Change Your Yarn, Change Your Life

26Sep09

Here I go, giving this whole blog thing another whirl . . .

Aidan and I have been in Syracuse for about a month now. And although we’re still feeling some of the residual stress that inevitably comes with significant life changes, we’re both enjoying the city, our new apartment, the cats, each other, etc. Over the summer, I had a really productive burst of knitting–mostly when Aidan was off studying philosophy in Berlin for a month and knitting was the only buffer I had between me and my thesis. But aside from that period of time, I haven’t been knitting very much, especially compared to the amount of knitting that I usually do.

If you ask Aidan, he’ll say that I don’t knit when I’m stressed (which, he also notes, is weird given that knitting is supposed to be a relaxing activity). After giving it a bit of thought, I’d tweak Aidan’s observation just a bit. I don’t think it’s just stress, because there are times when the amout of knitting I do increases in direct proportion to the amount of stress I’m feeling. For instance, I all but finished an entire sweater during the first finals week of my graduate career. Really, I think I find it hard to knit when I’m feeling unsettled. And the later part of this past summer–what with all the moving and school-switching I did–was nothing if not unsettling. I’m just not very good at adjusting to new circumstances, and I think I find it hard to sit down, relax, and knit when I’m feeling out of my element.

Towards the end of August when things had settled down substantially, I tried to pick my knitting up again. I had pair of plain socks and two sweaters–the Featherweight Cardigan and the Elemental Boatneck–all sitting in my knitting box, but working on them wasn’t bringing me any kind of pleasure, and I started to feel more like I was having to force myself to pick them up. No good. And on top of it all, I was having a hard time feeling motivated and excited about school-related stuff.

But I finally reached my breaking point, and realized that if I didn’t want to work on a project, I should just put it away. And that’s exactly what I did. I bagged both of the sweaters up and put them in the closet with the rest of my stash to be pulled out at a later time and date when I feel reenergized about working on them. And the socks went to the bottom of the knitting box–they’re there if I want to work on them, but they’re not staring me in the face anymore. As I was putting the two sweaters into the closet, I came across some Karaoke yarn that I got at a pretty deep discount from a yarn sale awhile back and realized that it was exactly what I needed in my life at that moment. That was last week, and now I’m just a few rows short of being done with the body on my Hourglass Sweater (Rav link).

The Hourglass Sweater pattern comes from Last Minute Knitted Gifts, which was my Christmas gift from my brother last year. It is (clearly) coming along quickly. I think the speed with which this baby is knitting up is only surprising to me given the fact that I haven’t knit anything with worsted weight yarn since back in January. Things definitely go a lot quicker when you’re dealing with bigger needles and thicker yarn. I dig it.

I put the Featherweight cardi and Elemental Boatneck pullover away thinking that I wouldn’t pull them out again until next spring, but I’m already thinking about putting the Hourglass sweater on hold briefly while I finish the Featherweight cardi. It’s getting a bit cooler and I’ve got a conference coming up, so I could definitely use a light black cardigan. We’ll see.

In short, I’m glad to be excited about knitting again. But I’m also really happy to say that all of my work/school related anxieties have subsided, and I’m feeling pretty damn good about where I’m at and what I’m doing.

Am I ridiculous enough to think that my renewed optimism and motivation are knitting related? Hell yeah.

Filed under: Knitting   |  1 Comment
Tags: blather, Sweater, WIPS