Knitting as Coping (or Not)

When the world shut down and we all went home, several friends announced how delighted they were for me. Surely I would have so much knitting time now. Of course my stash would be obliterated by the hours of knitting I would have. 

And yet it wasn't. Granted, a fair part of that is because no matter how quickly I knit, I can still buy yarn at a much faster rate and an immediate financial focus was indeed to buy from indie dyers, mostly women owned businesses who I want to come out the other side because their work is so beautiful and small businesses are important.  But I also reverted to what I do in times of extreme stress-- carrying my yarn from room to room without getting much accomplished. 

Oh projects got knit; I'm currently at 31 finished objects so far this year and Stash Dash absolutely assisted in motivating me towards totals. But I'm certainly not my friend KB, who has stress knit something like three sweaters in the past few months? I blame having had to become responsible enough that I'm running meetings rather than attending them. I need to level up so I can go back to attending for a while; one gets far more socks knit that way. 

But in July I noticed there were entire days and even sometimes multiple day where I did not knit at all. That is unusual. It might not be a lot but usually I do knit every day. Not knitting and noticing I did not knit then further messed with my head. Why wasn't I accomplishing more? Why was it other knitters were getting through 15K for StashDash and here I was, staring at yarn, not making progress. 

This pandemic, this year, these times -- I keep telling others that they need to give themselves grace. That no one expects the 100% we expected in February and that the people asking for 150% were truly not right in asking that. It's harder to give yourself the grace when your knitting is just sitting there and the yarn you bought has stacked up. 

And then my mojo and my ability to knit one day started to come back. I'll share the project that kicked it off soon; I'm waiting on a thing. But I let the yarn lead and suddenly there we go, practically all I want to do is knit. It's bad for my To Do list, whether we are talking the endless ones for work or home, but it's so much better for  my mental health. 

I'm on a hat kick, trying to reassess where my hands are these days as my gauge has definitely changed and I want to use up some single skeins of DK and Worsted but making things that don't require a whole lot of thought. Hats are lovely for that and shared easily to friends. A couple of the ones pictured have been already wistfully claimed on the never-ending-round-of-web-conference-calls as the bright yarn goes by and Ooooh, That's Pretty. It is. It's nice to work with pretty yarn. 

The need for grace will continue as this year refuses to pull punches and there is still so much more work to be done. But the projects pile up and I can be sure that some people will be wrapped in wool and love this winter. And the yarn stash is extra insulation, right?