Hi, Knitters, and those of you are visiting because you’ve subscribed to the old Tranquil Garde! I hope you’ll stay!
It’s been an interesting year or so of transition. I put this site on hiatus, partly because my commitment to gardening had become a little thin, but also out of frustration with my computer, which is extremely slow and almost impossible to use for blogging or site-maintenance purposes. I haven’t bought a new computer, but I’m trying a new thing, posting and maintaining my site with my iPad. So far, so good. I hope to keep it up, but posting pictures and videos might be challenging. We shall see. Without the creative outlet supplied by writing posts on this site, I started getting more and more into knitting. I’m now officially obsessed.
It’s been about three years since I took up the craft after a 25 year hiatus. I’ve learned that this is a familiar scenario. Lots of people learn to knit as children or adolescents and then life becomes frantically busy and knitting (among other creative pursuits) goes by the wayside. For myself, the abandonment of knitting coincided with a new job I started with l’Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal in 1990. The new job brought new stresses, some physical. So, the pain and tension that I felt in my body (shoulders especially) from playing trombone a lot more than I was used to, seemed to be aggravated by knitting. I thought it behooved me to quit knitting, since quitting trombone wasn’t an option. I soon forgot about knitting and didn’t think about it again until three years ago, when a young colleague of mine showed me a cowl she had knitted. It being close to Christmas it occurred to me that I could do the same thing and make a few Christmas presents. Light bulb! The few cowls I knitted that Christmas got me hooked again and I started to branch out to shawls, hats, mitts, garments, and later to socks. I now love it all and spend some time each day knitting. And I’ve figured out ways of managing the inevitable aches and pains caused by both my main pursuits.
My husband, Dave, has accepted my obsession calmly and without criticism or question, for which I am very grateful. There’s a part of me that nags me with the criticism “why are you spending so much time on this? Knitting is a frivolous (and expensive) hobby!”, so if he added his voice to that, I think I’d wilt and eventually give it up. I don’t want to do that because there’s another voice saying quite strongly, “The beauty of the yarn, the challenge of the techniques, the start and end of projects you’ve planned and executed—these are all worthy!” I meet knitters who are content to knit the same things over and over the same way, just varying the yarn. I would die of boredom if I did that, but all the more power to them! We all knit for different reasons. I love that in knitting there is so much to learn! So many fabulous techniques, so many people out there designing amazing projects and above all, so many people who love knitting and who form such a welcoming community. There’s an extraordinary lack of competition in this community, too. Far more support for each other than jealousy, at least that’s what I’ve found. Perhaps crafters in general are like that, but having been a musician all my life, I’ve seen lots of competition and jealousy. It’s an inevitable part of the life, perhaps. But this is not a site about music, but about the joys of knitting (and gardening, beauty and philosophy!) I’m not saying the occasional side-note (get it??) about music might not creep in…
P.S. If you’d like to find me on Ravelry, my handle is osmviv, and is the same on Instagram and Twitter.
I love to hear from you!