Elegant Trust

Ever notice that occasionally, something comes along that has the most amazingly simple construction and yet it makes you rethink architecture? The Roman arch, for example. The act of putting stone into the rounded shape that built the aqueducts. The construction is simple. It’s utilitarian. It’s perfect.

This is the best description of Twisted from Knitting New Scarves . Twisted amazes me in how its simple construction is something that is not knitting in the traditional sense in my mind. To me, this scarf is architecture with yarn. I am not creating. I am not stitching. I am building. Granted, the author mentions that she based the design on the Infinity Tower being built in Dubai. However, the pattern is a special version of brilliance. In my excitement over this, I instant messaged a friend who knows nothing about knitting but is a super computer genius. I said, “have you ever read code that is just so beautiful in its simplicity, that it is a special version of perfection? That you sit there in awe looking at wondering how someone could manage something so simple yet so utilitarian yet so kind of mindset changing?” My friend responded, “Not often, but a few times. We call that ‘elegance.’” I thought for a second and realized that elegant is the best description of this pattern. The way that the stitches create a three dimensional quality through a simple yet unique manipulation? Elegant, simply elegant.

The Noro Silk Garden? The perfect yarn for this project since the color changes with almost every pattern repeat.

However, there’s more to this pattern than that for me right now. Many of my friends know that I’m not particularly a religious sort. I believe in God. I believe there’s something greater than me out there. I’m not going to argue that one. Formalized religion? Well, not quite so much. As some of my closer friends know, I’ve been having me an existential crisis. Thursday was a low low day. One during which I not only cursed at God, I asked Him (or Her) what the lesson I needed to learn was. Since I’m obviously deficient in something lately. It was at this point that I realized I needed to take a step back. I mean, really, there has got to be some mental imbalance or maybe even chemical imbalance when you scream at the ceiling assuming that there is a Great Being overhearing you. I decided that the best option was to crack open the Noro Silk Garden color 203 (now discontinued) I had just bought and cast on Twisted. The name, of course, being equally appropriate considering I was feeling as though my mind was a bit twisted.

Sitting down, I cast on the required stitches and started knitting. I made it through the rib section to the first twist. I followed the directions. I went to the back of the book to figure out how to split the rib stitches. I reviewed the directions. I moved step by cautious step. At each step, I looked at the results of my knitting. In my head, I just could not picture the final result. I could not visualize how the twist was going to occur. Sure, I saw how reducing the stitch number made it pinched in. However, it still seemed so flat. Weird looking, even. Then, I began the final set of directions and the reorientation of the stitches on the needles. I kept asking myself, “Am I doing this wrong? Is this right? How does this work? Is it really going to look right?” I reoriented stitches. I knit them back to the one needle. I started the next ribbing section.

Suddenly? It all be came clear. The pattern really did work. The directions were truly that simple. Just following and trusting in the pattern was all I needed. The pattern was that brilliant. The pattern was that simple. The pattern was that clear. All I needed to do was trust it, follow it, and let go of what my mind wanted to do, which was take over and control the knitting. Instead, with this pattern, you just have to trust the pattern and let the knitting take over. Once I realized that this pattern wasn’t about intellectualizing it or controlling it but about following it, things rolled along smoothly.

At this point, I admit, I had my first knitpiphany of the day. The pattern? Totally a metaphor for my existential crisis. I realized that I need to let certain things go. I cannot control them. I cannot intellectualize them. I need to free myself and just let things happen in the time and way they are meant to happen.

Then, I had my second knitpiphany of the day. Only forty minutes earlier I had been railing against God. I had been screaming, at the top of my lungs, that if there was something I needed to learn, please for the love of Yourself, at least give me some kind of hint. I mean, I’m all good with learning things. However, you have got to point me in the right direction. I am not psychic. I cannot figure things out with a nudge in the right direction. I suddenly realized that I was being nudged. I would not have cast on had I not felt I was going over the edge to crazy. I had bought the Noro because I had a gift certificate. I had gone in search of yarn because I was feeling a bit lost that day. Normally, I would have just worked on the projects I already had started. I am not one for many ongoing projects.  All these events of the day leading up to that moment were out of the ordinary for me. Something had guided me to go out and spend an afternoon doing something I do not normally do.

While I realize that perhaps there really is such a thing as coincidence, perhaps there is not. Perhaps I needed a little persuasion. Perhaps the lesson I needed to learn was to trust that things would work out, even when I am unsure. The simple, efficient answer is that sometimes you just need to let go and trust that the pattern, or that life, will work. That’s the elegance in life. Trust.