Thursday, January 15, 2009

Knit What You Like, Like What You Knit

There is so much variety in knitting. There's room for everyone's creative urges, even if they are the sort who only really want to make practical things. You can do so much with knitting, that the most sensible course of socks and mittens and dishclothes still leaves one plenty of room to experiment with colours and patterns and textures. I leaf through the dozens of magazines out there these days in awe (and sometimes terror) - people come up with so many ideas!

Myself, I've got no urge to knit sushi - but someone went to a lot of time and trouble to do so, and I've got the pattern. I'll never make any, but I have to admire the dedication and determination that went into it. Even tea cozies and stuffed lambs (which are absolute classics of knitting) strike me as only a few steps above total frivolity. I mean, all that time and effort and what are they for? I'll admit the necessity of happy babies and warm tea, but there have to be easier ways to get them. If I'm going to spend days knitting something - and let's face it, I am - I think I want the end result to be wearable by a person.

But that's all right: because for everyone like me who can't see the point in a draft excluder knit to look like a giant snake (got that pattern, too), there's the happy knitter who's making them for all her friends. She probably cannot understand the glee I feel knitting cables on just about anything at all. I've got friends who are addicted to the production of socks - is it the teeny stitches? The fiendish complexity of the heel? The stripes? I don't know, but their obsession with stockings leaves more room for me to fill the cosmic lack of knitted ties. And keeps me supplied with socks, too.

You don't have to justify knitting, of course - it's an end in itself, not a means to an end. There's nothing intrinsically silly about knitting a Dalek. Or an Elder God. Or my own personal demented goal of lace cafe curtains for the living room .... really. There's not.

Not for a knitter.

1 comment:

  1. Lace curtains? Don't you have a *big* front window? What a great project!

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