knitting
i learned to knit over the holidays and learned a few things about myself and about the craft:
yarn is expensive, especially natural fibers. but holding a silk/mohair/wool combo in your hands for 80+ hours really gives new meaning to sheep shearing tiktoks. a silkworm, a goat, and a sheep walk into a mulberry bush...
the tighter that you pull the stitches, the more yarn you end up wasting, because (wool) yarn typically doesn't have much natural elasticity. so if the stitches are knit too tightly, the panel ends up having very little leeway to stretch. reminds me of that aesop fable about the sun and the wind and the jacket.
i keep hearing that knitting patterns are similar to coding. i am not very good or patient at decoding the patterns, so i guess it's a good thing that i missed out on the compsci/tech train of the 2010s.
consistency is key. consistency with tension, pressure, repetition. i think i've gotten soft and lazy - i want my hobbies and interests and life to entertain and reward me, ideally with as little noticeable sacrifice as possible. i forgot what the investment of labor and the tolerance of tediousness felt like. at the moment, it feels like a lot of things in my life are out of my control; that i've tried to create opportunities and now i'm in a waiting pattern for things to happen to me. i don't know if that's actually true, and it's probably a bigger perspective problem than knitting can solve, but this was a good reminder that despite the apparent unpredictability of the big questions in life, many things remain subject to linear cause and effect. input time and energy, output a fluffy purple sweater.