A CALMING DISTRACTION

The majority of the hats I have made in the past year have been since this past January. After I returned from enjoying two weeks in England with my son and younger daughter. An impromptu trip that I am glad we had the opportunity to take.

The journey of coming up with the right combination of knitting needles and yarns started last summer. My growing collection of beautiful hand dyed yarns having started two years prior to that. The planning stages always seem to take longer than the actual creation. But both are a calming distraction to the world around me. To the drama of everyday life. And now, of waiting to hear back about my car.

I keep a journal of my knitting, documenting all that I have made since I returned to the world of knitting last year. It began with neck warmers, hand knit with bulky 2-ply merino wool yarn and large circular needles, to adult hats which I knit with DK and worsted weight yarns and much smaller knitting needles. Adult hats were something I have always wanted to knit, but all of my time was invested in knitting up baby hats and cocoons. That was sixteen years ago. A time when my son was my hat model.

Whereas the year began with hat number 14, I am now at hat number 52. My knitting has slowed somewhat due to the dreadful two-month move to this smaller apartment and a 12-day venture prior to that in order to explore future possibilities. Neither of those decisions proved to be good ones. However, life moves on and somewhere along the way we find the correct path we need to take.

Throughout the week, and especially on weekends, I look forward to those moments in time where I get lost in creating something. In seeing a hat form from simple movements of needles and yarn. A calming distraction needed to help me escape from reality to a world of peacefulness.