Musicalknitty

Ever since I picked up yarn and needles, I found that knitting, albeit something I don’t do every day, fulfills a need within me. I’ve tried to determine exactly what it is about knitting that intrigues and captures my imagination so much. A few months ago, in an online knitting group, one of the women mentioned that she had picked up the violin. It was at that point that my love of knitting clicked.

For 15 years, I played the violin. Note, I use the word played. I was ok at it but never great. I would perform, but I was never dedicated enough to practice so regularly that I would become anything other than passable. While for many people I knew, the instrument was a ticket to a college application essay or a lifestyle, for me it gave me something that I enjoyed. I would identify myself as “someone who played the violin,” but I would never call myself a “violinist.” Violinists have pinache. They have style. They have talent. I plugged along. I practiced when I wanted. I played with music; I didn’t dedicate my life to it. I loved the community of being in an orchestra or in the pit of a musical (although usually for the Upright Bass, not the violin). I loved riding the creative process, even if only sitting shotgun instead of driving. I loved giving my own interpretations to phrasings, trills, and dynamics. I enjoyed being a part of history by playing the same music that people had performed hundreds of years before me. I enjoyed updating the violin repertoire with things from bluegrass to rock. The highlight of my “career” was playing in an acoustic fest with a friend in college. We (mostly he) wrote the arrangement, and I have to say, I kind of rocked the house that night. I began at the age of eight and fell in love with music. My love of music remains, but, sadly, my stage fright and the fact that the noise of the violin freaks out the dogs have put a damper on my practicing. In other words, these days? I stink. That being said, there’s nothing quite as fulfilling as the feel of my fingers on the fingerboard and the smell of rosin wafting out of the violin case that’s just been opened after sitting for some time. Every so often, when life gets too stressful, I still pick up the instrument. However, these are those moments when nothing can quell the storm in my mind. Focusing on the little black dots and lines becomes a different world for me where time drifts away and sound - be it in tune or not - is the only thing that surrounds me.

One day, after reading about the woman in Knit Knack who played the violin, I realized that for me, knitting has that same magic. There’s rhythm to it. The needles move in and out in the same way the bow strokes the strings of the instrument. My mind can get lost meditatively in counting stitches and following patterns the same way that it used to get lost in paying attention to the black lines, the crescendoes, the decrescendoes. Since I knit continentally, in retrospect, the sweep of the right needles is similar to the sweep of the bow. The feel of the yarn threading through my left hand is similar to the feel of the metal strings underneath my fingertips. Colors replace sounds. Textures replace dynamics. Stitches replace those grooves on my instrument’s fingerboard to where my fingers always intend to go but which they don’t always remember or find. In the way that the notes make a song, the stitches make a fabric. The meditative quality of getting lost in something greater than myself is there. Sure, it’s just a scarf or a minuet, but it’s more. Others before me have done the same thing. I connect to history; I connect to myself. I connect to my past; I connect to the world. The community is the same with people coming together to work with a single mind on a single project - be it a knitalong, a Mystery Stole, or a slogalong. Women (and sometimes men!) congregate together to discuss, to share, to form friendships. My knitting friends are my quartets. My knitting group is my orchestra.

To me, music is a part of my life. I hear songs that I’ve played, and I remember the locataion where I was, the point in my life where I was, the things I was doing, and the people with whom I was doing these things. Knitting is the same way. I look at the blanket I’m making for my friend’s baby. I remember sitting in my knitting group. I look at the scarf I carry every day, and I can see myself sitting in the Bradley airport ripping out a week’s worth of work, sitting on a couch in a B&B in Kilkenny knitting quietly, sitting on a stone bench in Dublin waiting for my husband. I look at my yarn that I’ve bought or received from trips in the same way I look at my instrument. They are special, unique, precious. I’ve picked up my violin maybe five times in the last five years, but I think about it most days. I pass it on my way to get dressed in the morning because I need to know where it is. My yarn and needles are the same way. They need to be accessible. They need to be there in case I need to be calmed, to medidate, to recuperate from life.

 Knitting to me is more than yarn and needles. It transcends the act to become more for me. Playing the violin was never a burden. It was always more than the instrument. It was the act of doing and being. It gave me a place in the world at a time when I needed one. I may never be a Knitter, but I hope that I will always knit. For me, there is a musicality to knitting, a musicaliknitty or musical rhythm that only it can provide for me.