Beauty

Yesterday was a fantastic day. I went with my friend, Erik, to Ithaca and we had so much fun. Walking outside in natural light with cold, fresh air was both mentally and physically refreshing. We ate delicious subs and looked at books and music and yarn. That's my new sock yarn. It's Ja Woll Aktion sock yarn from Lang Yarns. It's a self-striping yarn and I just love the colors. Brown, two blue-gray shades and a lighter tan...it's very unlike the colorways I usually lean toward. The colors are rather understated, very beautiful and more masculine than I typically look for in a yarn. I'm a girly-girl with my yarn and tend toward pinks, purples, reds, and combinations that evoke more of a feminine feel. Something about this one, though, just caught my eye and said to me "Pick me! Pick me!" and who am I to ignore the call of the yarn? It was speaking to me and I had to listen.

I wasn't the only one who made a yarn purchase. Erik's yarn is Malabrigo Kettle-Dyed Merino. The camera didn't want to capture the colors quite the way they actually look. The yarn has olive green, brown and rust tones. The camera decided it wanted to make the colors a little more pink-ish looking instead. Either way, though, it's a lovely one-ply yarn that's working very well for my new knitting student. I'm pleased to say that every single one of those stitches are Erik's and he made very few mistakes (all of which were common for a novice knitter, very minor and easily fixed). His stitches are so lovely and even, I daresay he's a natural.

As I watched my friend carefully making stitch after stitch, I couldn't help but be moved by how beautiful it is to watch someone's hands performing an act of transformation. I've watched my own hands while knitting, and I've watched my other students' hands, but this was really the first time I've watched someone and found the movements so striking and amazing. I think it's due to the fact that he developed a basic competency level so quickly, so I was able to watch him make stitches, rather than watch in wait for mistake-fixing. Surely another factor was the quiet in which we were working. It was a learning experience for Erik and we had very few noise distractions and minimal conversation. My other knitterly friends have all been knitting for a long time and are at a skill level that allows them to chat and laugh while knitting, thereby distracting each other from watching hands make stitches. The quiet and the yarn and the stitching just put me in a bit of a Zen moment of beauty and I fell in love with knitting all over again.