05 Aug Its figureoutable

Three lessons we can learn from knitting.

My goddaughter came over to visit. As we sat together, she brought out a mass of yellow wool. “Some of the needles have fallen. Others have shifted,” she said, delicately cradling the precious garment in her hands.

Her mother passed away a few months ago after an aggressive bout of cancer. From diagnosis to death, it was a cold, hard five months. Which included two rounds of covid and isolation.

As she realized that her days were numbered her mother set out to knit a lovely warm mustard-coloured, cable-knit hat and scarf for her daughter. She finished the hat. And always a whizz with her kneedles, she managed a foot and a half of the scarf. Unfortunately, towards the end, the pain got the better of her. She dropped stitches, misread the pattern, and had to abandon the scarf unfinished.

Now, my goddaughter is an Ob/Gyn surgeon and no stranger to needles, thread and knots. But she stared – bereft – at this treasure, with its share of dropped stitches, a tiny part of the last moments of her mother, and had this question: “Can we rescue it? And finish it?”

Life lessons learned from knitting

So I had to assure her:

• We can pick up where we left off – We can pick up dropped stitches. It takes patience, and we may have to twist some loops around as we find our way, but it is all doable
• Deconstruct and recreate – It is OK to unravel. We can tug on the thread, find our way back to the parts her mother wanted to correct, unravel the parts that are confused (saving some part of it as a memory of the moment) and then reknit to finish the whole
• Look back to find the pattern – We can look back, learn by following what came before, and recreate the pattern

Knitting had taught me so many other life lessons

• Knit two, purl two. Knit two, purl two. Know the basics. All knitting patterns are based on these two stitches. Get this right, and the rest becomes easier. Just like one step in front of the other.
• Keep a steady tension on the yarn. Too tight, and the stitches bunch up. Too loose and you could stick a finger through the holes.
• Patience. Always patience. Because it takes a while for things to start looking like they should. Meantime, you have to believe in the possibility.
• Once I know my pattern, I can (and have) knit … in front of the TV, on the London tube or even on the NYC subway. It’s the kind of activity that recharges you rather than needs recharging.
• You can decipher something by studying it. Nowadays we call it reverse-engineering. But every knitter and crocheter knows, it is just paying attention to what came before.
• It all starts as a single strand. Just like life. One thread that goes through changes, incorporating love, experience, hardship, attention, … creating a beautiful garment that is the whole.

Patience. Pattern. Tension on the thread – all lessons I’ve learned from knitting.

Most things in life are figureoutable.

We could not save her Mum. But maybe we can find a way to wrap the daughter in her warm hug for many winters.

Tactile skills

In these last weeks of the summer, can you lean into one of your passions? Art. Sports. Writing. Cooking. Quilting. (The less screen-related the better!) We discover survival skills that can transfer to other areas of our life. And life lessons we can share with others.