Sunday, August 8, 2010

Knits amid warring hummingbirds

I knit. Not spectacularly, but I can putter my way through simplistic projects. I'm not picky about fibers or about notions. My current small work of mild wonder, this HipToBeSquare blanket (from ravelry), is cast with synthetic baby soft yarn on my thrift store scavenged aluminum needles, the blue rubbing away on the tips.



Knitting gives me fantastic feelings of warm fuzziness, and not just from petting all that delicious yarn. It feeds my artistically driven need to create, watching lovely patterns emerge from my clumsy old hands. Not that my creations are flawless; far from. But even with the missteps along the way, the beauty of the pattern shows through in the end.



There is also a meditative stillness in the act of knitting that is hard for me to experience in any other way. My mind is an insistent multitask-er, nearly always fretting over bills not yet due and highly unlikely catastrophes on the horizon. As I sit and work at knitting, counting away the stitches and rows, my mind is often able to let go of things. My other creative outlets give me no such relief; they often make me think too much. Knitting provides a much needed release of thought, the dialogue of my mind ceasing, or slowing down to a dull murmur."When walking, walk. When eating, eat." When knitting, knit.

4 comments:

  1. Beautiful!

    I feel much the same way about knitting, and spinning. It's a time to contemplate only the yarn, to see only the unfinished possibilities at hand. To keep repeating the mantra, "knit one, purl one, knit one, purl one, through the backloop" Drat, dropped a stitch. ;)

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  2. why did i not know this blog existed? beautiful, beth :)

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