Hello all! How was your Thanksgiving? I love that it's a holiday that everyone can celebrate (if they put aside the trite "origins" of it and just resolve to be thankful.) I went to visit my friends and their families in St. Louis and the outer reaches thereof. It was emotional, because I've missed them so much, but when I got home I was refreshed.
My dearest of dearies in St. Louis gave me a gift! Actually, a big bag of gifts! The gifts have by now either been eaten or dispersed to their new keeping places, but it was a smorgasbord of St. Louisy things and knitty things, meant to give a lonely girl comfort. And they did. I feel like I can face the world, as scary and worrisome as it is.
Also, on the way out of town I visited my old stomping grounds, Knitorious. It has changed locations since I was last there (we both relocated around the same time) and the new shop is just gorgeous! Of course, I didn't take any pictures, but I did buy a sweater's-worth of yarn and a pattern book, and some baby yarn. The permission to spend money at your former place of employment superceedes even the permission to buy "souvenir" yarn.
Work continues on more stuff for my sisters babies, and pictures will have to wait until gifted. I did recently learn something about my relationship with knitting, however. For the past two or three months I have been knitting almost exclusively on projects for the new people, and while I haven't cut down on knitting, something didn't seem right. Something was missing. It slowly ocurred to me, and then I became convinced of it, that it's not merely the action of knitting that fills a need in my life, but also the "me time". When I'm working on a sweater for myself, I'm doing something nice for myself, and so it's therapeutic on that level also. Recent bag-of-gifties aside, I don't have anyone in my life who regularly does something nice for me, so I do it myself. What an eye-opening revelation. (What do you think about this? Please share.) I'm considering bringing some sweater-for-me yarn on my upcoming trip to Seattle. I'll be spending a lot of time hanging out in a hospital, and a large project is not an impractical thing to bring, especially at the rate I knit if the pattern is basic.
Are any of my readers Seattleians? Seattleites? Seattlers? People who live in Seattle? I'll be there shortly; let me know if you want to meet up!
3 comments:
I am a big Me-time person. I have always been one to go off by myself and enjoy my solitude.
Your angle of Me-time is one I had never thought of. I know I get annoyed with deadline knitting that I put on myself and usually end up wanting to just cast on and knit something for myself. Looking back at my projects from years past I am seriously deficient in the knit for me category. Now I understand that feeling when it comes.
I totally agree with you. This recently occurred to me a few days ago, as I've been working on a sweater fairly steadily since the beginning of November. This the first big project I've made for myself in quite some time.
I am by nature a solitary person, so this is very surprising to me. Like you, I find myself knitting a great deal for others for very specific reasons (e.g. I knit something for every woman, all 14 of them, in my family for Christmas). And while I get a great deal of satisfaction out of this, there's something about the idea of making something for myself, a way of pampering myself multiple times: while working on the project and the use of it later.
What a thought-provoking post!
Knitting for yourself as more intensive "me-time" than knitting for others? Yeah, I can certainly see that. When I was younger, I used to commit crazy amounts of time to deadline projects for other people, but I haven't done that since I resumed knitting earlier this year. Perhaps I've learned something in the intervening time? Hmmm...
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