Creativebug by Meghan Alley – Creativebug’s Senior Enterprise Account Manager
Anyone who has ever been through a particularly difficult time in life, whether it’s grief over losing a loved one, an unexpected health issue, stress over a family member’s difficulties, or any unforeseen challenge that presents itself, can perhaps relate to the statement I’ve made repeatedly over the last year: it’s nearly impossible to be at your best when you are extremely stressed.
Stress can cause all kinds of missteps. Sometimes it seems like a cascade of bad things happening all at once. Even a tiny paper cut can feel overwhelming during such periods, and it’s very important to be extra careful when hand-washing a sharp knife! The feeling that the life you are striving for feels out of reach can compound the stress even more.
Knitting Through Stress & Finding Beauty in the Flaws
During such times, I have to knit. Continuing to put yarn on my knitting needles and create stitches brings me back to my center. Alas, even my knitting is not immune to stress-related mistakes. This used to bother me a lot more than it does now. I have come to embrace the philosophy that you can see your mistakes as design elements, a philosophy that is much easier to accept when making a garment for a very small person, requiring much less yarn.
I recently bought some of the most luscious hand-dyed yarn I’ve ever had, and I decided to use it for knitting hats for my children. When I was creating the one pictured here, I didn’t have much of a pattern but was sort of going for a roughly hat-shaped item that would fit on my baby’s head. I was purling when I was supposed to knit. I got a little confused about which way would be facing toward the world. At a certain point, I decided to just go with it and see what happened. With such low expectations, I succeeded in creating something that would fit on my baby’s head, and surprisingly, I liked the way it turned out.
Even though my daughter insists on ripping it off her head every time I try to gently remind her that, “It’s cold outside,” I find myself reminiscing about the process of knitting a one-of-a-kind hat from a handful of little stress-induced errors. In times of chaos and grief, it will always serve as a helpful reminder that the process of creating something, however flawed, can be healing, even beautiful.