Slow Living: Zen and the Art of Knitting

There is something deliberate about working with needles and yarn. It requires thought, focus.

I started with someone else casting on for me; just a few stitches, so I could re-learn what I had forgotten over the past way-too-many years. I fiddled with holding the yarn: too tightly, and I couldn't get the needle tip between the yarn and the other needle. Then too loosely, and the stitches bulged and sagged. The sides - at first so tidy, the stitches so tight! - became wider and wider as I added stitches to my row by (accidentally!) splitting the yarn.

I just kept knitting.


But I soon learned that my real issue was not getting used to holding the yarn.  It was getting used to holding the needles.  They didn't feel natural in my hands, like a crochet hook does. (Yarn in one hand, hook in the other & off you go!)

beginning

There is a rhythm to knitting, almost like breathing, and I was just huffing and puffing with that sharp pain in my side that says I've gone too far, too quickly....



And then... disaster.  The cat jumped in my lap, knocked the yarn to the floor, and my untidy mess of a beginning was undone.  Because it all slipped off the needle, and there I was, unable to save it.

And I just started laughing.

#justknit

I undid the sloppy beginnings, and looked up a *very slow* tutorial on casting on. (All Hail YouTube!)  I started over.

And this time, I remembered to breathe.  I let my hands relax, and my wrists, and my neck.  I didn't fret about how to hold the yarn correctly, or worry if I dropped a stitch.

I just kept knitting.
And when I sit down to watch something on TV, I pick up the project, and with no end goal in sight, I knit.  Perhaps only one row, perhaps ten.  It doesn't matter.  My racing thoughts slow down. My breath is easier, my hands relax.  This simple practice has become my meditation.


#justknit