the Village Knittiot

Early on in my knitting days, I read Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Knitting Without Tears. That was a fairly defining moment. I then discovered Anna Zilboorg and her revolutionary Knitting For Anarchists. (It’s the Z’s — we’re born troublemakers and pot-stirrers on account of always finding ourselves at the end of lines and back rows of classrooms). And beyond them, dozens of other artisans whose love and reverence for the craft embraces the roots that spawned their obsessions. They are the people who connect the past and the traditions with the present. And more than that, channel all that knowledge, practical understanding and creative spirit into something that is both new yet vaguely familiar, like the faded pictures of my stoic Norwegian relatives newly arrived in America.

Lately as I have been working through this utterly bland cotton sweater from some Rowan book, I am just unbelievably bored. There is nothing behind this knitting. It tells me nothing new. It inspires nothing. Why is that?

This morning, as I was looking through Lucy Neatby’s site (discovered thanks to a mention from the ever knowledgable Joe) I felt that familiar quickening of my senses. My hand flew toward the pencil on my desk. Notes were jotted down in a hurried fashion as I clicked from page to page, absorbing the details, hearing the story behind each design. And that is when something clicked in me.

Knitting tells a story. At least the kind of knitting that really matters to us. It is the thing that connects us to each other, to the past — even to something inside of ourselves that only seems to come alive when we have those needles in our hands. And that is what makes us come back again and again. The absence of story in knitting is, I think, what makes so many abandon their initial enthusiasm and never pick up the sticks again. Story is the reason we knit in community. Why we blog. Why we talk and dream and live Rhinebeck (or Maryland or Vermont) for days and weeks after coming home.

When I went back to Lucy Neatby’s site this morning, I went back for her story. I went back because I understand why she is doing what she is doing and I find that I can invest my time and attention happily in such endeavors. Partially because this kind of knitting teaches me something new every time I approach it, both from a practical standpoint as well as a personal one, but also probably because in this kind of scenario there is plenty of room for me to create my own story, and add my own ingredients to the “narrative.”

Around the Knittiot house the concept of story is an overwhelming preoccupation. It is central to almost every conversation, decision, adventure — even if it is only in the background, it is there. With us, 2 + 2 = story and I suppose it was only a matter of time before I connected the dots between the elements of knitting to create a similar, if not infinitely more complicated, equation.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 21st, 2005 at 6:09 am and is filed under this Knittiot Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.