Sleep my little baby-oh
Sleep until you waken
When you wake you’ll see the world
If I’m not mistaken…Kiss a lover
Dance a measure,
Find your name
And buried treasure…Face your life
Its pain,
Its pleasure,
Leave no path untaken.
(from The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman)
I can only just make out the scent of autumn in the air but it’s there, right along with its knitty siren call. As a belated birthday gift, I’m working on the first of a pair of fingerless wrist warmers. The second project is a baby blanket for an expectant mother.
I muse at the irony of my love of knitting —a skill, along with embroidery, that my seamstress mother declared she had no patience for. It requires a sort of sustained and mindful, sometimes even meditative, attention. This contrasts with the impatience that I exhibit when I attempt to work my way through a sewing project. Clearly our sensibilities around what constitutes patience vary greatly.
While I knit, I sometimes multitask. If the project is a simple one which allows my hands to do the work without engaging too much of my attention (a garter stitch or a simple rib pattern, for example), I am able to watch movies while I work on a project. When I work on more complicated things requiring focus and greater visual contact with the piece and the pattern, I tend to listen to audiobooks.
Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (together or separately) are favourites, in that regard. As my son will attest, I will listen to the books repeatedly (enjoying them immensely each and every time), while I work on my various pieces. The little poem up top is from Neil’s The Graveyard Book, which I adore. I found a rather aged post that mentioned it was being made into a stop motion film. That should be pretty fantastic.
