Why I Knit

A word or two about knitting and how I started knitting and why I knit and why I decided to start this new blog.

Several years ago I told a treasured friend of mine that I'd always wanted to learn how to knit. I've always been drawn to color and fabrics and textiles, but I could only imagine in my head the kinds of things I wanted to see in knit form. The idea of creating something simply from a ball of yarn and two wooden sticks amazed me, but I felt I had neither the talent nor the dexterity to do it. I'd watch her with her tiny little size 3 needles just clicking away and I'd think, gee I'd love to know how to do that. Well, they say you should be careful for what you ask for. My friend turned up at our coffee shop date with a beautiful skein of Brownsheep 80% cotton yarn in magenta -- my favorite color, second only to orange -- and a pair of size 8 bamboo needles. In one sitting she showed me how to cast on and continue along in a simple garter stitch pattern. Learning the purl came much later -- my own tutorial -- because my treasured friend moved far away to El Paso.

That garter stitch little scarf was my very first date with knitting. Parallel to my writing, it was something I enjoyed. I began to knit for the same reasons that I write. Knitting is meditative and healing. Knitting provides a mirror for me into the most creative part of my being. Knitting connects me to a time in human existence in which we treasured the hand-made. Not the hand made that comes from sweatshops and factories but the hand made that Grandma or Aunt Susie worked on for hours and hours on end, lovingly. Knitting is progressive, like my writing. It's wonderfully affirming to have an idea and be able to bring the idea out of the mental space and into the physical. Knitting teaches me patience, not necessarily with others but with myself, which I believe has been and may always be my individual life lesson. We each have our own. Knitting is challenging. There are times that I try to work a pattern only to find midway that I've been doing it wrong the whole time. It takes a big heart to rip out twenty-five rows of stitches and start again. Similarly, it takes a lot of hootz-pah to chuck two whole chapters of a novel -- chapters that may have taken all summer long to complete. But when it's wrong, it's wrong and there's no getting around that. Knitting gives me confidence that, in turn, translates into a needed confidence in order to call oneself a writer. Writers have to get comfortable with revision. Period. Writers have to be comfortable with writing schmuck until the good stuff comes. People who call themselves writers and say that they hate revision are not true writers because it's only in the revision that you see what matters to the story, the essay, the poem and what doesn't matter at all. Knitters have to get comfortable with ripping out stitches and starting again OR doing the work it takes to learn how to revise without starting all over again. And even then there are times that the most experienced knitter will have to chalk it up and start again. Knitting produces something tangible and depending on what you're making it can be tangible in a relatively short space of time. Life is short, art is long and novels are even longer. There are times that the novelist in me needs something to cast off, to call done....finished....complete. The novelist in me needs to hear someone say, "Job well done. It's gorgeous. Can you make one for me?" Finally, knitting has been a healing force for me and the recipients of some of the things I've knitted. I joined a knitting circle that made washcloths -- simple washcloths -- for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. To know that someone who lost every single thing they owned received one of my cloths and was able to wash their face in the morning with something I made, lovingly and freely, makes me proud. To know that I was able to add just a little bit of beauty into someone's life after events that were so ugly....makes me feel happy and somewhat hopeful for this human race.

So I knit. And I read alot about knitting. And I challenge myself to learn more .... to try different patterns that require more skills. As I'm knitting, I am often struck with a poem or a verse or a new scene for my novel currently under revision.

This little purse is what I'm currently working on.




It's beautiful but it has pushed me further than I thought I was ready to go. It's a lace pattern that I found at ChezPlum and most can agree that lace patterns are not easy business. It also involves decreasing stitches and picking up stitches ... something I knew nothing about at all before jumping into this project. And it involves a little crochet work, which I'll have to learn. I'm about three quarters of the way into it, working on the sides and I have to thank Emmie and Necia and Sylvie from the Crafster Site for all their help.

I'll be adding links and wishlists and updates as I go along. Thanks for stopping in.

A.