From the Journal: Knitting

I thought it might be interesting to post some of the entries that I've been doing in my journal. This piece, undated, is one that I wrote on knitting. Enjoy.



Have you ever seen a hand-knitted dishrag? They're not the most common things anymore--who goes to the trouble of making something that's just going to be violently soiled, something transient? I love making them, though: there is an incomparable serenity in knitting. It calms my mind, and allows me to tie my thoughts into rows of neat little knots, secured in loops of cotton and wool.

Knitting has always done that for me. Imagine my surprise at my first guided meditation (during that ill-fated stint at UCA), discovering that the goal of Zen meditation is an intense awareness of the body and its position in space and time, an awareness of its rhythms, and that knitting achieved the same ends. It has been an anchor for me in unsteady times. I have used it to ground out masses of manic energy, finish difficult books (I'm thinking of Pinchbeck's 2012 and Bram Stoker's Dracula), and I can even knit while so baked I can barely see. Once, I knitted straight through all 12 hours of the Lord of the Rings extended editions.

If you've got an itch to create, knitting scratches all the right spots: it's portable, affordable, infinitely variable and complex, but simultaneously simple and restful. There is something incredibly comforting about a handmade gift; a simple, heartfelt honesty and profundity. To give a handmade gift is to say, "I surrender to you that which our modern society values above all else: my time."

Dishcloths are a particular conundrum. A dishcloth, particularly one made on the Peaches and Cream yarn that's made for them, is ultimately a fragile, mortal object. It has a lifespan, admittedly a long one, if it's well cared for.

But even these labor-intensive, impermanent objects, the knitting goddesses that went before me have never been content to just make a purely functional rectangle of garter stitch. They are mostly knitted on a bias, the rows of garter stitch framed by a delicate circle of lace stitches. Some are even done as circles. With scalloped edges. Admittedly, boredom undoubtedly plays a large role in the elaborations on the basic theme, but still, they are amazing.

Once, I made an afghan out of a whole bunch of yarn my parents got for almost nothing. It was my first spring break at college, although 'spring' is perhaps a contradiction in terms--we got snowed in at Lake Wedington. There were ten of us in a frigid, ancient cabin made for five, and on the first night, over glasses of wine and the faint reek of weed I finished it--a utilitarian beast in gray and blue and yellow. Over the weekend, it was worn as a dress, and Cody and I spent our first night together beneath it. I had a picnic on it behind Baridon Hall with a curly-haired transsexual, and we smoked cigarettes and drank chocolate milk out of wineglasses while discussing zombies. Yes, you read that last sentence correctly.

I broke the afghan down when it started to unravel, and it briefly became part of a sweater before disappearing into a dozen or so hats. But I still remember the cold air, and the scratch of the wool on my skin, and Cody's stubble on my shoulder--warm and content, surrounded by snow, and wrapped in the distilled essence of time.