Knitting and Plan B
4-6-05
I’ve been thinking about the nature of sadness. It’s is a slippery viscous thing – sliding away when one expects it to be present, clinging to you when no actual cause is within reach. Whenever something terribly sad happens in my life, my wise, well meaning mentoring lovies advise me to be attentive to the sorrow, to sit with it as needed. And I do, usually. Only it’s never as deep as I expect it to be. It’s never, very…well…timely.
Today I am inexorably sad. Why, you ask? Well, because last night I found out that I am knitting wrong.
Apparently I twist and untwist my stitches oddly. “It’s the Eastern technique, you see,” explains my knitting teacher, “as opposed to the English or Continental technique. It’s quite difficult really. Surprised you can do it, actually. But still, it’s wrong, and if you do it this way the tricks I’ve taught you for increasing and decreasing and yarn over’s and SSK’s won’t work.”
Lovely. Four weeks, eighty dollars, and a bazillion hours of knitting and frogging and reknitting – all with the wrong technique. Well, this discovery– made on the very last minutes of the very last night of class–just undid me. I started crying. Not that gulpy, face-contorting kind of crying. Just that silent, streaming, thank-god-I’m-not-wearing mascara kind of crying where your face and chin and the creases of your neck are glazed with wet. I finally just had to leave the class. I went home and unraveled two projects with three kinds of yarn in them. The poor paper towels had to be sacrificed so I could use the cardboard tube to rescue a particularly knotty kind of yarn. It became a spindle for all my undoing. Then I went to bed in a funk. Woke up in a funk. Shlumped my way through yoga class in a funk…over knitting…..or something.
Probably, all this weepiness and defeatism is about something else. Something I’ve not paid enough attention to, or suppressed, or sat with for like, five minutes, before deciding to see what Dr. Phil was talking about instead. I’m probably really sad over something like my grandmother’s sad aging…or Cate growing up and starting kindergarten…or falling out of love with the big church that I once adored…or having a really lame-assed chronic illness…or not being able to do a handstand in yoga. (You know…because that is so much more life shattering than twisting your knitting. Jeez! I’m a case.)
At any rate, it mystifies me. Because even though I try to clear out a drawer for sorrow whenever he comes for a visit, he still manages to spill out at me as thought I went and shoved him into a precariously full closet.
You cannot bottle up sadness. It comes out through your pores.
___________________________
An Update:
I just want you to know, that the same day I wrote this, I got the bestest ever package in the mail. Kat Delarosa, she of the big dreams in Portland, sent me a care package. It had chocolates, and green tea, and a candle (of course) and origami papers (she knows me!) and almost best of all…a tiny music box with a hand crank that plays “Puff the Magic Dragon.” (Who does that? Sends music box innards? I LOVE IT!) But then, in the very bottom of the box was the piece de resistance. It came with this note:
So if you didn’t guess by now…I am the worst at sending timely packages. Originally, I bought the book and was going to send it. Then Anne came to PDX to do a reading. I waited to try to get it personalized, but she was only signing. So here is your signed copy of Anne’s new book along with a few little treats! Love, Kat
Can you believe it! Just that very morning I had been wondering, “Why don’t my friends ever send me little love-y packages and treats and things” and then, viola! My box from Kat. I guess sometimes the Muse (and the postal service) really does get it right. So Kat my dear, never fear, you could not have been more timely! I have already devoured the chocolates and half of the book, and everyone in our house is humming the dear little Puffy tune. So thank you, thank you, thank you!
I’m off to make Plan B….
A God well done. Blessings on you both.
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. I leap to you defense - you cannot knit WRONG. I mean, I guess if you aren’t getting FABRIC, then that would be wrong. But if you are ending up with fabric, and you like the way it looks and feels, then you are knitting right. Your knitting teacher, in fact, said that it was a common way to knit, just not as common in the US.
You are knitting fine. It just doesn’t happen to be the way your knitting teacher teaches. What you need is a new knitting teacher. I bet that someone at your local spiffy yarn shop knows someone who’s an expert at knitting eastern. Who might enjoy answering questions over a glass of Russian tea. Despite the frogging, your hours and money don’t need to be wasted in the long run. I am not the only one who thinks this - somewhere among my books, I have a very fine inspiring essay from a teacher/designer who says this very thing. Which is where I start with new students when I teach. (I’ve had students who knit “backwards”, who started knitting English with no coaching or example…..and they all end up with knitting,)
I know you’re sad, and probably not really about knitting, but I wish I could to come out there, hug you, give your teacher a good smack (and make her take a good long look at your teary neck) and, after a few days /weeks of NOT THINKING ABOUT IT AT ALL, be there to sit around knitting with you.
