Shortly after Mindful Knitting, I received an email asking for my feedback. I had so many thoughts about the day that I wanted to take my time over it, and maybe even put it into a blog post. As is the way with many of these things, procrastination got the better of me. The only reason I am finally doing it now is that I have a heel to turn and am a little anxious about it. Apparently, as much as I love knitting, it is not always the most preferable option.
My thoughts on Mindful Knitting are on the whole very positive. I wasn’t sure if the course would be about knitting in a mindful fashion or using knitting as an aid to mindfulness. It turns out it was a bit of both, which I was pleased about. I would like to have seen a clearer introduction into mindfulness as a whole and a distinction between mindful knitting and knitting as therapy. To me these are similar yet different concepts and exploring them further would have been beneficial. One point I disagreed with was the idea of using knitting to “stop” thoughts. I don’t know all the different schools of thought on mindfulness but I do know that this contradicts the Andy Puddicombe/Headspace technique of “noting”.
I would say that the morning session fell into the “knitting as an aid to mindfulness (or even meditation)” category. We talked about doing 20 minutes of really simple knitting every morning as a way of preparing yourself for the day. We even tried it with our eyes closed which was both fun and about as close to meditation as knitting can get. I started practicing mindfulness about a year ago and, although promising at first, it has lately descended into fast-paced daydreaming with a calm, recorded voice chuntering away in the background. I am hopeful that adding knitting to my practice will give me the focus I need.
Later in the day we looked mainly at colour. I didn’t really get the relevance at first but, looking back, I can see how this linked so closely to my idea of “knitting in a mindful fashion”. Now I have completed the course I would better describe it as “making mindful choices in knitting”. We questioned why we chose certain colours and how we felt about them and how easy it is to make decisions with very little awareness. My favourite thing was Lynne and Sarah’s observations of how engaged we were with the colours we liked and how distracted we became when we were less interested.
The course also taught me a valuable lesson in planning. We talked about different projects for different purposes. Specifically we talked about having projects of different complexities for different occasions. I realised that, if I never prioritise my knitting I won’t get the full benefit of it. For instance, if I am knitting a sock, it is necessary to get the tricky heel section done even if I have other chores to do (within reason) because then I will have an easy part that I can pick up anytime. If I never get on with the difficult bits my projects stall and that never leads anywhere good.
There was a lot of information covered throughout the day but I still felt we could have explored more. Focus, concentration, relaxation and flow were all discussed by the group but I felt that everybody had their own definitions. As with the mindful-knitting-versus-knitting-as-therapy notion I found the edges of the ideas getting a little blurry. I would have loved to investigate these issues deeper and at one point, while one of the tutors was talking, I thought to myself, “I could sit here listening to knitting theory forever”. I had visions of myself embarking on a masters degree before remembering that I hate writing essays and am appalling at deadlines. I did wonder if the course could have been spread over a couple of days. The topic definitely had enough scope but I think the nature of it was self-limiting. I felt quite fatigued by the end and needed to go away and let all the information settle itself in my brain.
One thing I hadn’t expected from the course was how funny it was. There was a lot of laughter, often about nothing in particular. I loved last year’s course but learning the technique and keeping up with the other knitters was surprisingly stressful (it wasn’t a competition but being slow to finish one section made it difficult to learn the next). Mindful Knitting did make me a little anxious at first as I didn’t know what to expect or what was expected of me but I soon realised it was a lot more about the being than the doing.
Unlike the first course I attended, the emphasis of the day was not on what you made but once I got home I had such positive reflections that I wanted to make them tangible. I did this by framing the swatches from the colour session. I’m really quite chuffed with them.
Time for me to turn that heel!