Unraveling

I've been knitting.

I'm not very good at it. And I got a bit overambitious in this last project, choosing a nubbly, irregular yarn that is hard to work with. Despite several false starts, however, over the past week, I had managed to struggle my way through about a foot and a half of the soft, open-weave scarf I was trying to make for myself. Then it all went to hell last night.

I made the mistake of attempting to do two things at once: in this case, to pay attention to a movie on television and knit. This, it turns out, was a grave error. Half an hour into the movie I'd already lowered my stitch count by three and inexplicably created two large holes in the middle of the work. When it became evident that my attempts at repairing the damage were completely futile, I decided to unravel the damned thing back to where things were going pretty well.

One problem with that: the yarn is so woolly and lumpy that once I started unraveling, it was impossible for me to relocated all the stitches properly and get them back on the needle. Damn. Damn damn damn. I was obliged, finally, to unravel the whole damned thing – a week's worth of work, piled up on the sofa accusingly. I didn't even have the heart to start over. I just wound the stuff up, jabbed the needles through it, and drank wine instead.

It occurs to me this morning that maybe life and knitting have something in common. You can make a beautiful scarf out of plain cheap yarn or you can make a ratty-ass scarf using fancy yarn. It's not the raw materials. It's your skill, patience and craft that turn it into something worth using. And sometimes, damnit, you have to be willing to unravel it all and start over.

My life came unraveled when I got divorced, almost exactly two years ago. Since that time I've made a few sloppy starts at knitting it up, and on a couple of occasions have had to pull the work apart again. Now at last I'm beginning to get the hang of the stitchery, but I have to learn to be patient. I can't rush through, try to do too many things at once and focus too much on the end result, rather than the process. Knitting, and life, is not about getting somewhere. It's really about doing something, and trying to do it well, with practice and patience and love.

Sometimes all I can think about it what I want and how long it will be before I can have it and maybe I won't, ever, get my act together enough to make my dreams come true. Maybe I'll always be making a mess of things, watching TV and dropping stitches. But I have to believe that it won't always be that way... that eventually, if I can just focus on doing this, right now, to the best of my ability... I will get where I want to be.

It's not easy, especially when you've got a big pile of yarn and a lost week of work. But tomorrow I'll take up my needles again and cast on. Better luck this time.