More on KNITTING and WISDOM

More about KNITTING and WISDOM

by Toni Wheat, Feb 27, Sioux City IA 2012.

I sat knitting, and marvelled that the back of the new sweater I was making was going very slowly but it was beginning to look like a sweater finally. The process of knitting likens a life. We begin with just one stitch on the needle, cast on, not by the yarn or by the needle, but by the knitter.  The yarn cannot knit itself into a sweater, a sock or a jacket. The first stitch is cast on, others are added, from the same thread, from a source the knitter chooses: a choice from myriads available. Growing and growing from colored string, twisted, wrapped and slipped, the needle finally holds a textured shape, almost a map, a tapestry of knots all combined into that one special purposeful object. Beautiful.

I thought of my new grandson, having lived not quite two stitches yet, as compared to my own sixty plus. I began counting at the left end of the knitting needle and counted each stitch, imagining years, sliding stitch by stitch, from left slightly to the right, first five then seventeen. How few stitches we are a child at home with our parents or caregivers. Not so many more and we are in school.

When my grandson arrives at the seventeen stitches, or eighteen count points, highschool graduation, I will probably be on my way out, sliding off the end. I slid four more stitches over a bit and again thought what a short time we are in college or elswhere as young folks after highschool, training for our lives. Then fourteen more slid over, for that first marriage with children, then ten for a single life of sorting out purposes, priorities and perspectives that hadn't been thought through enough in those first stitches. Finally counting off almost twenty more, to the total number of my years, I think I've been gazing backwards too much, reviewing mis-knits, shortcomings and what-ifs.  I should rather be getting on with the knitting, adding some colorful threads for interest.

All held together with those knots and knits, gathered together by that knitting needle, our years are really part of one long line of thread. It's ok, and it's really alright - really... relax, pray, forgive.

Those first sixty cast on stitches still sit waiting on that knitting needle for me to continue. I am formulating the pattern. It will be really super when I start and really beautiful when the Spirit finishes it. The round ball of flesh toned yarn I chose sits next to the two rows I put on the knitting needle. Nothing moves though, unless I make it do so. Right now, before I knit any more, I'm contemplating being almost two, wondering what that feels like again: to learn to stand up and walk after scooting around the floor for about one whole stitch. I am wondering about spoken language, about attitudes and taking lots of naps and what apple slices feel like in my fingers as compared to applesauce when I don't want to use a spoon. It might not be a really long time before those cast on stitches that I am, start to be cast off; unravelled. I hope I meet my grandson at least somewhere in the middle of that process and he can teach me some of what he learned along the way. I do pray for, and wish his parents WISDOM.

Rosebuds on Debate Nights

Her knitting began again in earnest when her husband started a new job. I mean he started his own new job by buying a restaurant that took all his time and attention. Even the dog didn't mean quite as much as the restaurant for quite some time, and she realized, the familiar pattern of this man's project building would last for a while; probably a real long while.

So she dragged out the shopping bag of sky blue yarn that she'd picked up when the town's yarn store decided to shut down. Yarns and books were more than half off so how could she NOT buy a whole bagfull of the beautiful soft threads, in a rainbow of gorgeous colors, plus the book with that drop dead beautiful model sporting that soft skinny little knitted top revealing her belly button on the cover?

The store closed over two years ago. Until now, it didn't seem important to knit. Knitting is so slow. So contemplative. So old fashioned. Though, when the nights grew a bit long and lonely and TV talkingheads sounded so much different than they did when he was in the other chair, she wound all the colors into miniature little ball copies of themselves, and began the task of re-learning to decipher knit lingo and charts. "Knitters code can't too much different than computer programers codes" she muttered inside her head. Of course, if he was home, she could say it outloud and they'd discuss the yes and no of it. He'd get to be the expert because at one time understanding code and programming were part his jobs. But he wasn't, either home or a coder/programmer any more, so with lifesize newsies begging for attention from the screen, she took to the remote.

The remote turned to FOXnews almost automatically, from habit droned into it by it's prior master.  The Republican presidential debates and New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida primary results took shape, an earthlight away. A new winter blue sweater was born.

The sweater took on "friend" role, to her. During the day, she'd stop her homework, take a lunch break or rest her aging back, and pick up where she'd left off in knit-life. Ribbed seed stitch formed the lower back edge. Stockinette and woven intarsia the body of the garment. Charts led her through rosebuds and tiny leaf shapes, columned next to a kind of lace line she'd not seen or knitted before. Sleeves, armholes, buttonbands. The flowers lay upon a bed of blue that was supposed to be hissop, in hue, but looked luscious anyway. Countings. pulled out and corrected purls, yarn overs, and knit-two-togethers, occupied her brain. Good company, good practice. 

One evening a vision, almost as real as life, popped into that little vignette space in her brain where she replays personal color videos of happenings long gone away. Her dad, tired after work, but still in his nice shirt, sans tie, after dinner. Her mom, sporting those yellow stretch pants with the loop at the bottom where you put your foot, like a stirrup, inside your shoes; knitting covers her lap, needles click away like a tiny keyboard somewhere. Strings and bobbins of colored thread dangle arranged in careful order. The black and white little square TV, in the sparse living room with the aura of a family meal dinner past, mixing with that tincan sound, directed their attention away from each other, to the far wall, by the doorway. There in gray and white inside 20 inches were John F. Kennedy and Richard (what was his middle initial?) Nixon going at it in much the same way, as those on her own lifesize living color flat screen: Gingrich, Romney, Santorum and Ron Paul. Arguing and haranguing and lying like rugs. She missed her old friends Bachman, Cain and Perry at their podiums these dark eves. Now those three are missing from the clamor. At least until she changes the channel.

In the tiny mind vignette, every now and then a newsman (never a newswoman) offered curt sometimes friendly, sometimes surprising comments, and always, "we'll be right back after this station break". It probably seemed like another part of the family way back then, to them, not to me as a child. As a child they seemed like intruders. I rather think Rosebuds are truly beautiful with their vine tendrils dropping against the light colored leaves like that. I haven't seen one thorn in this pattern.

She can NOT believe she sits in a similar chair 25 feet from the monitor, as those nightly visitors blab away, about politics, while she wraps blue yarn behind red needles. She forms the stitchs and slips them off the needle, adding hundreds to the carpet of days already laid out. If you would have told her so, she could not have heard you say, "Life is like a sweater", "some days are like that", or "I think "the American People" should learn to knit, understand patterns; learn to stick with it, learn to code or knit code, rest a bit, see rosebuds."

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PS - the pattern for "her" sweater is called Rosebud, from Sasha Kagan's book, Knitwear, first published 2008 by Guild of Mastercraftsman Publications Ltd., Lewes East Sussex, England. 

The Sioux City store mentioned was a wonderful spot, "Susan's Yarn Garden", proprietor was Susan Adkins. Thank you Susan and Sasha.

copyright 2012 Toni Wheat, Sioux City IA