Writing and knitting

One of my favorite daily reads is Pioneer Melissa. I'm almost always motivated by what she writes, and really envious of her style. She's been writing about writing and what she's going through in order to do it.

If it's not stretching the point too much, I see some similarities to my knitting. She talked about postponing her writing until she had the perfect studio. And on another day she writes about just keeping track of her thoughts as they occur, writing them down whenever they occur instead of trying to remember them for later.

And today she wrote about writing as just doing it. Getting it done by doing it, not by thinking about it.

I know there are some people who have studios where they go to do their knitting or whatever. If I had waited for that I'd still be waiting. I could say that my home is my studio, I suppose. I knit in almost every room. I even keep knitting magazines in the bathroom.

And now I'm just starting to realize that when I get startitis I need to give in to it. I always have several projects going. I don't always work on everything everyday but I do keep them moving at whatever pace I can manage. I've been stalling on starting a project with some yarn I got earlier this year. I kept thinking I need to finish something before I start another project. But I was always thinking about that yarn. So I started a swatch. Now I have a record of what the yarn looks like, what it feels like to work with and a better idea of what I will do with it. A record so I won't forget later on.

Knitting doesn't happen if you don't do it. Skills don't improve without practice. The best way to get knitting done is to do it. I don't always have a huge block of time to knit. But I can do it for five minutes maybe. I don't believe it when people tell me they don't have time to knit even though they say they'd like to. Or that they could never do that. Of course you can. But it doesn't happen if you only think about it.