Those who have been reading these posts for a while will no doubt be familiar with my obsession with making things out of other things — mostly sewing, knitting and crocheting.
I call it Fiber Therapy. It keeps my brain busy enough that my head stays quiet for a while, and I can relax and allow myself to have no thought except what the next stitch brings. I was thinking about that a lot over the weekend. There’s a big difference between knitting/crochet patterns and sewing patterns. A sewing pattern is something you can, and should, read before you begin, before you even put scissor to fabric. But a knitting or crochet pattern, eesh, it’s gobbeldy-gook. You can’t make any sense of it. k1 yo k2tog p3 ssk yo k1 – okay, I know what that means, and in a short little snippet of it I can tell you that it means to knit one, wrap the yarn over the hook to create a new stitch, knit the next two stitches together, purl for three stitches, slip two and knit them together behind the right-hand needle, yarn over again, and knit one. But even writing that was a slog, and reading it isn’t much fun at all. So either way, you can’t really make sense of it until you are doing it.
You have to read the immediate instruction, do it, then read the next instruction, do it, and eventually a pattern will emerge and you will be able to read whole chunks of it because you’ll have a greater context to put the instructions in.
You really have to be in the moment if you want to knit.
There is no reason to skip ahead, it really won’t do you any good at all. There’s nothing to do but make the stitch in front of you, and then make the next one. That’s it. You can’t start at the end and work backwards, or start in the middle and work outwards. You have to start at the beginning, do what’s in front of you, and then do the next thing, and the next thing, until the end when you cast off, tie off, and weave in the ends.
I think this is part of the reason I love doing it so much. I’m not a huge worry-wort, but I do have a tendency to over-think things sometimes, and get bogged down in small picture stuff when I should be looking at a much bigger picture. Sitting down to knit something unites the big picture with the details, because you see the end product yet follow the stitch-by-stitch instructions. I can imagine the finished project, imagine myself wearing this sweater or this scarf, imagine how cozy this shawl is going to be on cold nights, or how much joy I wish for whoever I am making the project for. But when I am immersed in the doing, my ego-mind shuts up and my brain is well occupied interpreting the directions and controlling my hands.
It sounds very linear, and in a way it is. But at the same time, you enter a mental state that transcends the experience of time. You’re in the Now, deeply and comfortably. It’s peaceful and meditative, and the whole journey is laid out for you, with very few decisions left for you to make, beyond color, size, and selections of style variations, and those decisions have to be made before you every pick up a hook or a set of needles. It’s really very Zen.
Sometimes, when things get a little overwhelming, it’s nice to have a set of instructions that tell us how to make something out of these raw materials. It’s like a little escape from a frequently unforgiving reality which is, actually, rather productive and so guilt-free. So k1/p1 to end, turn and repeat for 3 inches. Then do the next thing.