One With the Knit

Gettin' one with the knit, that's all I'm sayin'!

You know (or may not) that I am a HUGE rules girl. Well except for sometimes the speed limit and that doesn't count. I follow the rules, and am in fact sometimes inextricably tied to them-- as suffer the normal thought processes.

That is I think much of my problem when it comes to knitting. When I sew or quilt I don't follow the rules, I feel it in my bones and stitch by the seat of my pants. It all works out, I feel it, I know it, I am one with it.

Knitting? Hmmmmmmm. I have indeed known how to knit since small kid time but my knitting has been sporadic, dictated largely by the locale in which I lived and had need of wooly goodness. For a large part of my past I have not knit past the occasional baby sweater or schmooty item of small consequence. Because of that I was a slave to the rules. For ages and ages and ages I could not knit lace from a chart, patterns from a chart were right behind that. And I did prevail over the chart thing. I still could not knit without a stitch marker for each pattern on the needles and I was very closely tethered to the instructions. Marked clearly and encased in a sleeve of plastic protectment!!! If something happened, even ever so slightly and something went awry (because as we all know that DOES happen) I was screwed. Totally screwed.

My lovely cardi in progress has been my oneness knit, maybe (just mayyyyyyyyyyybe) the knitted piece that will turn my corner, make me one with the knit, might well make me a KNITTER. It was the damn seed stitch pattern that made me crazy from go. I don't know why, I can't tell you. No simpler stitch exists. But until you are one with that (or any stitch to be honest) and you sink into it......... can watch it, be organic with it........... you don't move past the first door. And what is behind door number 1? The 'watch' of it. The knowing that it is time to do something when it is time just because you know that you know, not because you are told to by markers, or counting or the pattern sitting there at your hip.

Perhaps it was week two of this boogerin (and I think I mean that literally) cold that has fried my brain, or the lack of sleep or the intricate combination of N*yquil and Chai, I have seen the light. I'm not using the instructions.............. and haven't for quite a few rows now. I seem to see the piece as more than the piece but as this lovely happy wooly bit that I have a relationship with. Dare I say I think it is the beginning of control?

I've almost finished the (ongoing and going) back of the cardi.... adding a few more rows because I (yes...... I) have chosen that it will be prettier at the shoulder where the panels join fronts to back if I knit on a little longer and make the diamond pattern narrower. I'm very close to this point and might manage to get it off soon. The resulting extra length really doesn't mean a heckuva lot when you are a boxy comfy cardi to begin with.

Perhaps not, and maybe I make no sense at all. But I do to ME, and after all that is all that matters. I might just be on to something!