I taught myself to crochet recently. It was my ‘something new to learn to keep my brain active,’ which social media tells me everyone past their thirties should do, because that is when the rot starts. I had also read in Michelle Obama’s book The Light We Carry that she bought knitting needles at the beginning of the pandemic, and taught herself to knit while she dealt with the anxiety and the uncertainty caused by the pandemic outside her doors.
Inspired — and even though it had been a few years since the
pandemic — I bought myself a pair of needles to deal with the dread and unease
caused by the world, in general, outside my door. And I taught myself to knit,
using YouTube videos very helpfully put up there by people teaching beginners
how to knit. Then a few months in, I discovered crochet, found it even more
interesting to use a single hook instead of the two required for knitting, and
ordered myself some crochet needles and yarn on Amazon; and I haven’t looked
back since!
It took me the better part of a year to become comfortable enough to crochet without constantly watching my fingers, and counting and recounting my stitches. And I spent hours putting together my stitches, then unravelling them, only to put them back on, and unravel them again. This unravelling of the stitches is called ‘frogging’ in crochet parlance because of the ‘rip it, rip it, rip it…’ that goes on in our minds when we are doing it. This went on for a very long time (sometimes, still does); and drove my family up the wall. It made them look at me like I was a deranged woman, seated a chair in the corner with my yarn cake and my wild hair, pulling out yarn that I had painstakingly put in some order for hours! While to me, it is all part of the quiet, relaxed process of crocheting.
Initially I was wont to take the help of my family to wind
my yarn back up once I had completely unraveled my projects, only to start them
all over again. They would ask me what in the world I was trying to achieve by
this madness, and I could only tell them, ‘I am working on it’. You see, I
never thought this was problematic. Because for me, it was all about getting
the project right. It did not matter how many times I unraveled the stitches,
because all the time that went into it, was going towards making the final
project the best. The thought that I was ‘wasting’ my time frogging, never even
entered my mind. What looked like hours of work wasted, to my family,
actually felt like hours of work invested in the final outcome, to me.
And that was how all my projects went, much to their annoyance. While I sat
there, cool as a cucumber, working on my projects one patient stitch at a time.
Of course, as expected, this lead to a curious case of
multiple half-done projects. We lovingly refer to them as WIP (Work in
Progress) in crochet parlance; and there they would be, lying around all over
the house. To me, they represented the many hours I could spend in my corner
chair, quietly, lost in my own thoughts. But my family only saw them, mainly as
mounting evidence of how I was slowly, but surely losing my sanity. There is
that black pullover, for instance, that I started to crochet for my teen, and
then faced several days when the colour black felt too dark to be around for
the hours of crocheting it took. So I side-stepped it, in favour of a
soft-beige and dove-grey stole that involves yarn that is not just snuggly and
soft, but makes me feel loved and warm as I crochet it. I am ribbed about it
all the time — the running joke in our home is that by the time I will be done
with it, my teen’s teen will be able to wear it finally!
And I get the joke. I too laugh with them. You see, I know I
will finish it someday. But until then, I need to do what I need to do to
maintain my sanity, and to keep my mood buoyant. Don’t we all have something
like that? Something that we do just for ourselves. Something that lets us keep
going, because otherwise, suddenly, we are not the ones running things, but the
ones getting run by things in our lives!
Which brings me to an interesting observation. (What can I
say, crocheting allows me to spend a lot of time with myself without leaving
too much time or space for distraction from counting the stitches, and keeping
up with the pattern.) You see, I have come to see, that much of writing is
very similar to crochet. I would even go so far as to say that what is
true of crochet is true of writing too: unraveling, is as much a part of the
process as much as creating. Completion, while extremely satisfying, is
optional. There is always space for a terrible first draft, which can
completely be written over — and in fact, is, multiple times, written over — to
the extent that the final product looks nothing like what it did when it
started out. It too, is a slow process. Subject to the whims and vagaries of
the mind, the mood, the kind of day I am having, and most importantly, the
colour I choose to work with on a given day. And yes, there is always that
distant dream, of turning either of these hobbies into something I could make
money from, but for now, let’s just stick to baby steps.
It is no surprise, to me then, that of all the hobbies in
the world that I could have spent my time indulging in, I chose these two.
Because the truth, I feel, is that life is not about the destination, but about
the journey. So is crochet. So is writing. It is not about the final product,
it never is. But about the process. If you enjoy the process, the unraveling
(or editing in case of writing) is not time wasted, but time invested.
The final product is a bonus happiness at the end of all this effort. While the
real joy, is what happens during the process, one stitch, one word, one
breath, at a time.
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