I think this project could also be called “What the Hell Am I Knitting With?”
There is something so special about those simple knit projects that I can knit anywhere, any time. If knitting is a Venn diagram comprised of skill level, amount of attention required, and design details, this blanket is deceptively in the middle. The pattern reads as easy, and it is. There is little technique involved in this knitting project. But the yarn. The yarn makes this project one that requires more than feel. It’s prone to tangles and the feathered ply of the fabric often obscured my vision of the stitch construction. There were many moments of pause, making sure I was knitting into the correct loop. Without a doubt there are hidden mistakes in this FO. The bright side, this yarn is forgiving (it hides mistakes, tension variations, etc.).
The same complaints about the yarn I list above also make it a bit difficult to read each stitch for the crocheted edging, which I had never done before and was by which I was VERY intimidated. Like so many other material artists, I turned to YouTube for quick tutorials on double and single crotchet stitches. The hand movements of crochet are very different from those of knitting. I have since started crocheting smaller single items, because the hand movement is delicate and fluid and the swoosh of the wrist twirl is consuming.
Knitting with this yarn is similar to my experience reading lit theory: it’s a little wonky to get started but then it picks up steam and encourages stings of thoughts that help me, like theory, piece my thoughts together. This project was one of those projects that makes me a better knitter, helps give structure to other knitting experiences.
Aside from its interesting knitting experience, knitting with this yarn brings so much of the joy of knitting to light. The facet of knitting that draws me to it is its capacity to bring various elements of my life together. In each stitch, I bring parts of myself together as if the FO itself is a mirror that reflects my own life—my experiences, the people in it.
As I so frequently discuss, knitting has most recently been a way for me to feel, move through, process the maternal grief I experience through infertility. And knitting this blanket has been a way for me to see those feelings physically manifesting.
The texture of the yarn is like velcro with feet. It brings everything into its fold: cat hair, lint, fibers of itself, my own hair. As I watched pieces of my life gather into the fabric and construction of this blanket, I thought of Victorian hair jewelry and its connection to the dead, as a way to bring people to life.
Although the hair collected in this FO is not my future-hypothetical baby’s, I can sometimes imagine the pleasure of sharing this moment of my life with a baby in the future, wrapping it up in my life of this moment, almost as if that baby is experiencing life along side me now.
“What the Hell Am I Knitting With?”