Slogging away at the Shibori Scarf
Stockinette makes me nervous.
Not the actual interaction with the fabric, which is the kind of knitting that you see everywhere, every day. It's the process of making it. Knit a row, purl a row. Over and over and over, until it seems that you will never get back the hours that you gave to making a piece of knitting that a machine could whip out in no time flat.
I'll admit it: I'm a product knitter. Well, I'm a product-everything. For me, the process is generally just the vehicle to get me to the end result. I'm not proud of this. Philosophically, I'm in favor of process: being mindful of what you are doing, enjoying the activity for its own good instead of getting through the work to get to the reward. But the mind has its own devices, and somewhere along the way, I was shaped into a product person.
Stockinette is not about product. It's the same actions, repeated innumerable times, in the same way. And the result is a homogenous piece of knitting, smooth on one side, bumpy on the other. No surprises. No change in result, no change in manner of making it.
I've introduced some color changes into the Shibori scarf to give my mind something to hold on to: a finish line, a slight change in stitches. In between each color change: a row of garter stitch. And a way to give my impatient nature an artificial way station. Now I can say to myself, only two more inches of pink, and then I get to switch to purple.
The promise of this scarf lies in the future, when I can see the effects of felting with surface detail. In the meantime, it's draining every last vestige of knitting desire out of me.
Not the actual interaction with the fabric, which is the kind of knitting that you see everywhere, every day. It's the process of making it. Knit a row, purl a row. Over and over and over, until it seems that you will never get back the hours that you gave to making a piece of knitting that a machine could whip out in no time flat.
I'll admit it: I'm a product knitter. Well, I'm a product-everything. For me, the process is generally just the vehicle to get me to the end result. I'm not proud of this. Philosophically, I'm in favor of process: being mindful of what you are doing, enjoying the activity for its own good instead of getting through the work to get to the reward. But the mind has its own devices, and somewhere along the way, I was shaped into a product person.Stockinette is not about product. It's the same actions, repeated innumerable times, in the same way. And the result is a homogenous piece of knitting, smooth on one side, bumpy on the other. No surprises. No change in result, no change in manner of making it.
I've introduced some color changes into the Shibori scarf to give my mind something to hold on to: a finish line, a slight change in stitches. In between each color change: a row of garter stitch. And a way to give my impatient nature an artificial way station. Now I can say to myself, only two more inches of pink, and then I get to switch to purple.
The promise of this scarf lies in the future, when I can see the effects of felting with surface detail. In the meantime, it's draining every last vestige of knitting desire out of me.
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