the Peace of Knitting

Stress knitting… it’s a thing. I have been avoiding the action for the past three weeks, but on Friday, I broke down. It was a combination of trying to focus on online meetings—in person meetings are hard enough!—wrestling with technology, constantly changing and vague answers, lack of daily human contact, a rapidly diminishing supply of reading material, and rain. Cold, downpouring rain for days. My mind was jumping from one thing to another, unable to settle, much like the weather.

I knew it would come to this. I had purchased a complex sweater pattern and yarn several years ago, but I had not yet begun the sweater. I did not need another sweater, especially not a heavy one made with grey, sheepy yarn. I have enough sweaters. I do not wear the ones I have…all sorts of reasons to not begin.  The yarn was sitting in the closet and the bottom of the yarn bag, mocking me every time I sorted through the stash, vowing to knit it all down. Six skeins of yarn…. Waiting.

On Friday, I realized that I may not need a sweater to wear, but I did need a sweater to knit.  Socks, hats, earmuffs for bike helmets are all quick projects, to be begun and done over the weekend or on a long car drive. Sweaters, especially complex ones, are a commitment. They engage the mind in a different way; they grow slowly in the evenings, an inch at a time. I am fast enough to see growth after about 45 minutes, but a complex sweater will take weeks, not days, to finish. Knitting a sweater, you are in it for the long haul. And knitting is a calming process, engaging just enough of the mind to settle it to wander into calming paths, not jumping from action to action, thought to thought.

So I hauled out the pattern, rearranged it to be knit on circular needles all at once, not in pieces to be sewn together (why would anyone sew a sweater together?!), and cast on 173 stitches. Before long, the rhythm settled my mind. By dinnertime, I was done with the ribbing, counting stitches to set the pattern, and settled in. Peace.

If this goes on for months, Mark and the cat will be sporting Irish Knit sweaters next winter.