(re-post from October 2007)
Chronicled Knitting: Polish Deli; early morning; cast on 14 sts, #1 green
needles. Back and forth knitting:
stockingette happens because I haven’t yet figured out how to do garter this way. There is something satisfying about not changing needles from one hand to the other, just knitting one way, knitting back and sort of scooping off rather than sliding off the stitches on the return trip. I am knitting into the backs of the stitches going both ways because it is simplest and easiest.
A hawk swoops silently from out of nowhere; somehow sparrows disappear instantly into hedge; hawk misses a breakfast. The part of me that realizes a hawk needs to eat too is less than the part of me that is very glad the sparrows all escaped because I am the reason the sparrows were scattered around the open ground eating seeds I had thrown down for them. They stay silent and invisible in the hedge and only gradually emerge to continue eating. I find my knitting has speeded up during this disturbance. Sun slices
through clouds.
Two men walking across the street call to a man walking on this
side in the opposite direction and ask him if he has a match. For some reason he risks the rush hour
traffic (well, rush hour for Victoria) on Cook Street and crosses over to light
whatever they are smoking and then crosses back.
Pot scrubber is progressing. The hemp is pleasant to work with; it has a stance to it but not a disagreeable stiffness and the black yarn looks nice in contrast to the green of the needles.
I greet the regular passersby. The regulars greet me. Some stop for a chat. I can knit and talk and the conversations work themselves into the knitting.
A little boy, being pulled along by his mother as she walks him and his sister and brother to school, is staring so hard at the knitting that he almost walks into the telephone post but his mother yanks him out of the way just in time. She laughs and then he laughs and I have to stop and pick up a stitch because I guess I was expecting him to be scolded.
I pour a
last cup of tea from the big silver tea pot; it is cool enough now to drink down, not
sip.
I walk home and knit with hemp ball in pocket, four
rows to a block. Three crows hop along the telephone wires keeping pace with
me……waiting. When I finish a row I
dig in carry bag for some dry cat food and scatter on ground for them. The pot scrubber is held up for their inspection – and to compare it with their blackness – but they are intent on the cat food and they do scold. Not me. Each other.
Eight
more rows of knitting and pot scrubber is finished.
I am now home. Sit on deck and
cast off. Sew up the two ends and
gather the edges and secure. Toss it in the air a time or two and catch it and feel good at the weight and the form and the creation of a thing from two sticks and some yarn.
Hold in
hands and think of the person, as yet anonymous (because it is in an art show and for sale), to whom this is going.
(This is one aspect of the adventure of Knitting Intuitively, knitting with the awareness that we are energy and can expand into that with our focus, gifting ourselves and the recipient of our action. It compounds. It gives the experience of living in the now. It is a heck of a lot of fun.)