Knitting and crochet are like food for the soul.
Just like real food, they can satisfy, intrigue, nourish, challenge, and comfort. And just like with food, you can crave different things when in different moods. I’ve been plugging away at designing the big-secret-crochet-house-project (which is n-e-a-r-l-y finished), but tonight, forget all that: I need simple, warm, comfort-knitting. And I need somebody else’s pattern, so that I don’t have to think too much. So I’m back on my other project: the Cladonia shawl. Photo from a while ago because I’m writing this (with a pen! In a notebook!) by a combination of firelight and low electric light, which doesn’t make for great knitting photos. I’ve come a wee way since this twinnage-assisted picture was taken, and I’m almost on the lace section. Cladonia has beautiful lace, as you’ll see, soon enough.
Also, I’m writing very quietly because it’s November 5th, Guy Fawkes Night, and the fireworks going off outside may yet wake the twinnage. They’re frightened of fireworks, so I’m very much hoping that they sleep through the entire shebang (with emphasis on the ‘bang’).
Before I reach the lace section of Cladonia, I’m going to add some extra increases because my Burrow And Soar yarn is working out at a much smaller gauge than the pattern dictates. (Disclaimer: I didn’t pay for the yarn, but It Really Is Luscious. Honestly.) Burrow and Soar ship worldwide, just so you know…
So no more crazy crochet cabbages tonight. And no finished object yet. Instead, I’m curled up in an armchair with a deep glass of wine, occasionally chattering with the Stoic Spouse, alternating knits with sips and staring into the fire. It’s been a long day at work on the ward. A L-O-N-G day. This clinical psychology malarkey can be intense and raw. Tomorrow I’ll be back to inventing stuff, but tonight I need the simplicity of knit-knit-knit with just the occasional increase. If you’re a fellow knitter or crocheter (or clinical psychologist), I know that you’ll understand. I hope you understand.
And you? Do you have comfort-knits or comfort-hooks?
I have all kinds of comfort activities, none of them knitting or crochet, but some include sewing little crafty things. It’s good to have something to do with your hands after a day of too much thinking, so I hope you had a peaceful, lovely evening with no waking twinnage.
Yes, there’s something about making (of any sort) that is so soothing. Thank you for your kind comment. (No waking twinnage was a bit much to ask, though.)
Definitely there are two types of knitting! The challenging: two or three colours, complex shaping, a headache of a pattern, lots of counting, lots of mistakes and undoing, thin needles with thin wool. All very satisfying when it works out and good light is essential. The comforting: miles and miles of lovely stocking stitch in DK wool, no shaping on UK size 10s, good TV and a glass on the side! Hope your twins didn’t wake up.
Yes, yes, and a thousand times yes. It’s good to have both sorts of projects on the go at once. (The twins woke up. The twins always wake up.)
There is one crochet hook I have that was my Dad’s favorite hook. I always go to that one first when getting a project going
I can so understand that. Sounds as though there’s a wonderful story behind that comment?
Yup. There is. Dad taught me to crochet. It was his favorite hook and it was the one he used to teach me to crochet with. I use it quiet often
No wonder it’s special. 🙂
Oh we had a night of bangs and cracks last night – I hate Guy Fawkes. I always hope it rains. All I ever hear about is how the very poor take all the money they don’t have and buy big $250 boxes of fireworks and let them all off in an hour and a half. No food for the kids for the next two weeks! I keep my little fur babies inside and turn the music up. I’ve been colouring in as my destress-I-don’t-want-to-think activity. It’s quite fun 🙂
Yes, it’s a horrible time for pets and wildlife. 🙁 Hope Siddy and Orlando weren’t too traumatised.
I am a knitter, sometimes crocheter, retired counselor with adult daughter, son-in-law, and grands age 8 &almost 4 living with us. Needles, hooks and yarn are often !NY salvation from the household chaos. I haven’t been able to concentrate on designing a pattern more difficult than a soap sack in months. We knit so we don’t harm people.
Yup, I hear you. Thank goodness we do have this outlet.
I totally get this! Knitting and crochet are both comfort activities when it is simple, easygoing stitches. I often feel, after a long trying day or several days, that as I knit slowly and mindfully, that I am stitching back together what has come unravelled though the day’s stresses. Glad you are taking the time to let yarn do its work. (Sketching and drawing are also comforting activities, but again needs to be easy going without judgment.?)
Yes, you’ve said it better than I could, re. stitching back together the unravelled strands of life.
I quite understand your desire to just work with yarn plus needles or hook to unwind/destress/switch off the day without having to think too much and I hope that you felt better for doing so.
I’m currently hooking a random colour random stitch blanket from a collection of yarn that I bought for a CAL which I didn’t do. Having a limited pallette and the freedom to just do whatever stitch I feel capable of that session means that I can enjoy my hooking without any pressure to follow a pattern and there’s no right or wrong. Totally relaxed hooking and something to show for it too.
