Things I'm learning.

I've just read a good book review over on Cast On, and was intrigued by the author's comment in her bio that she was 'experimenting with finding her own deeply unique creativity and has thus cleared out her queue in an attempt to remove the constraints of expectation from her knitting'. I had no idea other people viewed it this way. I should have had an inkling when I was listening to an old episode of Knitting Nora's podcast when she talked about Ravelry and all its delights for those who like to be organised. I use it to organise me! I queue things for those moments when I have a mental block. Like an online gallery of starting points. I have never ordered them since that will vary depending on the day, time or season I get to begin. I have never felt any pressure to adhere to this list nor do I find it constraining. Nor does it ever feel imperative.

Then I started to think about my expectations of knitting. Here we are in no particular order.

I expect knitting:

• to be there for me whatever sort of day I've had, and be able to match my mood;
• to challenge and soothe me;
• to be an instant input of colour and texture to a moment;
• to be a safe haven and solace;
• to companion my desperate need for solitude;
• to free my imagination;
• to be impervious to the level of internal monologue it has to hear;
• to remain an inanimate object vivified by each moment of its making;
• to be alive to me.

Interestingly, when I look at the list above, knitting is used each time as a noun, a person, place or thing. Never as a verb. Maybe that's it? To me I expect knitting to be just as it says in my dictionary: knitting n. Work in process of being knitted. It is always in process and can therefore never be constrained or constraining. Like water. Like imagination. Sometimes the imagination is breathing in and needs lots of soul-food, other times it is breathing out and creating out there. There are also those still moments between when it's just holding its breath... and that for me is the best time, since it is pure potential, unmarred by any strain.

Isn't that what we see in yarn? Imagination holding its breath?