For years I said I wish I knew how to knit, but it seems too hard. Whenever I looked at a knitting pattern, it seemed pretty insane, garbled gibberish, arcane language, like Bash commands. p to BOR marker , M1Lp, work - two times in total, p3 , *k1 p1*. Blip beep boop.

But I kept seeing people knitting bonnets and sweaters and scarves, and I really love a knit sweater, and I wanted something to do with my hands that wasn’t tapping a second screen while watching TV. So I finally decided to learn how to knit. While the world is forever and irrevocably changed by the information glut of modern times, and our brains are possibly rotting and howling for dopamine every two seconds, it’s also much easier to pick up a new skill and to learn a lot of things very quickly just by watching a short clip or an elaborate tutorial. I’m thankful to the video scribes and fiber artists who have taught me a new vocabulary. It’s nice to chip away at a tactile project where I will end with something I can wear. It’s exciting to look at skeins of yarn and imagine what they’ll become. It gives me a deeper appreciation for things I already have, like a cable-knit hat, or a machine-made sweater that I now recognize as ribbed and stockinette stitching. I’m still mystified that, essentially, you can knit a single strand of yarn into its own lattice. Excuse me? What???

It’s a slow flow. I started over my first scarf maybe a dozen times or more. I just started my first sweater last night and then ripped it out tonight because a stitch became inexplicably loose and I couldn’t figure out how to fix it. But it’s reassuring that I can start over, like taking another run in a roguelite game, with what I’ve learned. The repetitive movements are soothing. The process requires patience, which I often don’t have, but it reminds me of my time in the kitchen, where I understand better what a hydrated cookie dough feels like, or the smooth and bubbly skin of well-proofed sourdough, or how many pours of rice vinegar to quick-pickle some cucumber. One moment flows into the next. I don’t have the same patience for playing guitar, where the sound is an ephemeral thing and my pride is easily soured, though I wish! And I find it funny that J can play forever and feels such ease with guitar strings, yet will look over at my knitting with horror at how complicated the enterprise is. Meanwhile my hand cramps trying to hold a bar chord and other basic shapes. I told J it feels nice to do something difficult. When the clouds part and I can parse new code. It feels bright in my head and in my body.

I woke up sick on New Year’s Day and I felt like I was suddenly behind, while everyone else did their new year things. My journal pages empty. J brought home everything we needed for the week, pulling boxes of cold medicine and cans of chicken noodle soup and cereal from his backpack. He made lentil sausage stew with kale and garlic oil and peeled oranges for me. I drank hot tea and felt generally miserable. A blob who could not breathe and who could not laugh without falling into coughing fits. But I did read seven books. I kept tracking, day by day, my symptoms, and evaluating whether I felt better or worse. I kept expecting to feel a great rush of relief once I felt better, like one day I’d be healed, but it was much more incremental and subtle than that. Tasting the unfortunate nuances of my gummy vitamins. Finding that I wanted to cut up a mango, and then doing so. Sharing the slices of mango with J, divvied up into small ceramic bowls.