Adventures in Steeking

Adventures in Steeking

It’s peaceful. Not quiet but peaceful. The world is still turning, with the birds still chirping and while it’s dimly lit I can hear the sounds that accompany the sun outside.

In the soft shadows I can see my balls of yarn, neatly wound and piled up in order of future projects. Little insights into a future where I am a better knitter, a stronger knitter. A knitter with a cardigan I made myself.

A cardigan I wear outside, a cardigan that is worn meeting people, friends, strangers, says hi unerringly and without fear to the person who makes my coffee. Smiles warmly at strangers and acquiesces to the brush of their fingers to the sleeve of my future hand knit. A cardigan with a little piece of me, and I within the cardigan.

Now, I pick up the yarns and take them to a brighter room. Here I can truly see their beauty, and in touch feel the life that they had led before. The life it had when it was the fleece that lived on a sheep. A tall broad sheep of the north, slender and elegant, standing proud in all weathers. Unyielding in the rain, unyielding except to the farmer and his dog. Yielding only to the firm but needed shear.

As I settle to a seat, yarns in arms, a soft shine of metal glances at me.

The colours behold me. Like jewels as they catch the muted brights of the morning sun babbling through the windows. The yarns are hand spun and hand dyed, almost perfect. I wish I knew the sheep they came from and maybe one day that will come. But for now I know of the hands the colours came from and that will do.

I pick up my needles. Slender wooden things, pleasant to the touch and pleasingly neutral to feel. The tools of my creativity, I pick up a strand of yarn and begin the knit. Starting life as a tube, the shape of infinity.

My eyes flicker over, the metal is there, more formed. The straight edge. There’s a curve of orange plastic.

Hours pass as the strands of yarns become a rich ocean of colours passing between my fingertips. As the days pass the fabric of wool ebbs and flows past my knees. Mistakes are made, stitches taken apart and brought back together. The vibrant colours coming together and pushing apart as my fingers bring the strands of yarn together creating my piece of peace.

The scissors sit high on the shelf, the soft sheen of the cold edge glistens differently as the days pass. The curves and the gloss of the handles belies an ease in the use. The Fiskars scissors sits up there and I glance at it nervously from time to time. A cold dread slowing growing into glowing fear as time passes.

I try not to pay to much attention to the fear, distract myself. I try and focus on the joy of the knit. The colours undulating, the delicate pattern growing like a small world in my mind’s eye. Glorious rounds and rounds of knitted stitches, soothing me.

This tiny world created, creating. There’s a beautiful bubble around my true thoughts, and as the cardigan grows, I grow too.

Every so often this perfect bubble is thrown about, as though a child has blown it off course. I see the scissors on the shelf and am filled with anxiety of what’s to come.

I chose this.

The cardigan has reached its apex. It can no longer spend its life a tube. It is beautiful, I spread the tube out lovingly on the dining room table. Almost formed, with sleeves, it could be a jumper. As I take in the beauty of the colours playing in the patterns, doubts begin to fill my mind.

I have a way out. Another jumper. It doesn’t need to be a cardigan. I don’t have to steek this tube, destroying my work, slicing it down the middle. All this to make a cardigan.

I brush my fingers against the landing strip down the middle. The space where the scape of the tube changes. The strands of yarn no longer at play, knitted into a conservative strip.

I look at the buttons in a jar. Six big wooden buttons peer back at me hopefully, and I look back at the tube wondering if I damn it to being another jumper.

I resolve.

I take a deep breath and pick the scissors up off the shelf. The cool curve of the orange plastic presses against my fingers. I lean over the tube, my hands suddenly clammy in the scissors. My mouth goes dry.

I line the scissors up, at the middle of the landing strip. Carefully breathing, measuring and perfecting. Once this is done there is no way back.

With the first cut, the bubble is popped. With dominion over myself, I hear the pleasing sound of the crisp of yarn fibres meeting a sharp blade.

I breathe out. I cut again, making my way through the strip marvelling at how creating can sometimes be destroying. The sounds of individual yarn fibres shattering as I guide the blades of the scissors down this path.

I hold my breath at the last cut. And with a final glance of the blade the act is done.

A cardigan lies before me.