The knitting needle swoops gently through the golden loop of yarn, bowing to meet its caress. What were once clumsy movements, full of uncertainty, have become the graceful dance of a practiced ballerina. I’ve danced this rhythm countless times. Danced until my muscles ached, then my joints, and then my mind, then past the point where the pain had either evaporated or melted into the ominous fog around me. That fog, an incorporeal humming, is something that I periodically grasp at, if only to pull something out of that darkness, to have something to hold onto. The pain is a weighted blanket, pulling me down to Earth. This dance has become a ritual of mine. Most often, I do it in class, counting stitches while my classmates court intervals and paragraphs. Snatching up my needles between senselessly scribbled notes. My knitting pattern, streaks of “K”s and “P”s and “K2T”s and “P2TTBL”s, like strands of 1s and 0s, is a binary more coherent to me than my textbooks, the printer paper smeared with chalky checkmarks and cake from last November. I can still listen to the lectures and pay attention in class, I tell myself. I haven’t checked the gradebook to find out if that’s true.
Knit two together, knit two, make one right, knit one, make one left, knit to three stitches before the marker, slip-slip knit, purl one, slip the marker, repeat. I fall into the pattern. Then fall out of myself. The rhythm of the needles chatters in the background like the clockwork ticking of my heart, though I can’t seem to hear its beat. Sometimes, I’m watching myself. Other times, I’m nowhere to be found. I like it better that way, when my consciousness has dispersed into a thin and milky cloud. I imagine it’s what it feels like in the seconds before death—the embrace of nothingness.
On the other hand, when I’m watching myself, I see a different kind of emptiness. The presence of something where it feels like there’s nothing. Like choking down a frothy hot chocolate in a video game, tasteless and unfilling. Pointless. Like a bamboo knitting needle scraped too many times on the concrete, its tip frayed and dull.
I’ve spent a year layering this shawl together, one row at a time. A machine could’ve made the whole thing in the same amount of time it took for me to lose all my friends from summer camp. Made it faster. Made it perfect, the V-shaped stitches falling into row upon perfect row like wheatfronds bowing to the same wind. My wheat field, on the other hand, has been disturbed, the fronds brushed this way and that, trampled in places. I suppose it’s beautiful, in a way. But the part of me that understood beauty seems to be on leave. You would think that the beaver would admire the flawless craft of a dam, but I admit that the appearance of most knitted items makes me cringe. I guess a lot of people spend their lives building something hideous. I don’t know why I do what I do.
Everything I touch seems to unravel, even as the shawl grows inch by inch. Everyone forgets that knitting requires unraveling something, one way or another. You make a mistake, and you unravel your work, each stitch making a satisfying pop as you undo the last hour of your life. Even as you make progress, the ball of yarn gets smaller, shriveling up like a grape left in a stale cupboard. I can see my ball of yarn losing mass now, weakening. What will happen, I think, when the yarn runs out? Will I disappear, too? Sometimes, it seems like the only thing keeping me going is this shawl. When I can’t get out of bed, I know at least I’ll be able to pick up my knitting bag. Except for those days when I can’t, and that’s when I know I’m six feet under, one way or another. In those times, the dirt is suffocating, too heavy to lift.
One day, I will be six feet under, for real. And part of me that will be left above the ground will be that shawl, finished or not. It’ll be those socks, and those hats, and those gloves, and those tubs and tubs of yarn that gave me something to work towards, to look forward to. And maybe someone will cherish them, but probably not. And they’ll be worn and washed and tossed out, maybe thrown to someone who has no idea whose hands made them. And eventually those knitted tatters will meet their end, too. And it’ll be like they never existed, like I never invested hours of my life into their creation, and then they’ll join me in that state of un-being.
