The Craft

Have you visited the ocean? I have. I love it. There is a reason. I love visiting the ocean because I love the sound ocean waves make. There is a tune and a beat. I like that you cannot turn the sound down or alter it. It is chaotic, yet organized - just like my mind.

My thoughts tend to race. I like to say it means I am mentally quick in an attempt to spin this fact in the positive. But this 'speed' can become mentally overwhelming, especially when it does not stop on command. Thoughts pile on top of one another quickly. Beautiful construction decimates into rubble and just as quickly reconstructs into something new. All this mental construction has a consequence, it can get very noisy in my head.

Frequently, if I am honest, I find myself wanting my thoughts to slow-down. I reason that if I slow-down the thoughts the noise in my head will quiet too. But desire is not an effective solution for this type of problem. Rather, I have found that embracing something physical - a hobby, a movement, a sound, etc. - that synchronizes with my mental rhythm helps to create balance. In other words, find the tune of your mental rhythm and create a dance to the beat.

So back to the ocean, I love visiting the ocean because I love the sound ocean waves make. There is a tune and a beat. I like that you cannot turn the sound down or alter it. It is chaotic, yet organized - just like my mind.

But one cannot necessarily just choose to live at the ocean or even be there year-round if it is a place that brings peace. Where I grew-up in New England, and live now, the price to live year-round at the ocean is steep - millions, in fact. So while visiting the ocean when I can is one strategy for helping quell a chaotic mind, it is not the practical strategy I employ to bring myself peace. Rather, I knit.

I started knitting twenty years ago when I was nine. I wanted to make blankets. I still love (and now knit) blankets. Knitting was more challenging than I thought, yet inspired such a feeling of peace, pleasure and accomplishment that I have kept the first piece I knitted as a memento of pride. I have knit many more pieces since.

I am mainly self-taught, having learned before the age of YouTube. In the early days, it was truly fulfilling to acquire knitting books, hold the needles and working yarn in my hands and craft intricate items like what I saw in the pages of my books. It also felt like I was crafting some intimate connection as well, learning an art that through its existence and practice unites multitudes of unique and talented strangers across generations and cultures.

In the moments when I am knitting - turning a straight line of yarn into a woven intricacy of colors, shapes and textures - I feel my chaotic thoughts slipping away as my needles move. I have bettered my abilities over the years and now the needles move in my hands as if I am able control them with telekinesis. When my hands accomplish a stitch without thought, there is the same feeling of balance I get from visiting the ocean - a synchronicity of physical and mental sensations.

After a period of knitting, I can feel telltale relief. My shoulders relax, my hands feel loose and less distracting and my mind is too tired to blare trumpets. I like to call knitting a craft more because it tingles of magic than because I know I am working nothing into something with my energies. It feels like the chaos of my mind is converting into a stable peace, which is a better state of being for my thoughts.

Would you ever realize the ocean and knitting can have so much in common? I did not, but I am glad I see the connection now.