Creative Contemplation. Knitting

My family call it an obsession. I do bring it with me when I know there will be moments of stillness: while the children are encouraged into bed; while the dye is colouring my hair.

But why knitting? Why now? 

I spend a lot of time with my body in stillness. Because it disregulates energy production, the ME/Chronic Fatigue needs me to conserve energy, and needs my body to rest. Needs my mind, my emotions, to rest. All the doing, the thinking, feeling, moving, uses energy. Whenever I can, I need not to use energy.

Because of the chronic pain I experience, my body generally welcomes any opportunity for sitting still or lying down. My mind more often needs help to enter stillness, to rest. It can help my mind to rest if I can give my eyes something to gently focus on; if my hands can be engaged in a simple, repetitive task.

Lying down, the most accessible activity after reading (which requires more than a gentle focus for eyes and mind) is holding the phone and scrolling the socials or playing games. But screen time is not, actually, restful for my eyes; the scrolling and mindless games do not refresh my mind. I know. What a surprise.

Lying down, I could engage my listening with a gentle focus; music, podcasts, audiobooks. And in some moments, that is right. More often than not, stillness means also quiet. Silence. I find noise, more and more, to diminish energy; even the soft hum of a theatre audience before the curtain goes up feels like an assault after a while.

Sitting in an armchair with feet on a footstool and head leaning back is almost as restful a pose as lying down. Thank goodness for laptops: I am sitting in the wingback chair in my lounge room now, head on a wing, feet up, able to engage in this favourite activity: writing, for a short while at least.

As I felt in my body with regard to moving and floating in water years ago, I felt in my body a pull towards the gentle rhythm of knitting to hold me in a restful posture. Many years ago I taught myself two patterns, which I have found embedded in muscle memory after all this time. I can sit, head back, feet up, winding yarn around needles in movement enough that I am able to be still.

Creative contemplation invites me into a ‘flow’ state. Do you know ‘flow’? When you become utterly immersed in an activity; lose track of time; loosen the chains of stress and worry and simply be, here, in this moment. A moment of joy, gratitude, presence with self and Sacred.

Resilience, healing, wellbeing are all nurtured through time in ‘flow’.

Jigsaw puzzles have offered this for me in recent years. But I need to sit upright, even have my head forward, to engage in a jigsaw puzzle. The opposite of a restful posture for the body. It has become too much of a strain for my eyes, too demanding a focus, in a year of serial Post-Exertional Malaise experiences (crashes).

Sometimes, rest needs to be a complete stop, a nap, each sleep at the end of the day, an active, intentional doing nothing.

At other times, I need to move a little more within the restful stillness; to move enough to enter flow. Once upon a time, a swim or a walk would be my choices. Perhaps they will be again some day. For now, I need movement within physical stillness, rather than the stillness that comes from such movement as a walk or a swim.

Then there’s the reality that rest, sleep, is not actually rejeuvenating for those with ME/CFS. So a different kind of stillness that actively encourages flow.

Knitting.

I know two patterns well enough that I don’t really have to think about them, once I get going. I watch what my hands are doing, but my mind can switch to idle in trust that the rhythm will carry itself along. With each row, I feel all else slip away as I enter, fully, into this moment.

As my fingers move yarn around needles

I remember that the Holy and me together is enough

I follow my heart towards my congregation and its members, family and friends, and hold them in my attention, present with them in my praying

I enjoy the craft, the process, the creativity.

Meditative. Movement. Creative. Contemplative.

In the background a question sometimes arises: where will all these scarves go?

Well, I have given one as a birthday gift.

Mum expressed interest in the green and blue one above, and so I gave it to her. She has since commissioned a second.

As I worked on another, a nephew watched, enthralled. What are you doing? Knitting a scarf. Who is it for? I think I’ll offer this one t your uncle – its colours remind me of salted caramel, and so of him. Can I have one? Of course  – what colour would you like? Red. (See this scarf completed, as modelled by Big Ted).

I daydream again about a market stall, with these scarves and perhaps face washers and ponchos and blankets, alongside my poetry books and the offer of bespoke ‘tiny poems’ crafted in the moment for market-goers. One day, perhaps. I don’t like having to sell myself and my wares; but going to a market where people are looking for crafted things to buy already, maybe I need spend less of my limited energy on PR. And perhaps it will be a way to be more present in the wider community, emerging from the Wee Hermitage to spend time with fellow creatives?

Knitting.

Contemplative creativity. Entering flow. Sharing joy. Dreaming dreams.

Embodying the Sacred Rule of Presence of the Play. Tell. Be. postures.