But before then, before I join the worms, I’ll be old. Or at least that’s what I’m supposed to hope I’ll be. My mind is repeatedly visited by that aphorism, “knitting is for old people.” It sends me back into that tornado of pitiful pointlessness, that conviction that I shouldn’t be knitting because I’m young and should be doing better things with my time, and that I can wait until I’ve worked enough decades to break my back before picking up a knitting needle. And that’s when I realize the big “if”. I’ll knit if my heart still beats to the rhythm of the needles when I’m seventy. If my hands don’t shake with arthritis or hang limply at my sides. If I have the yarn, or the money, or even an ounce of passion to work the yarn between my fingers like magic.
So, even though I don’t know why, I let myself pick up the needles. Let myself fall into the rhythm and become entranced: by the yarn, and the stitches, and each new band of shimmering substance. I let myself knit.
Knit two together, knit two, make one right, knit one, make one left, knit to three stitches before the marker, slip-slip knit, purl one, slip the marker, repeat. I fall into the pattern. Then fall out of myself. The rhythm of the needles chatters in the background like the clockwork ticking of my heart, though I can’t seem to hear its beat. Sometimes, I’m watching myself. Other times, I’m nowhere to be found. I like it better that way, when my consciousness has dispersed into a thin and milky cloud. I imagine it’s what it feels like in the seconds before death—the embrace of nothingness.
On the other hand, when I’m watching myself, I see a different kind of emptiness. The presence of something where it feels like there’s nothing. Like choking down a frothy hot chocolate in a video game, tasteless and unfilling. Pointless. Like a bamboo knitting needle scraped too many times on the concrete, its tip frayed and dull.
I’ve spent a year layering this shawl together, one row at a time. A machine could’ve made the whole thing in the same amount of time it took for me to lose all my friends from summer camp. Made it faster. Made it perfect, the V-shaped stitches falling into row upon perfect row like wheatfronds bowing to the same wind. My wheat field, on the other hand, has been disturbed, the fronds brushed this way and that, trampled in places. I suppose it’s beautiful, in a way. But the part of me that understood beauty seems to be on leave. You would think that the beaver would admire the flawless craft of a dam, but I admit that the appearance of most knitted items makes me cringe. I guess a lot of people spend their lives building something hideous. I don’t know why I do what I do.
Everything I touch seems to unravel, even as the shawl grows inch by inch. Everyone forgets that knitting requires unraveling something, one way or another. You make a mistake, and you unravel your work, each stitch making a satisfying pop as you undo the last hour of your life. Even as you make progress, the ball of yarn gets smaller, shriveling up like a grape left in a stale cupboard. I can see my ball of yarn losing mass now, weakening. What will happen, I think, when the yarn runs out? Will I disappear, too? Sometimes, it seems like the only thing keeping me going is this shawl. When I can’t get out of bed, I know at least I’ll be able to pick up my knitting bag. Except for those days when I can’t, and that’s when I know I’m six feet under, one way or another. In those times, the dirt is suffocating, too heavy to lift.
One day, I will be six feet under, for real. And part of me that will be left above the ground will be that shawl, finished or not. It’ll be those socks, and those hats, and those gloves, and those tubs and tubs of yarn that gave me something to work towards, to look forward to. And maybe someone will cherish them, but probably not. And they’ll be worn and washed and tossed out, maybe thrown to someone who has no idea whose hands made them. And eventually those knitted tatters will meet their end, too. And it’ll be like they never existed, like I never invested hours of my life into their creation, and then they’ll join me in that state of un-being.
But before then, before I join the worms, I’ll be old. Or at least that’s what I’m supposed to hope I’ll be. My mind is repeatedly visited by that aphorism, “knitting is for old people.” It sends me back into that tornado of pitiful pointlessness, that conviction that I shouldn’t be knitting because I’m young and should be doing better things with my time, and that I can wait until I’ve worked enough decades to break my back before picking up a knitting needle. And that’s when I realize the big “if”. I’ll knit if my heart still beats to the rhythm of the needles when I’m seventy. If my hands don’t shake with arthritis or hang limply at my sides. If I have the yarn, or the money, or even an ounce of passion to work the yarn between my fingers like magic.
So, even though I don’t know why, I let myself pick up the needles. Let myself fall into the rhythm and become entranced: by the yarn, and the stitches, and each new band of shimmering substance. I let myself knit.