Knitting

forgiveness? and love

Allowing, watercolour on paper by Kirstie McKinnon

Knitting patterns can contain multiple instructions at once, and the knitter is required to do both, or several things in one row. Complex instructions are usually signalled by the words: at the same time.

At the same time I began A History of Kindness I bought green wool, new needles and began to knit a hooded cardigan that would be somehow symbolic of: me being kind to myself. And, at the same time, it would also be a proper serious cardigan in one-colour-only, which I would be able to wear to work. 

Problems began. When I was sick with covid, I started to hate the shade of green I had chosen. And the lofty cable pattern was just-too-hard. So, practising self-compassion, I found an easier pattern, unravelled the messed up cables and began again. The bottle green yarn however remained tainted with the memory of illness. And, was it actually the same colour as my high school uniform jersey? I bought more wool in different shades of green and began stripes. I knitted at work. 

‘Those are nice colours,’ my colleagues said.

‘Hmm,’ I said. 

I wasn’t happy, the green, the pattern and my own ideas about being kind and serious were bugging me. I decided to commit to the knitting and finish it. I ploughed on, completing the back and two fronts, I stitched on a pocket. Now only the sleeves and hood remained. But the pattern itself had started to reveal problems. The numbers for the neck-line didn’t add up. The sleeves, with a complex lace edge would need simplifying. I did what I often do when I hit a snag. I put the knitting aside.

For months.

For some time, I’ve mulled over the concept of playfulness in creativity. I loosely wondered if I could in fact live more joyfully? Not in a sort of chasing-the-dragon pursuit of happiness, but you know, joy. Up until I started A History of Kindness my writing-life had been a tense mess. Like knitting a cable sweater. How I love and admire complex cables and those who can knit them. I want to be like them. Except: what I actually love is big needles, wild colour, and simple patterns.

At my child’s last school prize giving, while my oldening heart flip flopped around on the floor dying-fish style as I tried to come to grips with the fact that my child had grown and was on the cusp of leaving; one of the young people on stage said (and I’m paraphrasing here, and he was quoting someone else): define yourself by what you love.

I love my child. I love to see cable knitting. What I love to do is engage with colour.

So I let go, and started knitting simply in colour, reusing the green wool, and adding to it vibrant hand-spun, hand-dyed yarn from my lovely mother.

All of this possibly has nothing to do with forgiveness. Maybe I forgive myself for trying too hard. I’m not at all sure what forgiveness is; it does perhaps feel like an open field, where loss is the stream flowing through, and movement anywhere is possible. And whatever happens next, love is the oxygen.

Sent

I am calm.

I dreamed the twisted eel 
of past pain and wretched pattern 
left me, drifted into
the air above the surf
and dispersed with all salt.

In the morning I painted:
The past falling into the past.

Since then also, the trauma:
the now, and now, and now
re-lived almost daily
fell into the past.

It was long ago
in an ancient time of stones
you would not recognise the collapsed structure
grass has grown a deep untended verge around it
rain has settled and levelled it
long ago
	long ago

In morning rain, in evening moonrise
	I know
I have forgiven you
	so quietly
as a tiny violet in the rhododendron dell
as leaf under leaf under leaf
as water — many droplets together
seeping into ground
an ancient cycle
complete.

~ poem by Kirstie McKinnon

Gratitude List

I’m grateful to

Claire Beynon

for encouraging me to write about knitting when I didn’t know where to start.

I’m grateful to the make-art-book-study group for helping me understand why story telling matters, whatever the medium.

I’m grateful to you for reading A History of Kindness.

Thank you,

Kirstie