EVERYDAY RITUALS - Knitting

Most of the time knitting projects arise from meeting a need. Sometimes they also come from being presented with an irresistible impulse. At a recent craft fair I encountered a stall selling absolutely massive hanks of aran style wool for a tenner a hank.  After wandering around for a bit simply to think what on earth I could do with it. I returned and bought a mega amount of mottled charcoal grey wool. My mind roughly set on knitting myself a meditation blanket. Leaving with the wool hank slung over my shoulder like a cowboy's lasso.

Rituals, everyday or otherwise, are invariably born of a mixture of these informal impulses. aspirations, desires, leaps of faith you might call them, and the finding of a recognisable formal structure to hang them upon. Knitting is no different. I had the impulse - bought this hank of wool - then the aspiration - to knit a meditation blanket. There then followed a period of deciding what form that would take, what would be the structure of its pattern, what size would it need to be, and did I have enough wool and patience for this likely long running ritual of knitting a blanket

The essence of any knitting ritual is the turning of a long string of wool into a wearable fabric. But first my large wool hank needed to be in the more manageable form of balls of wool. In my childhood I have memories of sitting by the fire, my Grandma sat in a chair winding wool. Whilst I sat on the floor with a small hank of wool stretched between my tiny hands, doing a gently rocking motion in time with her speed of winding. This time it was on a whole different scale. Hubby and I took turns at being the wool winder or the standing human, rocking in a wobbly side to side motion. Its really a test of how in tune and synchronous you can be, keeping time, and not getting ahead of each other. Maintaining mindfulness of them, as well as oneself. Not getting peeved with one another for 'not doing it right'.

On such a large project, the sheer size and weeks of effort involved in executing it has to be considered. The pattern you chose needs to be relatively simple, appropriate, not too elaborate, or yarn hungry. Had I not bought this huge amount of wool for a tenner, I would not be attempting knitting a meditation blanket in the region of 40 x 60 inches. It would be frighteningly  expensive in this quality of wool. The pattern I chose is called Cashew, I know not why. But it is the definitive simple four row pattern

Row One - Knit across the entire row

Row Two - K 5, P an infinitesimal number of times, finishing with K5

Row Three - Knit across the entire row

Row Four - K5, P1, *K2,P1, an infinitesimal number of times, finishing with K5.

Repeat - again and again and again and again and again and again......

What comes out of the variation in stitch and stitch tension of just the fourth row of this pattern, is to my mind a minor miracle. A lovely waffle like, basket effect.

Repetition is the staple ingredient of many rituals,  whether that be in the form of incantation or mantra, or the structure of a knitting pattern. Keeping engaged, mindful and present with whatever you are doing or saying, is vital.  The moment the minds attention drifts of, you lose track of where you are, you go into automatic, you drop a stitch or do the entire row in the wrong pattern sequence and have to pull the row back. Maintaining presence in the moment is crucial. When its going well, and there is no emotional resistance dragging its feet behind you, knitting can become this one synchronous flow of mind, hands, needles and heart. This moves any ritual beyond something that you are consciously driving. In my experience this happens only on very rare occasions.

Most of the time knitting is a lot of conscious effort. It gets tedious or boring. And it gets so for very obvious reasons. You've become this person, single-mindedly focused on a mission, to complete so many rows or inches of pattern or the whole damn thing, ASAP.  This leads to impatience arising, the repetition becomes perceived as mind numbingly endless, you want the fix of having achieved something, to reward yourself for all this effort. You want it all over and done with and to move on to a newer, fresher more interesting project. So you can get your life back. 

Rituals, whether meditation or knitting, can become just another task we are doing in a very heavily scheduled list of task driven days. And maintaining regular and meaningful connection with what you are doing, your longer term vision for it, cannot be emphasised enough. There is no urgency, only in your mind. You've been living without this hand knitted meditation blanket all your life, so give it, and yourself, space to breath in. Take a step back and do the opposite of being goal driven. Come back to doing knitting in small regular but containable amounts of time and effort. Come back to the quality of what you are doing, not the quantity. Everyday Rituals all too easily become elaborated, with lots of extraneous personal wants and needs hanging off them like limpets.

I understand all too well myself the scurge that is wanting a sense of completion. But think of it more like watching a very long but beautiful film by Tarkovsky, you have to just go with its open ended sense of time and the unfolding journey he's set you out upon. Death will happen all too soon, but one never finds oneself chasing it as a destination. In fact its the opposite. Our activities, tasks and rituals, our sense of achievement, completion and goals reached are driven by an often unconscious impulse to hurry and get them done lest we die before completing them. As if completion was a way of thwarting death.

A completed task list is what we'll leave behind, no one else will care one jot about.  No one will say at your funeral he left no task list uncompleted. Its who you were, not what you did or achieved that will matter. If anything we do matters at all.

Everyday rituals are often better carried out with an emptiness of purpose, utility or meaning. The suchness of this ritual moment, the knittingness of just knitting, this is worth learning to calmly abide with.