…Which is how it should be. 🙂 Stress-free yet constructive. Enjoy.
Oh yes, a large soon to be finished granny square blanket that just goes round and round , it’s now at double bed size and so cosy.
…And the lovely thing about projects like that is that you can stay cosy under them whilst crocheting them!
Comfort knits for me equals socks, whichever one I have on the needles. Preferably vanilla.
And at least socks are portable, so you can take your stress-relief wherever you go. AND then have the comfort of wearing lovely handmade socks at the end of it. Win!
I enjoy knitting socks in a self patterning yarn from Norway. It’s nice to see something pretty come off the needles after watching a movie and just mindlessly knitting in the round.
Yes, it’s bliss when you can let the yarn do the work, and just sit back and watch the colours of your work evolve.
100000% understand – I feel like that a lot when I’m knitting lots of presents and orders and I just need something I am really interested in, and simple, that I can just reboost my motivation with – and knitting has to be relaxing so we can’t always be knitting to a deadline right? 🙂 jenny xx
Agreed. I must admit that I don’t knit to order, partly because it would then become and job, and therefore pressured. I fear that that would remove a little of the fun. Hope you have a lovely relaxing project on the go that is just for you.
knitting keeps me calm, for sure! I usually try to have two different projects gong – one that is simple and mindless (socks, hat, sweater anythgin knit in the round) and one that requires concentration – like lace or a complicated sweater pattern. Sometimes my mind needs to concentrate to stop whirling with all the things going on in there, sometimes I need mindless knitting to calm the body down. It is all good!
That sounds like the perfect way of working, so you’ve always got a project available to suit your mood / concentration level. I’ve got the most mindlessly simple blanket going on in the background, that I return to when my brain is REALLY shot.
it doesn’t always work, but I try! And I am noticing, right now, that I don’t like knitting only on one thing. Because I have a deadline I have been really resisting picking up a few projects which are calling my name…
Sometimes I think knitting is the only thing that keeps me sane. The repetitive working of a pattern is like meditation for me. It quiets my mind, body, and soul.
I so agree (about the meditation – I’m not doubting your sanity!) Those tiny repetitive stitches are exactly like meditation. Thank goodness we have this outlet.
I totally agree on the psychological benefit of knitting and crochet. I am making an easy blanket lately and am having to have evenings off because my wrists hurt but sometimes I just have to pick it up to do some even if I shouldn’t. Looking forward to seeing the lace section on your shawl.
Yikes, I hope your wrists sort themselves out. Not being able to knit/crochet sounds like a special sort of torture. I don’t think non-knitters always understand how and why this stuff is quite so important to us. Wishing you much knitterly/hookerly health.
Your big-secret-crochet-house-project has become like broad beans are to some folk, AWFUL! You have grown tired of “eating” it day in, day out and it’s time for some Thai food. I love that your shawl pattern is spiral. It smacks of Fibonacci in the most pure of mathematical ways. Of course it helps that you placed the yarn where you did. Looks like a gorgeous greeny/brown nautilus. I completely understand the soul food that “mindless vacuous effort” becomes when you just let your fingers do the work and your mind can switch off. The value of doing something positive after you have immersed your mind in the dark side of life is entirely underrated. Lets just call it a yarn bridge over the river Kwai.
Of course you’ve not made me want to go away and design a Fibonacci shawl (unless somebody else has done so already). I love your thinking. That would be so splendidly fabulous.
You could call it the nautilus and whether I can knit or not, I would do my level best to make it and wear it 🙂
You are such a tease with the big house project! Knitting for me is a portable replacement for my sewing machine. And my “easy” project is a moss stitch scarf in hand dyed silk yarn that I bought on holiday with birthday money….
Ooh that yarn sounds delicious. And yes, considerably more portable than a sewing machine.
Do you do B & B at your old brewery? Because firelight, wine and comfort knitting sound absolutely bloody lovely to me!
Hope you had the restorative evening it sounds like you badly needed.
Ah, but what I don’t mention in the blog posts is the Lego all over the floor and the fact that the roof is leaking. Sigh! Actually this place was a B&B for a while in the 1990s, but that was many years before we moved in.
A quiet, comfortable night with mindless-yet-lovely activity–ahhhhhhh!
Yup, it’s pretty heavenly, isn’t it?
I have two mindless patterns I particularly like to do…feather and fan with a wide repeat of three with 2 balls of Cushendale’s boucle for a frothy shawl/head cover/cowl confection. Three rows I can sleep through and one row that doesn’t need much thought. The other one is simple wrist warmers k1p1 rib for whatever length suits me. They both come in handy in the cold middle-of-Canada winter.
The shawl/head cover/cowl sounds gorgeous! And considerably less mindless than my mindless stuff!