but...you know the rest....
Have been knitting again lately and it reminds me so much of why I began knitting in the first place, the desire to create something with my hands. The desire to bring something tangible into the world, something I've created with my own two hands.
I've often felt disconnected to things because I live a lot in my head. My thoughts are my friends. Maybe this comes from being an only child with a busy mother that raised me in her spare time. Trust me, this is true. She often retells the time I found her book lying around somewhere titled something like "How to Raise Kids in Your Spare Time" and how it appalled me even when I was young. I can laugh at it now because I know my mother and she was a great mother to me and still is, although we are more friends than parent and child obviously. I was more of the parent to her actually and she often would say when I corrected her behavior in front of others "I gave birth to my mother".
So back to my story. Feeling somewhat disconnected to things during my life, even though I now consider it very Zen, I fear that without some connection I could very easily float away. I've often felt I don't belong here, I'm so different and the way I think is so different that I've felt very alone at times and only now am I able to be okay with that feeling knowing that we all feel that way at times and that we are all unique. My lonliness or my feelings of not fitting in are not unique. With this feeling of disconnectedness, I crave connection, with others, with my higher power, with nature. Material things have never been important to me. Another story my mom likes to tell is how she would have to beg me to get up on Christmas mornings to come see what Santa brought me. I wasn't all that excited. I did it more for her, she was like a child on Christmas morning and as most mothers do, got excited to give me toys and "things" and I went along with it but really wasn't into "things" and still am not too much into "things".
However, dabbling in art throughout my life, my mom is a professional artist by the way, I've never been able to find my form of self expression outside of writing. I wanted to create something I could hold, something I could give to someone, something I could sale or something I could display at an art show. I wanted to be able to turn something from one form into another with my hands. Being nonmaterialistic and therefore practical about "things", knitting was the perfect outlet for my creative endeavor of making something with my hands and making something useful and practical, not wasting materials etc. I've made numerous collages that hang on my walls and under my bed and in my closets but wanted to make something to be used not stored or hung if you know what I mean.
I love the colors, the feel, the textures, the smells, haven't tasted yarn yet. All of the senses are stimulated when I go into a yarn shop and walk around trying to find that perfect skein that speaks to me. I always go in with an idea from a book that I want to create and it never happens that I find what the book is asking for but it always happens that I find a project and yarn that speaks to me at that moment. Today I skipped softball practice because I needed a yarn project fix, I needed to touch, see and salivate over mohair, alpaca, merino wool and cashmere. I brought my most favorite knitting book Intertwined with the hopes of buying some handspun yarn and making this really cool hat and walked out with another kind of yarn, beautiful and calling my name, another hat pattern and new needles. It's not what I wanted when I set out to take this trip across town to this little yarn shop called Only Ewe but it ended up being exactly what I needed, a new project to create something useful with my hands.
May you be open to finding what it is that you need to feel complete and whole and fulfilled if even just for today.
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