The challenge with the yarn began the moment I removed it from the package. It was a lovely soft merino, hand-dyed in a rich variation of hues that ran from deep purples and blues to vibrant yellows and greens. It arrived in what is called a hank, a twisted ring, which would necessitate being rolled into a ball. For that, I would need an extra set of hands, but I knew my husband would not have the patience to keep still for that sort of project. So I sat cross-legged on the floor and looped the yarn around my knees.
Before I could say cat’s cradle, I found myself in a jumble of multi-coloured woolen mess. It would take evening after evening to unknot the disaster and wrap the yards and yards of yarn around a cardboard tube. During those hours, I came to know very well the touch and character of that fine merino wool.
All I had wanted to do was to knit a simple scarf. I studied YouTubes to figure out how to cast on the 19 stitches for the pattern. I perfected the knit and purl. I would make several scarves for Christmas presents. It was easy. Until it wasn’t.
Somehow the number of stitches on my lefthand needle kept growing. Then just as I would really get into a rhythm, enjoying the click-click of the needles and the swish-swish of the yarn, I would forget which row I was on. Worst of all were the dropped stitches. They left ugly holes in the body of the scarf. I didn’t know what to do with them. They glared at me as a testament to my lack of focus.
I started over more times then I could count, pulling apart with little tugs, stitch by stitch, everything I had painstakingly knitted together, until I was left with one long strand of raw material again and again. Each time I went back to the beginning with a new hope that this try things would be different and there would be no mistakes. And each time something would snap my concentration and I would lose my place or drop a stitch once more.
Last week, my friend sent a short video of the great, ancient oak that had graced her ranch for the better part of three centuries. The clip panned the enormous tree, which lay sprawled out across the ground, not unlike my tangle of yarn. Perhaps the old tree had foreseen the brutal winds that would tear through the Valley in a few days time and knew that should could not withstand them. Perhaps she had decided to crack wide open on her own terms.
How many generations of species had this tree been Mother to in her nearly three hundred years? How many children had she enbraced within her infinity of leaves? She breathed and breathed. Until she didn’t. Now she lay quietly unravelling into the dark earth.
My knitting is teaching me that I am not good for more than one stitch and breath at a time. Slowly a pattern is emerging. It is a very pleasing weave of colours that may or may not become a scarf.
I want to be like that old oak, living patiently from sapling to crone, in one beautiful spot, providing shelter, sustenance and shade, for as many days as I am given. And when that moment of uprooting arrives, I want to gather up my wool, rise and stride boldly toward that other place, into the bright becoming of something new.