courtesy of Illiana's Corner
Emergency
knitting is the equivalent of the magazines my sister keeps in the back
seat of her car, the Hot Wheels in my son's backpack, the pocket flask
in a friend's coat. It's a security blanket for knitters.
Emergency knitting tends to be a sock, a hat, a mitten. Something small and portable that can be stashed in a pocket for those times when you have to wait. For me, this tends to be soccer practice (and even during the games: bad soccer mom!), a doctor's office, or the interminable wait before the animated kid's matinee starts.
Typical of many security objects, I don't need to actually get it out: it's the idea that it's there that helps. I've been known to run into my stash at the last minute and grab a skein and a pair of needles with no idea what I'm going to knit, just to have them "in case."
So my latest emergency knitting is washcloths. I know, how tacky and uncreative. But I'm off socks at the moment, after the socks that took a year to finish. And I love the intricate pattern options washcloths offer. It's a pure little swatch of rhythmic knotted fiber, and in the end, useful too! Very soothing simple "emergency" knitting. No shaping, no counting, just the repeated motions of needle and yarn, in, out, around and through.
You could group knitters into two categories: color or pattern people. I've always been a pattern person: moss, seed, cables, guernsey, linen, bamboo, basket weave, brioche, entrelac, even the humble garter. (Though I'm not brave enough to tackle lace.) My mother is a color knitter: intarsia and fair isle. I took a tentative dip into color knitting with the infamous Latvian Wristers. It's a window into a whole new path I may explore at some time in the future.
I know that to non-knitters, the idea of knitting as an endeavor that offers contradicting directions, in-depth challenges and new landscapes to explore sounds ludicrous. But it is. So there.
Say it loud: I knit and I'm proud.
the humble knitted cotton washcloth
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