. . . . this was a good post . . . i am a little timid about sharing . . . honestly . . . because its clear to me that you are a ‘happy’ person and my comments are not meant to make you sadder . . . but your little blog about sadness and knitting helped me today and i wanted you to know . . .
no you don’t know me, i don’t comment when i visit, i just visit, i am just this little shot in the big shot world of blogging . . . for the last several months i’ve been blogging about my health issues and the only way to lose hits quicker on a blog site is to post about tithing . . . anyway, that’s my way of saying no body knows me in blogdom and i’m not ‘famous’
. . .
i read your blog . . . at a distance i read your blog . . . listening to the girls chatting . . . waiting for the occational nugget to bubble to the top of your conversation and today was one of those days for me . . .
yesterday my doctor told me that on top of the current health issues that i am working through i also have cancer . . . it was okay really until today . . . reality sort of sunk in and it made me sad . . . i’m worried about my wife financially, my 13 yr old son what will hos wife’s face look like and his children how many will he have . . . like you i’ve had this thing wrong with me like the knitting . . . and i’ve been living with this thing for some time . . . but i didn’t know it, i’ve been unaware . . . (Genesis 28:16) . . . i feel really funny about leaving this ‘bomb’ with you because i’m a stranger . . . but i wanted you to understand that when i say thank you and that you helped me nudge forward a tad . . . i really mean it . . . the peace of Christ be with you : : :
While searching for a fitting definition of anarchy, I stumbled across a book on Amazon called _Knitting for Anarchists_. It might be just the thing for an Urban Abbess’s dilemma.
Hey, How do I get Anne to sign my books? I anyone has a sure fire way I’m all about it. I have been hoping she’ll do a book tour, but I haven’t heard of one coming anywhere near by. I’ve got four of them. Plan B and Traveling Mercies are the bomb.
Thanks, Abbess Rachelle, you reminded me today how important it is to remember the people we love with little tidbits of that affection. I have been so caught up in my own life lately that I have forgotten to do that as often as I should.
What a wonderful package from Kat!
And, David, my heart went out to you. I can’t even imagine what you are going thru right now.
David,
I’m so glad my little words gave you compainonship on your difficult journey. I hope you may find little cubby holes and empty drawers to nestle your sadness, because it is part of the real-ness of our lives, and we become more human as we allow it to just be.
One of my favorite stories about sadness is in Sue Monk Kidd’s “The Secret Life of Bees.” In this novel one of the sisters is mentally ill, or developmentally challenged (it’s unclear). The thing that stymies her most is her empathy/smpathy. She cannot hear a sad story or watch the news without experiencing deep sorrow for the person who’s story is being told. Her sisters help her make space for this by taking her out to the garden and building a wailing wall. Each time she is floored by sorrow, she goes out to the garden and adds a stone to her rock wall. Soon it encloses thier garden in a cool solidity and a comforting sense of boundary. I’ve often advised friends to do this with their sorrow. Not a rock wall neccessarily, but a stack of stones, or a window sill altar. I wonder what your figurative or literal rock wall will look like in time? An ancient relicary? An abstract sculpture? A beautiful garden grotto covered in vines and moss? A starck column of memory? Who knows?
My prayers are with you and your family as you wade through this difficult time. May the love of Jesus be boyant to you.
Shalom,
Rachelle
Betsy et al,
Thanks for the encouraging words and fun reading suggestions. Since my knitting breakdown I’ve decided just to soldier on with my own twisted technique. A friend of mine, “Lily with the lip ring,” told me that she nows plenty of people who knit “wrong” and they all end up wearing perfectly cute mittens and hats and such. In “Stich and Bitch” they call this kind of knitter the “Kamakazie Knitter.”
I’ve made four fuzzy scarves out of eyelash yarn for my little gaggle of girls in elementary school. I’ve started and frogged (twice) a wool scarf for myself, and I’m determined to finsih the fun fuzzy cat bed for my grandmother’s one and only! 
Knit on!
R
GO Rachelle!
rachelle…last night just frogged out a tank top for the 4th time because of a blasted twist…i can’t figure out where it went wrong. i am abandoning it for socks.