Friday, September 15, 2006

A World of Our Making

During this week commemorating September 11, 2001, and reading the daily newspaper reminders of the violence that has followed, who among us isn’t heart-sick?  We see evidence everywhere of our powers to dismantle, to unravel.  It’s harder to find evidence of the opposite.

But here’s a modest example of people literally making order from threads of chaos: the sudden resurgence of knitting as a hand craft.  It’s a veritable revolution unfurling all around us.  It’s a good, if surprising, post-9/11 story, of knitting shops springing up in our area, and knitting groups hatching in schools and among circles of friends.  I myself am a slow study, but I have watched those close to me pick up needles and begin making things, and I am learning to see the world differently through their eyes.  Recently, a 7th grade knitter leaned in close to my ordinary store-bought shirt with a furrowed brow, plucked it with two fingers and said delightedly, “Huh! Stockinette stitch, with two-by-two ribbing.” What she saw is what many of us forget: So much of the world is made, a testament to turning our ingenious hands toward creation rather than destruction.

As with any craft, once you peek your head inside the world of experts, you are never the same.  Learn to paint and suddenly you see brush strokes and technique where once you saw only pictures in frames.  You’re newly literate; you can interpret and appreciate yet another language of human creation.

Critics claim that folk arts like knitting are simple-minded nostalgia for a simpler age. But I think it’s just the opposite – crafters see that we need a productive response to a destructive time. And knitting is wonderfully counter-intuitive – just right for today’s crazy-making politics.  Being “tied up in knots” is usually bad, but in knitting it produces beautiful clothing to comfort and warm us. Knitting is perfectly portable, so that after an hour of conversation with friends in a café, your fingers flying as quickly as your ideas, you’ve got tactile evidence of your time together, the richly looped fibers making visual the interlocking acts of risk and safety that hold relationships together.

A knitter’s view is hopeful: My friend Elizabeth reminds me serenely, when I’m blundering through my simple projects, “A repeated mistake is a design element.” Knitting teaches patience. I look at a wretched tangle of yarn and see aspects of my life or our political situation that are just as snarled, and that tempt me to despair.  My friend the master knitter calmly spreads the mess out on a table, begins teasing the strands apart, and by the time our coffee mugs are empty she’s holding a tidily wrapped sphere and has the satisfied smile of someone who has made order from chaos. Why resist such a useful metaphor?

There’s a reason wags have called knitting “the new yoga.” Like few other secular activities, knitting creates space for self-reflection in a world that largely views contemplation as unproductive.  The repetitive motion and softly clicking needles evoke the handling of prayer beads; you can lose and find yourself in the rhythm of the stitches. It’s also like walking a labyrinth, but knitting captures your winding path in a garment that can become a gift for others.  Knitting also just feels good.  In our phobic world where we buy squirt-bottles of hand sanitizer to erase traces of human contact, knitting brings us back in touch with the world, inviting us to wrap our fingers around springy animal wool and fine cotton fibers that drew life from soil.

Our natural world is turning toward a season of decay; don’t we all have overripe tomatoes bruising and weeping on our kitchen counters?  Lots of animals are packing up for the winter, but I’ve taken heart from the penny-sized garden spiders still crafting their daring webs every night in our doorframes.  ‘See?’ they seem to say, ‘Now’s just the time to create beauty, to weave together our otherwise broken world.’ Can we, with half as many appendages but a lot more power, create some order from this chaos? We don’t have to accept the world that’s been handed to us.  We can take it in hand and make something new.

Broadcast by April Lidinsky on September 15, 2006
Health • Peace & War • Sports & Recreation • Permalink • Printer Friendly
Google
WWW Michiana Chronicles