Knitting envy!

Last night I collapsed on the couch at 7 p.m. for my allotted knitting time in front of the TV and felt an intense pressure to perform. Must, must, must make significant progress on the sock so I, too, could share a photo I could be proud of – or at least one not so embarrassing as that tiny little strip of knitting on the needles.

I knitted, frogged, dropped stitches, repaired the goofs, and then dropped another stitch. Sigh. Failure loomed. Stubbornly, I persisted for another hour until the tight soreness in my fingers loosened enough to allow reasonable speed and reliability. At that point, I’d progressed an inch past the toe and still wasn’t satisfied with the shape or fit. Or the mistakes I could still see in the fabric, and they were HUGE…glaring…embarrassing…. Decision point. Continue and call it a practice sock? Or frog?

My first thought was that I’d have nothing to show. I’d failed as a Sockhopper before the end of the first week. Eeeek! That thought reeked of the old Type A competitive me. The older, wiser me knows better, right? Yeah, theoretically. Old habits die hard, and those fueled by petty human emotions tend to slink about in the shadowed corners of the mind, just waiting for an opportunity for a little action.

Action’s not a bad thing. Competition can be invigorating. The issue is perspective, and I’d lost mine. So…deep breath. Knitting isn’t a competitive event. It’s therapy. It’s fun. The joy of a knit-a-long is in the shared experience, the assistance we can give one another as we experiment with new patterns and techniques, the mutual support, the progress photos of those beautiful socks. But…but…BACK, YOU DEMONS OF KNITTING ENVY!

Deep breath. Okay. Time to frog.

It wasn’t so bad. In pulling out those stitches and winding the yarn back onto the ball, I think I symbolically released the emotions I’d knit into them. I stopped envying the commuters who could count on the commute time for knitting. I stopped thinking wistfully of those long trips with someone else driving, of the carpool wait times, and all the other knitting times and places I’ve left behind.

It’s Indian Summer here at the farm, and so much must yet be done before frost claims the land. Winter is a relentless, non-negotiable deadline, and there’s an urgency to the preparations – physical demands that leave the body tired and sore. My non-farm professional commitments carry their own deadlines. So an hour of knitting at the end of the day…ah, that’s where I find peace. Usually.

I knit a little here and there, but mostly now I knit in the living room, sometime after sundown, sprawled on the couch with the TV running. I watch as I knit, or tune it out, whatever my mood dictates. It’s a peaceful end to my day, and the movements help undo the combined damage of the day’s activities, the hours at the keyboard and more hours of a different strain on my hands from the physical labor of moving hay bales or twisting stiff wire for fence repairs, or any of the other myriad chores of the day.

When do you knit? How does it help you?