If you were attentive, you will have noticed that although the previous blog talked about ‘level one rest’ and how various people achieve it, there was no mention how I personally achieve it.
Have you ever looked at Ravelry.com? It’s jam-packed with patterns written by astonishingly creative people. You can mark patterns to look at later. You can upload your projects so that other people can see how you interpreted the pattern and what wool and colours you chose. I love it. I love using my mom’s old needles, some of them bent and dented. I imagine her using them to open stuck doors and jam jars. And then getting back to knitting. I love my modern needles – the interchangeable set that I invested in, that give me pleasure just swapping the needles around on the cords. I more than love wool, choosing wool, sorting my stash into thickness and colour. And all this before I even knit the first stitch.
Having read somewhere that learning new things is an excellent way to keep your brain supple and active, I use knitting to learn new things all the time. I chose the picture above of some of the last knitting that my mother did. She was 90 when she knit this. And her mind was certainly supple!
I fear I may never really excel at any one aspect. I’m too busy exploring all kinds of aspects of knitting, learning new techniques, indulging myself completely. But that really isn’t the point. I have had to learn that productivity isn’t the point either. It’s about pleasure and creativity. There is something quite strangely fascinating about winding wool around needles and ending up with an object that didn’t exist before.
I could go on, but I fear that you are already slumped across the keyboard, snoring. The point is, knitting puts me straight into level one rest. I’m so engrossed that I forget to worry about the state of the world.
I ask the question again? What activity is this engrossing to you? It’s an important question.
0 Comments