years ago (7 or 8, maybe?), it was never something that I liked very much -- it was mildly interesting and all, but I just wanted the sweater at the end. It reminds me very much of how i feel about running. When B and I lived in California, we both ran; he ran much, much more than I did. The furthest I ever ran was 7 miles, and I can still remember the feeling in my knees when I stopped -- that hot and swollen feeling. No, running was something that I did to be healthier and maintain my weight, to justify the affair that I had with both Ben and Jerry (**rampant eye batting**) while Brian was away at work. But for Brian it had become something therapeutic. And although he falls in and out of "therapy", as it were, it always holds that mental place for him.

So knitting is my running. And as I've become more involved with knitting, I've been amazed most by how willing I am to unravel something that needs to be redone, even if it means losing hours of work. I'm not happy about it, of course, but I realize that knitting in and of itself is meaningful to me, and so I'd be doing it anyway -- whether it's that same sweater three times over, or three different sweaters. I also started to learn when it is appropriate and good to improvise...and when it is not. And how the improvisation and the mistakes are, uh, often related.

I'd say that making mistakes is the most intriguing part about knitting, because my perfectionistic blood simply boils at the thought of leaving a known error. But over the past few knitting months, I have begun to recognize when a mistake is best left (it has no impact, or is perfectly hidden), as well as when it needs to be remedied. Although I've always known it in my head, I'm beginning to understand that it's better to take a few hours to fix a problem so that I don't have to wear it for several years. I truly think that when I learned to knit a few years ago that I was just too young to knit. Not chronologically young, of course -- I was in my mid 20s at the time -- but just too impatient, too uptight about the possibility that things might not be perfect.

And of course, there's the obvious stuff about patience and craftspersonship and pride in one's work and connection to the material base of our world. And these are all important.

But really? I think it's the yarn.

I used to get tickled at little kids and their hoarding ways; both Annemarie and Cole have stockpiles of stuff in their dresser drawers and pockets. There's always something stashed somewhere, which makes housecleaning and laundry constant adventures. They refuse to throw away anything. I was wondering to myself the other day why little kids are like this, and while musing upon this I stumbled onto my yarn stash.

Knitting folk refer to their stockpiled yarn as their "stash", and in recent months I've come to develop my own. Now i'm rather certain that's it's not nearly as healthy as Jovi's is, but it's substantial enough to see me through at least four or five more projects, not to mention supplement a couple that are already under way.

OK: Guilty confession time.

In the rather recent past I saw the stash as a rather superfluous and sorta silly thing, since after all, it' s not like you can knit with all of that yarn at once, you don't know exactly how much you'll need when you buy it, and if you used the stash rationale ("But it's ____brand, and it's just the color I want, and it's on sale!") for everything, you'd be the credit card's golden child.

But this is why I like knitting. The irrationality of stash building (the opposite of which is stash busting, btw) is so much like preschooler hoarding habits, I think. And it goes something like this:

It's pretty. it's soft. And if I just mess with it for a minute, it will turn into something lovely. And I just love to be around loveliness.

argh. Micah's awake. 12:10 AM.