I told my partner I wanted to learn to knit and they got me a knitting starter kit for Christmas. Just some yarn, some needles, and a how-to guide on basic stitches for a scarf.
I have been busy for the last 10 days or so, knitting my little heart out. I knit a scarf in a simple garter stitch, and then I tried a couple little squares to get the hang of switching back and forth between knitting and purling. Currently, I’m trying to make a simple hat which certainly would be the biggest piece I’ve tried to knit so far. I’ll have to learn how to do decreases.
Anyway, like most of my interests, I’ve hit the ground running on this one and been hyperfixating. We shall see if the interest wanes or if this one sticks around. So far, I’m really enjoying it. It is deceptively simple, just the two stitches, knits and purls, that when combined in different ways make an entire range of patterns and textures. And it’s the perfect thing for me to do with my hands while sitting on the couch watching TV or whatever.
Throwing myself into knitting has also given me a great deal of time to think. Since my hands are occupied and I need to pay at least some attention to what I’m doing, I can’t browse the internet or play stupid phone games. It is the perfect level of difficulty to keep my attention fixated just enough but to allow my mind to wander.
And what I have been thinking about it is art, craft, writing, creativity, and my relationship to those things. I don’t want to get too navel-gazey here, but, I have one major problem when it comes to art and creativity, particularly writing, but also game design and a whole host of other hobbies I started and then promptly stopped. And that problem is focus. Commitment. Following through to see the end of something.
I’m really good at starting stuff. I have folders and folders on my computer of game projects and beginnings of stories. I have boxes and boxes of started craft projects, probably not even far enough along to be called half-finished. I leave in my wake a graveyard of directionless, skeletal husks of projects and ideas.
And that’s not a bad thing in itself. But the problem is, they’re not just dead, unfinished projects. They’re more like zombies, lost spirits, still taking up space in my brain. And I just keep bouncing back and forth between projects, without any real goal or purpose (While writing this blog post, I have worked on my knitting, started putting together a puzzle, started a new Twine project, and worked on an old Twine project). And, again, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. If all you want to do is putter around and mess around with stuff, then great. Do that.
But I want to do something with my art and writing. Even if by “do something” I just mean actually finish something to the point where I can show people.
And that’s where knitting got me thinking. With a knitting project I’m limited by the needles. I’ve only got two pairs for now, so at most I could have two projects going at once. Once you start knitting, you can’t take the needles out until you bind off the piece, and then it’s finished. If you do remove the needles before you bind off, the yarn all unravels.
Knitting allows me to be more intentional with my work. I say, “I want to make a hat” and then I keep working on the hat until it’s either a hat or I decide I no longer want to make a hat, in which case it’s just yarn again. But I have to make a decision. I have to have an end goal in mind. It’s fine if I just want to knit little squares of different stitches to practice. It’s fine if I want to knit a scarf or a hat or some socks. But I have a goal in mind, some direction.
I’m going to try to apply that to my writing and other projects. Set a goal, set the intentions when I start something new. And if I work on it for a while and decide it’s not going anywhere, I can just remove the needles and let it return to yarn so it isn’t taking up my brain space anymore.
But I think actually finishing something will help me to learn what works and what doesn’t. What’s worth pursuing and what’s only for practice.
I’m going to go back to knitting and see if I can make a hat appear.
