Gee Whiz: You Need to Learn to Knit!
I couldn’t sit still.
Waiting rooms were torture. Quiet spaces felt impossible. I pushed buttons. I dug through my grandma’s purse. I asked for Life Savers if I couldn’t find them fast enough.
One day, sitting there while I fidgeted and sighed and generally made myself a nuisance, my grandma looked at me and said:
“Gee whiz, you should learn how to knit so you can sit still.”
She meant it half seriously.
I took it completely seriously.
That same night, I went to Walmart and bought a how-to-knit book for $9.97 and a skein of hunter green yarn. I sat down in my bedroom in 2001 fully convinced I was about to master this.
I stayed awake all night.
By 6am, I had maybe two rows.
But I knew.
I had discovered something wonderful.
Knitting slowed my hands just enough to quiet my mind. It gave my restlessness somewhere to go. It asked for focus but offered rhythm in return.
Knit. Purl. Knit. Purl.
Before long, knitting gave way to crochet. Then one day I found myself driving to Madison to pick up a secondhand spinning wheel — an Ashford Traditional that I still love to treadle now and then. My main wheel now is an Ashford Kiwi, and there’s a Jensen in my garage waiting patiently for a new spinner to fall in love with it.
Yarn didn’t just become a hobby.
It took over my life.
There is a feeling — if you know, you know — when you run your hands over soft skeins of merino, alpaca, even qiviut. The first time I felt lanolin on my fingers after watching color bloom into fiber, it was like something clicked in my brain.
Every step of the process lit up a different pleasure sensor. The drafting. The twist. The color. The softness. The transformation.
Somewhere along the way, I realized this wasn’t a phase.
I had found a forever companion.
Knitting comes with me everywhere (much to my husband’s occasional dismay). No matter where I am, I can pull a sock or hat out of my purse and knit a few rows.
Waiting rooms don’t intimidate me anymore.
They’re just time to make progress.
